Menteşe

The Menteşe dynasty founded the earliest Anatolian beylik in ancient Caria, with Milas as its capital. Named after the Turkmen chief Menteşe Bey, it was the first beylik to take to the sea, earning its sailors the name Sea Turks. Under Mesut Bey its fleets briefly seized parts of Rhodes in 1300, and in 1311 a combined Menteşe and Genoese fleet attacked the Hospitallers there. The beylik traded with Venetian Crete, exporting grain, horses and alum through Mağrı.

Weakened by the earthquake of 1389, it submitted to Bayezid I in 1390, was restored by Timur after 1402, accepted Ottoman overlordship in 1414 and was fully annexed in 1426. Its shipyards and seamen supplied roughly two fifths of the fleet that besieged Constantinople in 1453.