116

The Germiyan Oghullarï

By 699–832/by 1299–1428

Western Anatolia

by 699/by 1299

Ya‘qūb I b. Karīm al-Dīn ‘Alī Shīr

⊘ after 727/after 1327

Muḥammad Chakhshadān b. Ya‘qūb

⊘ by 764/by 1363

Sulaymān Shāh b. Muḥammad

⊘ 789–92/1387–90

Ya‘qūb II Chelebi b. Sulaymān, first reign

792/1390

Ottoman annexation

⊘ 805/1402

Ya‘qūb II Chelebi, second reign

814/1411

Qaramānid occupation

816–32/1413–28

Ya‘qūb II Chelebi, third reign, as an Ottoman vassal

832/1428

Definitive Ottoman annexation

The Germiyān were originally a Turkish tribe first heard of in the service of the Seljuqs of Rūm at Malatya. But in the late thirteenth century they moved into western Anatolia and founded a beylik based on Kütahya as vassals of the Seljuqs and of the latter’s suzerains the Il Khanids. The decay of the Seljuqs allowed the founder of the Germiyān Oghullarï, Ya‘qūb I, to form the most extensive and powerful Turkish principality of its time in western Anatolia, embracing the greater part of classical Phrygia and taking advantage of the trade routes through the Menderes basin. Also, he exercised suzerainty over neighbouring amīrs, such as those of Aydïn (see above, no. 113), and had the Emperor of Byzantium as his tributary. However, in the second half of the fourteenth century Germiyān was cut off from access to the Aegean by the growth of the maritime beyliks along the coast, and became squeezed between the Ottomans to the north and the Qaramānids to the south-east. The last amīr, Ya‘qūb II, lost his principality to Bāyazīd I in 792/1390, but was restored by Tīmūr after the battle of Ankara; eventually, however, he bequeathed his lands to the Ottomans, so that after his death, Murād II took over Germiyān.

Khalīl Ed’hem, 292–4; Zambaur, 152; Bosworth–Merçil–İpşirli, 301–3.

EI2 ‘Germiyān-Oghullari’ (Irène Mélikoff); İA ‘Germiyan-Oğulları’ (İ. H. Uzunçarşılı).

İ. H. Uzunçarşılı, Anadolu beylikleri, 39–54.

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