Dilmac

The Dilmaçids were a small Turkoman beylik centered on Bitlis in the Armenian Highlands, born from the Turkic settlement of eastern Anatolia after the Seljuk victory at Manzikert in 1071. Dilmaç oğlu Mehmet received Bitlis as an iqta grant in 1085, and after his death in 1104 his son Togan Arslan made the principality independent.

Togan Arslan joined the Artuqid bey Ilghazi against the Crusaders at the Battle of Ager Sanguinis in 1119, where Roger of Salerno was killed. He and his successors also warred with Georgia and rival Turkic beyliks to hold Bitlis.

The dynasty passed through the suzerainty of the Ayyubids, the Khwarazmshahs, the Ilkhanids and Timur, and its rulers were sparsely recorded in the fourteenth century. Around the 1410s the Aq Qoyunlu Turkomans overran Bitlis and brought the Dilmaçid line to an end.