Tekfur (Ottoman Turkish: تكور, romanized: tekvur) was a title used in the late Seljuk and early Ottoman periods to refer to independent or semi-independent minor Christian rulers or local Byzantine governors in Asia Minor and Thrace.
[2]) began to be used by historians writing in Persian or Turkish in the 13th century, to refer to "denote Byzantine lords or governors of towns and fortresses in Anatolia (Bithynia, Pontus) and Thrace.
[1] Thus the 13th-century Seljuk historian Ibn Bibi refers to the Armenian kings of Cilicia as tekvur, while both he and the Dede Korkut epic refer to the rulers of the Empire of Trebizond as "tekvur of Djanit".
[3] Modern historian Hasan Çolak suggests that this use was at least in part a deliberate choice, to reflect current political realities and Byzantium's decline, which between 1371–1394 and again between 1424 and the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 made the rump Byzantine state a tributary vassal to the Ottomans.
[4] The 15th-century Ottoman historian Enveri somewhat uniquely uses the term tekfur also for the Frankish rulers of southern Greece and the Aegean islands.