Konya

After the Sultanate of Rum collapsed in 1307, Konya fell first to the Eshrefids and in 1322 to the Karamanids, who made it the capital of their beylik and the prize of a long rivalry with the Ottomans: the city changed hands between the two houses sixteen times before Mehmed II ended Karamanid rule in 1467. As the seat of the Ottoman province of Karaman it was entrusted to the sultans' sons, beginning with Mehmed II's own sons Mustafa and Cem. War returned in December 1832, when Ibrahim Pasha, son of the rebellious governor of Egypt, routed an Ottoman army just outside the city and occupied it, and the British traveller William Hamilton, passing through in 1837, found Konya a scene of destruction and decay.