Koustouganes
beg of Chalybia
Koustouganes (Medieval Greek: Κουστουγάνης) was a Turkmen chieftain who was the earliest known head of the Emirate of Chalybia. He first appeared in records when he attacked the town of Kerasous in 1301.
Name
The original version of the name Koustouganes (Medieval Greek: Κουστουγάνης) is a matter of dispute. Historian Anthony Bryer connected it with the name Küçük Ağa (lit. 'little agha'). Elizabeth Zachariadou suggested it was Küçdoğan. According to Necati Demir, the original form was Kuştoğan, which echoes in the toponyms of the region. The fortress of Kuşdoğan stands 36 kilometers from Giresun, nestled 4 kilometers to the north of Dereli. Tahrir defters from 1515 and 1530 refer to the village surrounding Kuşdoğan Castle as Kuştoğan. Similarly, Kuştoğan village, currently known as Kuşluhan, is situated approximately 5.5 kilometers north of Bulancak. Records from 1455 additionally list the villages of Kuşdoğan (currently a neighborhood of Gölköy District known as Kuşluvan) within the Niyabet-i Hafsamana, and the village of Kuştoğan (presently a neighborhood of Tepeköy) under the Nahiye-i Niyabet-i Gerish-i Ihtiyar.
“Koustouganes” enters the record as beg of Chalybia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Koustouganes and Chalybia can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Koustouganes” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Koustouganes and Chalybia provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q107126451. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1301, 1515, 1530 and 1455.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Koustouganes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.