1416
Mustafa Çelebi, 1416
In 1416 a man who says he is Mustafa, the son of Bayezid lost at Ankara, appears in Wallachia, and Mircea backs him. Ottoman chronicles call him Düzme Mustafa, the false Mustafa, while many modern historians accept that he was Bayezid’s son. Cüneyd, whom Mehmed had made governor of Nicopolis on the Danube in 1414, joins him. By Loredan’s letter of June 1416, the Ottoman fleet at Gallipoli was to sail to the Danube and stop Mustafa from crossing into Rumelia.
Mehmed I hunting by the Danube on his campaign in Wallachia, in an Ottoman manuscript of the 16th centuryWikimedia Commons, unknown Ottoman painter, Public domain (Mehmed I hunting near the river Tuna in Romania.jpg)
Mustafa and Cüneyd cross the Danube and gather followers in Macedonia and Thessaly, among them men of Sheikh Bedreddin. Mehmed brings his army from Bursa by Gallipoli and beats them near Thessalonica. The two take refuge in the city, which Mehmed besieges, and its governor Demetrios Laskaris Leontares refuses to hand them over without the emperor’s consent.
Mehmed lifts the siege when Manuel II swears to keep both men in custody as long as Mehmed lives, and Mehmed agrees to pay 300,000 akçe a year for their keep. Mustafa and Cüneyd are held on the island of Lemnos. Mehmed then sends raiders into Wallachia for the help Mircea had given Mustafa.
The castle of Myrina on LemnosWikimedia Commons, Annatsach, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Castle of Myrina, Lemnos, Greece (day).jpg)
Sources
- Doukas, Historia Turco-Byzantina (about 1462).
- Laonikos Chalkokondyles, Histories (c. 1464).
- Aşıkpaşazade, Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân (late 15th century).
- Halil İnalcık, “Meḥemmed I”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. 6 (1991), 973–978.
- Fahameddin Başar, “Mustafa Çelebi, Düzme”, in TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi.
- Dimitris J. Kastritsis, The Sons of Bayezid (2007).
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