125

The Eretna Oghullarï

736–82/1336–80

North-eastern Anatolia

⊘ 736/1336

Eretna b. Ja‘far, ‘Alā’ al-Dīn

⊘ 753/1352

Muḥammad I b. Eretna, Ghiyāth al-Dīn

⊘ 767/1366

‘Alī b. Muḥammad, ‘Ala‘ al-Dīn

782/1380

Muḥammad II Chelebi b. ‘Alī

782/1380

Rule and eventual succession in Sinop (Sīnūb) of Qāḍī Burhdn al-Dīn

Eretna (whose name has been explained as possibly stemming ultimately from Sanskrit ratna ‘jewel’) was a commander of Uyghur origin (hence from eastern Turkestan), probably in the service of the Chobanids and their suzerains the last Il Khānids. After the fall of Temür Tash b. Chobān (see above, no. 120), Eretna was able to assemble an extensive principality stretching from Ankara in the west and Samsun (Ṣāmsūn) in the north to Erzincan (Erzinjān) in the east, with its capital first at Sivas (Sīwās) and then at Kayseri (Qayṣariyye), and under the protection of the Mamlūks of Egypt and Syria. After his death, however, the lands of Eretna were nibbled away by the Ottomans in the west and the Aq Qoyunlu in the east, and authority in their lands was effectively exercised by Qāḍī Burhān al-Dīn, who in 782/1380 ended the line of Eretna and instituted his own short-lived beylik based on Sivas (see below, no. 126).

Khalīl Ed’hem, 384–6; Zambaur, 155; Bosworth-Merçil-İpşirli, 297–9.

EI2 ‘Eretna’ (cl.cahen); ‘Erenta’İA (İ. H. Uzunçarşili).

İ. H. Uzunçarşih, Anadolu beylikleh, 155–61.

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