INDEPENDENT CHRISTIAN STATES
There were two Christian states in Asia Minor during the fourteenth century.
Little Armenia (44), so called to distinguish it from the classical Armenia of the upper Euphrates valley and the mountains between Asia Minor and the Azerbaïdjan, was a portion of Cilicia in the south-eastern corner of Anatolia, south of the Taurus mountains. A dynasty of Armenian kings, who had successfully held off the Seljuks of Konia, and had maintained its position in the fourteenth century by siding with the Mongols and Tartars against the Egyptians, was overthrown between 1360 and 1374 in three invasions by the Egyptians, who made Tarsus their frontier fortress.[791] Ahmed ben Ramazan, however, in 1379 established a Turkish emirate at Adana, which survived throughout the fifteenth century. The Osmanlis were masters of a portion of Hungary before their power was felt in Cilicia.
Trebizond (45), in the north-eastern corner of the peninsula, in the country where Mithridates in his kingdom of Pontus had defied the Romans, came into no contact with the Osmanlis during the century. Nor was it the object of aggression on the part of Timur.[792] It resisted successfully, with its Greek and Laze population, on land and sea, the attacks of the Turks of its hinterland and of Sinope.