Konya Sultan Kei-Khosrow II
After the death of Alaeddin Keykubad I in 1237, the Konya Sultanate was the most powerful in Asia Minor. His vassals were the Trebizondian Greek Empire, the Nicene Greek state, and the Cilician Armenian Kingdom. In turn, the sultan was a vassal of the Mongol Empire.
Giyas ad-Din Kei-Khosrow II ascended to the throne.
Ghiyas ad-Din Kay-Khosrow II was the Seljuk ruler of the Konya Sultanate (1236/1237—1246). The heir and probable poisoner of his father, Kei-Kubada I. After becoming sultan, Kei Khosrow married his sister to Malik Aziz, the son of Muhammad, the Ayyubid ruler of Aleppo, and married the latter’s daughter. Tamar (Gyurju Khatun), the daughter of the Georgian queen Rusudan, became the second wife of Kay Khosrov. The illustration was created by AI
Because of the palace intrigues, the Khorezm beys and their people rebelled against the sultan. They defeated the army and went to the borders on the way plundering the country.
All power in the sultanate is concentrated in the hands of the courtier Saadeddin Kepek. In 1238, Kepek ordered the arrest of Sultan Kilic’s brothers Arslan and Rukneddin. It was too much, there were many dissatisfied people who killed Kepek with the tacit consent of the sultan.
All these internal troubles affected the defense capability of the state. At that time, hundreds of thousands of Turkmens accumulated on the borders, who were driven from their lands in Central Asia by the Mongols. The Koni Seljuks did not allow them into the sultanate, which caused looting and violence on their part by the border population.
A certain Baba Ishaq appeared among the nomads. He claimed that godlessness and arbitrariness reigned in the sultanate. He condemned the sultan for his dissolute lifestyle, neglect of the affairs of the common people. As a result, the Turkmens rebelled in 1239 and captured Sivas.
Nomadic Turkmen from other provinces of the sultanate join Baba Ishaq. The uprising covered a significant part of Eastern and Central Anatolia. It was only by chance that Baba Ishaq was arrested. I drove unguarded into the city where the sultan’s soldiers were. They hanged me. In 1240, the main rebel forces were defeated, the survivors and their families (except for three-year-old children) were executed.
The Sultan of Konya is a vassal of the Mongol khans.
In the autumn of 1242, three tumen Mongol-Tatars under the command of Noyon Baiju invaded Anatolia. Erzurum has been captured.
In the winter of 1242-1243, Ghiyas ad-Din Kay-Khosrow II gathered 70 thousand troops from Iktadars, vassal militias, mercenaries from Arabs, Armenians, and Franks from Sivas.
Instead of taking up a defensive position in the well-fortified and well-stocked Sivas, the Sultan went to meet the Mongols. At Kesedag, on July 3, 1243, the Mongols lured out the Seljuk detachments in parts and destroyed the entire army in this way. The Sultan fled to Konya.
Sivas and its reserves went to the Mongols without a fight. They spared the inhabitants, only demolished part of the fortifications. But Kayseri fortress offered fierce resistance to the Mongols. But the Mongols pulled up catapults and captured him, slaughtering everyone.
After that, negotiations began. The Sultan pledged to pay the Mongols 360 thousand silver dirhams, 10,000 sheep, a thousand head of cattle and a thousand camels annually. The agreement on this was approved by the governor of the Western Ulus Batu.
Using the support of the Mongols, the Seljuks defeated the troops of the Cilician Armenian kingdom, which tried to withdraw from vassalage.
As a result of the successful military operation, a peace treaty was signed with Armenia, according to which it was obliged to pay tribute to the Seljuk state for the two previous years and for the next year, reimburse the costs of the military campaign, pay compensation for damage caused to refugees, and also return the territories of the Seljuk state captured during the Mongol invasion —
In 1249, an internecine struggle arose in the Konya Sultanate in the struggle for the throne between the sons of Kay Khosrow II — Izz ad-dunya va ad-din Kay Kavus II and Kilich Arslan IV. As a result, three brothers rule the country at once, as they were joined by another son of Kay-Khosrow II — Kay-Kubad II.
Since 1256, the Mongolian state of the Ilkhans-Hulaguids was formed on the eastern borders of the Koni sultanate.
The Hulaguid troops defeated the troops of the Koni Sultanate in August 1256. Kay Kavus fled to the Greeks, the country is ruled by Kilich-Arslan, installed by the Mongols.
The following year, Kilic Arslan participates in a campaign against Baghdad together with the Mongols.
While he was on the campaign, Kay Kavus returned and seized the throne. In order not to aggravate the situation, in 1259, Ilkhan Hulagu divided the Konya Sultanate into two parts:
The territory West of the Kyzyl Yrmak River to the borders of Byzantium was given to Sultan Izzeddin Keikavus.
Sultan Rukneddin Kilich Arslan ruled the territory east of the Kyzyl Yrmak River up to and including the city of Erzincan.
But in 1264, Kay-Kavus was summoned to the Crimea, where a Turkic ruler was needed. Kilic-Arslan began to rule alone.
In 1266, Kilic Arslan was strangled with a bowstring by order of the Mongols. The son of Kay-Khosrow III was placed on the throne. He has a Mongol governor with him. All taxes are collected by the Mongols.
This situation did not suit the Seljuk aristocracy. In 1277, they rebelled against the Mongols. They were supported by the ruler of Egypt Baybars. Together they defeated the Mongols at Elbistan. But Baybars was old and died the same year. The Mongols returned, destroyed and captured up to 600 thousand local Turks.
However, in the same year 1277, a certain lucky robber Karaman captured the capital of the sultanate of Konya. And he put an impostor there on the throne — allegedly the son of Key-Kavus Siyavush, who was in the Crimea. It was only in 1279 that the Mongols defeated the rebels, executing Siyavush.
After that, the sultanate was actually ruled by the Ilkhans. In 1317, the son of the Mongolian emir Choban, Noyon Timur-Tash, captured Kayseri, made it the capital and began to rule the whole of Anatolia. The Sultan has only Konya left. It was only in 1328 that Timur-Tash was executed by order of the Ilkhan for having relations with the Egyptian Mamluks.
In 1335, the last ilkhan Ebu Said died. The Ilkhan state ceased to exist, and the Mongols left Anatolia.
The situation in Asia Minor after the Mongols left
After the Mongols left, the Konya Sultanate collapsed. His sultans had no support left and the sultanate broke up into several dozen beyliks. The largest were the Karamans and the Hermians.
These small bailiffs existed quite well for themselves, balancing between the Romans and the Muslim rulers:
«…This country, of all countries, is probably the most beautiful. All that is beautiful, which in other countries can be found only in isolated manifestations, is present here in the aggregate… People live here dressed in the cleanest clothes, and the most delicious food is prepared here… Of all the servants created by the Almighty, the most compassionate and merciful are the local people… After arriving in Anatolia, we felt the increased attention to ourselves wherever we stayed. The neighbors, men and women who do not cover their faces here, rushed to feed us. When we left, they saw us off with tears in our eyes and gave us food for the journey…» — Ibn Battuta
The Beyliks retained the administrative administration and armed forces modeled on the Konya Sultanate. The armies were very large — so the Karamans had 25 thousand cavalry and 25 thousand infantry. And the Germans have 40 thousand.
The Navy is very developed. Some coastal bailiffs had up to 400 galleys. Ibn Batuta says that the Turks had special teams of divers who drilled the bottoms of enemy ships. High-quality vessels were built in the bailik of Jandar, which could transport up to 30 thousand troops at a time. There was a 900-ton ship in their fleet.
The Turkic beyliks are waging successful wars with the Romans, pushing them back to the walls of Constantinople. This is how the laying of the foundation of the Ottoman Empire begins.