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Bayezid I (Ottoman: بايزيد اول, Turkish: Beyazıt, nicknamed Yıldırım (Ottoman: ییلدیرم), "the Thunderbolt", Serbian: Бајазит / Bajazit; 1360 – March 8, 1403) was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, from 1389 to 1402. He was the son of Murad I and Valide Sultan Gülçiçek Hatun.
Biography
Bayezid was born in Edirne[citation needed] and spent his youth in Bursa, where he received a high-level education. His father Murad I named him governor of the province of Kütahya.
Bayezid ascended to the throne following the death of his father Murad I, who was killed by Serbian nobleman Miloš Obilic during (June 15), or immediately after (June 16), the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, by which Serbia became a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. Immediately after obtaining the throne, he had his younger brother strangled to avoid a plot. In 1390, Bayezid took as a wife Princess Olivera Despina, the daughter of Prince Lazar of Serbia, who also lost his life in Kosovo. Bayezid recognized Stefan Lazarević, the son of Lazar, as the new Serbian leader (later despot), with considerable autonomy.
From 1389 to 1395 he conquered Bulgaria and northern Greece. In 1394 he crossed the River Danube to attack Wallachia, ruled at that time by Mircea the Elder. The Ottomans were superior in number, but on October 10, 1394 (or 17 May 1395), in the Battle of Rovine, on forested and swampy terrain, the Wallachians won the fierce battle and prevented Bayezid from conquering the country.
In 1394, Bayezid laid siege to Constantinople,[3] the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Anadoluhisarı fortress was built between 1393 and 1394 as part of preparations for the Second Ottoman Siege of Constantinople, which took place in 1395. On the urgings of the Byzantine emperor John V Palaeologus a new crusade was organized to defeat him. This proved unsuccessful: in 1396 the Christian allies, under the leadership of the King of Hungary and future Holy Roman Emperor (in 1410) Sigismund, were defeated in the Battle of Nicopolis. Bayezid built the magnificent Ulu Camii in Bursa, to celebrate this victory.
Thus, the siege of Constantinople continued, lasting until 1401. The Emperor left the city to seek aid. The beleaguered Byzantines had their reprieve when Bayezid fought the Timurid in the East.
In 1400, the Central Asian warlord Timur had succeeded in rousing the local Turkic beyliks that had been vassals of the Ottomans to join him in his attack on Bayezid. In the fateful Battle of Ankara, on 20 July 1402, Bayezid was captured by Timur. His sons, however, escaped, and later they would start civil war (see also Ottoman Interregnum). Some contemporary reports claimed that Timur kept Bayezid chained in a cage as a trophy. Likewise, there are many stories about Bayezid's captivity, including one that describes how Timur used him as a footstool. However, writers from Timur's court reported that Bayezid was treated well, and that Timur even mourned his death. One year later, Bayezid died — some accounts claim that he committed suicide by smashing his head against the iron bars of his cage (the version given by Marlowe; see below). Other accounts claimed that he committed suicide by taking the poison concealed in his ring.
In fiction
The defeat of Bayezid became a popular subject for later western writers, composers and painters. They revelled in the legend that he was taken by Timur to Samarkand, and embellished it with a cast of characters to create an oriental fantasy that has maintained its appeal. Christopher Marlowe's play Tamburlane the Great was first performed in London in 1587, three years after the formal opening of English-Ottoman trade relations when William Harborne sailed for Constantinople as agent of the Levant Company. In 1648 there appeared the play Le Gran Tamerlan et Bejezet by Jean Magnon, and in 1725 Handel's Tamerlano was first performed and published in London;[4] Vivaldi's version of the story, Bajazet, was written in 1735. Magnon had given Bayezid an intriguing wife and daughter; the Handel and Vivaldi renditions included, as well as Tamerlane and Bayezid and his daughter, a prince of Byzantium and a princess of Trebizond (Trabzon) in a passionate and incredible love story. A cycle of paintings in Schloss Eggenberg, near Graz in Austria, translated the theme to a different medium; this was completed in the 1670s shortly before the Ottoman army attacked the Habsburgs in central Europe.[5] Bayezid (spelt Bayazid) is a central character in the Robert E. Howard story Lord of Samarcand.[6]
Marriages and progeny
His mother was Valide Sultan Gülçiçek Hatun who was of ethnic Geek descent.[1][7]
Marriages
- Erhondu - daughter
- Hundi - daughter
- Fatma - daughter
