Europe · High and late Middle Ages
Beylik of Aydin
drawn on the map 1305–1428
The Aydinids (Aydınoğulları), Beylik of Aydın, were a western Anatolian principality famous for seaborne raiding. Its capital was Birgi, with the great ports of Ayasoluk (Selçuk, near ancient Ephesus) and Smyrna (İzmir).
- Shown on the map
- 1305–1428
- Peak area
- 8k km²
- Region
- Europe
Overview
The Aydinids (Aydınoğulları), Beylik of Aydın, were a western Anatolian principality famous for seaborne raiding. Its capital was Birgi, with the great ports of Ayasoluk (Selçuk, near ancient Ephesus) and Smyrna (İzmir). It began as a vassal of the Germiyanids; the eponymous founder Aydınoğlu Mehmed Bey had been a Germiyanid commander. Conventional dates are c. 1300/1308–1425/1426. Mehmed Bey (r. 1308–1334) extended the beylik into former Byzantine lands to the Aegean coast.
Decline and legacy
Its most celebrated ruler was Umur Bey (Umur Ghazi, "Umur the Lion," r. 1334–1348), who built a formidable fleet and conducted repeated naval expeditions across the Aegean, into Thrace, the Morea, and the Aegean islands, often in alliance with the Byzantine claimant John VI Kantakouzenos during the Byzantine civil war of 1341–1347. His raids provoked the Latin Smyrniote Crusades; a crusading fleet burned the Aydinid fleet and took the harbour fortress of Smyrna, and Umur was killed attempting to retake it in 1348. The beylik declined thereafter; Bayezid I annexed it before 1402, Timur restored it, and the last ruler, İzmiroğlu Cüneyd (Junayd) Bey (r. 1405–1425/1426), resisted the Ottomans until Murad II finally annexed Aydın in 1425/1426. Aydın's naval tradition, like that of Karesi and Menteşe, fed directly into Ottoman sea power.
Common questions
- What was the Beylik of Aydin?
- The Aydinids (Aydınoğulları), Beylik of Aydın, were a western Anatolian principality famous for seaborne raiding. Its capital was Birgi, with the great ports of Ayasoluk (Selçuk, near ancient Ephesus) and Smyrna (İzmir).
- When is the Beylik of Aydin shown on the map?
- The border data draws the Beylik of Aydin 1305–1428. The source samples borders at fixed dates, so a span can begin late or run on past the end.
- How large was the Beylik of Aydin?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Beylik of Aydin covered about 8,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
- How did the Beylik of Aydin end?
- Its most celebrated ruler was Umur Bey (Umur Ghazi, "Umur the Lion," r. 1334–1348), who built a formidable fleet and conducted repeated naval expeditions across the Aegean, into Thrace, the Morea, and the Aegean islands, often in alliance with the Byzantine claimant John VI Kantakouzenos during the Byzantine civil war of 1341–1347.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each beylik, khanate and principality as the primary basis, with Encyclopædia Britannica, the World History Encyclopedia, museum and academic sources (the Baku Presidential Library on the Shirvanshahs, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on the Armenian Genocide) and the historiography of early Ottoman state formation (Wittek, Lindner, Kafadar, Lowry). The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Aydinids en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aydinids
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
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