Artuk

The Artuqids were a Turkoman dynasty of the Oghuz Döger tribe, named after Artuk Bey, a Seljuk general who governed Jerusalem from 1086 until his death in 1091. Expelled from Jerusalem by the Fatimids in 1098, his sons Sökmen and Ilghazi carved out principalities in Upper Mesopotamia and northern Syria, ruling from Hasankeyf, Harput, Mardin and at times Aleppo.

Ilghazi crushed the Principality of Antioch at the Battle of Ager Sanguinis in 1119. The Hasankeyf and Harput lines fell to the Ayyubids and the Seljuks of Rum in the thirteenth century, but the Mardin branch endured as a vassal of the Ayyubids, Ilkhanids, Timurids and Qara Qoyunlu.

In 1337 the Mardin ruler was as-Salih Mahmud, who reigned from 1312 to 1364. The line ended when the Qara Qoyunlu seized Mardin in 1409 and deposed the last Artuqid bey, Ahmad.