ABSTRACT
The emirate of Menteshe, situated in the fertile plain of the river Meandros (Menderes), was one of the vigorous Turkish emirates which emerged after the breakup of the Seljuk state of Anatolia. It seems to have been the earliest emirate that developed naval activity in the Aegean Sea. In the very early years of the fourteenth century (c. 1302–3) the Lords of Menteshe possessed a number of light vessels and began to raid their neighbouring islands. In 1306 a new Christian state, that of the Knights Hospitallers, was established on Rhodes and the surrounding islands, 1 which struggled to check the maritime expansion of the Menteshe Turks. However, the Menteshe Turks went on with their raids and in the 1330s, if not earlier, they obliged several islands, as well as certain territories on the littoral, to pay them an annual tribute in order to be left in peace.
