Saruhan Beylik

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Metadata

Name: Saruhan Beylik (Saruhanoğulları, 1313 - 1390 / 1402 - 1410)
Predecessors:

  • Sultanate of Rum
  • Germiyan Beylik

Successors:

Saruhan Beylik in 1337

SARUHAN BEY — THE YELLOW LORD OF THE AEGEAN

From Manisa, in the shadow of Mount Sipylus, the old ghazi Saruhan Bey rules a small state with a long reach. Denied land to conquer — Ottomans to the north, the Aydinid corsair-prince Umur Bey to the south — he turned his emirate toward the water, and now Saruhanid galleys sweep out past Foça to raid the Byzantine islands and carry warriors to whichever Christian civil war pays best. The Latins of Chios and the Genoese merchants curse his name and buy his truces; the Romans of Constantinople alternately fight him and hire him. It is a profitable life, but a borrowed one: the sea gives plunder, never provinces, and the beylik’s borders have not moved in years. Can the house of the Yellow Lord turn corsair silver into something that outlasts him? Or will the quiet, methodical neighbor to the north — the one that builds instead of raids — one day swallow Manisa and keep only the name?

TL;DR

Saruhan Bey 1 was an emir of the Germiyanids, until he formed his own nation with his name in Manisa 2. Geographically sandwiched between the expanding Ottomans to the north and the naval power of the Aydinids to the south, Saruhan had no choice but to focus on the sea. They became a formidable naval force in the Aegean raiding Byzantine islands. Eventually, the beylik was defeated and absorbed by the Ottomans in 1390. Timur briefly restored the beylik in 14023, but it was absorbed into a province again in 1410.

Trivia

  • Saruhan was famous for the Grand Mosque of Manisa using recycled materials (spolia) from Byzantine ruins. Not surprisingly, our blond guy was more environment-aware than most environmentalists today.

Footnotes

  1. The name literally translates to “Yellow Lord”. It is still unclear today if he was actually blond, but hey, there was a “Principality of the Blond Guy” under “Principality of the Footstool” some time in the history. And “Province of the Blond Guy” actually lasted until modern age. ↩

  2. Manisa later became a very important city for the Ottoman princes. Future Sultans were sent to Manisa as teenagers to learn how to rule. Sons of Sultans in the medieval era got high-level internships just like sons of CEOs today. ↩

  3. Timur forced the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I to release Anatolia beyliks just to troll him. This defeat actually saved Europe; Bayezid was about to take Constantinople, but Timur’s intervention delayed the city’s fall by 50 years, effectively extending the textbook medieval. ↩