Background
Burhan al-Din justified his claim to the throne through descent from the Seljuks: his grandmother was the granddaughter of Kaykaus II.
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Burhan al-Din
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In 783 AH (1381–1382) he took over Eretnid lands and claimed the title of sultan for himself. He is most often referred to by the title “kadi“, or Islamic judge, his first position under the Eretnids. The Eretnid sultanate he inherited had a large Turkmen and Mongol population but also contained many of the older, established urban centers of the Seljuks of Rum and Ilkhanid Anatolia.
The sultanate resembled these older states more than the Turkmen beyliks then ascendant in other parts of Anatolia. The Kadi’s eighteen-year rule was not peaceful. He challenged the Turkmen Karamanids and Beylik of Erzincan and twice fought Kötürüm Bayezid, Jandarid bey of Kastamonu.
In 1387, he was defeated by the Mamluks of Egypt. The Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I, accompanied by his vassal the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologos, campaigned against Burhan al-Din in 1391. His türbe, or mausoleum, survives in Sivas.
An analysis and commentary has been provided by H. H. Giesecke, Das Werk des ‘Azīz ibn Ardašīr Astarābādi (Leipzig, 1940).
