1423 – 1426
Cüneyd and the beyliks, 1423–1426
In 1423 Murad marches against İsfendiyar of Candar, who had backed Küçük Mustafa. He takes much of İsfendiyar’s land, with Taraklıborlu, today Safranbolu, and İsfendiyar withdraws to Sinop. By the peace that follows, İsfendiyar keeps Kastamonu and Sinop, and in 1425, or 1424 by other accounts, Murad marries İsfendiyar’s daughter Hatice Halime Hatun.
A wedding of Murad II in a copy of the Tâcü’t-Tevârîh of Hoca Sadeddin made in 1616, Musée Jacquemart-AndréWikimedia Commons, unknown Ottoman painter, Public domain (Wedding of Murad II. Tadj al-Tawarikh (The Crown of the Chronicles), 1616, Ottoman (Musée Jacquemart-André, Ms 13141).jpg)
Cüneyd, who had been given the governorship of Aydın after Ulubad, tries to win back his old beylik. He seeks help from Venice and Karaman and backs a new pretender, Prince İsmail, whom Murad’s Genoese allies keep from sailing to Rumelia. The governor of Aydın, Yahşi Bey, and the beylerbey of Anatolia, Oruç Bey, cannot subdue him. In 1425 Hamza Bey, Bayezid Pasha’s brother and the new beylerbey, beats Cüneyd near Akhisar, and Cüneyd shuts himself up in the castle of İpsili on the coast opposite Samos.
Genoese ships from Chios and Lesbos keep help from reaching Cüneyd by sea. Cüneyd slips away to Ibrahim of Karaman and comes back with Karaman troops, but they leave him when they reach İpsili, and he surrenders to Hamza Bey. Cüneyd and his son Bayezid are killed, and Aydın is annexed. Menteşe, whose bey İlyas had died in 1424, is annexed in 1426 with its seat at Milas. Teke, whose bey Osman Çelebi dies in 1423, is annexed that year, or in 1425 by other accounts.
The İsa Bey Mosque at Selçuk, the Ayasluğ of the Aydın beys, built in 1374–1375Wikimedia Commons, Carlos Delgado, CC BY-SA 3.0 (İsa Bey Camii.jpg)
Sources
- Doukas, Historia Turco-Byzantina (about 1462).
- Aşıkpaşazade, Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân (late 15th century).
- Mehmed Neşri, Kitâb-ı Cihan-nümâ (late 15th century).
- İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Anadolu Beylikleri ve Akkoyunlu, Karakoyunlu Devletleri (1937).
- Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1481 (1990).
- Halil İnalcık, “Murād II”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. 7 (1993), 594–595.
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