Spring – summer 1403
İsa and Mehmed, 1403
In the spring of 1403 Mehmed, Timur’s vassal at Amasya, proposes to İsa at Bursa that they divide Anatolia between them. İsa refuses, saying that as the elder brother he is entitled to the whole. Mehmed marches west and defeats him at Ulubad between March and early May 1403.
İsa flees to Constantinople and goes on to Süleyman at Edirne. Mehmed enters Bursa, holds an enthronement there, has his father buried in the town and strikes coins bearing Timur’s name with his own. By 18 May İsa is back in Anatolia with troops from Süleyman, but he fails to take Bursa.
A silver akçe struck at Bursa in 806 (1403–1404) in the names of Timur and MehmedWikimedia Commons, Numista, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Akçe - Mehmed Çelebi in the name of Timur.png)
Supported by Cüneyd of İzmir and other beys whom Timur had restored, İsa fights on, but Mehmed beats him again in Karasi and he flees to Karaman. He is later caught in a bath at Eskişehir and strangled by Mehmed’s men. By the report of Clavijo he is dead by September 1403, while older Turkish histories place his death in 1406. İsa is buried beside his father at Bursa.
Sources
- Anonymous, Aḥvāl-i Sulṭān Meḥemmed (15th century).
- Âşıkpaşazâde, Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân (late 15th century).
- Doukas, Historia Turco-Byzantina (about 1462).
- Ruy González de Clavijo, Embajada a Tamorlán (about 1406).
- Dimitris J. Kastritsis, The Sons of Bayezid (2007).
- Halil İnalcık, “Meḥemmed I”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. 6 (1991), 973–978.
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