Gülnar Hatun
Gülnar Hatun (731-769) was a semi legendery Turkish female hero. Her life story requires further research.
Life
She was born in in 731 to Yahşi and his wife Duru. According to unsourced claims the family descended from a branch of Göktürk family. Her family was in the Dörtkuyu village close to Merv, what is now in Turkmenistan. Merv was under Ummayad rule and the Turks in Merv were fighting against forced proselytising . Both Gülnar's and her fiance Yirbağı's fathers were killed by Ummayad general Nasr ibn Sayyar during the reign of Caliph Marwan II. Although Ummayads were replaced by the Abbasids in 750, during the early years of the Abbasid rule Abbasid policy was not much different than that of the Ummayad. After Yırbağı was also killed, Gülnar with a large partisan group escaped to Al-'Awasim, a buffer region between the Ummayad and the Byzantine Empires, what is now in south Turkey. In al Awasim, Gülnar began fighting against Abbasids and in 769 she too was killed during a clash around Gülek Pass (Cicilian Gates of the antiquity).[1][2]
Legacy
In 1950 the Turkmen town Hanaypazar in Mersin Province was renamed Gülnar..[3]Now Gülnar is a district center.