Suleiman of Dulkadir

The Beylik of Dulkadir was founded by Zayn al-Din Qaraja (r. 1337–53), a Turkmen chieftain, as a client state of the Mamluk Sultanate, in southern Anatolia and northern Syria.

He governed Kayseri after his father was granted control of it in April 1419 as a reward for Dulkadirid participation in the Mamluk campaign against the Karamanids, a state in central Anatolia.

Although the diplomatic mission of Suleiman's mother, Khadija Khatun, in Cairo was successful in preventing the loss of Kayseri, the Karamanids and the Ramadanids captured the city in July 1435.

At the request of his father, Suleiman traveled to Gallipoli, where the Ottoman Sultan Murad II (r. 1421–44, 1446–51) was momentarily residing, and was authorized military support to recover Kayseri from the Karamanids, who were invested in internal struggles.

While the dowry payment was brought to Elbistan by a cortege of every Ottoman wali (governor) and their consorts, Murad II additionally invited the kadis (judges), ulama (Islamic dignitaries), poets, and others in his realm to join the wedding.

Despite the demand of the Mamluks, Suleiman and their frontier governors were in covert support of Jahangir and his brother Uzun Hasan, future ruler of the Aq Qoyunlu (r. 1452–78).

Fearing the worsening of the Mamluk–Qara Qoyunlu relations, Jahan Shah gave up on attacking the Dulkadirids and was forced to make peace with Jahangir the next year upon the impending threat of the Timurid ruler Abul-Qasim Babur Mirza.

[5] Subsequent to the end of the Aq Qoyunlu–Qara Qoyunlu conflict, Suleiman marched on Çemişgezek with a thirty-thousand-strong army to subdue its Kurdish ruler Sheikh Hasan, who was competing to gain control of the castles of Gobrak and Vibrak, thus jeopardizing the eastern frontier of the Dulkadirids.