September 1399 – August 1400
Timur takes Sivas, 1400
Timur, a Turco-Mongol emir from Transoxiana, has ruled from Samarkand since 1370. He has conquered Persia, Iraq and the Caucasus, beaten the Golden Horde in 1391 and 1395 and sacked Delhi in 1398. In September 1399 he sets out on a new campaign in the west and spends the winter in Karabagh. In the spring of 1400 he invades Georgia and defeats King George VII.
A silver tanka of Timur struck at Baghdad in 795 (1393) in the name of the Chagatai khan MahmudWikimedia Commons, Classical Numismatic Group, CC BY-SA 2.5 (Timur coin. Citing Chagatai khan Mahmud. Baghdad mint. Dated AH 795 (AD 1393).jpg)
At Pasinler the beys whom Bayezid has driven from their lands, among them Yakub of Germiyan and İlyas of Menteşe, come to Timur and ask him to restore them. Timur also wins over Kara Yülük of the Aq Qoyunlu and Taharten, the emir of Erzincan, from whom Bayezid has demanded tribute. Ahmad Jalayir of Baghdad and Qara Yusuf of the Kara Koyunlu, whom Timur has driven out, take refuge with Bayezid, who gives them Kütahya and Aksaray as fiefs. The two rulers exchange letters full of threats and insults.
Sultan Ahmad Jalayir on horseback with armed men, in a Khamsa of Khvaju Kirmani made for him at Baghdad in 1396, British LibraryWikimedia Commons, unknown painter, Public domain (Sultan Ahmad Jalayir on horse with an armed retinue. Khamsah by Khvaju Kirmani - BL Add MS 18113.jpg)
In August 1400 Timur takes Sivas, the Ottoman fortress on the upper Kızılırmak, and burns the town. He lets those who surrender go and has about 4,000 of the defenders buried alive. Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi and Nizam ad-Din Shami write that they were Christians, most of them Armenians, and by one tradition Bayezid’s son Ertuğrul dies in the town. From Sivas Timur turns south against the Mamluks.
Sources
- Nizam ad-Din Shami, Zafarnama (1404).
- Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi, Zafarnama (1425).
- Ibn Arabshah, ʿAjāʾib al-maqdūr fī nawāʾib Tīmūr (1435).
- İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Tarihi, vol. 1 (1947).
- Beatrice Forbes Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane (1989).
- Michele Bernardini, “Motahharten entre Timur et Bayezid: une position inconfortable dans les remous de l’histoire anatolienne”, in Syncrétismes et hérésies dans l’Orient seldjoukide et ottoman (2001), 199–211.
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