Autumn 1460 – 1461
Amasra and Sinop, 1460–1461
Amasra, a port on the Black Sea coast of Anatolia, has belonged to Genoa since 1261 and is the most important Genoese fortress on that coast. Mehmed takes it from the Genoese in autumn 1460 by Babinger’s account, or in 1458 or 1459 by İnalcık’s. The town’s Byzantine church becomes a mosque.
Amasra and its Genoese castle, seen from the islandWikimedia Commons, Babbsack, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Amasra, Turkey, Castle, view from the island.jpg)
East of Amasra the Candar beys rule Kastamonu and Sinop, and their bey, Kemaleddin İsmail, has promised to help the emperors of Trebizond. In spring 1461 Mehmed crosses the Dardanelles to Bursa with the army of Rumelia, gathers the army of Anatolia there and marches to Ankara, while a fleet of 200 galleys and 10 warships sails along the coast to Sinop. At Ankara İsmail’s son Hasan comes to meet the sultan. In the account of Doukas, Mehmed tells him that he wants Sinop: if İsmail gives it up freely, he will receive the province of Philippopolis (Plovdiv) in exchange, and if he refuses, Mehmed will come and take it.
Sinop has strong walls and, by one account, 400 guns with 2,000 gunners, but İsmail gives up his lands and moves to his new estates in Thrace, where he writes a book on the rules of Islamic worship and dies in 1479. Kritovoulos writes that Mehmed takes Sinop because he fears that Uzun Hasan will seize it first. Mehmed leaves his admiral Kasım Pasha to set up the government of Sinop and makes İsmail’s brother Kızıl Ahmed, who has sided with him, governor of Kastamonu and Sinop, but he takes the post from him later, after a year by one account and in 1464 by another. The Candar principality, which has ruled the region since 1291, comes to an end.
The castle of Sinop by the harbourWikimedia Commons, Ertly, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Sinop-Castle.jpg)
Sources
- Doukas, Historia Turco-Byzantina (about 1462).
- Michael Kritovoulos, History of Mehmed the Conqueror (about 1467).
- Laonikos Chalkokondyles, Histories (c. 1464).
- Halil İnalcık, Fatih Devri Üzerinde Tetkikler ve Vesikalar I (1954).
- İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Anadolu Beylikleri ve Akkoyunlu, Karakoyunlu Devletleri (1969).
- Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time (1978).
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