Chepni people

The Tschepni ( modern Turkish spelling: Çepni, Azerbaijani Çəpni ) were a major Oghuz tribe. They settled during the Seljuk conquest of the Middle East mainly on the territory of modern Turkey.

Mahmoud al - Kaschghari she mentioned under the name Tschepni as one of the 24 Oghuz tribes. As a totem animal they had a hawk. Their tribal name means in the Old Turkic " wherever they see an enemy, grab him at lightning speed ."

The Tschepni have come with the Seljuks in the 11th century from Central Asia to Anatolia. They played a major role in the conquest of northern Anatolia and conquered from the Byzantine cities Kerasous 1277, Kotyora and Sinope. The Tschepni attacked until the collapse of the Empire of Trebizond in 1461 coming back to the Byzantine. The Spanish author Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo reported during his trip to Central Asia in 1404 that they would control the cities of Giresun and Ordu. He also reported that the army of Tschepni was about 10,000 men strong and had been under control of the local Turkmen ruler Hacı Süleyman Bey.

During the reign of the Ottoman Sultan Selim I, the area around the provinces of Giresun and Ordu and Beşikdüzü, Şalpazarı, Vakfikebir (all three provincial Trabzon ), Koyulhisar ( Sivas province ) and Kürtün ( province Gümüşhane ) was designated as the Vilayet -i Çepni.

Today there are remnants of the tribe in Turkey, where there are 32 places called Çepni, CETME, Cetmi or CITME.