In a garden of a rundown building in Turkey’s Antalya province’s Kaleiçi district two tablets describing the Seljuk conquest of the region were found.
The tablets were last seen in 1924 and their whereabouts had been unknown until now. Historians had been searching for the lost pieces for about 100 years, and now they have been discovered by researcher Necmi Atik. According to him, 27 of the 43 known accounts of the conquest are inscriptions on stone structures and had previously come under the protection of Turkish authorities. Another seven manuscripts are on display in the Antalya Museum. Of the nine other missing accounts, two were found in the garden.
The accounts of the conquest by Kaykhusraw I, who reigned as Sultan of Rum from 1192-1196 and 1205-1211, were inscribed on an entrance column to a dilapidated former entertainment building. The found accounts are the second and third books of the conquest. The inscriptions were commissioned by Sultan Kaykaus I, who ascended to the throne in 1211, succeeding Kaykhusraw I, and ruled until his death in 1220. Kaykhusraw I seized Antalya from the grip of the Nicene Empire in 1207. The same year, the sultan established a mosque there. The Sultanate of Rum was a Turko-Persian Sunni Muslim state established by the Turkic Seljuk Empire in parts of Anatolia conquered from the Byzantine Empire. Authorities report that the pieces will be moved into their collection after completing necessary inspections of the places where they were found.
(after Daily Sabah)