Danishmendid dynasty

The Danishmendids, the Danismendliler, were a Turkish dynasty that gave its name to the Anatolian beylik existing from 1071 or 1075 to 1178. The state was centred on Sivas, Tokat and Niksar in central and north-eastern Anatolia and reached, for a time, as far west as Ankara and Kastamonu and as far south as Malatya, which its horsemen took in 1103. Its founder, Danishmend Gazi, is a figure whose origins are wrapped in legend: the Byzantine Niketas Choniates gave him Arsapid blood, Armenian historians called him Armenian, and Persian sources knew the title Danismand as the wise man. From 1134 the dynasty's leaders carried the title Melik, granted by the Abbasid caliph al-Mustarshid for their wars against the Crusaders. The Danishmendids were the great rivals of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, and fought the crusaders as long as they fought the Seljuks. Their lands were divided after 1142 among the heirs of Melik Mehmed Gazi, and the Ottoman Turks absorbed them in 1178, while the Teke branch had already split off to found its own beylik on the southern coast.