HAMID DYNASTY

Turkmen dynasty (c. 13001423) that ruled in southwestern Anatolia. It was founded by Felekuddin Dndar, whose father, Ilyas, was a frontier ruler under the Seljuqs and who named it after his grandfather; Dndar governed the Hamid principality jointly with his brother Yunus, with two capitals, one at Egridir and one at Antalya (Attalia). Dndar was defeated and killed (1324) by Demirtas, the Il-Khanid governor of Anatolia. Egridir was restored by Dndar's sons in 1374 as a dependency of the Ottoman Turks. The Antalya branch was occupied by a Christian force from Cyprus (136173). Annexed by the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I in 1392, the principality was restored by Timur (Tamerlane) after his victory over the Ottomans at the Battle of Ankara (1402). In 1423 Osman, the last Hamid ruler, was defeated, and the principality was reincorporated into the Ottoman Empire. Situated on the north-south route from the Mediterranean port of Antalya to the Mongol empire, Hamid was a strategically and commercially important territory.