For roughly a century, from the middle of the thirteenth century to the last quarter of the fourteenth, Amasya lived in the shadow of a power whose centre lay far away. That power was the Ilkhanate, the state founded by the descendants of Hülagü, whose capital was first Tabriz and later Sultaniyya. In this period the city came under the control of governors appointed by the Ilkhanid rulers, of their deputies, and of the great emirs who from time to time travelled to the region. The political history of the age has largely been written around the office of the governor-general of Anatolia, and the sources describe the fortunes of governors and of the Chobanid family in far more detail than the daily administration of the city. The most tangible document Amasya has inherited from this age is the Dârüşşifâ of 1308-1309, and the life of the city in this century can be understood by reading the administrative history together with that building.

From Köse Dağ to Mongol Overlordship

The Anatolian Seljuk state, which had barely managed to suppress the Babai revolt under Kaykhusraw II, had been left weak against the Mongols. The Mongol commander Baiju Noyan took Erzurum at the end of 1242, put its people to the sword, and turned on Anatolia again the following year. The Seljuk army was defeated at Köse Dağ, northeast of Sivas, according to Ibn Bibi on 1 July 1243, by a smaller Mongol force. The Mongols plundered Sivas and Kayseri; at Kayseri the resistance of the Ahîs lasted two weeks and was broken only by an act of treachery. The sultan withdrew to Tokat, known for the strength of its fortress, and from there went on to Antalya. The vizier Mühezzebüddin Ali, meanwhile, took refuge in Amasya on the night of the battle and went from there to Mughan, taking valuable gifts with him, to negotiate peace with the Mongols. Under the treaty the Seljuks were to pay each year 3,600,000 dirhams of silver, ten thousand sheep, a thousand cattle and a thousand camels. The Anatolian Seljuk state thus became a vassal of the Mongols, and the burden, growing heavier over time, impoverished both the state and its people.

After this date Amasya came under Mongol rule. The city was left to the administration of Mongol governors; it is also recorded that for a time it fell under the authority of Tâceddin Altınbaş, son of the last Seljuk sultan Gıyâseddin Mesud II. The Seljuk sultanate kept its name, but real authority lay with the Ilkhanid representatives; the sultans became rulers whom the Mongols enthroned and deposed as they pleased. In 1277 the Mamluk sultan Baybars entered Anatolia and defeated the Ilkhanid army at Elbistan; Abaka Khan then marched into Anatolia and, in his anger at the Seljuk emirs who had invited Baybars, had thousands put to death. The Turkmen beys, led by the Karamanids, began to shrink from rising against the Mongols, but that reluctance did not last.

Ilkhanid Administration and the Governorship of Anatolia

The Ilkhanids had gathered the greater part of Anatolia into a single administrative unit called the governor-generalship of Anatolia. The internal division of labour in the state resembled the Seljuk tradition: a vizier beside the ruler, a beylerbey at the head of the army, and ulus beys in the provinces. Gazan Khan's making Islam the official religion of the state did not lighten the load on the people of Anatolia; taxes remained heavy, and the Seljuk fiscal system, especially the land system, dissolved in this period. The revolts of Baltu and Sülemiş in Gazan's time show that the Mongol governors in Anatolia had begun to rely on the increasingly powerful Turkmen.

With the accession of Olcaytu (1304), the governorship of Anatolia went to İrencin Noyan, the ruler's maternal uncle and a descendant of Genghis Khan. The sources describe him as a harsh and brutal administrator. He imposed heavy taxes and inflicted severe punishments on those who could not pay, punishments that sometimes ended in death. The Turkmen beys turned this tyranny into propaganda against the Mongols, and the beyliks led by the Karamanids stopped paying taxes. In the last years of Olcaytu's reign revolts broke out again and alarmed Sultaniyya.

Emir Chupan and the Anatolian Campaign

To restore the situation, the Ilkhanid beylerbey Emir Chupan arrived in Anatolia with a large army in June 1314. He set up camp near Karanbük, between Sivas and Erzincan, and summoned the Turkmen beys to declare their allegiance. Learning that the Karamanids had seized Konya, he marched on the city and recaptured it in December 1314 (the Anonymous Seljukname places the event in 1315; the difference is explained by the siege having fallen at the end of the year). The Turkmen beys then came to the camp at Karanbük and declared their obedience; a representative of the Armenian kingdom at Sis was also present at the ceremony. Chupan stayed in Anatolia for more than a year and restored order, named İrencin Noyan's repressive policy as the cause of the revolt, and removed him from office. İrencin was later banished to the governorship of Diyarbakır, which became one of the reasons for the grudge he bore Chupan in later intrigues.

Once he was satisfied that Anatolia had been set in order, Chupan made Kayseri the seat of the governorship, appointed his son Timurtash as governor, and left the country. Contrary to what Aksarayî reports, Faruk Sümer holds that wintering at Karanbük could only have taken place after Konya was taken, and he considers it wrong that the event has been placed in Abu Said's reign. In 1316, when Olcaytu died and the child Abu Said Bahadur Khan came to the throne, Chupan became, as beylerbey, the real ruler of the state. He put down the revolts in Anatolia and averted the dangers threatening from the Golden Horde and Chagatai khanates; the long struggle with the Mamluks also ended under his beylerbeyship, with a treaty made in 1323. He had married a daughter of Olcaytu (1307), and his own daughter Baghdad Khatun became the wife of Abu Said. The Chobanid family thus stood at the heart of both the army and the court, but that very position was the one their enemies were aiming at.

Timurtash: A Young Governor

Timurtash (Demirtaş Noyan), the second son of Emir Chupan, was born, according to the sources, about a year before Gazan Khan's Syrian campaign, around 1298-1299. On that reckoning he was sixteen or seventeen when he became governor of Anatolia. The date of his appointment differs among the sources. Haykıran gives about 1314, immediately after Chupan's campaign; some sources point to 1316 or 1317. Beside the governor Chupan had left behind were Celâleddin Hoca, son of the vizier Rashid al-Din, to handle the affairs of the divan, and Emir Seyfeddin Râzî as deputy governor.

The records of the period describe Timurtash as a brave, pious and just administrator. After the harsh rule of İrencin Noyan, his justice-based administration calmed the movement that had stirred among the Turkmen, and discontent with Mongol rule eased to some extent. He is said to have forbidden arbitrary treatment by soldiers and officials and to have collected taxes fairly, and the Turkmen of Anatolia called him the "Just Sultan". The same sources also note that he combined this justice with harsh military measures: he made all the Turkmen beys of Anatolia acknowledge his authority, sometimes by force and sometimes by politics.

The Events of 1319 and the Cilician Campaign

Abu Said, who had succeeded when Olcaytu died, felt himself to be in Chupan's shadow. The emirs who resented Chupan's power planned in 1319, with the ruler's consent, to kill him. The sultan had confided his wish to İrencin Noyan, Kurumişî and Emir Tokmak. Chupan was at that time occupied in Derbent and preparing to march on Georgia. Kurumişî invited him, on the pretext of giving a banquet in his honour, to the city of Sör Mari in his own territory. On his way to the banquet Chupan received news of the plot; he left with only his son Emir Hasan, while Kurumişî attacked his camp with ten thousand horsemen, and more than three hundred soldiers died on the two sides. Chupan took refuge in Merend and from there came to the neighbourhood of Tabriz. When the vizier Tâceddin Alishah spoke in his favour, Abu Said changed his mind, Chupan begged forgiveness, and he received permission from the ruler to call his enemies to account.

At the same time Timurtash too was attacked on an order from the centre; some of the emirs under his command prepared an assassination, and he escaped by taking refuge in a fortress. He then had the beys who had attacked him put to death and set out towards Tabriz to help his father. In this turmoil he asked for help from the Mamluk sultan al-Malik al-Nasir; the sources report that in his letter he offered to attach Anatolia to the Mamluks and to become himself a Mamluk governor. When the danger passed the help was no longer needed, but Timurtash's view of the centre had changed. In 1321 he decided to march on the Cilician Armenians and came to an agreement with the Mamluk sultan: Mongol and Mamluk forces attacked Sis and took Ayas (against the date 1321, based on Abu al-Fida, some sources give 1323). In a letter he wrote to the Mamluk sultan Timurtash is said to have argued that Muslims should act together against the Armenians and that opening the passes would also benefit merchants and pilgrims. His taking of Sis and Ayas at the encouragement of the Mamluks is counted among the reasons why he fell out with the Ilkhanid administration; he did not pay his tax and did not attend the summons. The Karamanids, taking advantage of the turmoil of 1319, had retaken Konya; Timurtash recaptured the city in 1323.

The Declaration of Independence and His Father's Arrival in Anatolia

A half-independent administration was in operation in Anatolia, and a large army of Turkish and Mongol origin stood under Timurtash's command. The emirs and scholars around him urged him to declare independence; among those who pledged allegiance, names such as the preacher of Kayseri, a judge from Niğde and a sheikh's son from Tokat are mentioned. The sheikh of the Konya Mevlevi lodge, Âbid Çelebi, refused to pledge allegiance and was forced to leave the city. Timurtash stopped sending taxes to the centre, did not attend the summonses he was obliged to attend by protocol, and sent away the tax officials dispatched by Abu Said empty-handed. According to Haykıran, in 1322, that is, in the last months of 1321 or the first of 1322, he declared independence by having the khutba read and coins struck in his own name; the sources give the year as anywhere from 1319 to 1324, but the fact that it happened in the last months of a year accounts for the discrepancy. Some accounts also record that he laid claim to being the Mahdi.

Abu Said's repeated invitations went unanswered, and this settled the revolt in the ruler's eyes. In mid-winter, though ill, Chupan asked permission to go to Anatolia to suppress his son; Abu Said, fearing that Chupan would join his other sons and Timurtash and march on the court, first refused and then, on solemn oaths, gave permission. When Chupan set out in the winter of 1324 Timurtash was thinking of fighting, but his father secretly wrote letters to his commanders explaining that the end of the revolt would be bad. The next morning the army advanced reluctantly; the emirs told Timurtash that for an emir's son to lead troops against his father would set a bad precedent in the Mongol land. Timurtash dismounted and met his father on foot. Chupan took him and brought him to the centre and had the emirs who had urged the revolt, Emir Sürkâcı and the judge Necmeddin Tabesî, put to death. Abu Said pardoned Timurtash and appointed him governor of Anatolia again; the revolt was put down by Chupan's experience without much bloodshed.

The Second Governorship

During his second governorship Timurtash adopted a harsher rule and turned on the Turkmen beys who were drifting away from Mongol authority. He marched first on Süleyman Bey II of the Eshrefids; on 9 October 1326 he attacked Süleyman Şehri (Beyşehir), the seat of the beylik, plundered it and had Süleyman Bey killed. He then went after Dündar Bey of the Hamidids; Dündar abandoned Eğridir and fled to Antalya, where Timurtash caught him and had him killed (some sources place this event in 1324; Haykıran says that, since the date of the Süleyman Bey affair is certain, the order must be as given here). He then took the lands of Turgutluoğlu, Şecaüddin, Doğancık, the region of Bolu and the territory of Yakub. He sent Eratna Bey against the Sahib-Ataids, and Eratna took Karahisar in 1327. As he was about to march on the İnançids of Denizli, news from Sultaniyya upset his plans.

Meanwhile Abu Said had moved to be rid of the Chobanid family. He first had Chupan's son Dımaşk Hoca killed, citing his misconduct at court, and then secretly sent letters to the emirs in Khorasan for the killing of Chupan and his line. A decree was also sent to Timurtash saying that the ruler missed him; the aim was to draw him to the court and dispose of him there. The messengers were caught by Timurtash's men on the Derbent frontier, and the letters found on them exposed the plot. According to the TDV, Chupan was killed because he did not agree with the idea of Timurtash's joining the Turkmen to resist the sultan; he died at Herat in 1327. As the reason for Abu Said's decision, the same entry gives the sultan's falling in love with Chupan's married daughter Baghdad Khatun and the court intrigues this caused.

Flight to Egypt and Death

Timurtash was left with two roads: to stay in Anatolia and wait for Abu Said to come, or to go to Egypt. He first thought of fighting, placing his emirs in fortresses and taking up residence himself in the fortress of Larende; then, his courage broken, he decided to go to Egypt. He left his family at Larende and set out with three hundred horsemen, and on leaving Anatolia he left Eratna Bey in his place as governor. He reached Damascus in January 1327 and then Cairo on 21 January 1327. He was received with ceremony, went hunting with the sultan, and was made an emir. The sultan, despite Timurtash's request, did not give him an army to march on Anatolia, because he had word that Chupan was not yet dead.

Then things turned. İbrahim Bey of Karaman sent the son of Dündar Bey, whom Timurtash had killed, to Egypt and had him bring a blood claim before the sultan. A quarrel broke out between Timurtash and Dündar's son, and the Mamluk sultan, deciding that Timurtash had ill intentions, imprisoned him on 18 June 1328. At the same time Abu Said's envoys had come to Egypt; the Ilkhanid ruler proposed that the Mamluk sultan hand over Timurtash in exchange for the return of the fugitive Kara Sungur. The sultan at first seemed to accept, then said he could not give Timurtash up alive. Timurtash was strangled in August 1328, on 12 August by the date Haykıran gives; he was thirty-one years old. His body was shown to Abu Said's envoys and sent to them; the same article also writes that he was buried outside the Harran gate in Cairo. He had stayed in Egypt about seven months. Küçük Şeyh Hasan later asked for his father's bones; the Mamluk sultan refused, on the ground that the burial place was not known.

The Amasya Dârüşşifâ

The most important building to survive in Amasya from this age stands beside the avenue that runs parallel to the Yeşilırmak, in the Yâkutiye quarter. According to the Arabic inscription that wraps around the portal in three directions, the building was commissioned in 708 (1308-1309) by Anber b. Abdullah, a slave of İlduş (Yıldız) Khatun, wife of the Ilkhanid ruler Olcaytu Khan, together with Ahmed Bey, the emir of Anatolia. Nothing is known of its architect. Its endowment deed, which has not survived, is known to have been drawn up in 712 (1312). The building stands on a rectangular courtyard measuring 33.60 by 25.60 metres outside, with its long axis running east to west, and has the plan of a madrasa. The entrance iwan and the main iwan opposite it form a plan of two iwans around a courtyard; along both sides of the courtyard are rows of arcades, behind which lie long vaulted halls.

The arcades are built of pointed arches resting on columns whose capitals vary between plain, muqarnas and moulded forms. The west facade is of regular cut stone, the portal projects from the facade by a third and is balanced at either side by cylindrical corner towers. This arrangement shows that the traditional Anatolian Seljuk way of building continued in the Ilkhanid age. The kneeling human figure on the keystone of the portal is also among the notable details of the building. The other facades are rubble-built and supported with buttresses, and have lost their original appearance. The building has today been restored and its surroundings laid out.

The building's being known as the "bimarhane" arose from the idea that only the mentally ill were treated there. As far as the inscription shows, it was founded as a hospital in the general sense, that is, a dârüşşifâ, and for a long time in later centuries it continued to work as a medical institution. Şerefeddin Sabuncuoğlu, the author of the Cerrâhiyye-i İlhâniyye, practised medicine and surgery here. Born, by calculation, around 1386, Şerefeddin came from a famous family of physicians of a quarter in Amasya that still bears his name today, and was a grandson of İlyas Çelebi Bey, chief physician to Çelebi Sultan Mehmed. After practising medicine for fourteen years at the Dârüşşifâ he spent some time in Kastamonu, and he presented the Cerrâhiyye-i İlhâniyye, completed in 1465, to Fâtih Sultan Mehmed. The book's most important feature is that it contains, for the first time in the history of medicine, miniatures showing surgical procedures, and that it is written in plain Turkish. In the preface to the Mücerrebnâme, which he wrote in 1468, he says that he wrote the book at the request of the circle of physicians in Amasya.

The Buildings of Amasya in the Ilkhanid Age

The building activity in Anatolia under Mongol rule was part of the Ilkhanid programme of construction that revived with Gazan Khan's conversion to Islam. Among the Anatolian cities where Ilkhanid works are found, Amasya is counted together with Erzurum, Tokat and Niğde. Many buildings founded during or before the Ilkhanid overlordship have survived in the city. The Burmalı Minare Mosque (1237-1247) and the Gökmedrese Mosque (1266-1267) belong to the last years of the Seljuk age, to the first decades of Mongol rule; the Gökmedrese was built by the Seljuk emir Seyfeddin Torumtay, whose tomb is likewise counted among the city's surviving works of that age; the Dârüşşifâ (1308) and the Gümüşlü Mosque, dated 1326, are buildings of the Ilkhanid age. The Hızır Paşa Mosque, dated to the fourteenth century, belongs to the same century; the Saraçhane Mosque (1372) was built in the time of the Eretnids.

Under Ilkhanid rule, although Anatolia lay at the centre of the trade routes, it could not benefit sufficiently from that commercial activity, since the Ilkhanids seized the revenue of the routes. Even so, the city's institutions of learning did not disappear; the Dârüşşifâ's continued work into the fifteenth century is an indication of this.

The End of Ilkhanid Overlordship and the Eretnids

When Timurtash went to Egypt he had left the governorship of Anatolia to his brother-in-law Alâeddin Eretna. Eretna was a noyan of Uyghur origin who had come to Anatolia with the Ilkhanid army. Abu Said gave the governorship to the Jalayirid Büyük Şeyh Hasan, but Şeyh Hasan left Eretna as his deputy. When Abu Said died in 1335 without an heir the Ilkhanate broke up, and local dynasties such as the Jalayirids, Qara Qoyunlu, Muzaffarids, Khorasan Sarbadars and Eretnids took its place. Eretna, who refused the proposal of Chobanid Şeyh Hasan, son of Demirtaş, who had defeated Büyük Şeyh Hasan at Aladağ (1337), that he submit to him, established his own rule in Anatolia. In 1341 he broke his ties with the Mamluks and declared independence; he founded a state centred first on Sivas and then on Kayseri. In 1343 at Karanbük he defeated Chobanid Şeyh Hasan and his ally Süleyman Khan.

When Eretna died in 1352 Amasya was among the cities under his rule. In the time of his son Alâeddin Ali Bey central authority dissolved, and among the Eretnid emirs Hacı Şadgeldi began to act on his own in Amasya. Alâeddin Ali Bey, on his second expedition to Amasya, caught the plague and died in 1380. The vizier Kadı Burhâneddin removed, among his rivals, the emir of Amasya Hacı Şadgeldi too, and in the autumn of 1381 proclaimed his sultanate and founded a state known by his own name. After Şadgeldi's death his son Ahmed, with the support of the Ottoman sultan Yıldırım Bayezid, defended the city against Kadı Burhâneddin; Yıldırım Bayezid in the end annexed Amasya to Ottoman territory (1398) and left its administration to his son Çelebi Mehmed. Ilkhanid overlordship had begun a century and a half earlier, in 1243, at Köse Dağ; the later history of Amasya merges with the history of the Turkish beyliks and the Ottomans.

Chronology

1243: The Battle of Köse Dağ. The Seljuk vizier Mühezzebüddin Ali took refuge in Amasya; the Anatolian Seljuk state became a vassal of the Mongols.

1277: Baybars entered Anatolia; Abaka Khan campaigned in Anatolia to punish the Seljuk emirs.

1305: İrencin Noyan was appointed governor-general of Anatolia (Olcaytu's accession: 1304).

1308-1309: The Amasya Dârüşşifâ was built (endowment deed 1312).

1314: Emir Chupan's campaign in Anatolia and the recapture of Konya from the Karamanids.

1316: Death of Olcaytu; accession of Abu Said Bahadur Khan.

1319: The attempt on Chupan's life.

1321-1322: Timurtash's declaration of independence (the date differs in the sources).

1323: Treaty between the Mamluks and the Ilkhanids; Timurtash retook Konya.

1326: Killing of Süleyman Bey II of the Eshrefids (9 October); date of the Gümüşlü Mosque in Amasya.

1327: Emir Chupan was killed at Herat; Timurtash fled to Egypt.

1328: Timurtash was executed in Cairo.

1335: Death of Abu Said and dissolution of the Ilkhanate.

1352: Death of Alâeddin Eretna; Amasya was at this date under Eretnid rule.

1381: Kadı Burhâneddin removed Hacı Şadgeldi.

1398: Yıldırım Bayezid annexed Amasya to Ottoman territory.

Sources

Academic studies

  • Kemal Ramazan Haykıran, "Anadolu'da Bir İlhanlı Valisi: Demirtaş Noyan (1314-1328)", Muğla Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi (İLKE), Autumn 2009, no. 23 (DergiPark).
  • TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam (TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi), entry "İlhanlılar". islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, entry "Amasya".
  • Gönül Cantay, "Amasya Dârüşşifâsı", TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 3, pp. 5-6.
  • Faruk Sümer, "Kösedağ Savaşı", TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam.
  • TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, entries "Eretnaoğulları" and "Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin".
  • İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, "Emir Çoban Sulduz ve Demirtaş", Belleten, XXXI/124 (via Haykıran's article).

Other sources

  • Wikipedia (Turkish), entries "Timurtaş" and "Emir Çoban" (supplementary source).

Online sources