Most visitors to Turkey have heard of the Ottomans. They’ll probably have heard of the Selçuks too. But the Beyliks? Let’s be honest – this is a slice of Turkish history that perhaps one visitor in a hundred can truly claim to know about.
The Beylik era is the Turkish equivalent of the European Dark Ages, a virtually forgotten period when all sorts of different groups battled it out for supremacy. It’s a period that lasted from the collapse of the Selçuk Sultanate of Rum after its defeat by the Mongols at the Battle of Köse Dağ in 1243 to the emergence of the Ottomans in the early 15th century. In the interim Anatolia splintered into a patchwork quilt of emirates governed by “beys (lords)” who jostled each other for power until eventually all of them were crushed as the Ottomans rose from being just one beylik amongst equals to being the only power in the land.
The most powerful beylik was that of the Karamanoğulları who governed a huge swathe of Central Anatolia until 1487 with their capital sometimes in Karaman and sometimes in Konya. Second only to the Karamanoğulları were the Germiyans who held power around Kütahya until 1429 when they were driven out by their more powerful neighbours. By then the Germiyans had planted offshoot beyliks all along the Aegean, one of them being the Saruhanoğulları who ruled the area around Tire and Manisa until 1410. Meanwhile the Aydınoğulları ruled the roost in Selçuk and Birgi, while the Menteşes hold court in Milas and Beçin.
Further to the east the Candaroğulları were masters of the area between Çankırı, Kastamonu and Sinop on the Black Sea, while the Ramazanoğulları established a beylik around Adana. The Ottomans themselves started out as a simple beylik centred on İznik and Söğüt that steadily expanded until by the reign of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent it had forced all its rivals out of Anatolia.
No matter how little known they may be now, the beylik rulers bestowed on Anatolia some of its most magnificent monuments, especially in the form of mosques. These are some of the sights most worth going out of your way to discover. Turkey’s 10 Best Monuments of the Beylik Era
