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Beyşehir Encyclopedia / Article

Hamidoğulları and Beyşehir

The Hamidoğulları held Beyşehir after the fall of the Eşrefoğulları, placing the lake town in a wider political contest across southwestern Anatolia.

Medieval BeyşehirHistoryStates and beyliks
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After the Eşrefoğlu beylik

The death of Eşrefoğlu Süleyman II during the campaign of the Ilkhanid governor Timurtaş in 1326 ended the independent Eşrefoğulları beylik. Sait Kofoğlu describes its territory being divided among neighbouring powers. Beyşehir, Seydişehir and Akşehir came under the Hamidoğulları, while other lands passed to the Sâhib Ataoğulları and Karamanoğulları. This was a redistribution of a former beylik, not a change in the lake’s older settlement history.[1]

Kofoğlu’s Hamidoğulları study identifies Hızır Bey, a grandson of Dündar Bey, as the figure who took Beyşehir, Seydişehir, Akşehir and Doğanhisar while reviving the beylik after Timurtaş fled Anatolia. An inscription study also records local rule associated with Emir İsmail Ağa in the following decades. These records describe overlapping levels of authority; they do not justify a single uninterrupted list of rulers for every neighbourhood and village.[2][3]

A regional power rather than a Beyşehir dynasty

The Hamidoğulları originated around Isparta, Burdur and Eğirdir and expanded through the uplands west of the Konya plain. Their capital and political centre were elsewhere; Beyşehir mattered as an eastern possession and a route between the lake basin, Konya and southwestern Anatolia. The town’s value was therefore tied to roads, neighbouring fortresses and access to several districts, as well as to its own urban fabric.[4][5]

The Hamidoğulları themselves faced pressure from the Ilkhanid governors and then from the Karamanoğulları. Treating the town as simply Hamidid throughout the fourteenth century would erase this shifting balance. The local funerary monuments studied for İsmail Ağa and the later exchanges between Karamanid and Ottoman rulers show how different kinds of evidence reveal different aspects of power.[6][7]

The sale to Murad I and its limits

Hamidoğlu Kemâleddin Hüseyin Bey sought Ottoman support against Karamanid attacks. Kofoğlu’s account dates a formal sale to 1381–82: Akşehir, Beyşehir, Seydişehir, Yalvaç and Karaağaç were transferred to Murad I for 80,000 gold coins. Medieval accounts differ over the full list of places in this transaction, so the five towns named in Kofoğlu’s analysis are the safer summary. The transaction explains an Ottoman claim to Beyşehir; it did not end the regional dispute.[8]

The town changed hands repeatedly between Karamanoğulları and Ottomans after the sale. The chronology assembled by M. Akif Erdoğru places lasting Ottoman annexation in 1466. That later sequence belongs to the Karamanid–Ottoman frontier article. The Hamidid episode is essential because the sale created one of the political claims that made Beyşehir a contested border town for generations.[9][10]

See also

Medieval BeyşehirEşrefoğullarıThe Eşrefoğulları were a late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Anatolian beylik centred on Beyşehir.Medieval BeyşehirEmir İsmail Ağaİsmail Ağa was a later medieval emir whose name survives in Beyşehir’s medrese and funerary record.Medieval BeyşehirTimurtaş and the end of the EşrefoğullarıTimurtaş, also written Demirtaş, was an Ilkhanid governor whose 1326 campaign ended the Eşrefoğlu beylik in Beyşehir.Medieval BeyşehirBeyşehir on the Karamanid–Ottoman frontierFrom the late fourteenth to the mid fifteenth century, Beyşehir repeatedly changed hands in the struggle between the Karamanoğulları and the Ottomans.HistoryBeyşehirBeyşehir is a town and district in Konya province on the southeastern shore of Lake Beyşehir.

References

  1. 1Sait Kofoğlu · Eşrefoğulları · TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi · 1995 · final paragraph
  2. 2Sait Kofoğlu · Hamîdoğulları · TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi · 1997 · Hızır Bey section
  3. 3İbrahim Kunt, Hüseyin Muşmal, Mustafa Çetinaslan · Beyşehir’de Moğol Emiri İsmail Ağa Dönemine Ait Farsça-Arapça Sandukalar · Turkish Studies 9/1, pp. 367–386 · 2014 · introduction and inscriptions
  4. 4Sait Kofoğlu · Hamîdoğulları · TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi · 1997 · origins and territorial expansion
  5. 5M. Akif Erdoğru · Beyşehir - TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi · Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi · 1992 · political history
  6. 6Sait Kofoğlu · Hamîdoğulları · TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi · 1997 · fourteenth-century narrative
  7. 7İbrahim Kunt, Hüseyin Muşmal, Mustafa Çetinaslan · Beyşehir’de Moğol Emiri İsmail Ağa Dönemine Ait Farsça-Arapça Sandukalar · Turkish Studies 9/1, pp. 367–386 · 2014 · conclusion
  8. 8Sait Kofoğlu · Hamîdoğulları · TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi · 1997 · Kemâleddin Hüseyin Bey and 1381–82 sale
  9. 9M. Akif Erdoğru · Beyşehir - TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi · Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedisi · 1992 · political chronology to 1466
  10. 10Sait Kofoğlu · Hamîdoğulları · TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi · 1997 · aftermath of the sale

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