1417 – August 1420
Candar and Samsun, 1417–1420
İsfendiyar, the Candar bey at Kastamonu and Sinop, keeps the peace with Mehmed. In 1417, or 1416 by another account, his son Kasım rises against him with Mehmed’s backing, and İsfendiyar has to give up the lands south of the Ilgaz mountains. Kasım holds Çankırı and Tosya under the sultan.
Çankırı seen from its castleWikimedia Commons, joseph48, Public domain (Çankırı (Kaleden).jpg)
After Ankara, Samsun passed through the hands of local lords to the Candar beys, and İsfendiyar gave it to his younger son Hızır. Beside the Muslim town stood the walled town of the Genoese, as Clavijo saw it in 1403. In 1420 Mehmed sets out from Tokat, takes his son Murad and Murad’s tutor Hamza Bey with him at Amasya, and sends Hamza ahead to Samsun. The Genoese set their town on fire and sail away, and Hızır hands the keys of the castle to Mehmed in the weeks after 11 August 1420, or in 1419 by another account.
Sources
- Ruy González de Clavijo, Embassy to Tamerlane (1403–1406).
- Aşıkpaşazade, Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân (late 15th century).
- Mehmed Neşri, Kitâb-ı Cihan-nümâ (late 15th century).
- Mehmet Öz, “Samsun”, in TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi.
- Halil İnalcık, “Meḥemmed I”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. 6 (1991), 973–978.
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