Chaka of Smyrna

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Chaka of Smyrna (Turkish: Çaka Bey; Greek: Τζαχᾶς, Tzachas) was an 11th century Turkish emir who ruled an independent state based in Smyrna.

Chaka was taken as a prisoner during a war with the Byzantine Empire by Emperor Nicephorus III Botaniates. The emperor took an interest in the youth and brought him to live in the palace. He was granted the title of protonobillisimus.

After Alexius Comnenus became the Byzantine Emperor, Chaka decided he wanted to have this position. By 1090 he had extended his realm to include most of the Aegean coast of Anatolia. In that year he captured the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos and Rhodes. In 1091 he lost a battle in the Sea of Marmara to Constantine Dalassenus. In 1092 he was murdered by Kilij Arslan I thus cutting short his attempt to capture Constantinople.

The first Anatolian Turkish naval fleet, which consisted of 33 sail ships and 17 oar ships, was established at the port of İzmir by Çaka Bey in 1081, following his conquest of İzmir, Urla, Çeşme, Foça, Sığacık and the surrounding Aegean coast of Anatolia in that same year. The ships were built at the naval arsenals of İzmir and Ephesus, which Çaka Bey had established.

Çaka Bey's fleet conquered Lesbos (1089) and Chios (1090), before defeating the Byzantine fleet near the Koyun Islands off Chios on May 19, 1090, which marked the first major Anatolian Seljuk naval victory in a sea war. In 1091 Emir Çaka Bey's fleet conquered the islands of Samos and Rhodes in the Aegean Sea.

The Byzantines prepared a new naval force in order to take back these islands from Çaka Bey, but they feared him so much that they hesitated to get past Chios.

Çaka Bey's province became famous for its naval force, which was the first in Anatolian Turkish history. Çaka Bey, furthermore, was the father-in-law of Sultan Kılıç Arslan I of the Anatolian Seljuk Turks.

In 1095, during a campaign against the Byzantine Empire with the support of Kılıç Arslan, Çaka Bey's fleet conquered the strategic port city and gulf of Adramyttium (Edremit) on the Aegean coast of Anatolia, and the city of Abydos on the Dardanelles Strait, during the siege of which Çaka Bey died.

According to Byzantine sources Çaka Bey was killed by Kılıç Arslan; however, his name appears in some papers after that period, showing quite the opposite for those who are skeptical of this version of the story. Some historians^[1] indicate that it was in fact his son who was appointed to take his post, which would have been unlikely if a hostility between Kılıç Arslan and Çaka Bey truly existed.

After Çaka Bey's death, his beylik (principality) disappeared from history. The Byzantines would soon recapture the area under the leadership of Alexius I. On the whole, Çaka Bey was a feared and respected enemy for Byzantium, and a valiant warrior who expanded the Seljuk territories in western Anatolia, albeit for a brief period of time.