Erzincan

Who holds it

Name

Fakhr al-Din Bahramshah

Title

Melik of Erzincan

Since

560 AH (1165)

Family

Mengujekid

Confidence

high

See Bahramshah of Erzincan.

Lord in 1200

Fakhr al-Din Bahramshah in person.

Allies and rivals

See Mengujekids.

How things stand that morning

Bahramshah's capital, at peace.

Wealth

The plain and the road.

Threats

• The earthquakes of the Erzincan plain (no dated quake around 1200 pinned).

Charter

None: a lord's town, not a commune.

Council

No council recorded; the lord's governor (shihna or subashi) and the judge (qadi).

Communities

Muslim Turks; a large Armenian Christian population (Armenian forms Erez, Erznga); numbers not recorded.

Fairs and markets

None recorded for 1200.

Militia

The lord's garrison in the citadel.

Walls and castle

A citadel built up under the Mengujekids; the town walls described in the sources belong to the 1220s and after.

Trade and crafts

Grain and fruit of the plain; the caravan road; cloth-making, famous later (13th-14th centuries); not pinned for 1200.

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: Few dated remains; known from Ibn Bibi and later geographers.

On the map: Near land only; the plain is drawn under Bahramshah of Erzincan.

Primary sources for Mengujekids

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• The Chronicle of Michael the Syrian (Michael the Great), Michael the Syrian, patriarch of Antioch 1166 to 1199 (about 1180 to 1195). The Jacobite patriarch's world chronicle, in parallel columns of church, secular and miscellaneous events, ending four years before 1200 and shortly before his own death on 7 November 1199, which left the Syrian Orthodox church with a disputed succession in 1200. Read online
• The History of the Seljuks of Rum, Ibn Bibi (Nasir al-Din Husayn ibn Muhammad) (about 1281 to 1285, at Konya). The main Seljuk narrative for Rum begins with Kilij Arslan II's partition of the sultanate among his sons and his death (1192), Kaykhusraw I's first reign at Konya, his deposition in 1196 to 1197 by Rukn al-Din Sulayman II, Kaykhusraw's wanderings to Cilician Armenia, Aleppo and Constantinople, Sulayman's reduction of his brothers' towns (Tokat, Malatya, Amasya, and Ankara by 1204) and his Erzurum and Georgian campaigns. Read online