After Amasya acquired its Turkish and Islamic identity, the fate of the city lay for a long time in the hands of the Danishmendid dynasty. The principality that Danishmend Gazi founded after Manzikert, with Sivas as its centre, reached its most splendid age under his grandson Emir Gazi. Known in the sources mostly as Gazi, Emir Gazi or Melik Gazi, and appearing in Greek sources as "Amir Gazis", this ruler reigned for thirty years, from 1104 to 1134. He inherited from his father Gümüştegin Gazi a shaken and divided realm, and at his death he left behind the most influential Turkish state in Anatolia, stretching from the Euphrates to the Sakarya. Amasya lived under his rule on the northern flank of this wide territory, as one of the fortress towns of the Yeşilırmak basin. The general history of the dynasty and the Danishmendid period of Amasya are treated in a separate article; this one is concerned only with the life, policies and memory of Emir Gazi.

Name, Lineage and Titles

At first sight the sources seem to disagree about Emir Gazi's lineage. In older local narratives, and in some popular texts that follow them, he is presented simply as "the son of Danishmend Gazi". The reason is that the founder of the dynasty, Danishmend Gazi, and his son Gümüştegin were often thought of in popular memory as a single person. Indeed, in some sources and in the tradition attached to the tomb in Niksar, the founder is called "Melik Danishmend Gümüştekin Ahmed Gazi", a name that fuses two generations into one figure. Modern scholarship separates the two: Danishmend Gazi, the founder, died around 1085 and was succeeded by his son Gümüştegin Gazi, and Emir Gazi, Gümüştegin's eldest son, came to the throne in 1104. On this reckoning Emir Gazi was the grandson of Danishmend Gazi and the third ruler of the dynasty.

His name is itself the source of a further confusion. The title "Melik Gazi" was not reserved for him alone but was also used for other members of the family. The Melikgazi Tomb in Niksar is attributed to the founder, while his son Melik Muhammed is said to lie in the Melik Gazi Madrasa on the qibla side of the Great Mosque of Kayseri. Consequently, whenever a building or grave in some part of Anatolia bears this name, the question of whether it really belongs to Emir Gazi has to be asked anew. In his own lifetime his actual title was "emir"; the title "melik" (king) was to be sent to him formally from Baghdad and from the Great Seljuk court in the last days of his life, but the ceremony could only be held after his death, in the name of his son. The name "Melik Gazi" given to him afterwards is thus in a sense the memory of a crown he did not live to receive.

The full title that the caliph and the sultan intended to confer on him carries all the grandeur of the diplomatic language of the age: al-Malik al-ʿālim wa'l-ʿādil Nāṣir al-dunyā wa'l-dīn Abu'l-Muẓaffar Malik Ghāzī. These words, meaning "the learned and just king, helper of the world and of the faith, father of victories", show how a frontier lord had, within thirty years, become a ruler recognized by the centres of the Islamic world.

A Troubled Inheritance

The principality Emir Gazi inherited had made its name in the time of his father Gümüştegin Gazi through great victories over the Crusaders. Together with the Anatolian Seljuk sultan Kılıcarslan I, Gümüştegin had fought the Crusader army on the plain of Eskişehir in 1097; in the summer of 1100, before Malatya, he had ambushed and captured Bohemond, Prince of Antioch, taking him first to Sivas and then to Niksar, where he held him prisoner. In the summer of 1101 the great Lombard army that marched towards Amasya and Niksar to free Bohemond was routed by Turkish forces near Merzifon. These events took place before Emir Gazi came to the throne, but they are important for understanding the world in which he grew up and the prestige the dynasty bequeathed to him.

Yet these brilliant years did not end well. When Gümüştegin released Bohemond for a ransom in 1103, he fell out with Kılıcarslan I, who demanded a share of it. The Seljuk sultan inflicted a heavy defeat on the Danishmendid forces near Maraş, and some time after this rout Gümüştegin died in Sivas (1104). His death plunged the dynasty into a deep crisis. Within a few years Malatya passed to the Seljuks, and struggles for the throne broke out among members of the family. For a while the realm appeared to be divided in two: Emir Gazi held Sivas and its surroundings, while his brother Sungur held Malatya and the lands to the south. Sungur's share was taken by Kılıcarslan I around 1106.

Emir Gazi's seizure of sole power was a bloody affair. His contemporary, the Armenian chronicler Matthew of Edessa (Urfalı Mateos), writes that on becoming head of the dynasty he had all his brothers killed. As no other source confirms this account, its details remain uncertain, but it is clear that Emir Gazi emerged victorious from a struggle for the throne in the first years of his reign. At this stage the principality was a weakened state that had lost Malatya and had been forced to recognize the Seljuks as its suzerain. Holding on to the core lands around Sivas, Tokat, Niksar, Amasya and Çorum was the real achievement of those early years.

Amasya's Place in the Principality

Under Danishmendid rule Amasya did not remain merely a fortress town but became an administrative centre nourished by the fertile lands of its valley. The richness of the Yeşilırmak valley, the steep shelter of Mount Harşena and the city's position on the roads between the Black Sea coast and inner Anatolia made it one of the principality's important towns. The fact that the Crusaders of 1101, after Ankara, marched by way of Çankırı straight towards Amasya and Niksar also shows that the city was regarded as a gateway into the heart of the Danishmendid realm. In Emir Gazi's long struggle with the Byzantines of Trebizond and the Byzantine fortresses on the Black Sea coast, Amasya and Niksar served as the rear base for campaigns reaching northwards. The oldest Turkish building in the city is known to have been a mosque built by "Danishmendoğlu Melik Gazi" on the site of the present Şamlar Mosque, just east of the citadel. The building has not survived, and it is not certain which member of the dynasty this Melik Gazi was; even so, the fact that the first trace of building activity in the city's Turkish period bears the name of this family is one of the rare concrete signs of Amasya's link with the Danishmendid age.

In these years, when the ghazi tradition met settled urban life, Amasya was part of a frontier land where Turkmen tribes arriving from the east had settled. Alongside the Muslim Turkmens, Greek, Armenian and Syriac Christians also lived in the towns of this realm; in governing this mixed population the Danishmendid lords did not hesitate to make use of the institutions, and even the symbols, of the old order. The coins struck by Emir Gazi's father Gümüştegin, with a nimbed figure of Christ on one face and on the other a Greek inscription styling him "the great emir", are a well-known example of this pragmatic approach to rule.

A Son-in-Law on the Seljuk Throne

The development that changed Emir Gazi's fortunes was the death of Kılıcarslan I in 1107. The sultan's death created a power vacuum in the Anatolian Seljuk lands, and a long struggle for the succession began among his sons. Emir Gazi exploited this turmoil skilfully. By marrying his daughter to Mesud, one of Kılıcarslan's sons, he forged a family tie with the Seljuk house, and he backed his son-in-law against Mesud's brother Şahinşah. With the support of his father-in-law, Mesud ascended the Seljuk throne at Konya in 1116.

This marriage, and the change of ruler that followed it, reversed the balance of power between the two dynasties. The Danishmendid emir, who only a few years earlier had been forced to recognize the Seljuks as his overlords, now behaved towards the Seljuk sultan almost as an atabeg. For the first half of his long reign Sultan Mesud I remained in his father-in-law's shadow, while the Danishmendids once again became the most important political force in Anatolia. This shows that in Emir Gazi's policy networks of kinship and alliance counted as much as the sword: he had given one daughter to the Seljuk sultan and another to the Mengujekid lord İshak, and his sister had become mistress of the important fortress of Zamantı (Symnada).

Alliances in the East and the Recovery of Malatya

Emir Gazi's eastern policy took shape within shifting alliances with the Artuqids, the Mengujekids and the Byzantine dukes of Trebizond. Belek Gazi, the Artuqid lord of Harput, had married Ayşe Hatun, widow of Kılıcarslan, and so gained control of Malatya, and he then seized the Dersim region from the Mengujekids. When İshak, son of Mengücek, took these lands back in 1118, Belek, together with Tuğrul Arslan, the young Seljuk ruler of Malatya, invaded the Mengujekid country as far as Kemah (1119). In difficulty, İshak took refuge with Constantine Gabras, the duke of Trebizond, and allied himself with him. Belek and Tuğrul Arslan then joined forces with Emir Gazi, who was already at war with the Byzantines of Trebizond.

The two alliances met in 1120 in the Şiran district of Gümüşhane, at a place the sources call Serman. Emir Gazi and his allies won the battle, and Gabras and İshak were taken prisoner. Gabras was released on payment of a ransom of thirty thousand dinars. İshak, being Emir Gazi's son-in-law, was set free without ransom. This gesture shows the weight Emir Gazi gave to family ties, but it also cost him dear: Belek, angered that such a decision had been taken without consulting him as an ally, broke with him, and Artuqid-Danishmendid relations were strained for some time. The victory, on the other hand, consolidated Danishmendid influence between the eastern Black Sea and the Euphrates basin. İshak the Mengujekid long remained under their influence, and Gabras, once released, came to seek refuge with the Danishmendids in later years when he fell out with Byzantium.

In the same years Emir Gazi is known to have clashed with the Crusader principalities as well. It is recorded that in May 1119 he raided the territory of Antioch with an army of seven thousand men and routed Roger, Prince of Antioch, who had marched against him. This campaign shows that the Danishmendid realm, a neighbour of the Crusader states, no longer confined itself to defence but was also intervening in the balance of power to the south.

Malatya, lost in the first months of his reign, remained a goal Emir Gazi never forgot. As long as Belek lived, however, he did not dare march on the city. When Belek died in 1124 and a dispute arose between Tuğrul Arslan, the ruler of Malatya, and Süleyman, the Artuqid emir of Harput, the opportunity came. On 13 June 1124 Emir Gazi, together with his son-in-law Sultan Mesud, laid siege to Malatya. Famine broke out in the city, and at the end of a siege lasting months Tuğrul Arslan and his mother Ayşe Hatun were forced to surrender it. Some sources give the date of the surrender as 10 December 1124. The people of Malatya, who had suffered under the rule of the young prince and his mother, welcomed their new master as a deliverance. Emir Gazi is said to have treated Muslims and non-Muslims alike with mercy, to have distributed seed grain to the farmers and brought in herds of livestock, so that Malatya soon recovered its prosperity and peace. This was almost exactly the policy his father Gümüştegin had followed in the same city twenty years earlier; the Danishmendids had made it a tradition of government to win over towns worn down by long sieges through economic relief.

The Most Powerful Ruler in Anatolia

The years in which Emir Gazi's power reached its peak came in the midst of his son-in-law Sultan Mesud's struggle with his brothers. Mesud's brother Melik Arab, lord of the Kastamonu and Çankırı region, had rebelled with help from the Byzantines and the Armenians. In 1127 he ambushed and captured Emir Gazi's son Muhammed and, emboldened by this success, marched against Emir Gazi himself. He suffered a heavy defeat, however, and took refuge in Byzantium. Acting together with his son-in-law, Emir Gazi seized Kayseri and Ankara. Melik Arab fled once more to Byzantium. In the end Sultan Mesud, with his father-in-law's support, held on to his throne against his brothers Şahinşah, Tuğrul Arslan and Arab, but the price was high.

At the close of these struggles Emir Gazi brought within his own frontiers almost the whole of the Anatolian Seljuk lands from the Euphrates to the Sakarya, except for Konya and its surroundings, which he left to his son-in-law. In 1129 he also took control of Ankara, Çankırı, Kastamonu and the Black Sea coast. The core of Sivas, Tokat, Niksar, Amasya and Çorum inherited from his father thus grew into a realm stretching from Malatya to Kastamonu and from Kayseri to the Black Sea shore. This expansion made the Danishmendids, for a short time, the undisputed first power in Anatolia, while the Seljuk sultan, in his father-in-law's shadow, had to content himself with a small area around Konya.

Byzantium and the Black Sea Front

Under Emir Gazi, relations between the Danishmendids and Byzantium were for the most part a story of warfare. Byzantium had supported Melik Arab and Tuğrul Arslan against Mesud, once Emir Gazi's ally. Because of this, the struggle between the two sides continued almost without pause between 1126 and 1133, above all in the western Black Sea region around Kastamonu, which changed hands several times. Emperor John II Komnenos took advantage of Emir Gazi's absence in Cilicia to invade the Kastamonu region, but Emir Gazi recovered it in 1132. In these years Emir Gazi also took under his protection the emperor's rebellious brother Isaac Komnenos, seeking to weaken Byzantium from within. That a rebel prince of the Byzantine court should find shelter at the court of a Turkish emir is a clear sign of the weight Emir Gazi had gained in the politics of the region.

Emir Gazi's raids on the Black Sea coast were also part of this front. The sources attribute his failure to mount a second campaign against the Armenians of Cilicia to the fact that at that very time he was busy with raids along the Black Sea coast. Amasya and Niksar, as the natural bases for these northern campaigns, held an important place in the principality's system of defence and supply.

The Cilician Campaigns and the Struggle with the Crusaders

The event that made Emir Gazi's name best known in the Islamic world was his Cilician campaign of 1130. Bohemond II, Prince of Antioch, wishing to profit from the death of the Armenian prince Toros I, had marched on Cilicia. At the request of the Armenian prince Leon I, Emir Gazi also came down into the Cilician plain (Çukurova). The two armies met on the plain of Anazarbus (Aynizerbâ, today's Dilekkaya Castle), and Emir Gazi won the battle. Bohemond II was killed in the fighting; his embalmed head was sent, together with gifts, to the Abbasid caliph al-Mustarshid. That Bohemond II was the son of Bohemond I, captured thirty years earlier by Emir Gazi's father, lent the event the appearance of a settling of accounts between dynasties. According to some scholars, Emir Gazi might have taken still more of the principality's territory had it not been for the intervention of Emperor John II, who wished to extend his own influence over the affairs of Antioch.

The victory also brought the alliance with the Armenians to an end. Leon I, who had seized power after having Toros's son poisoned, attacked Zamantı, which belonged to Emir Gazi's sister, in 1131. Emir Gazi entered Cilicia again, took many fortresses and bound Leon to pay an annual tribute. Under the agreement Leon was both to pay tribute and to prevent Armenian bands from raiding Turkish lands. Thus for the first time the Armenians of Cilicia agreed to pay tribute to a Turkish state ruling in Anatolia. Once Emir Gazi had withdrawn, however, Leon did not keep his word: he neither paid the tribute nor stopped the raids, and Emir Gazi, occupied on other fronts, was unable to campaign against him again.

In the same years there was also a reckoning in the east with the Crusader County of Edessa. In 1129 Count Joscelin de Courtenay of Edessa had plundered the country around Diyarbakır, and in 1130 he had taken Raʾs al-ʿAyn, killing or capturing many people. Emir Gazi entered the territory of the county by way of Maraş and, according to some sources, besieged the castle of Kaysun near present-day Çakırhüyük. Joscelin, though wounded, set out at the head of his army on a litter and died at Dülük towards the end of 1131. On hearing this news Emir Gazi turned back without giving battle, so that the Crusaders could not attribute their defeat to the death of their ruler. Other accounts interpret the withdrawal differently: according to them, Emir Gazi raised the siege on learning that the count, whom he had believed long dead, was advancing with his army. Whichever version is true, the episode suggests a ruler attentive not only to the battlefield but also to the political meaning of war.

The Title from the Caliph and His Death

His wars against the Byzantines, the Crusaders and the Armenians made Emir Gazi a symbol of the ghaza in the eyes of the Islamic world. Having established peace and order in his lands and brought part of the Seljuk territories under his own rule, Emir Gazi was recognized as the most influential ruler in Anatolia. The Abbasid caliph al-Mustarshid and the Great Seljuk sultan Sanjar decided to confirm this officially. Envoys were sent to bring him the insignia of sovereignty, a diploma of investiture, a banner, a drum, a golden staff and a crown, and to confer on him the title of "melik". Some accounts also mention among the gifts a golden necklace and black banners, black being the Abbasid colour. The gesture was a sign that a frontier lord was now acknowledged as a recognized king.

When the envoys arrived, however, Emir Gazi was lying ill. The envoys waited for a time and, upon his death, gave the insignia of sovereignty to his eldest son Muhammed, who succeeded him, proclaiming him king in Malatya. Emir Gazi's death is dated to 528 (1134); some sources give the month as September. On the place of his death, however, the sources diverge: some say he died in Malatya, others in Sivas. The fact that the envoys handed the insignia to his son in Malatya suggests that he may have died in that city, but there is no conclusive document.

His Tomb at Pınarbaşı near Kayseri

Emir Gazi's body was carried to the tomb he had built in his lifetime and buried there. This tomb stands today in the village of Melikgazi near Pazarören, in the Pınarbaşı district of Kayseri, at the foot of Melikgazi Castle, on the slope of a high hill. Like classical Seljuk tombs it has two storeys: a mummy chamber below and, above, the room containing the cenotaphs. The mummy chamber is entered through a small door beneath the tomb's entrance; it is cross-vaulted and cruciform in plan, faced outside with cut stone and built inside of mixed brick and rubble. The upper storey holding the cenotaph, above the mummy chamber, is built of thin, flat bricks. Rising on a cut-stone base some seventy-five to eighty centimetres above the ground, the building is of brick throughout apart from its foundation and is counted among the rare monuments in Anatolia built entirely of brick. With its brick facing laid in geometric patterns of lozenges and zigzags, the narrow, tall muqarnas niches on either side of each face, and the slit windows opened in all four faces, it bears the character of an early period. It is covered inside by a dome on squinches and outside by a pointed conical roof on a hexagonal drum. Scholars compare it with the Gunbad-i Qirmiz at Maragheh, the Kırkkızlar Tomb at Niksar and the tomb of İzzeddin Keykâvus I in Sivas.

The lower storey of the tomb is known to contain three mummified bodies, Emir Gazi's among them. It is recorded that his mummified body has survived to the present day and that the tomb is visited as a holy grave.

The question of whom the tomb belongs to is, however, disputed. The building bears no inscription, and there is no text documenting which of the Danishmendid Melik Gazis it belongs to. Oktay Aslanapa, comparing it with similar buildings, notes that its architecture may date from the last quarter of the twelfth century, whereas Emir Gazi died in 1134, and states that the building cannot be attributed to him with certainty. Orhan Cezmi Tuncer, while accepting that the village where the tomb stands was founded by the Danishmendids and that the building was erected during their rule, also agrees with Aslanapa's view. On the other hand, the tradition that the tomb belongs to Melik Gazi has been handed down by word of mouth to the present day. What is certain is that the building is an early monument connected with the Danishmendid milieu and that for centuries the local people have visited it as the grave of Emir Gazi.

His Family and Successors

Besides Muhammed, Emir Gazi had three other sons, named Yağıbasan, Yağan and Aynüddevle. As soon as Muhammed came to the throne, his brothers Aynüddevle and Yağan rebelled. Melik Muhammed had to deal at once with his brothers and with Byzantine attacks; in 1135 he killed Yağan, while Aynüddevle fled to Malatya. Melik Muhammed became known as a pious and charitable ruler; he rebuilt the ruined city of Kayseri, had the Great Mosque of Kayseri built, and died in Kayseri in 1143. After his death the dynasty split into three branches, centred on Sivas, Malatya and Kayseri. Another of Emir Gazi's sons, Nizameddin Yağıbasan, was styled ruler of Sivas and Amasya, and Amasya remained part of the Sivas branch under his rule. In Malatya, Aynüddevle and his line held power.

Emir Gazi's death also marked the end of the principality's most brilliant age. The alliances and family ties he had built up over the years quickly unravelled in the struggles for the throne among his sons and grandsons. Sultan Mesud I, once overshadowed by his father-in-law, and after him his son Kılıcarslan II intervened in the internal quarrels of the Danishmendid house and extended their own dominions. This process ended in the 1170s with the complete absorption of the Danishmendid lands into the Anatolian Seljuk state, and Amasya too became the scene of new struggles for power.

The ghaza tradition of the Danishmendids lived on in the epic narrative known as the Danishmendname, compiled in the thirteenth century and rewritten in the fifteenth by Arif Ali, warden of Tokat Castle. The work chiefly recounts the legends of the dynasty's founder, Danishmend Gazi, and tells of his capture of Harşena, that is, the citadel of Amasya, along with fortresses such as Yankoniya (Çorum), Dokiya (Tokat), Karkariye (Zile) and Harsanosiya (Niksar). Yet the hard struggles with Byzantium of Emir Gazi's time are also reflected in the narrative. Some manuscript copies of the epic bear the title "Hikâyet-i Melik Gazi" (The Story of Melik Gazi); one of these, dated 1607, is held in the Atatürk Library in Istanbul. Sefer Solmaz's separate study of Emir Gazi's deeds as presented in the Danishmendname shows that this link between epic and history has also drawn the attention of scholars.

In many parts of Anatolia the name of Melik Gazi survived in popular memory as that of a warrior-saint. Tombs and shrines bearing this name became places of pilgrimage in various towns such as Kayseri, Niksar and Kırşehir; some of them belong to other members of the dynasty, or are buildings whose occupant is uncertain. This situation, a typical example of how historical figures take on a legendary identity over time, indirectly confirms how great Emir Gazi's renown was in his own day. For the people of Amasya, Melik Gazi is remembered as the ruler of a heroic age, an era of the city's Turkification crowned by the ghaza. The Turkish and Islamic order established in the Yeşilırmak basin in his time also laid the ground for the great monuments that would rise in Amasya in the Seljuk and Ottoman periods.

Chronology

c. 1085: Death of Danishmend Gazi, founder of the dynasty; he is succeeded by his son Gümüştegin Gazi.

1100: Gümüştegin Gazi captures Bohemond I, Prince of Antioch, and imprisons him at Niksar.

1101: The Crusader army marching on Amasya and Niksar is routed near Merzifon.

1104: Gümüştegin Gazi dies in Sivas; his eldest son Emir Gazi becomes head of the dynasty.

c. 1106: Malatya is taken from the Danishmendids by Kılıcarslan I.

1107: Death of Kılıcarslan I; struggles for the throne begin in the Seljuk lands.

1116: Emir Gazi's son-in-law Mesud I ascends the Anatolian Seljuk throne with his support.

1119: Raid into the territory of Antioch; the forces of Roger, Prince of Antioch, are routed.

1120: Battle of Şiran (Serman); İshak the Mengujekid and Constantine Gabras, duke of Trebizond, are taken prisoner.

1124: Siege of Malatya (13 June) and surrender of the city (10 December according to some sources).

1126-1133: Intermittent wars with Byzantium around Kastamonu and the western Black Sea.

1127: Melik Arab captures Emir Gazi's son Muhammed, then is defeated and flees to Byzantium. Kayseri and Ankara pass to the Danishmendids.

1129: Ankara, Çankırı, Kastamonu and the Black Sea coast come under Danishmendid control.

1130: Bohemond II is defeated and killed on the plain of Anazarbus; his head is sent to the Abbasid caliph.

1131: Second Cilician campaign; the Armenian prince Leon I is bound to an annual tribute. Campaign into the County of Edessa; withdrawal on the death of Joscelin.

1132: The Kastamonu region, occupied by Byzantium, is recovered; Isaac Komnenos is taken under protection.

1134: Emir Gazi dies as the envoys of the caliph and of Sultan Sanjar bring him the title of king; he is succeeded by his son Melik Muhammed.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Urfalı Mateos Vekayi-nâmesi (952-1136) ve Papaz Grigor'un Zeyli (tr. H. D. Andreasyan), Ankara 1987.

Academic studies

  • Sefer Solmaz, "Melik Gazi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (Encyclopaedia of Islam of the Turkish Religious Foundation), Supplement 2, Ankara 2019, pp. 245-247. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Artuklu-Dânişmendli İlişkileri Hakkında", Belleten (Turkish Historical Society). belleten.gov.tr
  • Mustafa Demir, "Danişmendli Emâreti'nin Kurucuları", Sakarya Üniversitesi Fen Edebiyat Dergisi, X/1 (2008), pp. 141-149.

Official sources

  • Governorship of Kayseri and Ministry of Culture and Tourism, descriptive texts on the Melikgazi Tomb. kayseri.gov.tr

Other sources

  • Abdülkerim Özaydın, "Dânişmendliler", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. VIII. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Abdülkerim Özaydın, "Dânişmend Gazi", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. VIII. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • "Dânişmendnâme", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. VIII.
  • "Amasya", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. III.
  • Oktay Aslanapa, Anadolu'da İlk Türk Mimarisi: Başlangıç ve Gelişmesi.
  • Orhan Cezmi Tuncer, Anadolu Kümbetleri.
  • Osman Turan, Selçuklular Zamanında Türkiye, Istanbul 1993.
  • Wikipedia, articles "Melik Gazi", "Emir Gazi", "Gazi Gümüshtigin" and "Melikgazi Türbesi" (auxiliary source). tr.wikipedia.org