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The Qaramān Oghullarï or Qaramānids

c. 654–880/c. 1256–1475

South-central Anatolia and the Mediterranean coastland

The Qaramānids were the most powerful and enduring of the Turkish dynasties of Anatolia which grew up alongside the Ottomans but were eventually absorbed by them. It seems that they arose from the Afshār tribe of Turkmens and that the father of Qaramān, Nūr al-Dīn, was a well-known Ṣufī shaykh; the dynasty would thus resemble certain other Anatolian lines which sprang from dervish origins. Their original centre was in the Ermenek-Mut region in the north-western Taurus Mountains, where they were somewhat rebellious vassals of the Seljuq sultan of Konya, Rukn al-Dīn Qïlïch Arslan IV, and then tenacious opponents of the Mongol Il Khānid attempts to dominate Anatolia. These endeavours continued into the fourteenth century, and by then the Qaramānids, definitely an independent power which, as heir to the Seljuqs, controlled much of southern and central Anatolia, at one point acknowledged the suzerainty of the Mamlūks of Egypt and Syria, who were their neighbours on the east after the Mamlūk reduction of the Little Armenian kingdom of Sis. Larande or Karaman (Qaramān), the original capital of the Qaramānids before their acquisition of Konya, became an important centre of literary and artistic activity, and, in modern Turkish eyes at least, the Qaramānids have achieved some fame for their encouragement of Turkish instead of Persian as the language of administration.

Relations with the Ottomans were inevitably uneasy, and after ‘Alā’ al-Dīn b. Khalīl was defeated and killed by Bāyazid, the Qaramānid territories fell to the Ottomans. However, they were restored by Tīmūr, and after the Ottomans’ absorption of the Germiyān Oghullarï of north-western Anatolia in 832/1428 and the Jāndār or Isfandiyār Oghullarï of the Black Sea coastlands in 866/1462 (see above, nos 116, 121), they formed the Ottomans’ most serious rivals for power in Anatolia. The last great Qaramānid ruler, Tāj al-Dīn Ibrāhīm II, was drawn into the nexus of Mediterranean powers, Christian and Muslim, opposing Ottoman expansionism. The alliance of the ‘Grand Caraman’ was sought by Venice and the Papacy and by their eastern neighbours, the Aq Qoyunlu of Uzun Ḥasan (see below, no. 146), and the Ottoman pretender Prince Jem was later supported. But internal disputes favoured Ottoman intervention, with Sultan Muḥammad II’s goal being the absorption of the Qaramānid lands, and this was achieved by 880/1475, when the dynasty was extinguished.

It should be noted that, from 692/1293 onwards, a branch of the Qaramānids controlled Alanya or ‘Alā’iyya (see above, no. 114).

Lane-Poole, 184; Khalīl Ed’hem, 296–302; Zambaur, 158, 160.

EI² ‘Karamān-Oghullari’ (F. Sümer); ĪA ‘Karamanhlar’ (M. C. Sihâbeddin Tekindağ).

Cl. Cahen, Pie-Ottoman Turkey.

Ī. H. Uzunçarşih, Anadolu beylikleri, 1–38.