Ottoman Interregnum

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The Ottoman Interregnum (also known as the Ottoman Triumvirate; Fetret Devri in Turkish) was a period in the beginning of the 15th century when chaos reigned in the Ottoman Empire following the defeat of Sultan Bayezid I in 1402 by the Tatar warlord Tamerlane. Template:TOCright

The Ottoman Empire (Ottoman Sultanete), which during the fourteenth century had acquired such dimensions and vigor, lay at the beginning of the fifteenth century in apparently irretrievable ruin. Besides the fatal day at Ankara, when its veteran army was destroyed, and it long-victorious sovereign taken captive, calamity after calamity bad poured fast upon the house of Osman. Their ancient rivals in Anatolia, the Seljuk princes of Karamanogullari, Aydinogullari (Aidian), Germiyanogullari (Kermian), and other territories which the three first Ottoman soy reigns had conquered, were reinstated by Timur in their dominions. In Europe the Byzantium Empire accomplished another partial revival, and regained some of its lost provinces. Bu the heaviest and seemingly the most fatal of afflictions was the civil war which broke out among the sons of Beyazit, and which threaten the utter disintegration and destruction of the relics of the ancestral dominions. At the time of Beyazit’s death, his oldest son, Suleyman, ruled at Adrianople. The second son, Issa, established himself as an independent ruler at Brusa after the Mongols retired from Asia Minor. Mehmet, the youngest and the ablest of the brothers, formed a little kingdom at Amasya. War soon broke out between Mehmet and Issa. In which Mehmet was completely successful. Issa fled to Europe where he sought protection and aid from Suleyman, who forthwith attacked Mehmet, so that Thrace and Anatolian sides were now arrayed against each other.

At first Solyman was successful. He invaded Anatolia, and captured Bursa and Ankara. Meanwhile while the other surviving son of Beyazit, Prince Musa, had, after his liberation by Timur, been detained in custody by the Selcuk Prince of Kermian, through whose territories he was passing with the remains of Beyazit, which he was to bury at Bursa. The interposition of Mehmet had put an end to this detention, and Prince Musa fought on Mehmets’s side against Suleyman in Anatolia. After some reverses which they sustained from Suleyman in the first campaign, Musa persuaded Mehmet to let him cross over to Thrace with a small force, and effect a diversion in Mehmets favour by attacking the enemy in his own territories. This maneuver soon recalled Suleyman to Thrace, where a short but sanguinary contest between him and Musa ensued. At first Suleyman had the advantage; but the better qualities of this prince were now obscured by the debasing effects of habits of debauchery. He treated his troops with savage cruelty, and heaped the grossest insults on his best generals. The result was that his army passed over to the side of Musa, and Suleyman was killed while endeavouring to escape to Constantinople (1410).

Musa was now master of the Ottoman dominions in Thrace, and speedily showed that he inherited a full proportion both of the energy and of the strength of his father Beyazit. In an expedetion which he undertook against the Servian Prince, whom he accused of having treacherously aided Suleyman in the civil war, he is said to have not only pursue the male youth for the janissaries, he also developed his army according to fighting three Servian units and order them to destroy not the armies but also their generals. Byzantine writer Ducas using his creative writing wrote; “Musa caused the carcasses of three Servian garrisons to be arranged as tables, and a feast to be spread on them, at which he entertained the generals and chief captains of the Ottoman army”.

The Byzantium Emperor, Manuel Palnologus, had been the ally of Suleyman; Musa therefore attacked him, and besieged his capital. Palnologus called over Mehmet to protect him, and the Anatoliatic Ottomans now garrisoned Constantinople against the Ottomans of Thrace. Mehmet made several gallant but unsuccessful sallies against his brother’s troops, and was obliged to re-cross the Bosporus is, to quell a revolt that had broken out in his own territories. Musa now pressed the siege of the Greek capital; but Mehmet speedily returned to Thrace, and obtained the assistance of Stephan, the Servian King. The armies of the rival Ottoman bother were at last arrayed for a decisive conflict on the plain of Chamurli, near the southern Servian frontier. But Musa had alienated the loyalty of his soldiers by conduct similar to that by which Suleyman’s desertion and destruction had been caused, while Mehmet was as eminent for justice and kindness towards those who obeyed him, as for valor and skill against those who were his opponent’s. When the two armies were about to close in battle, Hassan, the Aga of the Janissaries on the side of Mehmet, stepped out before the ranks, and exhorted his old comrades, who were the pert of Musa, to leave the cause of a madman from whom they met with constant outrage and humiliation, and to range then selves among the followers of the most just and virtuous of the princes of the house of Othman. Enraged at hearing his troops thus addressed, Musa rushed against Hassan, and kill him, but was him self wounded by an officer who had accompanied Hassan. Musa reeled back bleeding towards his own soldiers, who were seized with a panic, and broke their ranks, and fled in all directions. Musa endeavoured to escape, but was found by the pursuers lying dead in a marsh near the field where the armies had met. His death ended the war of succession in the Ottoman Empire, for Prince Issa had disappear some years before, during the hostilities between Suleyman and Mahomet in Anatolia; and Mehmet was now, after Musa’s death, the sole known surviving son of Beyzit.

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Summary

Suleiman Çelebi, ruled northern Greece, Bulgaria and Thrace. His brother, İsa Çelebi ruled Greece and the westernmost of Anatolia, however he was overthrown by the younger half-brother Mehmed Çelebi from his capital in Bursa in 1404. Suleiman then acquired southern Greece as well and Mehmet ruled over Anatolia. Mehmet sent his younger brother Mûsa across the Black Sea with a large army to conquer Suleiman. Mûsa won in Bulgaria in 1410 and Suleiman was forced to retreat south to Greece.

Mûsa then proclaimed himself as sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Mehmed became furious and sent a small army over to Gallipoli where it was defeated. Mehmed later came to his senses and forced an alliance with the Byzantine Empire. Three years later Mehmed sent over a new army that defeated Mûsa in Kamerlu, Serbia. It was then easy for Mehmed I to overthrow his last brother in Greece and become the Ottoman sultan.

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