Larende

Larende, later known as Karaman, stands on the southern Anatolian plateau beneath the Taurus Mountains. It was a principal seat of the Karamanids, whose Türkmen dynasty ruled a substantial part of central and southern Anatolia. The town's mosques and religious foundations recall the wealth and ambitions of a principality that for generations challenged its Ottoman neighbours.

During the fifteenth century the struggle between the two powers repeatedly brought armies to Larende. İbrahim Bey recovered the town with Ottoman help in 1421, but relations between the dynasties remained uneasy. The Ottomans eventually conquered the Karamanid lands, and the principality disappeared in the later fifteenth century. Larende survived the end of its rulers as a provincial town, its older name giving way to the name of the dynasty with which its history had become entwined.