Spring 1398 – 1399
Sivas and Malatya, 1398–1399
In the spring of 1398 Bayezid marches into Canik, the coast and hills around Samsun, takes the town and ends the rule of the petty beys of the region. He is back in Bursa early in the summer. Of the Candar lands İsfendiyar keeps only Sinop.
That summer Kadı Burhaneddin of Sivas goes to war with Kara Yülük Osman of the Aq Qoyunlu, who surprises his camp and takes him prisoner. Kara Yülük besieges Sivas, and when Burhaneddin’s son refuses to surrender the town, he has Burhaneddin put to death, in July or August 1398. Burhaneddin’s son and emirs call on Bayezid. Schiltberger, who marches with the relief army, writes that Bayezid sends his eldest son with 40,000 men. Kara Yülük withdraws, and the lands from Kırşehir to Sivas pass to Bayezid with Kayseri and Tokat, which some accounts have him take already in 1393.
The castle of Tokat on its ridge above the townWikimedia Commons, Amardarouich, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Tokat Kale.jpg)
Barquq, the Mamluk sultan of Egypt and Syria, dies on 20 June 1399, and his son Faraj succeeds him at the age of 13. Bayezid holds that his agreements with Barquq have lapsed and marches against the Mamluk border. He takes Malatya from the Mamluks, and Darende, Divriği, Behisni and Kâhta, castles held by the Dulkadir beys of Elbistan, vassals of the Mamluks. The Ottoman border reaches the Euphrates. Bayezid demands that Taharten, the emir of Erzincan, accept him as overlord, and Taharten turns to Timur.
The walls of the citadel of KayseriWikimedia Commons, rheins, CC BY 3.0 (Kayseri Castle - 2014.10 - panoramio.jpg)
Sources
- Johann Schiltberger, Reisebuch (about 1427).
- Ibn Arabshah, ʿAjāʾib al-maqdūr fī nawāʾib Tīmūr (1436).
- İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Tarihi, vol. 1 (1947).
- Jan Rypka, “Burhān al-Dīn”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (1960).
- 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.
- Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1481 (1990).
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