Until after the campaign of 1386, Karamania was a far more powerful emirate in Asia Minor than that of the Osmanlis. The Karamanlis were the actual successors of the Seljuks, and maintained themselves in Konia. While the Osmanlis were confined to a very small corner of Anatolia, the Karamanian dominions extended from the Euphrates and the Amanus to the Gulf of Adalia, on both slopes of the Taurus. Except in the maritime emirates of the Aegaean Sea, the Karamanlis and their emir were the great power in the peninsula of Asia Minor. Their independence was not broken by Bayezid, for they recovered their former glory after the intervention of Timur, and successfully withstood Mohammed I, Murad II, and Mohammed II. As in the latter half of the fourteenth century, the Karamanian emirs of the first half of the fifteenth century were allied by marriage with the house of Osman, but refused to do homage to the Ottoman sovereigns.[762] Limits of space prevent mentioning here the many grounds upon which the Karamanians were able to and did keep their independence in the face of both Constantinople and Cairo. It was only at the end of the fifteenth century that we find the fiction of the Karamanian vassalage to the Osmanlis and of the connexion between the Seljuks and the Osmanlis appearing in the Ottoman chronicles, which on this count are, as I have pointed out elsewhere, wholly unreliable. It is astonishing that their version of the rise of the Osmanlis in Asia Minor has been accepted for so many centuries by western historians.[763] KARASAR (22) An abbreviation of Kara Hissar. This is probably the modern Afion Kara Hissar, a picturesque town between Eski Sheïr and Konia on southern limit of the emirate of Kermian, of which its prince was a vassal. Its importance was in its location at the junction point of the roads from the north-west and west into Karamania. KARASI (23) The emirate which lay between the possessions of Orkhan and Sarukhan was called, after the founder of its dynasty, Karasi. Its capital was Pergama. There is a discrepancy between the accounts of Shehabeddin and Ibn Batutah, the forming making Pergama subject to Balikesri, and the latter giving Balikesri as independent. Ottoman historians make Balikesri the northernmost city of the emirate of Karasi. The limits of Karasi, outside of the immediate vicinity of Pergama, cannot be determined. There were several small independent emirates in the hinterland of the lower end of the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles. The emir of Karasi was an ally of Aïdin and Sarukhan in the first coalition formed to combat the growing power of the Osmanlis. Karasi was the first emirate to be destroyed by the Osmanlis, and the only one of importance incorporated under Orkhan. This was because it lay nearest to the Ottoman emirate.[764] KASTEMUNI (24)