After the defeat at Kösedağ in 1243, the Anatolian Seljuk state lived in the shadow of Ilkhanid Mongol rule. First in the name of the Seljuk sultans and later through Mongol governors directly, this administration tied cities such as Amasya to the centre at Tabriz and Sultaniya. Among those governors, the most discussed is Timurtaş, son of Emir Çoban, the real master of the Ilkhanate. Known in the sources also as Temürtaş or Demirtaş Noyan, this young commander governed most of Anatolia for about twelve years. Amasya lay within the borders of that broad governor-generalship. Because the general workings of Ilkhanid administration are treated in a separate article, this one deals only with Timurtaş's life, his governorship, his rebellion and his end in Cairo.

Timurtaş, Son of Çoban

Timurtaş was the second son of Emir Çoban, who had become the most powerful man in the state under Ghazan Khan and Öljeitü. His elder brother was Bayram and his younger brother Dımaşk Hoca. The records say he was born about a year before Ghazan Khan's Syrian campaign, which places his birth in 1298-1299 and makes him only sixteen or seventeen when he was appointed governor of Anatolia. He first made himself known at a great hunting gathering organised by Ghazan Khan in 1303, and until about 1314 he remained at his father's side in Sultaniya. Contemporary accounts portray him as a brave, generous and devout commander who was loved by his soldiers.

Conditions in Anatolia had deteriorated considerably before this appointment. Irencin Noyan, governor-general under Öljeitü, had worn the population down with heavy taxes and harsh punishments, and the Turkmen principalities led by the Karamanids had stopped paying taxes and turned against Mongol rule. In June 1314 Emir Çoban entered Anatolia with a large army, summoned the Turkmen beys to a camp he had set up between Sivas and Erzincan and received their submission, and at the end of the same year retook Konya, which the Karamanids had seized. After sending Irencin off towards Diyarbakır, he left Anatolia in his son's hands. The date of the appointment varies in the sources between 1314, 1315 and 1317, and some accounts name Kayseri as the seat of the governor-generalship while others name Konya. Most scholars hold that Kayseri was chosen for its strategic position.

To look after administrative affairs, the young governor was given Celaleddin Hoca, son of the vizier Reşidüddin, and Sinaneddin Arız, a man from Seljuk circles who knew Anatolian affairs well. After Arız died, Celaleddin remained the sole assistant, but his father's execution in 1318 damaged his standing and he was soon removed from office.

The Effort to Establish Order in Anatolia

The sources describe Timurtaş's governorship with two faces. He appears harsh towards the Turkmen beys and attentive towards the townspeople and the learned class. He is said to have taken care to dispense justice in the cities, to forbid the arbitrary conduct of soldiers and officials, and to keep taxation fair. He supported Mevlevi sheikhs, the ahi brotherhoods and men of learning; Eflâkî's Menâkıbu'l-Ârifîn calls him "a second Anushirvan in justice" and relates that the notables of Anatolia swore allegiance to him. It is also recorded that among the Turkmen he was known by the epithet "the Just Ruler." The same sources use words such as "bloodthirsty" and "tyrant" for him, a contradiction that shows how differently a governor can be remembered when he tries to impose authority in the cities and on the frontier at the same time.

The clearest evidence of his building activity is an inscription dated 1323. The thuluth inscription of the mosque in the Kale İçi quarter of Samsun states that the mosque was built during the reign of Sultan Abu Said Khan and "in the radiant time of Temürtaş, with his help." It was built by a Mevlevi named Evhad, son of Mahmud. That Timurtaş allowed mosques and madrasas to be built and encouraged them himself is a point repeated in studies of the period.

The governor also had a foreign policy. In 1321 he wrote to the Mamluk Sultan al-Nasir ibn Qalawun against the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. In this letter he argued that Muslim states should unite for the sake of religion and that, if the Armenians were brought to heel, the pilgrim and trade routes would run safely. After it, Mongol and Mamluk forces marched on Sis and took Ayas. Some sources link the event to 1323, but the date of 1321 given by Abu'l-Fida is preferred because it is more detailed. Konya, meanwhile, had passed back into Karamanid hands after Emir Çoban returned to Sultaniya, and Timurtaş retook the city in 1323.

Danger in Sultaniya and the Mamluk Connection

While Timurtaş worked to establish order in Anatolia, intrigues against the Çobanid family were under way in Sultaniya. The young Ilkhan Abu Said felt himself living in Emir Çoban's shadow. Emirs with a particular grudge against Çoban set a trap in 1319 to kill him at a banquet near the Georgian frontier. Warned in time, Çoban escaped by a narrow margin and reached Tabriz. At about the same moment Timurtaş's own emirs prepared an assassination against him; Timurtaş saved his life by taking refuge in a fortress, then had the beys who had attacked him put to death and went to his father's aid. During this turmoil Konya fell once more into Karamanid hands.

In those same days Timurtaş had sent an envoy to the Mamluk Sultan asking for troops and weapons, offering in return to attach Anatolia to Mamluk lands and to become the Mamluk governor of Anatolia. Since the danger passed of its own accord, the help was not needed. But the game the court circle had played against him shook his trust in the centre. A half-independent administration, an army made up of Turkish and Mongol soldiers, and the encouragement of the emirs and the learned around him pushed him towards independence.

The Rebellion of 1322

Timurtaş stopped sending taxes to the centre, ignored the summonses of the Ilkhanid court, and even sent away empty-handed the officials who came to collect revenue. Finally, in 1322, or according to some accounts between the last days of 1321 and the first days of 1322, he declared independence by having the sermon read and coins struck in his own name. It is also recorded in the sources that he presented himself as the saviour of the end of time, that is, the mahdi. Besides refusing to go to Sultaniya, he asked the Mamluk Sultan for support to end Abu Said's reign. Among those who pledged loyalty to him were scholars of the day such as Necmeddin Tabesî, Şeyhzâde of Tokat, Zahirüddin the preacher of Kayseri, Sheikh Nâsır Sûfî, the judge Şahab of Niğde and the preacher Hüsameddin. Âbid Çelebi, the sheikh of the Mevlevi lodge at Konya, did not pledge allegiance and left the city under pressure from Timurtaş.

Emir Çoban had difficulty obtaining permission to suppress his son's rebellion, because Abu Said feared that he would join his son in Anatolia and turn against him. In the end, having secured permission with heavy oaths, he marched on Anatolia in winter, ill as he was. Before the two armies met, Çoban wrote secret letters to Timurtaş's commanders explaining the grave consequences of battle. The next morning the soldiers advanced reluctantly and told Timurtaş that for an emir's son to march against his father was contrary to Mongol custom. Seeing that he had lost control of his army, Timurtaş dismounted and greeted his father on foot. As he took him to the centre, Çoban had the instigators of the rebellion, Emir Sürkaci and the judge Necmeddin Tabesî, put to death. Abu Said pardoned Timurtaş and made him governor-general of Anatolia again.

The Second Governorship and the Crushing of the Principalities

In his second governorship Timurtaş acted more harshly. He turned first on the Turkmen beys who had withdrawn their obedience. He attacked Beyşehir, the capital of Süleyman Bey II of the Eşrefids, took the city on 9 October 1326, and had Süleyman Bey tortured to death and his body thrown into Lake Beyşehir. With this event the Eşrefid principality came to an end. He marched on Dündar Bey of the Hamidids, forced him to flee from Eğridir to Antalya, and had him seized and killed; the sources place this event both in 1324 and after 1326, and the chronology is hard to settle exactly. He sent his commander Eratna against the Sahib Atoghlus and the Germiyanids around Karahisar. Eratna took Karahisar in 1327. Timurtaş was also planning to march on the İnançoğulları at Denizli, but news from Sultaniya upset the plan.

His harsh policy was not aimed only at the Turkmen beys. According to Faruk Sümer, Timurtaş had nine children of the Seljuk dynasty put to death at Akşehir, Konya, Sinop and Simre (Amasya); the other members of the dynasty fled to save their lives. In the same period his halting of the slave trade to Egypt also strained relations with the Mamluk Sultan. From 1325 Timurtaş forbade the passage through Anatolia to Egypt of slaves brought from the north and east. At his father's warning he withdrew the ban, and al-Nasir sent him a robe of honour; relations seemed to mend, but Timurtaş kept up his precautions against Egypt on Anatolia's southern frontier.

The Purge of the Çobanids

Meanwhile Abu Said moved to be rid of the Çobanid family that cast a shadow over him. He first had Dımaşk Hoca, Emir Çoban's son, killed, and then sent secret letters to the emirs in Khorasan and in Timurtaş's retinue. A message was also sent to Timurtaş saying that the sultan missed him and was calling him to the court. The delegation carrying the letters fell into the hands of Timurtaş's men on the Derbent frontier; under interrogation he learned that his brothers had been killed and that his father had taken up arms against Abu Said. He had the envoys killed. He knew that if his father were defeated, his own turn would come.

Timurtaş first gathered his emirs and consulted them; some advised war, others flight to Egypt. He placed each of his emirs in a fortress and withdrew to Larende himself, but then his courage failed. In a letter to the Mamluk Sultan he told of what had befallen his father and brother and, declaring himself ready to hand over the governorship of Anatolia to Egypt, asked for safety for his life. He settled his family and ample provisions in the fortress of Larende; he set out as though going on a campaign and near Behisni revealed his real intention, telling those who wished that they could turn back. He continued on his way with about three hundred horsemen. He left his authority in Anatolia to the Uighur emir Eratna, said to be his brother-in-law. On the date of his departure the sources diverge between the beginning and the end of 1327.

The End in Cairo

Received by Seyfeddin Tengiz in Damascus and by Mamluk officials at Gaza, Timurtaş entered Cairo with great ceremony. Al-Nasir seated him beside himself, gave him a robe of honour, lodged him in a palace within the citadel and granted him an emirate. Timurtaş presented the sultan with a hundred geldings, eighty Khorasan camels, slaves and valuable garments; al-Nasir accepted only a part of them. Timurtaş asked him for a large army to march on Anatolia, but the sultan, unsure of the situation at the Ilkhanid court, declined.

In time the relationship soured. Mamluk historians attribute the change to his excessive generosity, his proud manner and the esteem he won among the people. According to al-Maqrizi, he had brought hundreds of thousands of sheep with him to Cairo and gave them out to the emirs, and he tipped the bath attendant and the doorkeeper a thousand and five hundred dirhams; people lit fires along the roads to wait for his bounty. The sultan began to suspect that Timurtaş might raise an internal revolt against him. The letter of Karamanid Ibrahim Bey, and the demand made before the sultan by Dündar Bey's son for blood-vengeance for his father, reinforced this suspicion. After a tense exchange between Timurtaş and the Hamidid, al-Nasir had him arrested on 18 or 19 June 1328 and shut up in the fortress of Burj al-Sab. In prison Timurtaş went for days without eating, and he is said to have regretted coming to Egypt.

By then Abu Said's envoys had reached Cairo. Led by Abacı, they asked the sultan to hand Timurtaş over alive in exchange for Kara Sungur, who had betrayed the Mamluk state and fled to the Ilkhanids. Al-Nasir first agreed, then changed his mind, reasoning that if Timurtaş were sent back alive he might be forgiven through Baghdad Khatun and take vengeance on him. Before the envoys, Timurtaş was taken with his hands and feet bound to the Qarafa section of the citadel and strangled with a bowstring. The words reported as his last were to ask after those who had given him assurances and to ask why he was not being killed with a sword. The body, its head cut off and its skin stuffed, was offered to the envoys; because they carried orders to take him alive they refused it, and al-Nasir sent the corpse to Abu Said himself. The date of his death is August 1328 (Shawwal 728); some accounts give 12 August, and some sources name Ramadan as the month. Timurtaş, who died in his thirties, was buried at a place outside the Qarafa gate at Cairo. It is related that his son Küçük Sheikh Hasan later asked the Mamluk Sultan for his father's bones, but the request was refused because the location of the grave was unknown.

The Consequences of His Death in Anatolia

Timurtaş's death changed the balance in Anatolia. The principalities breathed a sigh of relief. The Karamanids found room to expand, the Hamidid Ishak Bey returned from Egypt and re-established the principality at Antalya, and the Eşrefid lands were divided between the Karamanids and the Germiyanids. Thanks to the influence of Baghdad Khatun, Timurtaş's children came to no harm and continued to live around Sivas, Kayseri and Niğde. Abu Said appointed first Uyrat Muhammad and then others as governor-general, but these seem to have had little effect in Anatolia. In 1333-1334 the governor-generalship was given to the Jalayirid Sheikh Hasan; when Sheikh Hasan went to Iran, his deputy in Anatolia, Eratna, acted in effect independently.

For Amasya, the most visible consequence of this process is the new period that began with Eratna. As the Ilkhanid centre dissolved with Abu Said's death in 1335, Eratna established a principality centred on Sivas and Kayseri; the sphere of influence of this principality, known as the Eretnids, also covered the Amasya region. Thus the order that began with Timurtaş's governorship became, in the hands of a commander who had emerged from his circle, a local state.

Timurtaş's place in popular memory did not close with his death either. Within ten years of his death a man known as the "False Timurtaş" appeared, and Turkmen, groups from the Mongol tribes and Çobanid supporters gathered around him. This movement shows the respect his name carried in Anatolia for a long time. His son Küçük Sheikh Hasan, for his part, after Abu Said died childless in 1335-1336, fought the Jalayirids and brought the Çobanid dynasty to the head of the state.

On the Sources

Timurtaş's life rests largely on the accounts of the Mongol, Persian and Arab historians of the period. Aksarayî's Müsâmeretü'l-Ahbâr, Eflâkî's Menâkıbu'l-Ârifîn, Abu'l-Fida's Taqwim al-Buldan, Hâfız-ı Ebrû's Zeyl-i Câmiu't-Tevârîh and al-Maqrizi's Suluk are the principal documents. In modern research, İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı's article "Emir Çoban Sulduz ve Demirtaş" in Belleten, Osman Turan's Selçuklular Zamanında Türkiye and the works of Faruk Sümer are taken as basic. The sources often give dates a year or two apart. A detailed document on Timurtaş's direct activities within Amasya is absent from the sources at hand; the city's connection can be established through its place within the governor-generalship, his harsh attitude towards the Seljuk dynasty and the later political picture that arose from Eratna.

Chronology

1243: Battle of Kösedağ; Anatolia comes under Ilkhanid influence.

About 1298-1299: Timurtaş is born.

1314: Emir Çoban comes to Anatolia, takes Konya from the Karamanids and leaves the governor-generalship to his son (between 1314 and 1317 in the sources).

1319: Assassination attempt against the Çobanids in Sultaniya; an attack on Timurtaş as well.

1321: Capture of Ayas in Cilicia.

1322: Declaration of independence by sermon and coinage; claim to be the mahdi.

1323: Retaking of Konya; building of the mosque at Samsun.

1325: Ban on sending slaves to Egypt.

9 October 1326: Capture of Beyşehir and the killing of Süleyman Bey II.

1327: Capture of Karahisar; Timurtaş's flight to Egypt.

June 1328: Arrest in Cairo.

August 1328: Strangled to death.

Bibliography

Academic studies

  • Haykıran, Kemal Ramazan. "Anadolu'da Bir İlhanlı Valisi: Demirtaş Noyan (1314-1328)." Muğla Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi (İLKE), no. 23, Autumn 2009. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/217271
  • Tuysuz, Ş. Cem. "İlhanlı Devletinin Anadolu Genel Valisi Temürtaş'ın Siyasi, Askeri ve Sosyal Hayatı." Atatürk Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 22(3), 2018, pp. 1649-1675. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/553643
  • Uzunçarşılı, İsmail Hakkı. "Emir Çoban Sulduz ve Demirtaş." Belleten, XXXI/124.
  • Sümer, Faruk. "Anadolu'da Moğollar." Selçuklu Araştırmaları Dergisi, I, 1970.

Books

  • Turan, Osman. Selçuklular Zamanında Türkiye. İstanbul: Boğaziçi Yayınları, 1996.

Other sources

Online sources