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Karaman Museum.
In ancient times, Karaman was known as Lānda in Hittite and Laranda (Greek: τὰ Λάρανδα). Little is known about the early history of Laranda. The city is first mentioned by name in ancient sources through the writings of Diodorus Siculus. According to him, after Perdiccas and King Philip defeated Ariarathes I of Cappadocia, they departed from Cappadocia and set out to punish the cities of Laranda and Isauria. This was in retaliation, because these cities killed Balacrus, a general appointed by Alexander the Great as satrap of the region. As a result, Laranda was destroyed. It later became a seat of Isaurian pirates. At one point, it was under the control of Antipater of Derbe, until he was killed by Amyntas of Galatia, who then took over the territories previously ruled by Antipater.
It belonged to the Roman and later Byzantine Empires until it was captured by the Seljuks in the early 12th century. Karaman was occupied by Frederick Barbarossa in 1190 and by the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia between 1211 and 1216. In 1256, the town was taken by Karaman Bey and was renamed Karaman in his honour. From 1275, Karaman was the capital of the Karamanid beylik.
In 1468 the Karamanids were conquered by the Ottomans and in 1483 the capital of the province was moved to Konya. Karaman has retained ruins of a Karamanid castle and some walls, two mosques and a Koran school (madrasah) from that age. A mihrab from a mosque from Karaman can now be found in the Çinili Pavilion near the Archeology Museum in Istanbul.
The Karamanslis were Cappadocian Turkomans who fought the Ottomans. Later they integrated into the empire.
Karaman clocktower
Laranda appears in early Christian sources as the seat of a bishop named Neon during the early third century CE. In a letter preserved by Eusebius, the bishops Alexander of Jerusalem and Theoctistus of Caesarea cite Laranda as part of their defense of Origen against criticism from Bishop Demetrius of Alexandria. The dispute concerned Demetrius' claim that it was unprecedented and improper for someone who was not yet ordained as a presbyter to preach publicly. In response, they argue that this practice was not unheard of, pointing to cases in which bishops authorized capable laymen to preach. Among these examples, they mention Euelpis, who preached in Laranda with the approval of Bishop Neon.
The poet Yunus Emre (c. 1238–1320) resided in Karaman during his later years and is believed to lie buried beside the Yunus Emre Mosque. A small adjacent park is adorned with quotations from his verse, many of them graffiti-splattered. In 1222, the Sufi preacher Bahaeddin Veled arrived in town with his family, and the Karamanoğlu emir built a madrasah to accommodate them. Veled's son was the famous Rumi, who married his wife, Gevher Hatun, while his family was living in Karaman. It was here, too, that Rumi's mother died in 1224. She was buried, along with other family members, in the Aktekke Mosque (also known as the Mader-i Mevlana Cami), which Alaeddin Ali Bey had built to replace the original madrasah in 1370.
When Thomas Jefferson fought Libya's Barbary pirates, he replaced one member of the al-Qaramanli dynasty with another as Pasha.
