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The Qaramānlīs

1123–1251/1711–1835

Tripolitania

The Qaramānlīs were a line of Turkish soldiers apparently arising out of the Qulughlīs or products of mixed marriages between the Turkish Janissary units in North Africa and local women. In the prevailing chaos and internal strife characterising early eighteenth-century Ottoman Tripolitania, Aḥmad Qaramānlī (whose name may derive from the fact that he or his forebears came originally from Qaramān in Anatolia) seized power, eventually receiving from the sultan in Istanbul the titles of Beylerbey or governor and Pasha and establishing what was virtually an independent line. From Tripoli (Ṭarābulus al-Gharb), he extended his control over most of what is now Libya. He and his sons managed to control the local factions of the Turks and the Arabs, and, despite the fact that Tripoli was notoriously a base of the Barbary corsairs, concluded trade agreements with countries like Britain and France. In the early nineteenth century, various rivals for the succession within the ruling family were to seek support from one or other of these two powers. But the appearance of the French in Algeria after 1830 alarmed the Sublime Porte and, taking advantage of Qaramānlī dissensions, sultan Maḥmūd II sent an expedition against Tripoli which removed the Qaramānlīs and imposed a rule from Istanbul which lasted until the Italian seizure of Libya in the early twentieth century.

The Qaramānlīs used only coins in the names of the Ottoman sultans issued by the Tripoli mint.

Zambaur, 85.

EI¹ ‘Karamānlī’ (R. Mantran).