The Anatolian Turkish Beylik of Saruhan with its capital in Manisa was one of the frontier principalities established by Oghuz Turkish clans after the decline of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm. It was founded by the tribal chief Saruhan about 1300. It lasted until 1410, when Sultan Mehmed I killed Hizir, the last Saruhan ruler, and absorbed the province into the Ottoman Empire.
The founder of the beylik, Saruhan Bey, was the grandson of a Khwarezmian commander who fought in the service of the Seljuk sultans. Saruhan himself began his military career as an emir of the Germiyan. Sometime at the beginning of the 14th century, he seized territories for himself in the Hermus valley and founded a dynasty that ruled Manisa, Menemen, Gördes, Demirci, Nif, and Turgutlu.[1]
The most enduring monument of the Saruhan dynasty is the Great Mosque at Manisa. Constructed in 1374 by İshak Bey, the mosque has a prayer hall covered by a dome 14m in diameter. Attached to the prayer hall is an innovative, semi-covered forecourt. The building likely served as inspiration for the Üç Şerefeli Mosque, constructed some sixty years later by the Ottoman sultan Murad II.[2]
The Turkish province of Manisa was named the sub-province and then province (sanjak, then vilayet) of Saruhan until the early years of the Republic of Turkey.
See also
References
- ^ Vryonis, Speros (1971). The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century. Publications of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 4. Los Angeles: University of California Press. pp. 138–39. ISBN 0520015975.
- ^ Goodwin, Godfrey (1971). A History of Ottoman Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson. pp. 25–7. ISBN 0500340404.
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