June 1421
Murad becomes sultan, 1421
Murad, the eldest son of Mehmed I, was born in June 1404 and grew up at Amasya, which he has governed since his father became sole sultan in 1413. Mehmed dies at Edirne on 26 May 1421, and the viziers keep his death secret until Murad has ridden from Amasya to Bursa. There, in June 1421, he is proclaimed sultan at sixteen. His brother Mustafa, thirteen years old, governs Hamideli, and his younger brothers Yusuf and Mahmud are still children.
Murad II enthroned, in the Hünername of Seyyid Lokman, 1584–1588, Topkapı Palace MuseumWikimedia Commons, unknown Ottoman painter, Public domain (Murad II. Hünername, folio 143b. TSMK Hazine 1523 (created 1584-1588).jpg)
Murad inherits the lands his father reunited after the civil war. In Europe they reach from the Danube and Dobruja to Thessaly and Valona, and in Anatolia from İzmir to Ankara, Amasya, Samsun and Antalya. Constantinople, Thessalonica and the Morea are Byzantine, Wallachia pays tribute, and Stefan Lazarević rules the Serbian Despotate. In Anatolia the beys of Karaman, Germiyan, Menteşe, Teke and Candar rule their own lands.
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).
- Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1481 (1990).
- Halil İnalcık, “Murād II”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. 7 (1993), 594–595.
Next: Mustafa takes Rumelia, 1421