Download PDF | Kastritsis, D. - The Sons of Bayezid , Empire Building and Representation in the Ottoman Civil War of 1402-13, (Ottoman Empire and Its Heritage) (2007).
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PREFACE
As is often the case with first books, the present study began its life as the author’s doctoral dissertation. In the two years separating the dissertation from the book, little has changed in my view of the Ottoman civil war of 1402–1413 and its significance for Ottoman history. If anything, I am now even more keenly aware of the need to bring this period out of the darkness and into the limelight of history, so that it may become the subject of serious historical study.
Since the present work is the first of its kind, while writing it I was often frustrated by the lack of an already existing narrative on which to rely for the basic sequence of events. Under the circumstances, I had little choice but to construct such a narrative myself, making use of primary sources and the little existing literature, most of which was in the form of journal and encyclopedia articles. Although I am sometimes critical of the work of the few colleagues who had the courage to tackle this complex period of Ottoman history, I appreciate that without their work my task would have been even more difficult. Needless to say, the present book is not a definitive study, but only the first of its kind, and certainly far from perfect.
I hope that it will become the cause for further investigation, since it is my belief that the ideas tentatively set forth in its covers deserve more attention than they have so far received. The most obvious difference between my presentation of the period 1402–1413 and that of other historians before me is the very name by which I have chosen to call it, namely “the Ottoman civil war.” In Ottoman history, this period is usually (but not always) known as “the interregnum,” the corresponding Turkish term being fetret devri. In the original dissertation I had chosen to accept that name, simply pointing out that it was not of Ottoman origin, but apparently coined by the nineteenth century Austrian historian Josef von Hammer-Purgstall (fetret devri being but a translation that gained currency in the mid-twentieth century).
Now I find myself no longer satisfied with the term interregnum, as I feel that it detracts from the importance of the years in question, reducing them to a dark interlude between the reigns of Bayezid I (1389–1402) and Mehmed I (1413–1421). While it is true that during the years 1402–1413 there was never an undisputed claimant to the Ottoman throne, the habit of seeing those years as an interlude between more stable reigns has created the impression that they were a time of chaos, devoid of any coherent politics or culture. In fact, exactly the opposite was true: during that period the Ottoman realm was divided between rival claimants to the throne, each of whom claimed to be the legitimate successor of Bayezid I and carried out coherent policies, both internally and in his diplomatic relations with foreign powers.
As leaders of rival factions in a civil war, the Ottoman princes deployed literature, ceremonial and other means of representation in order to appeal to the hearts and minds of their subjects, and it is no coincidence that the earliest surviving narratives of Ottoman history were written during the civil war. These narratives had a strong influence on later Ottoman historiography and self-perception: the sixteenth century miniature from Lokman’s Hünern¯ame decorating the cover of the present volume does not represent, as one might expect, Mehmed’s enthronement in 1413 (the year in which his reign is conventionally thought to begin), but rather an elaborate enthronement ceremony held in Bursa in 1403, at the height of the civil war, which is described in a contemporary chronicle commissioned for propaganda purposes.1 To the late sixteenth-century palace audience reading the Hünern¯ame, it was obvious that Mehmed I had ascended to the Ottoman throne immediately after his father’s death, even if he had to fight his brothers for an entire decade before his throne was secure.
It gives me great pleasure to thank the many friends, colleagues, and institutions who helped and supported me during the long years this book was in the making. I will limit myself to those who had a direct influence on the final product, as well as those without whose support it could never have been completed. I would like to begin with my teachers and dissertation advisors, each of whom influenced my work in a different way. Cemal Kafadar is by far the greatest overall influence, especially on matters of historiography. I would like to thank him for being a constant source of inspiration and encouragement during my long years of study at Harvard, and for introducing me to the endless possibilities of Ottoman history.
I am equally grateful to Elizabeth Zachariadou, who shared with me her research notes and helped me to see the Byzantine, Balkan, and Venetian angle of things, in addition to reading numerous drafts. Professor Zachariadou will always serve for me as an example of scholarly integrity and erudition. The late and much missed Sinasi Tekin introduced me to ¸ the intricacies of Old Anatolian Turkish language and paleography and helped me with the texts which form such an important part of the present work; unfortunately, his untimely passing did not permit him to see the final results. His place was taken by another of my teachers, Wheeler M. Thackston, whom I would like to thank for serving as a reader at a moment’s notice, in addition to teaching me Persian and the art of idiomatic translation.
To these names I would like to add Halil ˙ Inalcık, who may not have been my teacher in the usual sense, but who has always guided me through his publications, which include the most important work on the Ottoman civil war. As the greatest living expert in Ottoman history, ˙ Inalcık has had a profound influence on my work, and I would like to thank him for pointing the way. ˙ Inalcık is also senior editor of the Brill Ottoman series, and I view it as a great honor that he accepted my manuscript for publication in the year of his ninetieth birthday. I am equally grateful to the other senior editor of the series, Suraiya Faroqhi, for her many useful comments on my manuscript. This study would never have been possible without the generosity of several institutions. First I would like to thank the Center of Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, which helped me financially and otherwise during my years of graduate study there.
During the 2000–2001 academic year, my dissertation research at Harvard was funded by a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education, and a Whiting Fellowship held in 2003–2004 was of crucial importance during the most intensive stages of writing. I conceived this project in summer of 1997 in Istanbul as a pre-dissertation fellow of the Institute of Turkish Studies. The conversion of the dissertation to a book took place while I was a guest lecturer at Yale University’s Hellenic Studies Program, to whose sponsor, the Niarchos Foundation, I owe a debt of gratitude. I would like to thank the program’s co-directors, John Geanakoplos and particularly Stathis Kalyvas, as well as the Associate Program Chair George Syrimis, for making my year at Yale a pleasant and productive one. Thanks are also due to my new employer, the School of History at the University of St Andrews and its chair Andrew Pettegree, for delay-ing my appointment so that I could complete my book while at Yale.
Special thanks are due to my copy-editor, Christopher Adler, who did an excellent job at very short notice, and to Trudy Kamperveen and the other editors at Brill for being so professional. Finally, for their input and support at various stages, I would like to thank the following: Gönül Alpay-Tekin, Christopher Anagnostakis, Christina Andriotis, Helga Anetshofer, Dimiter Angelov, Sahar Bazzaz, Emmanuel Bourbouhakis, Giancarlo Casale, Houchang Chehabi, Erdem Çıpa, Charitini Douvaldzi, John Duffy, Ahmet Ersoy, Ioannis D. Evrigenis, Cornell Fleischer, Eurydice Georganteli, Çigdem Kafesçio ˘ glu, Kon- ˘ stantinos Kambouroglou, Hakan Karateke, Machiel Kiel, Selim Kuru, David Mann, Gülru Necipoglu, Hedda Reindl, Felipe Rojas, and Yian- ˘ nis Sarafidis. Needless to say, any mistakes are my own. My greatest debt of gratitude is to my parents, Costas D. Kastritsis and Patricia A. Kastritsis, who always encouraged my academic curiosity, as well as to my sister Elena Kastritsis and her husband Benjamin Banayan for their love and support. It saddens me greatly that the untimely death first of my mother and then of my father did not allow either of them to see this work in its final form, although I am grateful that my father saw it at least as a bound dissertation. This book is dedicated to their memory.
TRANSLITERATION AND PRONUNCIATION
Transliteration is a perennial problem in Middle Eastern studies. I had originally chosen to use full transcription following the system current in Ottoman history, which is a modified version of modern Turkish spelling to which macrons and other diacritics have been added. But such a system did not seem appropriate for non-Ottoman names (e.g. those belonging to Timurids) so for those words I had used a different transcription system. The end result was an anachronistic nationalization of names that in the fifteenth century would have been indistinguishable (e.g. Mehemmed . for an Ottoman prince, versus Muhammad . for a Timurid one).
Since it was impossible to be fully consistent or historically accurate, and the use of full diacritics has an alienating effect on the non-specialist, in the present volume I have opted for modern spelling, with the exception of words in italics (terms, book titles, and original quotations). I have also included full transcription of all proper names in the index, in order to facilitate research. For the same purpose, place names are given in their modern form and often in several languages. The following pronunciation guide will be of use to those not familiar with the modern Turkish alphabet.
INTRODUCTION THE BATTLE OF ANKARA AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
On 28 July 1402, a great battle was fought on a plain outside Ankara. On one side was the army of Timur (Tamerlane, r. 1370–1405), “the last of the great nomad conquerors,” who had spent the two preceding decades building a vast empire on the Mongol model.1 On the other was that of the Ottoman ruler Bayezid I ‘the Thunderbolt’ (Yıldırım, r. 1389–1402), who styled himself “Sultan of Rum” (Sul. t¯an-ı R¯um) in order to lay claim to the legacy of the Seljuks of Rum.2 Like Timur, Bayezid had spent most of his reign on campaign, enlarging the Ottoman domains toward the east and west to include almost all of the territory that had once belonged to the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium).
In an effort to create a seamless, centralized state, Bayezid had threatened his Christian vassals in the Balkans (Ottoman Rumili or Rumeli) with elimination, crushed the knights of Western Christendom at Nicopolis (1396), and subjected the Byzantine capital of Constantinople to a harrowing eight-year siege (1394–1402). In the east, he had carried out a series of campaigns against rival Muslim states, the Turkish beyliks or emirates of Anatolia (Asia Minor). Through these campaigns, which were unpopular with his Muslim subjects and therefore had to be carried out by armies consisting largely of slaves (kul) and Christian vassals, Bayezid had expanded his domains in Anatolia to match Ottoman expansion in Europe. But this eastward expansion brought Bayezid into conflict with Timur, whose interests also extended into eastern Anatolia.3
In the Battle of Ankara, the Ottomans were completely crushed and their Sultan was taken prisoner. Contingents from the absorbed Anatolian beyliks crossed over to their former lords, who were on Timur’s side, and Sultan Bayezid was left with his janissaries and Serbian vassals. Following his victory, Timur spent nine months in Anatolia with his armies, pillaging the countryside, looting Bursa and other Ottoman towns, and reconstituting the Turkish beyliks that Bayezid had dispossessed in creating his empire.4 Despite the scale of the destruction in Anatolia, however, Timur’s armies never set foot in Rumeli, the western half of Bayezid’s empire, and Timur left the Ottoman dynasty intact, apart from Sultan Bayezid who died in captivity and his son Mustafa who was apparantly taken captive to Samarkand.5
After Timur returned to Central Asia in the spring of 1403, Bayezid’s sons Emir Süleyman, ˙ Isa Beg, Mehmed Çelebi, and later also Musa Çelebi began to fight over the provinces that still remained in Ottoman hands. These included Rumeli, Bithynia, and the province of Rum in North Central Anatolia, centered around the cities of Amasya and Tokat.6 For a period of eleven years usually referred to as the Ottoman interregnum (Turkish Fetret Devri), Bayezid’s sons fought the first (and arguably also the worst) succession struggle in the six hundred years of Ottoman history. Mehmed I finally emerged as the winner after defeating his brother Musa at the Battle of Çamurlu (5 July 1413). From 1413 until his death in 1421, Mehmed I (known as Sultan Mehmed Çelebi, or Kyritzes in Greek) reigned as sole Ottoman sultan, although he was not uncontested.7 In 1415, Timur’s successor Shahrukh released Mehmed’s older brother, ‘the false’ (düzme) Mustafa, who formed an alliance with Byzantium and revived the succession struggle for about a year (1416).
Mustafa’s challenge coincided with a major social rebellion under the Islamic legal scholar and mystic Seyh Bedreddin, who had served in the ¸ administration of Mehmed’s defeated rival Musa in Rumeli (1411–1413). Bedreddin’s rebellion, spanning two continents and centered in areas that had been particularly active during the civil war, was finally put down after much loss of blood. As for Mustafa, the Byzantine Emperor agreed to keep him in captivity for the duration of Mehmed’s reign. On his deathbed, Mehmed Çelebi was still concerned with the problems of dynastic succession that had occupied him throughout his adult life. Before dying, he attempted to ensure a smooth transfer of power by appointing his son Murad (II) as his heir, while making arrangements so that his other sons would be unable to contest Murad’s rule. He promised the Byzantines two of his sons who were minors as hostages— a practice that had begun during the civil war—in order to ensure that they would not release his brother Mustafa.8
His son of the same name, ‘the little’ (küçük) Mustafa, was to remain in Anatolia while Murad ruled supreme in Rumeli. But these arrangements failed, for Murad refused to hand over his young brothers to the Byzantine Emperor, who in turn responded by releasing ‘the false’ Mustafa. In a vain effort to prevent another bloody war of succession, Murad’s regime tried to present Mustafa as an impostor (which is how he got the epithet); but Mustafa launched a serious revolt in the area around Izmir (Smyrna), where he was assisted by Cüneyd, a local magnate who had emerged in the aftermath of 1402 as a semi-independent actor.
Murad II’s throne was only secure after the elimination of both Mustafas (1423).9 It is thus clear even from a brief survey of the reigns of Mehmed I and Murad II that many of the challenges they faced had deep roots in the civil war of 1402–1413, and can only be understood in its context. While it is true that by 1453 the Ottomans were able to make a remarkable recovery from their defeat at Ankara and conquer Constantinople, thereby inaugurating the so-called “classical period” of Ottoman history, the long and divisive civil war left a deep mark on Ottoman political culture and historical consciousness. As he prepared for his Balkan campaigns of 1443–1444, Murad II still doubted the loyalty of the Rumelian frontier lords (uc begleri), speaking of how theyhad betrayed his uncle Musa.10 Most importantly, until the adoption of a succession system based on seniority in the early seventeenth century, the Ottomans still struggled with the problem of dynastic succession. Specifically for the Ottoman civil war beginning in 1402, Halil ˙ Inalcık has pointed out that “that the struggle for the throne among the descendants of Bayezid I ended only after the conquest of Constantinople.”11 Even after the legalization of dynastic fratricide in Mehmed II’s lawcode (k.¯an¯unn¯ame), the practice remained a controversial one until it was discontinued in the seventeenth century.12 Understanding the civil war of 1402–1413 is an essential prerequisite for understanding the development of the Ottoman Empire. The present work is the first full-length study of the period in question. Its aim is twofold: to provide a reliable narrative of the events of the years 1402–1413 (the first of its kind) and to identify and discuss some of the major themes and problems that emerge from the study of this period of Ottoman history. As the sources are much richer than has been generally recognized, the present work does not pretend to exhaust them, but rather to point the direction for future research. It is hoped that it will prepare the ground for a larger discussion of the role of the succession struggles of the interregnum in the development of the Ottoman Empire.
International Relations in the Ottoman Civil War The politics of the Ottoman dynastic wars were extremely complex, and involved many neighboring states and foreign powers. Perhaps the best way to paint a picture of the situation is by describing the composition of the army with which Mehmed Çelebi won his decisive victory at Çamurlu (5 July 1413) against his brother Musa (see chapter 5). In preparation for that battle, Mehmed brought with him an army from Anatolia consisting largely of Tatars and Turcomans, including forces under the command of his brother-in-law, the prince of Dulkadır. This army was ferried across the straits by the Byzantine Emperor, who added to it some of his own troops. Then, in the long buildup to the battle, further contingents joined under various Turkish lords of the marches (uc begleri), the Byzantine governor of Thessaloniki, and the Serbian despot Stefan Lazarevic, whose army is reported to have ´ included Bosnians and Hungarians. And that was only one battle, in which many other powers that had played a role in the Ottoman civil war did not take part. Let us briefly review the international situation that prevailed after 1402. The Ottoman defeat at Ankara had immediate consequences for the entire region. When Bayezid was captured by Timur, his imperial ambitions which had caused alarm in many quarters came to a sudden end. Before the Battle of Ankara, the Byzantine capital of Constantinople had been on the verge of surrendering to Bayezid after a long siege.13 In this light, it is not surprising that when Timur appeared unexpectedly on the eastern borders of Bayezid’s empire, the Byzantines saw the event as an act of divine providence.14 Constantinople was a city of immense strategic importance, situated at the crossroads of two continents and two seas and surrounded by some of the most powerful fortifications the world had ever seen. Without Constantinople, it was impossible for Bayezid to fully control the straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, which meant that he could never be completely sure of his ability to cross swiftly with a large army from one half of his empire to the other. Upon Timur’s departure from Anatolia, Bayezid’s sons found themselves surrounded by hostile neighbors. In order to consolidate his power over Rumeli, Bayezid’s eldest son Süleyman was forced to make extensive concessions to Byzantium and other Christian powers there.15 Had the Ottomans’ Christian and Muslim enemies in Rumeli and Anatolia succeeded in uniting against them, it is quite possible that they could have destroyed them once and for all. But this did not happen, for those powers were deeply divided. In the Christian Orthodox communities of the Balkans, such as the Byzantines and Serbs, there was deep anti-Latin sentiment, which had led to the creation of a pro-Ottoman faction. As a result of such divisions, any effort to limit the power of the Ottoman princes could at best enjoy only moderate success. Following the principle of divide and conquer, the Byzantine Emperor, the Voivoda of Wallachia, and the begs of Western Anatolia played the game of supporting one Ottoman prince against another, thus hoping to prevent the rise of another Yıldırım Bayezid. The Byzantines especially were quite adept at this game, and were able to hold on to Constantinople and prolong the life of their state for fifty years after 1402. Other Christian states were motivated by very different interests from those of Byzantium. The Italian merchant republics of Venice and Genoa were concerned first and foremost with securing the safety of their Levantine trade. Throughout the civil war, their policy was to sign treaties with whichever Ottoman prince was in the best position to guarantee those interests. Inasmuch as a powerful Ottoman ruler such as Yıldırım Bayezid could endanger their colonial outposts, the position of Venice was similar to that of Byzantium, Wallachia, and other powers threatened by Ottoman expansion. But unlike Byzantium, in this period the Venetian senate was willing to make deals with the Ottomans against various enemies that posed a more immediate danger, such as Balˇsa in Albania. Several smaller powers of Rumeli, such as the Serbian lords Stefan Lazarevic and George Brankovi ´ c and the lord of Cephalonia Carlo ´ Tocco, also sought Ottoman military assistance against their enemies during this time. Indeed, that was how the Ottomans had been able to prevail in Rumeli in the first place. As is well-known, the Ottomans first crossed the straits separating Asia from Europe as mercenaries on the side of John VI Kantakouzenos during his power struggle with John V Palaiologos, known as the Byzantine civil war (1341–1354).16 After occupying the important port city of Gallipoli following an earthquake, they were able to expand rapidly due to the political fragmentation that they had encountered in the region. What began as mere raiding evolved gradually into a specific method of conquest, which involved first establishing suzerainty over local lords by making alliances with them against their enemies, and later incorporating their lands into the sphere of direct Ottoman administration.17 Although a Byzantine emperor had been responsible for inviting the Ottomans into Europe, by 1402 it was clear that Ottoman expansion posed a threat to the very existence of Byzantium. Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos (r. 1391–1425), who reached maturity during this time, made great efforts to prevent political fragmentation within his family and to unite Christendom against Ottoman expansion.18 The same was true also of the Hungarian king Sigismund, who in 1396 had organized the last Crusade of the Middle Ages against the Ottomans.19 But Bayezid’s army had easily defeated the Crusaders. Moreover, after his defeat Sigismund was preoccupied with various challenges from his own noblemen and a rival contender to the throne, Ladislas of Naples. Hungarian involvement in the Ottoman succession wars was therefore indirect, and exerted mostly through Sigismund’s vassals, especially Mircea of Wallachia and Stefan Lazarevic.´ As for the Turkish beyliks of Anatolia, after Timur’s departure they were unable to pursue an independent foreign policy. Instead, like the Christian powers of Rumeli, they tried to gain whatever they could out of an alliance with one or another of the Ottoman princes, siding with whichever happened to be the weakest at the time, in the hope of preventing any one of them from becoming too powerful. But as Halil ˙ Inalcık has pointed out, by this time in their history the Ottomans had already become the greatest power in the area, to which all others turned to guarantee their position and resolve their differences. This was true as much for the Turkish beyliks of Anatolia as it was for the various Christian lords of the Balkans. Another important point to bear in mind is that the Ottoman prebendal land tenure system (the t¯ım¯ar, hereafter timar) was already fully operational under Bayezid I, which meant that after 1402, many timar holders had an interest in maintaining a stable Ottoman central administration that could guarantee their privileges.20 International relations during the Ottoman civil war are thus best characterized as dictated by opportunism on the part of everyone involved. The Ottomans’ neighbors switched sides frequently, allying themselves first with one, then with another of the Ottoman princes in an effort to gain something, or at least avoid losing everything. But their interests rarely coincided. In all the struggles of the civil war, only once did the majority of political actors join together in a common cause, rallying to the side of Mehmed Çelebi in 1413 against his brother Musa, whose aggressive policies had brought back for them the darkest moments of Bayezid I’s reign in Rumeli. But in supporting Mehmed against Musa, Byzantium and Hungary ended up undermining their own policy of divide and conquer. As a result, by 1413 it was clear to all that despite the disaster at Ankara, the Ottomans were still the dominant power in the region. Of course, as we have already seen, the efforts of Byzantium and other powers to limit Ottoman power and expansion did not end in 1413. But a great opportunity had been lost, and forty years later another Ottoman Sultan would realize Bayezid’s imperial ambitions and conquer Constantinople. The reign of Mehmed II (1451–1481) saw the consolidation of the Ottoman state into a formidable world empire, larger, more powerful, and more coherent than the one created by Bayezid I.
The Civil War and Ottoman Society The Ottoman dynastic struggles were full-scale civil wars involving the entire society over which the rival princes strove to establish their rule. In navigating the turbulent and changing waters that prevailed after the collapse of Bayezid I’s empire, the Ottoman princes and their advisers had to take into account internal political actors at least as much as the foreign powers mentioned above. The importance of internal dynamics is best illustrated by the revolt of Seyh Bedreddin. As we saw ¸ above, Bedreddin’s involvement in politics dates to the reign of Musa Çelebi (1411–1413), who appointed Seyh Bedreddin as his head military ¸ judge (k.¯ad.¯ı #askar, hereafter kazasker). Musa owed his rise to power in Rumeli largely to the raiders there (akıncı or ˙g¯az¯ı, hereafter gazi), so his appointment of Bedreddin is probably no coincidence, since apart from being a great scholar and mystic the ¸seyh was also a genuine product of the frontier milieu of Rumeli. Seyh Bedreddin’s father was one of the ¸ first gazis who crossed the straits into Rumeli: he had conquered the small Byzantine town of Ammovounon (Sımavna) with its castle and married the daughter of its Christian lord (tekv¯ur).21 Coming as he did from such a mixed frontier environment, Bedreddin appears to have enjoyed wide support among various segments of Ottoman society, both Muslim and Christian. Due to this wide biconfessional support, Bedreddin’s uprising has been presented in modern Turkish historiography and popular culture as a proto-communist revolt, especially after the publication of the Turkish poet Nâzım Hikmet’s epic on the subject.22 While such a presentation is clearly anachronistic, there is nevertheless a kernel of truth in it, since Bedreddin’s revolt appears indeed to reflect certain social tensions created by the Ottoman empire-building project and intensified by the civil war. Bedreddin’s patron Musa Çelebi apparently enjoyed great popularity with certain segments of the population, notably the lower ranks of the akıncı and the kul, while others felt threatened by his policies and worked at engineering his demise. The latter category included the powerful frontier lords (uc begleri) of Rumeli, as well as certain high functionaries of the government, such as Musa’s grand vizier, Çandarlı ˙ Ibrahim Pa¸sa. Apart from attacking his Christian neighbors, Musa had also sought to destroy the power of those elites in order to increase the authority of the central state. In fact, his policies bear a striking resemblence to those of his father Bayezid, who was criticized by some for undermining gazi authority while strengthening that of his own slaves (kul), and by others for going against the Ottoman policy of gradual conquest, which was based on moderate policies toward the neighboring Christian states. Those policies had already become associated with the Çandarlı family of grand viziers, whose last important representative Çandarlı Halil Pa¸sa was executed in 1453 for opposing the conquest of Constantinople.23 Several prominent historians of the Ottoman Empire have made the point that the disaster at Ankara brought to the surface internal social and political divisions created by Ottoman expansion and centralization during the reigns of Murad I (1362–1389) and Bayezid I.24 For those opposed to Bayezid’s project of turning the Ottoman state into a centralized empire on the Seljuk or Byzantine model, his defeat at the hands of Timur was proof that his policies were seriously flawed. By far the most important criticism levelled against Bayezid I was his use of janissaries and Christian vassals to attack and incorporate the Muslim beyliks of Anatolia. Indeed, the fact that a ruler blessed by God with the conquest of new lands for Islam was fighting against other Muslims was thought to constitute nothing less than hubris. A related point which has received less attention concerns the revival of Central Asian nomadic political traditions in Anatolia following Timur’s invasion. Timur’s political ideology was founded on the Chingizid political order in its Islamic form, as represented by the Ilkhanid Mongol appanage state in Iran. Following the defeat of the Seljuks of Rum at the Battle of Kösedag ( ˘ 1243), large parts of Anatolia had came under the direct rule of the Ilkhanids, who had sent a governor to Sivas (1277). Although Mongol direct rule in Anatolia had not lasted long, it had left its imprint on an area inhabited largely by Turks of nomadic background (Turcomans), who like the Ottomans’ own ancestors had migrated there in the 1220s–1230s fleeing the Chingizid conquests further east. From the beginning of their history, then, the Ottomans were no strangers to Central Asian political culture; indeed, they were native to it. However, as the Mongol threat grew weaker in the course of the fourteenth century, they adapted to local conditions on the Byzantine border, first in Bithynia and then in the Balkans. Eventually, like the Seljuk rulers before them and inspired by their example, they came to see themselves as sedentary rulers. They forged alliances with their Christian neighbors by marrying into the Balkan nobility, and created slave armies and courts by converting Christian peasants and prisoners of war into janissaries and servants of the Porte (kapı kulu). But as their realms expanded during the reigns of Murad I and Bayezid I, once again the Ottomans came face to face with the larger post-Mongol Islamic world as represented by the Mamluks of Egypt, the Akkoyunlu and Karakoyunlu tribal confederations of eastern Anatolia and western Iran, the ruler of Sivas Kadı Burhaneddin, and eventually the great nomadic conqueror Timur himself. Their response to these challenges was to adopt as much as possible the political language and ideology of those enemies, while still emphasizing their own uniqueness as the gazi conquerors of Rumeli. Needless to say, the Ottomans’ various claims to legitimacy were not entirely compatible. Easterners absorbed into the Ottoman state criticized the historical validity of Ottoman policies and institutions (unlike Timur, the Ottomans adopted the title khan without having even the slightest connection to the Chingizid family) while the gazis of Rumeli condemned ‘innovations’ brought in from the east, such as land surveys and tax registers. After 1402, given the prestige that Timur enjoyed and the fear that he inspired as the absolute winner of the confrontation with the Ottomans, it was only natural that people in the Ottoman realm with whom Chingizid political ideas still resonated would feel empowered. Any examination of the social divisions brought about by the Ottoman defeat at Ankara and the ensuing civil war is inseperable from modern historical treatments of this period of Ottoman history. The founding father of the field is without a doubt Paul Wittek, whose famous “gaza thesis” has inspired generations of Ottoman historians, but still remains controversial. It is a good idea to deal with the controversy now, as it pertains to the period under consideration.
Paul Wittek’s Thesis and its Critics The broader importance of the early fifteenth century succession wars for Ottoman history has been emphasized by many scholars, notably Halil ˙ Inalcık, who has stated that for this period “the fundamental question is to ascertain how the Ottoman state re-emerged as the dominant power in Anatolia and the Balkans under the most adverse conditions after the disaster of 1402.”25 However, the existing scholarly literature is confined to a few articles, which while helpful in elucidating aspects of this extremely complicated period, lack a broad enough scope to create an overall impression of the events and their meaning for Ottoman history. Without such an overall view, it is impossible to adequately address ˙ Inalcık’s question. The first modern scholar to draw attention to the period following 1402 for the rise of the Ottoman Empire was the great philologist and historian Paul Wittek. In 1938, Wittek delivered a series of lectures at the Sorbonne which were published in the same year under the title “De la défaite d’Ankara à la prise de Constantinople.”26 As suggested by its title, Wittek’s work is not really about the civil war per se, but about the transformation of the early Ottoman principality into an empire during the reign of Bayezid I, its collapse after Ankara, and its gradual recovery which led eventually to the capture of Constantinople in 1453. This broad scope is one of the merits of Wittek’s essay, but also one of its shortcomings. “De la défaite d’Ankara à la prise de Constantinople” has been criticized by Colin Imber for its sweeping generalizations, many of which do not hold up to close scrutiny.27 In Imber’s words, the work’s “seemingly mesmeric effect appears to derive from the fact that it provides a coherent—or fairly coherent— explanation for the events of an obscure and complex period, and to challenge its thesis requires a knowledge of diverse and fragmentary source material in a number of difficult languages.”28 Before discussing Imber’s criticisms, let us examine Wittek’s claims in more detail. Wittek’s lectures on the defeat at Ankara came only two years after a previous lecture series at the Sorbonne, and one year after his famous 1937 lectures in London, published as The Rise of the Ottoman Empire. 29 When he delivered these lectures, Wittek was working out the ideas and implications of his so-called gaza thesis, which has become the object of much scholarly debate and controversy in recent years.30 It is clear that his attempt to address the significance of the succession wars for Ottoman history was part of the same project. Wittek is usually remembered for these published lectures, but far more important are his numerous meticulously researched scholarly articles and studies. In his lectures, Wittek was addressing a wider audience including many non-specialists, a fact that goes a long way toward explaining their “mesmeric effect” to which Imber refers. As is often the case in public lectures, the speaker was forced to oversimplify and overstate his case by generalizing and using terminology such as “holy war ideology,” “the gazi tendency,” and “the Muslim tendency” to describe the driving forces and divisions within early Ottoman society. While Imber and other critics dismiss Wittek’s ideas as deriving from “the traditions of right-wing German nationalism,” this is rather unfair to a scholar of Wittek’s caliber and contribution to the field, especially one who fled the rise of the Nazis in Germany.31 Of course, one must take into account that like all historians Wittek was a product of his time, in which the terms he used did not seem as problematic as they do today. Moreover, it is clear that the author himself had certain reservations about the terminology that he was using.32 As Cemal Kafadar has pointed out, regardless of whether they agree or disagree with Wittek’s theory, most later commentators on the gaza thesis (including Imber) have accepted his terms without trying to understand the historical realities behind them.33 In so doing, they risk throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. While Wittek’s terminology and even many of his conclusions cannot be accepted today as such, the ideas that he tentatively developed in his London and Paris lectures had a stimulating effect on many Ottoman historians, encouraging them to consider and refine his paradigm of the rise of the Ottomans in light of further research. This process is exemplified by the work of Halil ˙ Inalcık and Cemal Kafadar. Thanks to ˙ Inalcık’s mastery of the Ottoman chronicles and archival sources, Wittek’s paradigm has been revised to produce a much more persuasive account of the rise of the Ottomans, in which the struggle between “the gazi tendency” and “the Muslim tendency” has been replaced by competition between centrifugal and centripetal elements within early Ottoman society. Even more than that of Wittek, ˙ Inalcık’s paradigm is well grounded in the sources, and as we will see, his conclusions are clearly visible at the time of the Ottoman succession wars, when Bayezid I’s centralizing project had collapsed. Finally, thanks to Kafadar’s masterful study of the rise of the Ottomans, we now have a convincing and nuanced explanation for many of the apparent contradictions in the culture of the early Ottomans, which is based on their own literature and a detailed understanding of the historical environment in which they were operating. One of the main principles of the school of Ottoman history represented by Wittek, ˙ Inalcık, and Kafadar is the critical use of chronicles. According to that school, apart from containing factual data that can be compared to documentary and other evidence, the early Ottoman chronicles are also mirrors of the society that produced them. Rather than seeing the chronicles’ political nature as a shortcoming that ren ders them “biased,” that very nature is viewed as an advantage that permits the historian capable of reading between the lines to better understand the society in question. Such is the approach followed in the present work. On the contrary, another school whose foremost representative is Colin Imber seeks to dismiss the chronicles in question as unreliable, claiming that they are little more than propaganda written several decades after the events. While it is certainly true that one must be cautious and critical, since a political agenda or message generally forms part and parcel of any historical narrative, it is this author’s opinion that the existence of such an agenda does not constitute sufficient grounds to reject the narrative altogether. On the contrary, if analyzed carefully on multiple layers, such chronicles may yield not only accurate factual information, but also insights on the politics of the period in which they were written. This is all the more important since, as we will see, the chronicle that forms the foundation of the present study was not composed in the late fifteenth century, as Imber and others allege, but in the early part of that century as an immediate response to the events of the Ottoman civil war. The narrative of the civil war followed by most Ottoman chroniclers (and therefore also by modern scholars) is an anonymous epic chronicle covering the years 1402–1413 from the perspective of the winner (namely Mehmed Çelebi, Sultan Mehmed I). This chronicle, which is analyzed in the sources section later in this introduction, originally bore a title similar to Ahv. ¯al-i Sul. t¯an Mehemmed . (‘Affairs of Sultan Mehmed’) and will henceforth be referred to as “the Ahval.”34 As we will see, there can be little doubt that this work is one of our most important narrative sources on the Ottoman civil war. However, since it is biased in favor of Mehmed Çelebi, in whose court it was produced, it must be used side by side with other narrative and documentary sources. A good illustration of this methodological difference is provided by Imber’s review of Wittek’s article “De la défaite d’Ankara à la prise de Constantinople.” The reviewer begins his critique by presenting a more or less accurate summary of Wittek’s thesis, followed by a detailed refutation of his arguments from which he concludes that “Wittek’s interpretation of early Ottoman history … is a false analysis, but one which has become an orthodoxy among Ottoman historians.”35 Some of Imber’s points are quite valid, but others are less so. Before discussing Imber’s criticism, it is necessary to examine Wittek’s arguments in detail. When discussing the circumstances surrounding Emir Süleyman’s loss of power to his brother Musa Çelebi in 1410– 1411, Wittek claims that “the internal situation in Rumeli seems, in effect, to have been rather critical.” He points out that Süleyman is depicted by various chronicles as an effeminate prince given to bodily pleasures such as bathing and drinking wine, adding that he also married a Christian princess who was a close relative of the Byzantine Emperor. According to Wittek, “all this, and his foreign policy” (namely his conciliatory policies toward the Christian powers of Rumeli) “shows that he was following the ways of the latinized high aristocracy.” That is why the gazis abandoned Süleyman and supported his brother Musa, an “austere, hard and fanatical young man” whose sad youth in the court of his brother Mehmed Çelebi had turned him into “a somber fanatic.”36 Wittek goes on to relate that when Musa took over with the support of the disgruntled gazis, he relaunched “the holy war” and appointed as his head military judge (kazasker) “the same Seyh Bedreddin who ¸ a few years later would become the leader of a vast social and religious movement which preached a sort of communism and fraternization with the Christians.” But despite his popular support, Musa’s “revolutionary Rumeli” was not viable, for Musa spread “a veritable terror” among “the aristocrats and high functionaries of his state,” causing them to unite with his Christian enemies in support of Mehmed Çelebi. The fact that Mehmed was based in the province of Rum, which had belonged to the gazi Turkish principality of the Dani¸smendids, meant that he preserved his “national” character, a fact proven by his decision to marry into the tribal Turcoman family of Dulkadır, rather than take a Christian bride as Süleyman had done. According to Wittek, Mehmed’s victory in the civil war was due to a great extent to his preservation of this essential “national” character.37 As is immediately obvious to anyone familiar with the details of the period in question, there are some serious problems with Wittek’s argument. First, his emphasis on the fact that Emir Süleyman had a Chris tian wife is completely unwarranted, for the practice had been common since the time of Orhan Gazi, and the gazi-supported “fanatic” Musa seems to have had not one but two Christian wives. As we will see in chapter 2, Mehmed’s choice of a Turcoman bride was based solely on political considerations, since his power was located in an area with a large population of nomadic Turcomans. Second, any claim to an understanding of Musa’s personal psychology and childhood in Mehmed’s court amounts to little more than speculation, since it is not possible to psychoanalyze a fifteenth century Ottoman prince on the basis of scant evidence mostly produced in the court of his brother. Third, even if we accept as true that after Musa’s death his kazasker Seyh Bedreddin was the leader of an important social and religious ¸ movement based on ideas of common ownership, it does not necessarily follow from this alone that Musa was himself the leader of a revolutionary communist regime in Rumeli. In fact, Bedreddin’s revolt is still poorly understood, which makes its anachronistic projection back in time all the more problematic. Finally, in the case of Süleyman, the fact that several chronicles hostile to that prince contain didactic stories in which he is presented as drinking in bathhouses does not in itself constitute sufficient evidence that Süleyman was overcivilized and lacking in manly virtue. On the contrary, for most of the duration of the Ottoman succession wars, Süleyman was the most successful claimant to the throne and waged many important campaigns against his brothers and the beyliks of Anatolia. As Zachariadou has pointed out, after the Battle of Ankara Süleyman’s conciliatory policies toward the Christian powers of Rumeli were necessary for the Ottomans’ survival in Europe.38 Let us see now what Imber has made of these weaknesses in Wittek’s argument. A sympathetic but impartial reviewer would have had every reason to identify them for what they are, namely gross inaccuracies and exaggerations, while also recognizing that they represent attempts to get at something real that is present in the sources. However Imber fails to find anything plausible in Wittek’s argument, rejecting it altogether. He interprets the hostility of the Ottoman chronicles toward Yıldırım Bayezid’s wife Olivera as mere scapegoating whose aim is to explain the disaster at Ankara, and their even greater animosity toward the Çandarlı family of viziers as a retrospective projec tion of the political climate following the execution of Çandarlı Halil Pa¸sa in 1453. However, it is quite clear that these attitudes are much older than the second half of the fifteenth century, and that their origin should be sought instead in popular reaction against the imperial project of Bayezid I. As we will see below, the Ahval, which should be dated to Mehmed I’s reign (1402–1421), also contains several stories in which Çandarlı Ali Pa¸sa appears as the villain. It is thus impossible to accept Imber’s assertion that the negative presentation of Ali Pa¸sa in various Ottoman chronicles is due to “anti-Çandarlı propaganda which dated from after 1453.”39 Similarly, in the case of Musa and Seyh Bedreddin, Imber’s evalua- ¸ tion that “Wittek’s account of Musa’s reign is completely illogical” does not change the fact that there were clearly complex social forces at work behind that prince’s rise to power. While it is of course anachronistic to present Musa as a communist revolutionary, Wittek is correct to point out that his rise to power presents “a completely particular character,” since it can be attributed largely to the support of certain social groups such as the raiders (akıncı) and other fighters of Rumeli who were displeased with Süleyman’s peaceful policies.40 Moreover, these raiders seem to have held certain egalitarian, anti-aristocratic beliefs that Musa exploited during his reign in order to weaken the power of the frontier lords of Rumeli, who were by this time in Ottoman history already becoming a kind of local nobility. As for Seyh Bedreddin, he ¸ was the son of a raider and a Byzantine lady and the leader of a mystical order, apparently with a significant following among both Christians and Muslims. Seen in that light, it is unlikely that Musa appointed him as his kazasker simply because he was “a renowned jurist,” as Imber claims.41 Bedreddin was indeed a renowned jurist, but it is surely significant that at the end of the Ottoman succession wars he was imprisoned by Mehmed I in the same prison as the important frontier lord Mihal-oglı Mehmed, only to escape three years later and lead a revolt ˘ centered in the very region where Musa had achieved his strongest popular support. It is obvious that both men were viewed as dangerous by Mehmed I’s regime because of their popular following in Rumeli. In conclusion, while it is difficult to accept Wittek’s presentation of the Ottoman succession wars as such, it would be an equally grave mistake to reject it outright. Despite its overgeneralizations, it contains many elements of truth which are well founded in the sources. In fact, one of the aims of the present study is to test Wittek’s ideas on early Ottoman society through a careful study of the sources and politics of the early fifteenth century. Whatever the weaknesses in his presentation of the events of the Ottoman civil wars of 1402–1413, Wittek was right about one thing: to do justice to those events it is necessary to study them within the larger context of early Ottoman history. What is needed is a solid, source-based understanding of the political and institutional history of the Ottoman state going back at least as far as the reign of Bayezid I, and ending with that of Mehmed II the Conqueror (1451–1481). Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, such an understanding is still lacking. Perhaps the greatest obstacle is the absence of sufficient and reliable sources on the first century of Ottoman history, which coincides with the fourteenth century of the common era. The situation is especially bad for the first half of that period, when the Ottomans were still in Anatolia and had not yet attracted much international attention (1300– 1354); but it gradually improves with time, so that it should be possible to write the history of the decades before the disaster of 1402 in much greater detail than has so far been attempted. In fact, most of what has been written on this period is in response to the controversy created by Wittek’s gaza thesis. The most recent works on the subject are Cemal Kafadar’s Between Two Worlds and Heath Lowry’s The Nature of the Early Ottoman State, both extended essays on the question of Ottoman origins.42 Of the two, Lowry’s is the more polemical work, since the author attempts to disprove Wittek’s thesis by criticizing his use of the sources. Instead, Kafadar’s work should be seen as a largely successful attempt to paint a more nuanced picture of the early Ottoman world, in addition to dealing with the modern considerations that have dictated much of the debate over who the early Ottomans really were. Yet despite the lively debate created by such studies, we are still far from knowing all that we would like to know about Ottoman history before 1402. What is needed, in fact, are detailed monographs on the reigns of individual Ottoman sultans, making use of all the available sources regardless of language. For Sultans Murad I (1362–1389) and Bayezid I (1389–1402) such monographs have yet to be attempted, even though those sultans reigned during the transformation of the Ottoman principality into an empire. For the reigns of Mehmed I (1413–1421) and Murad II (1421– 1444, 1446–1453), some work has been done, but this is still in the form of unpublished doctoral dissertations not yet readily available.43 If the above is an accurate assessment of the state of early Ottoman history in general, it is especially true for the civil war of 1402–1413. In view of the primitive state of the field, it is the primary objective of the present work to make available a detailed narrative of the Ottoman civil war. As will become apparent below, the events of this period are extremely complicated, and the sources available for its study are disparate, fragmentary, and in many different languages. While the publication and study of some of these sources began as early as the nineteenth century, often this work is only available in the form of journal articles that are difficult to obtain. To the extent possible, an effort has therefore been made to take into account most of the available published sources. I have not attempted to locate undiscovered and unpublished archival material, since such material for the period in question is very rare and would have been difficult to find. As we will see in a moment when we turn to a detailed presentation of the sources, the published narrative and documentary sources are more than adequate for the work at hand. As for the secondary literature, the most important articles and studies concerning the period in question have also been taken into account.44 As has already been suggested, the present study is largely an attempt to create a reliable chronological narrative of the Ottoman civil war, beginning with the Battle of Ankara (28 July 1402) and ending with the reunification of the Ottoman territory under Mehmed I (5 July 1413). To date such a narrative has been totally lacking, and the few surveys of the period in articles and works of general Ottoman history are often confusing and contradictory. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that several prominent Ottoman historians have made serious efforts to disentangle various aspects of the succession struggles of the civil war, thereby making the task of producing an overall narrative much more manageable than it would otherwise have been. Prior to the present work, and apart from Wittek’s article which as we saw above is actually the transcript of a public lecture, two articles stood out as representing the state of the art on the civil war: Elizabeth Zachariadou’s article on Süleyman Çelebi, and Halil ˙ Inalcık’s entry on Mehmed I in the Encyclopedia of Islam (new edition).45 Besides Paul Wittek’s article, Elizabeth Zachariadou’s is probably the most frequently cited work on the period in question, and justly so. Zachariadou’s mastery of Byzantine, Venetian, and other Western European documentary sources makes her work very valuable, since such sources are often overlooked by Ottoman historians. Moreover, as the title of her article suggests, Zachariadou has made a point of using these sources side by side with the Ottoman chronicles. Unfortunately, she has failed to take into account the contemporary nature of some of these chronicles, which makes them particularly important for reconstructing the events and political culture of the civil war. Specifically, she treates the Ahval as the work of Ne¸sri, dismissing it with the words: “Ottoman narrative sources do not seem trustworthy as far as the period of the interregnum is concerned apart from their bias in favour of Mehemmed” and “the earliest Ottoman historians dealing with that period—mainly Neshri—wrote several decades after Süleyman’s death.”46 While it is true that Ne¸sri’s chronicle was written at the turn of the sixteenth century, it has been accepted for a long time that it is a compilation of older sources, at least one of which (the Ahval) is clearly contemporary to the events that it describes. As we will see in chapter 2, Zachariadou’s decision not to follow the chronicles but to rely primarily on “strictly contemporary” documentary sources led her to the erroneous conclusion that ˙ Isa Çelebi was killed by Emir Süleyman, after the two brothers tried unsuccessfully to attack Timur as he was withdrawing from Anatolia. Nevertheless, Zachariadou’s emphasis on documentary sources resulted in many important conclusions about Emir Süleyman’s reign, which cast doubt on the rather negative way in which he is presented in the Ottoman chronicles. The content and approach of Zachariadou’s article on Emir Süleyman is complemented nicely by Halil ˙ Inalcık’s one on Mehmed I.
While the article in question was written as an encyclopedia entry, it deserves to be treated as the main scholarly contribution on the subject, as it has been until now the best available study of the Ottoman civil war and its significance.47 The author’s unparalleled understanding of all aspects of early Ottoman history make his work essential reading for anyone interested in the subject, and by and large his conclusions are confirmed by the present study. ˙ Inalcık shows great sensitivity to the political context after Ankara, the political challenge posed by Timur, and the role of foreign powers. Unlike Zachariadou, he insists on the value of the Ahval, whose importance for early Ottoman history and historiography he has emphasized repeatedly in articles and conferences.48
The Sources
It should be clear by now that one of the greatest challenges posed by the study of the civil war is that of sources and source criticism. The sources for the civil war are many and varied, reflecting the political complexity and fragmentation of the period. They include chronicles and other literary works of a historical nature, travel narratives, diplomatic and administrative documents, coins, and inscriptions. These sources are in languages as varied as Turkish, Persian, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Old Serbian, and Venetian dialect. Needless to say, this diversity of sources makes great demands on the historian, since a source’s meaning can often hinge on the interpretation of a single word. This much said, the interpretation of the sources on the Ottoman civil war does not depend on philological skills alone. It has long been
recognized that the composition of the first Ottoman historical narratives dates to the period beginning in 1402 and ending in the first years of Murad II’s reign, namely the civil war and its immediate aftermath.49 The Timurid débâcle and the collapse of the empire of Bayezid I, many of whose policies had been controversial, followed by the protracted political crisis represented by the civil war all resulted in a strong need for the Ottomans to legitimize their position vis-à-vis rival Islamic states. Thus two of the earliest surviving Ottoman historical narratives deal directly with the events of the civil war, while others composed around the same time are preoccupied with the presentation and evaluation of Ottoman history before Ankara.50 Since chronicles and related literary works mirror the historical consciousness and political ideals of the societies in which they were produced, a detailed analysis of such texts is an indispensable part of any effort to understand the civil war and its significance. As discussed above, it would be naive to make use of these texts as mere sources for an histoire événementielle without first understanding the political culture that created them. Indeed, such an understanding often holds the key to explaining why events are distorted or presented in a certain light. The production of historical narratives in the courts of the warring Ottoman princes was part and parcel of the civil war. Some of these narratives pose a particular problem, however, for they do not survive as independent texts, but only as incorporated into later compilations. Well known examples of such compilations are Ne¸sri’s Kit¯ab-ı Cih¯annüm¯a, the chronicle of A¸sıkpa¸sazade which contains chapters attributed to Yah¸si Fakih, and the many anonymous manuscripts known collectively as the Ottoman Anonymous Chronicles (Tev¯ar¯ı ˘ h-i Al-i ¯ #O ¯ sm¯an).51 Much of what is contained in the early Ottoman chronicles thus reflects a process of copying and compilation, which often makes it difficult to discern when a particular passage was written and by whom, and whether it was copied more or less accurately, or tampered with to serve particular narrative or ideological goals.52
As explained above, many of the historians who have dealt with the civil war to date have fallen into one of two traps with regard to the Ottoman chronicles: they have either rejected them as unreliable, or they have taken their information at face value. Painstaking as it may be, the only way to deal with the elusive narratives of the civil war, Ottoman or otherwise, is by comparing them with one another, and whenever possible checking them against “hard” sources such as documents, coins, and inscriptions. Before turning to the chronicles, let us first examine these “hard” sources. Documentary, Numismatic, and Epigraphic Sources The most important documentary sources on the civil war are cited by Zachariadou in her article on Süleyman.53 They include the deliberations of the Venetian senate, in which numerous references are made to the sons of Yıldırım Bayezid and their relations with the Serenissima. Many of these senatorial documents have been published in numerous publications dating back to the nineteenth century, and most of them have been summarized in French by Freddy Thiriet.54 Thiriet’s work is very useful, but his summaries must be used with extreme caution, as they contain errors and are in any case only partial. The most complete and reliable publication of Venetian senatorial documents pertaining to the Ottoman civil war is Giuseppe Valentini’s Acta Albaniae Veneta (AAV), which provides the full text of the documents in the original Latin.55 Apart from the records of the Venetian senate, other published documentary sources in Latin include the expense accounts of the Genoese colony of Pera and various documents from the archives of Ragusa (Dubrovnik). The expense accounts of Pera were partially edited by Nicolae Iorga in the first volume of his Notes et éxtraits pour servir à l’histoire des croisades au xve siècle, published originally in volume 4 of the periodical Revue de l’Orient Latin (ROL).56 It is this publication that has been consulted for the present work. As for the Ragusan documents, two important collections are available: Jovan Radonic,´ Acta et Diplomata Ragusina, and Jozsef Gelcich and Lajos Thalloczy, Diplomatarium relationum Reipublicae Ragusanae cum regno Hungariae. 57 Apart from these collections, other letters and documents from the Ragusan archives have been published by various scholars, which will be cited at the appropriate time. Finally, it should be stated that unlike the Venetian archives, which have been searched by many scholars and published extensively, there is a good chance that the Ragusan archives may still contain important unpublished documents relating to the civil war. As this work deals only with published sources, however, the task of locating such documents must be left for the future.58 Turning now to the Ottoman documentary sources, it can be said that their most distinguishing characteristic is their scarcity for the period in question. While historians dealing with later periods of Ottoman history rely regularly on edicts (ferm¯an), tax registers (tahr. ¯ır), judicial documents (hüccet . , sicil) and a host of other documentary sources, these are extremely rare before the reign of Murad II (1421–1451), and become plentiful only in the second half of the fifteenth century. The first extant tahr. ¯ır, which is dated 835 (1431–1432) and concerns Albania, has been published by Halil ˙ Inalcık.59 Apart from this register, the Ba¸sbakanlık Archives in Turkey also contain an unpublished book of fief appointments (t¯ım¯ar defteri) for the same region (specifically the districts of Premedi and Görice) and the same year.60 Upon careful examination, these documents may in fact shed light on Ottoman land tenure in the newly conquered region of Albania during the civil war, since frequent mentions are made in them of fief appointments under Emir Süleyman and other sons of Yıldırım Bayezid. But such an examination falls outside the scope of the present study, and could in fact form the subject of a separate monograph. For the purposes of the present work, apart from the important Ottoman narrative and literary accounts to be discussed below, some documents (n¯ı¸s¯an) are available in which the Ottoman princes of the civil war granted privileges to certain individuals, monasteries, and other religious foundations (waqf, vakıf . ). Most of these documents have been published by Paul Wittek in a series of articles entitled “Zu einigen frühosmanischen Urkunden.”61 As with coins (see below) the main use of such documents is often to demonstrate a prince’s control of a particular region at a particular time. Thanks to the existence of chancery manuals (mün¸se"¯at) compiled from real documents, the occasional letter has also come down to us. By far the most important of these for the period in question is a letter of oath sent by Mehmed Çelebi to the ruler of Germiyan Yakub II in spring of 1403; another case is Mehmed’s correspondence in 1416 with Timur’s successor Shahrukh.62 Many coins have survived from the civil war, issued by all of the claimants to the Ottoman throne except ˙ Isa, whose reign was very brief. These coins have been listed by ˙ Inalcık in his article on Mehmed I and are the subject of a monograph by Cüneyt Ölçer.63 They prove first of all that the Ottoman economy still continued to function during the civil war despite the endemic warfare. Of equal importance, however, was the function of such coins in asserting the political claims of the prince who issued them. In Islamic tradition, political power in a region was asserted by minting coins and having the Friday sermon delivered in the ruler’s name (˘ hu. tbe ve sikke). As we will see, it is significant that one of the coins minted by Mehmed Çelebi in Bursa also bore the name of his overlord Timur. Finally, as already mentioned, the fact that many coins indicate the date and place at which they were issued means that they can be used to prove that an Ottoman prince had control of a particular city at a particular time. This is also true of some inscriptions, such as the one placed on the tomb (türbe) of Yıldırım Bayezid in Bursa by Emir Süleyman, and the burial inscription of Çandarlı Ali Pa¸sa in Ankara, which indicates that he died there on 28 December 1406. 64 Short Chronicles and Travel Accounts Short chronicles and travel accounts occupy the space between the documentary, numismatic, and epigraphic sources discussed above and the larger chronicles and literary accounts to be discussed below. In fact, the distinction is mostly a formal one, since short chronicles are brief entries recording events, and as such do not differ much from reports sent by Venetian and Ragusan merchants and functionaries to their home governments. The same is true of travel literature, whose sole relevant example is the Castilian ambassador Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo’s account of his embassy to Timur in 1403–1406, in which he makes certain references to the situation in the Ottoman lands.65 The most important short chronicles for the study of the Ottoman civil wars are Byzantine. We are fortunate to have an almost complete edition of these chronicles by Peter Schreiner in two volumes, the second of which contains the editor’s commentary.66 This commentary must be used with caution especially with regard to dates, since Schreiner creates the impression that his dating of events derives from the short chronicles themselves, whereas this is in fact not always the case. Unfortunately, he was unable to include in his edition a certain extensive short chronicle with important information on the Ottoman civil war, which was published in a separate article by Elpidio Mioni shortly after the appearance of Schreiner’s compilation.67 Finally, the Serbian short chronicles published by Ljubomir Stojanovic should also ´ be mentioned, one of which is the only source to provide the date of the death of Musa Çelebi.68 Long Chronicles and Literary Sources: The Ahval Let us now turn to the more extensive narrative accounts of the civil war, beginning with the Ottoman chronicles and other historical literature. As has been suggested, by far the most extensive and important of these accounts is the Ahval, a contemporary account of the exploits of Çelebi Mehmed I from the Battle of Ankara to his defeat of Musa (5 July 1413). Since this text is our most important Ottoman narrative account of the civil war, it is worth pausing here to examine it in detail. As Halil ˙ Inalcık has pointed out, the source in question is in fact an epic in the style of a ‘book of exploits’ (men¯akıb-n . ¯ame) not unlike the wellknown medieval Turkish epics of Sal. tukn. ¯ame, D¯ani¸smendn¯ame, Ba. t. t¯aln¯ame, and Düst¯urn¯ame. 69 To varying degrees, all of these epics contain traces of real historical events, although it is sometimes difficult to separate fact from fiction. The popularity of such works in the fifteenth century suggests that they held an important place in the formation and preservation of historical consciousness at that time. In the words of Cemal Kafadar: The impressive historiographic output of the Ottomans in the fifteenth century must be seen in the larger context of transformations in the historical consciousness of Turco-Muslim Anatolians … All this must also be related, on the one hand, to the transition from oral to written culture in certain circles and, on the other, to a series of complex ideological experiments in response to unprecedented political problems starting with an identity and confidence crisis following the Timurid debacle.70 The style of the Ahval leaves no doubt that like other works of its kind, it was intended to be read aloud before an audience, which was most probably composed of different social groups. This is what gave the work its intended propaganda value. As ˙ Inalcık has pointed out, “in a society imbued with the ghaz¯a spirit men¯aqibn¯ames were usually intended to be read aloud in public gatherings, in the army or in the bazaars …”71 That this also holds true for the Ahval is clear both from the work’s lively narrative style, which often includes dialogue in simple everyday language, as well as the fact that a new chapter often begins with a brief summary of the previous one. The Ahval has not survived in its original form, but only as incorporated in two later chronicles. One of these is the anonymous Ottoman chronicle known as “Oxford Anonymous” or “pseudo-Ruhi” (Bodleian Library MS Marsh 313). The other is the chronicle of Ne¸sri, which survives in many manuscripts reflecting the different stages of its composition.72 Both Oxford Anonymous (OA) and Ne¸sri are available in published form. The single manuscript of OA has been published in facsimile with an imperfect transliteration (i.e. insufficient diacritics) under the erroneous title of “Rûhî Tarîhi.”73 As for Ne¸sri, both a critical edi tion and facsimiles of two of the most important manuscripts are available.74 While ˙ Inalcık has stated that the Ahval was “apparently most faithfully reproduced in [the] revised version” of Ne¸sri’s compilation, he provides no justification for his claim, and it would appear instead that Ne¸sri made significant alterations both in style and content to his source in the process of incorporating it into his work.75 These alterations are immediately visible if one compares the relevant passages of the two manuscripts of Ne¸sri published by Franz Taeschner, the Codex Menzel (Mz) and the Codex Manisa (Mn). The Codex Mz is an early draft of Ne¸sri’s chronicle written in the hand of a scholar who may have been Ne¸sri himself, in which the process of compilation is clearly visible. The importance of Mz has been emphasized by the great philologist V.L. Ménage, who has stated that “it is an exceedingly good text, and that it stands in an intermediate position between the sources and the remaining manuscripts” of Ne¸sri’s chronicle.76 The text of the segment of Mz covering the events of the civil war (namely the Ahval, which corresponds to folia 98–141) is almost identical word for word with the corresponding segment in OA (folia 45a–101b). However there are some minor discrepancies—certain passages are absent in OA, while Mz also seems to reflect some minor editing by Ne¸sri. Let us turn now to the question of the authenticity of the Ahval as a separate, contemporary account of the Ottoman civil war. The idea that the section on the civil war in Ne¸sri and the Oxford Anonymous Chronicle represents a distinct text contemporary to the events that it describes is not new. It was stated simultaneously in 1962 by Ménage and ˙ Inalcık in two articles on early Ottoman historiography appearing in the same collection.77 Along with Ménage’s book on Ne¸sri published a few years later, these two articles represent the culmination of the efforts of several prominent scholars to untangle the intricate web of the earliest Ottoman chronicles. Cemal Kafadar has compared the early Ottoman chronicles to a head of garlic, with many distinct cloves contained within subsequent layers.78 It can thus be said that the Ahval has been viewed for half a century as one of the two oldest prose chronicles of Ottoman history (along with the Menakıb of Yah¸si Fakih). However, it has not attracted the attention it deserves, and to date not a single scholar has attempted to prove its antiquity or describe its contents. It is therefore necessary to do so briefly here. As Ménage has pointed out, a first indication is provided by the chapter headings in Codex Mz, which unlike other chapter headings in the same manuscript “are invariably in Turkish, each ending with the archaic construction -dugıdur ˘ /-dügidür ˘ .”79 In later, more polished versions of Ne¸sri’s work such as the Codex Mn, these chapter headings have been changed to conform to the rest of the chapter headings, which are in Arabic or Persian. Turning now to OA, we see that unlike Mz all chapter headings share the form “dugıdur ˘ /-dügidür ˘ ” identified by Ménage. At first OA thus appears to be a continuous, stylistically consistent chronicle of the house of Osman from the beginning of the dynasty until Bayezid II’s conquest of Kilia and Akkerman (1484). While this would suggest that the chapters on the civil war in OA were composed in the late fifteenth century along with the rest of the chronicle, and that Ne¸sri then incorporated them selectively into his own work, this first impression is false for several reasons. Perhaps the most important of these is that the section on the events of 1402– 1413 in OA makes up approximately one third of the entire chronicle, a surprising proportion for a chronicle covering almost two hundred years of Ottoman history. Even the remainder of Mehmed I’s reign after the end of the civil war (1413–1421) seems to have been added later, as it is only summarized briefly in a single chapter. Another argument is the titles used for the Ottoman rulers. A brief examination of the chapter headings before and after the section on the civil war reveals that they are generally referred to there either by the Persian title P¯adi¸s¯ah-ı ˙ Isl¯am (‘The King of Islam’) or its Arabic equivalent Sul. t¯anü "l-Isl¯am (‘The Sultan of Islam’), sometimes followed by their name. In the section on the succession wars, however, Mehmed Çelebi is invariably called simply Sul. t¯an, and his name is only mentioned in the first two chapter headings. This leads to the conclusion that the section on the civil war (the Ahval) was originally separate from the rest of OA, and the anonymous late-fifteenth century compiler of the chronicle as we have it today used it as a core, adding chapters before and after to cover the entirety of Ottoman history to his day. The simple title Sul. t¯an used for Mehmed Çelebi would suggest that the section on the civil war was produced during that war, or in its immediate aftermath. As we will see in chapter 6, there is strong evidence that Mehmed regularly used the title of sultan during his struggles with his brothers in order to assert his political claims. However, in later Ottoman history the title lost much of its original force and appeared too plain to be used on its own, which explains the use of loftier titles such as P¯adi¸s¯ah-ı ˙ Isl¯am in the rest of OA. Some other examples are the following: Sul. t¯an Mur¯ad ˘ H¯an-ı G˙¯az¯ı (Murad I); Sul. t¯anü "l-˙ Isl¯am ve "l-Müslim¯ın Mehemmed . ˘ H¯an (Mehmed II); and Sul. t¯an Mur¯ad ˘ H¯an (Murad II). Murad II seems in fact to occupy an intermediate position in this respect, as he is usually called simply Sul. t¯an Mur¯ad; this would suggest that the chapters on his reign may also come from an older, independent source. The fact that Mehmed Çelebi is only mentioned by name in the first two chapter headings of the Ahval suggests that the chronicle’s author(s) didn’t consider it necessary to mention his name, because the work was about him and him alone, and he was still alive at the time of its composition. Put differently, the chronicle’s audience understood (or needed to understand!) that there was only one Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed Çelebi. Finally, as will become clear in the course of the present study, another strong argument that the Ahval is a contemporary chronicle of the Ottoman civil war is its extremely detailed description of that war’s events. Both the topographical and chronological data it provides is remarkably accurate, and it is extremely unlikely that such information would have been included in a chronicle composed several decades later. Furthermore, as we will see in chapter 6, the political preoccupations inherent in the narrative itself clearly reflect the situation following the Ottoman defeat of 1402. Before moving on to other sources, a brief note on methodology is in order. To some readers, the use of the Ahval as a source of both historical information and political ideology may appear problematic. If the text in question was composed with a political agenda in mind, one might ask, does its bias not make it unsuitable as a source of historical information on “what happened”? In fact, we have already seen that this represents a false dilemma, since every source is biased in one way or another, and it is always possible to read the same text on several different levels depending on what one is looking for. In the first five chapters, the Ahval is used alongside other narrative and docu mentary sources in an effort to determine a plausible course of events. The emphasis there is on the chronicle as a source of information, that is, what is presented rather than how it is presented. Where the manner of presentation is discussed, it is done primarily to get at the real events behind the political message, rather in the manner of a detective investigating a crime. Since every crime requires a motive, it is generally possible to take at face value information whose falsification would serve no apparent purpose, such as names of people and places which appear plausible and are corroborated by other sources. However, in chapter 6 this approach is abandoned in favor of a direct treatment of the Ahval’s political agenda as revealed in the narrative itself, whose aim is to glean important information about Ottoman political attitudes at the time of its composition. The difference is not one of substance, but rather one of emphasis. Other Ottoman Chronicles and Literary Sources Apart from the Ahval, the Ottoman civil war and its aftermath saw the production of several other texts dealing with a historical theme. Some of them resemble the Ahval in that they do not survive as independent works, but only as parts of later chronicles. These include the so-called Men¯akıb . of Yah¸si Fakih, a work generally considered as accounting for the chapters on the fourteenth century common to A¸sıkpa¸sazade and the Ottoman Anonymous Chronicles (ed. Giese), as well as some other passages in those chronicles which deal directly with the events of the civil war.80 Like the Ahval, these texts are in a simple prose style with an oral flavor. Apart from these chronicles, the literary production of the civil war also features works of poetry with a historical content. Unlike the prose chronicles, these have survived in their original form thanks to the fact that they formed part of larger works by well-known poets of the day. The most famous is Ahmedi’s ˙ Iskendern¯ame, which is generally viewed as the oldest surviving work of Ottoman historiography and was dedicated to Emir Süleyman (1402–1411). Another which was discovered quite recently is a versified epic account of Mehmed Çelebi’s victory over his brother Musa at the Battle of Çamurlu (1413) by the poet Abdülvasi Çelebi. Like the section on Ottoman history in Ahmedi’s ˙ Iskendern¯ame, Abdülvasi’s epic poem also forms part of a larger work by him, a romance on the life of the prophet Abraham entitled ˘ Hal¯ıln¯ame. Abdülvasi Çelebi appears to have spent several years in Mehmed’s court in Amasya; the ˘ Hal¯ıln¯ame was commissioned by Mehmed’s grand vizier Bayezid Pa¸sa and presented to the Sultan in 1414, only one year after the battle that it describes.81 The content of the ˘ Hal¯ıln¯ame’s epic account of the Battle of Çamurlu is of considerable historical interest, as it confirms certain ideas about dynastic succession also present in the Ahval (see chapter 6). Since this source has never before been translated or analyzed, an English translation of the relevant verses has also been provided in the appendix. There is therefore no reason to dwell any more on the ˘ Hal¯ıln¯ame here; let us turn instead to the ˙ Iskendern¯ame. This work will not preoccupy us beyond this introduction, since Ahmedi provides little information that is directly relevant to a reconstruction of the events of the civil war, but deserves to be discussed briefly here since it forms part and parcel of the literary production of the period. Since 1992, a critical edition and translation by Kemal Sılay has become available; furthermore the content of Ahmedi’s account has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention over the years, beginning with Paul Wittek and ending with Heath Lowry’s recent book, in which the author devotes an entire chapter to criticizing Wittek’s use of Ahmedi.82 The first observation that must be made about Ahmedi’s work is that despite the certainty that it was completed sometime between 1402 and 1411 and intended for Emir Süleyman, who died before the work could be presented to him, there is still some controversy concerning the time of composition of its various parts. It is not clear when the poet entered the service of the Ottomans; it has been alleged that prior to joining the Ottoman court Ahmedi had spent time in the court of Germiyan, where he may have begun composition of the ˙ Iskendern¯ame. 83 Needless to say, the question that most concerns us here is the dating and content of the section on Ottoman history. This section in fact forms part of a larger world history, which itself forms part of the epic of Alexander, the main subject of Ahmedi’s work. Moreover, it is clear that for his history of the Ottoman dynasty Ahmedi made use of a lost prose chronicle that was also used more extensively by later chroniclers.84 As has already been stated, despite the fact that Emir Süleyman was his patron, Ahmedi provides little historical information on his reign. A first reading of the ˙ Iskendern¯ame’s chapter on Süleyman appears to reveal a rather standard presentation of ideal Perso-Islamic kingship, emphasizing the ruler’s power, justice, and generosity. In the context of the civil war, however, these verses deserve a closer reading, especially the following couplets: Although [Emir Süleyman has] an army, wealth, treasure, and power, he does not desire to conquer a country Compared to his grace, the world is only as big as a mosquito’s wing If he had desired to conquer a country without having a battle, the east and west would have been taken by him85 These verses are not without political significance in the context of the situation facing Yıldırım Bayezid’s sons after the Ottoman defeat at Ankara. As has already been mentioned and will be discussed in detail below, following that defeat Emir Süleyman pursued a policy of appeasement toward the Christian powers of Rumeli, for which he was criticized by those elements of his own society whose existence depended on wars and raids against neighboring Christian states. As for Süleyman’s policy towards Anatolia, while we will see in chapter 3 that he did attack some of the beyliks restored there by Timur, true expansion such as that which had taken place under Yıldırım Bayezid was impossible during the civil war. For these reasons Emir Süleyman, who was indeed a wealthy and powerful prince as Ahmedi states, was unable to expand his territory. In this light, it would appear that in the above verses Ahmedi is trying to justify his patron’s peaceful policies toward his neighbors by presenting them as a product of free choice rather than political necessity. But what is most noteworthy about Ahmedi’s treatment on Ottoman history is his emphasis on gaza as the practice that made the first Ottoman sultans so successful. While Wittek originally used Ahmedi’s emphasis on gaza as proof that the first Ottoman sultans were gazis, Pál Fodor and more recently Heath Lowry have argued that these ideas “were a literary device, whereby ‘Ahmedi presents the Ottoman rulers as gazis in a manner that served well-definable political objectives.’”86 Leaving aside the loaded question of whether Osman and Orhan really saw themselves as gazis, it is still noteworthy that this quality of the earlier sultans would be emphasized in a work completed during the civil war, since the direct cause of the Timurid disaster was widely perceived as being Bayezid’s betrayal of the gaza spirit, represented by his attacks on the Ottomans’ Muslim neighbors. Following Fodor, Lowry has also argued that “a careful reading of the full text [of the section on the Ottomans in the ˙ Iskendern¯ame] establishes that Ahmed . ¯ı had initially envisaged the work for Bayezid, as an attempt to warn him away from the errors (his wars against his fellow Muslim rulers in Anatolia) which were ultimately (while the work was still in progress) to lead to his downfall.” But it is much more likely that the relevant section was composed after 1402, for an Emir Süleyman who desparately needed to show his reverence for his ancestors’ struggles against the Christians, since he was not undertaking any such struggles himself. Lowry’s assertion that it was begun under Bayezid does not hold water, as it is based only on the unfounded assertion of Fodor, and a statement by Ménage which Lowry has misinterpreted.87 Thus Ahmedi’s warning about the dangers of turning away from gaza, an activity respected by the “Tatars” during the reign of the Seljuk Sultan Alaeddin, is not “prophetic” as Lowry claims but rather didactic, for it was written after 1402! Moreover, it is extremely unlikely that Ahmedi would have dared to lecture “his intended patron Sultan Bayezid … without much subtlety” since by all accounts Yıldırım Bayezid was not a man who took kindly to criticism.88 In light of the above, Lowry’s presentation of Ahmedi’s account of Ottoman history cannot be accepted as such. Nevertheless, there is at least one positive aspect of Lowry’s chapter on Ahmedi: by emphasizing the ˙ Iskendern¯ame’s criticism of Yıldırım Bayezid’s policies, he unintentionally sheds light on the political circumstances of the civil war and the challenges facing Ahmedi’s real patron, Emir Süleyman. Non-Ottoman Chronicles and Literary Sources Apart from the Ottoman chronicles and other works discussed above, the essential sources on the Ottoman civil war also include several nonOttoman chronicles and literary sources. Since the present work is first and foremost about the Ottomans themselves, these sources will not be discussed in the same detail. Nevertheless, it is worth pausing for a moment to examine what makes the sources in question so indispensable to our topic. Several non-Ottoman historical accounts are particularly rich on the events of the civil war in regions in which the Ottoman princes were active during this time. The first of these is the Byzantine chronicle of Doukas, which is most important as a source on events in Aydın, a region with which its author was well acquainted.89 As a prominent partisan of the defeated emperor John VI Kantakouzenos, in 1345 Doukas’ grandfather Michael had been forced to escape from Constantinople to Ayasoluk (Ephesus), whose ruler Aydınoglı ˘ ˙ Isa had given him refuge. Since then, the family had maintained a certain loyalty to the Aydın dynasty which is evident in Doukas’ chronicle. By 1421, Doukas had joined the service of the Genoese family of Adorno in New Phokaia (Yeni Foça) where he worked as secretary. Then he moved to Lesbos where he died in the service of the Gattilusi, whose interests he represented in their various negotiations with the Ottoman porte. All of this recommends his chronicle as a source of primary importance for the history of the Aegean coast of Asia Minor in the first half of the fifteenth century, especially where the region of Aydın and its local dynasty are concerned. Among the events of the civil war for which Doukas is an indispensable source are Mehmed Çelebi’s alleged attempt to save his father from captivity after the Battle of Ankara; Emir Süleyman’s relationship with his vassal Cüneyd of Aydın; and the revolt of Seyh Bedreddin’s associate Börklüce Mustafa in the Aydın ¸ region in 1416. Two other Byzantine historical narratives that are essential for reconstructing the events of the civil war are the chronicle of Laonikos Chalkokondyles and the discourse on the miracles of St. Demetrius by the Archbishop of Thessaloniki Symeon.90 There is no need to dwell here on Chalkokondyles, whose extensive chronicle of the fall of Byzantium and the rise of the Ottomans in the style of Herodotus has been discussed by such prominent scholars of Byzantine literature as Herbert Hunger.91 Chalkokondyles’ sources are unknown, but his chronicle contains a wealth of information on early Ottoman history, including the names of many historical actors about whom we otherwise know very little. An alphabetical list of the Ottoman personages appearing in Chalkokondyles, in which his information is compared to that in the Ottoman chronicles, is available in the form of a published dissertation by Akdes Nimet Kurat.92 As for Symeon of Thessaloniki, his discourse on the miracles of St. Demetrius in preserving Thessaloniki from various calamities is a source of the first order on the period 1387–1427. Symeon assumed his position as Archbishop of Thessaloniki in 1416 or 1417, and probably wrote the work in question in 1427 or 1428. He was thus an eyewitness to events in Thessaloniki between 1416/1417 and 1427. He is also a first-hand source for the years preceding his induction as archbishop, including the period that concerns us here—during that period he was probably based in his native city of Constantinople, where it is believed that he resided prior to assuming his position in Thessaloniki.93 Despite the fact that Symeon’s account of Ottoman activity is strongly influenced by his anti-Turkish sentiments, his discourse is an essential source on a number of events, especially those concerning Thessaloniki, such as Emir Süleyman’s return of the city to Byzantium following the Treaty of 1403, its siege by Musa Çelebi, and the Mustafa affair of 1416. A detailed examination of the situation in Thessaloniki is available in the form of a doctoral dissertation by Nevra Necipoglu. ˘ 94
Symeon’s account is also directly relevant to some of the larger questions that will occupy us here, most notably the rise and reign of Musa. Another source that is of primary importance for the study of the career of Musa as well as other aspects of the civil war is the biographical chronicle of Stefan Lazarevic in old Serbian by Konstantin the ´ Philosopher (Konstantin Kostenecki). ˇ 95 Like Symeon of Thessaloniki, Konstantin the Philosopher was an eyewitness to many of the events that he described. He spent the years of the Ottoman civil war in Bulgaria and Serbia, joining the court of Stefan Lazarevic after the sack of ´ Plovdiv by Musa Çelebi’s forces in 1410, which he describes in detail. On the value of Konstantin as a historical source, an old but still useful article is available by Stanoje Stanojevic.´ 96
The relevant portions of Konstantin the Philosopher’s work have been edited and translated into German by Maximilian Braun, whose translation forms the basis for the discussion and quotations here.97 Finally, two other non-Ottoman literary sources deserve to be mentioned even though they do not directly concern the Ottoman civil war. Much like the short chronicles and documentary sources discussed earlier, these works contain information not otherwise available that sheds light on the period in question. One is the anonymous Greek chronicle of the Tocco family published by Schirò.98 This source deals mainly with the exploits of its protagonist, the Angevin lord Carlo Tocco who was based in Cephalonia, against his Albanian enemies in Epirus, Zenebis and Spata. As we will see, this source interests us mainly because it mentions a marriage alliance between Carlo Tocco and Musa.
The other is the Timurid chronicle of Sharaf al-Din Yazdi, which provides essential information on Timur’s policy toward Yıldırım Bayezid’s sons.99 Although the chronicle in question is only one of many Persian chronicles of Timur, it has been chosen for its comprehensiveness. Like the Ottoman chronicle of Ne¸sri, Yazdi’s chronicle is a compilation probably completed in 1424–1425, based largely on the chronicle of Shami which was completed during Timur’s lifetime.100
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