April – August 1473
The march to the Euphrates
Mehmed prepares through the winter of 1472, and the army gathers at Yenişehir near Bursa, where the troops of Rumelia arrive by way of Gallipoli. Mehmed reaches Yenişehir on 11 April 1473 by one account, and an Italian letter of that year has him leave Constantinople on 13 April. His sons join him with their troops, Mustafa from Konya as governor of Karaman and Bayezid from Amasya, and the army counts about 85,000 men. Besides the guns of the janissaries it carries light mortars, cast for the first time for this campaign.
Past Sivas the army enters high mountains and is caught in a snowstorm. For more than 40 days there is no news of Uzun Hasan, until his men attack Ottoman raiders at Niksar. The people of Koyulhisar and Şebinkarahisar flee into the mountains, and at Erzincan Turahanoğlu Ömer Bey with 5,000 men defeats an Aq Qoyunlu force of the same size.
The plain of Erzincan below the Munzur mountainsWikimedia Commons, Volker Höhfeld, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Erzincan Ova 17 06 88 Munzur Dağları 2A.jpg)
At Tercan many of the people who have fled come down and surrender. The Ottomans march up the Euphrates, and Uzun Hasan's army appears on the far bank. Uzun Hasan has added the men of the Karaman princes to his Turkoman army, most of whom are light horsemen, with foot soldiers who carry lances.
Aq Qoyunlu princely guards on horseback, in a Divan of Hidayat painted at Tabriz in 1478, Chester Beatty LibraryWikimedia Commons, unknown Tabriz painter, Public domain (Aq Qoyunlu princely guards on horse, 1478. Divan of Hidayat. DCBL, T 401, f. 19b (cleaned up).jpg)
Sources
- Tursun Beg, Tarih-i Ebü’l-Feth (about 1490).
- Aşıkpaşazade, Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân (late 15th century).
- Mehmed Neşri, Kitâb-ı Cihan-nümâ (late 15th century).
- Abu Bakr Tihrani, Kitab-i Diyarbakriyya (late 15th century).
- Giovanni Maria Angiolello, Historia Turchesca (about 1490).
- Ibn Kemal, Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân (early 16th century).
- Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time (1978).
- John E. Woods, The Aqquyunlu: Clan, Confederation, Empire (2nd ed., 1999).
- Theoharis Stavrides, The Sultan of Vezirs: The Life and Times of the Ottoman Grand Vezir Mahmud Pasha Angelovic, 1453–1474 (2001).
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