48: From Crisis to Conquest

I Take History With My Coffee Podcast
Episode 48
Title: From Crisis to Conquest

“He realized that the Turkish forces were superior in numbers and that the Hungarians, intimidated, were contemplating flight. When at sunrise Murad beheld the tents of the Hungarians in disorder as they hastened to take flight, he fell upon them, and those who did not escape, he despoiled or slaughtered. Murad had won a great victory and Janos had suffered defeat.”
Doukas, Historia Turco-Byzantina, c. 1462

Welcome back to the I Take History With My Coffee podcast where we explore history in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.


Bayezid I became the Ottoman sultan in 1389 after his father, Murad I, was assassinated at the Battle of Kosovo. Right off the bat, Bayezid set a brutal precedent by having his younger brother Yakub strangled to death - the first instance of the practice of fratricide to eliminate threats from rival princes. Unlike his father,  Bayezid was hasty and unpredictable as a statesman but a skilled and swift military commander, earning the nickname "Yildirim" or "Thunderbolt." 

Bayezid took power at a high point for the Ottomans, with their territories across the Balkans consolidated following Murad's victories over the Serbs and Bulgarians. In those fractured Slavic territories, some lords supported the Hungarian king, while others allied with the Ottomans. Bayezid cemented these alliances by marrying Olivera, daughter of Prince Lazar, who had perished at Kosovo. But Ottoman control of Anatolia remained tenuous, with Turkish principalities like Karaman resisting being subordinates.

So Bayezid acted decisively to stamp his authority over Anatolia with military force, with the Byzantine emperor Manuel II and other regional contingents joining his forces. He defeated Karaman's troops and put down a rebellion by his former vassal, the "philosopher-sultan" Burhaneddin of Sivas. With Anatolia largely pacified by 1391, Bayezid could focus on expanding more in the Balkans.

He allowed the Serbs to remain autonomous as a vassal state in exchange for tribute and military support. But Bayezid showed no such leniency towards Bulgaria, directly annexing it into the empire after executing the Bulgarian tsar in 1395. This brutal move solidified Ottoman domination of the entire Balkan region.

Bayezid's ultimate goal was capturing Constantinople to secure the strategic Bosporus Straits and an impregnable fortress as his empire's capital. If he could conquer that city, it would ensure his dominance, even if he lost other territories. To this end, he involved himself in Byzantine succession disputes, captured Christian Philadelphia (Alaşehir), and forced the Aegean Turkish knights to acknowledge his authority. After Emperor John V Palaeologus died in 1391, his successor, Manuel II, was reduced to a humiliating vassal state. Bayezid demanded increased tribute and the establishment of an Islamic judge in the city.  

Bayezid initiated a lengthy siege designed to starve the city into submission while his forces rampaged across the southern Balkans and Greek territories like the Morea peninsula. Ottoman forces besieged Constantinople for seven months, leading to Manuel's agreement to harsher terms, including an Islamic tribunal within the city and a portion of Galata. This marked the start of Ottoman influence and control over what they called Istanbul. However, the powerful Venetian and Genoese navies prevented an outright Ottoman conquest at sea, and a small relief force arrived in 1399 to help the city's defenses beat back an Ottoman naval attempt on the Dardanelles. This likely saved Constantinople for the time being. 

Bayezid’s expansion threatened Hungary, prompting King Sigismund to seek alliances against him. By 1394, Sigismund, the Byzantine emperor Manuel II, and Venice formed an anti-Ottoman league, bolstered by French and Burgundian forces recently unemployed by the peace between England and France. But in 1396, Bayezid achieved a landmark victory by demolishing a massive crusading army of over 100,000 men assembled at Nicopolis in Bulgaria. The overconfident Western knights underestimated Bayezid and were unprepared for how he responded. Their lack of coordination and understanding of contemporary military tactics contrasted sharply with the Ottomans' disciplined approach. Despite some early success, their reckless cavalry charge against Bayezid's disciplined main army led to a devastating defeat with heavy casualties.  Bayezid's victory was decisive. 

Nicopolis was a catastrophic failure for the last major crusade trying to stop the Ottomans. Bayezid followed up with more military campaigns cementing his power, underscoring how disastrously the Crusaders misjudged the situation and the shifting balance of power favoring the Ottomans.

With Balkan resistance crushed, Bayezid returned to his goal of finally taking Constantinople and extinguishing Byzantium once and for all. However, in 1402, the seemingly unstoppable sultan's plans went off the rails when the legendary Mongol conqueror Timur invaded Anatolia from Samarkand.

When iron first became known among the Tatars, they found it really hard to bend compared to other metals. So they assumed it contained some special substance and named it "timur" meaning something filled or stuffed. This term was later bestowed on their great leaders as a symbol of extraordinary strength.

Timur emerged as the greatest among them. Born into a small tribe, he rose to chiefdom, ruling a region between Samarkand and Hindustan. Endowed with courage, energy, leadership, and military genius, he amassed a powerful army, conquering Persia, Tartary, Turkestan, and India, extinguishing nine dynasties to reign over a vast empire.

Known as Timur the Lame due to his limp, hence his name Tamerlane in the West, he was a devout and just ruler. His enormous, victorious army, with cavalry numbering in the six figures, extended his dominion all across Asia, even daring to challenge Bayezid's Ottomans.

Bayezid, full of pride after a decade of victories, underestimated Timur at first and even provoked him into action when Ottoman troops trespassed into Timur's territories. Despite diplomacy, Bayezid's hubris and insults provoked the brilliant commander, already renowned for his sacking of Baghdad and Damascus after over a decade of conquests across Asia. Angered by Bayezid's dismissive attitude, Timur resolved to destroy the Ottoman Empire. In 1402, Timur invaded Anatolia, exploiting the fragile loyalties among Bayezid's subjects. Many of Bayezid's Anatolian forces and subjects, resentful of his heavy-handed rule, defected to the better-treated Timurid ranks, hoping the invader would free them from Ottoman subjugation.  

In July 1402, Bayezid's depleted and demoralized forces faced Timur's vastly larger army at the Battle of Ankara. Against his generals' advice, the headstrong Bayezid took the offensive instead of defending - only to get surrounded and outflanked. His son's cavalry charge failed, and after brutal fighting, the once-feared Bayezid was eventually captured.

At first, Timur treated Bayezid respectfully, but there are many stories of how he soon subjected the sultan to cruel humiliations and psychological torture that broke his spirit and will to live. Within eight months of his shameful capture, the 48-year-old Bayezid was dead, possibly by suicide.

Timur followed up by spending over a year devastating Anatolia to wipe out any remaining Ottoman resistance. He sacked cities and reinstalled local rulers, destroying Bayezid's dream of building an Ottoman Muslim superpower with its capital in Constantinople. Timur's ambitions really lay further east, so after Bayezid's death, he left Anatolia for Samarkand, preparing to conquer China—but he died on that journey, leaving chaos in his wake as the Tatars departed.

When the conqueror finally turned east again after his destructive rampage, no serious opposition remained across the fractured former Ottoman territories west of the Bosporus Strait to continue the fight against Byzantine intrigues. It fell to Bayezid's sons to ultimately overcome both internal conflicts and Byzantine efforts to regain influence in the region.

Bayezid's disastrous Ankara defeat might have shattered his grand ambitions of creating an eastward-spanning Muslim superpower based in Constantinople. But the very survival of his dynasty despite Timur's invasion meant the Ottomans could transform into a power durably rooted in the Balkans and eastern Mediterranean through more prudent statesmanship - achieving staying power that Bayezid's conquering zeal alone could not.

So after Bayezid's catastrophic defeat by Timur in 1402, the fledgling Ottoman Empire faced a major crisis. There was a messy succession struggle between Bayezid's sons that plunged everything into nearly a decade of anarchy as they vied for power. Local beys saw their chance to break away and grab autonomy amidst all the infighting between the sultan's offspring. It was looking like the empire could disintegrate just like the old Seljuk Empire did after the Mongol invasions.

The main contenders for the throne were Bayezid's sons Suleyman, Musa, Isa and Mehmed. There was a fifth son, Mustafa, but he was being held captive by Timur. After Isa died, Mehmed established his base in central Anatolia while Suleyman controlled the traditional capitals like Edirne. A turning point came in 1409 when Mehmed allied with the Turkish emirs and Wallachia, allowing him to defeat first Suleyman in Anatolia, and then Musa who had briefly ruled from Edirne after Suleyman's death.

But the final challenge was when Mustafa escaped from Samarkand in 1415 and invaded with foreign backing. The Byzantine emperor was happy to stoke the instability against the Ottomans. Mehmed beat Mustafa, who fled to Constantinople, and Mehmed made the Byzantines promise not to release him in the future. It wasn't until 1421 that Mehmed's son Murad II ruthlessly eliminated Mustafa and blinded his own two brothers that this 20-year dynastic war finally ended. Paradoxically, this drawn-out conflict actually reinforced Ottoman unity and the dynasty's religious-political legitimacy as the House of Osman solidified itself as the sole claimant to Islamic sovereignty.

Amidst all this chaos, there was also a populist revolt in 1416 led by the mystic Börklüce  Mustafa ("Felt-Crowned") and the former judge Sheikh Bedreddin. Accounts really differed on what their motivations were. The Greek aristocrat Ducas portrayed Börklüce as a prophetic figure trying to unite Islam and Christianity, abolish private property, and overturn social hierarchies. But Bedreddin's grandson gave a very different hagiographic story portraying his ancestor as a loyal Sufi unjustly branded a traitor by the young Sultan Mehmed I. The Ottoman chronicler Aşık Paşazade straight up denounced them as ambitious frauds falsely cloaking political aims in spiritual talk, foreshadowing the subsequent Shi'ite Safavid challenge to Sunni Ottoman rule. Mehmed crushed the rebellion, massacring Börklüce's followers in Karaburun and executing Bedreddin in Rumelia, but the tensions it exposed remained unresolved.

The Ottoman understanding of sovereignty was distinct from their Persian Shi'ite rivals, the Safavids.  Unlike the semi-divine status of the Safavid shahs, the Ottoman sultans' legitimacy came from respected Turkish lineages like the Kayi clan, their recognition as Islamic rulers by the declining Abbasids and Seljuks, and their role as patrons upholding Sunni Islamic tradition. So, sultans were revered more as pious noble enforcers of orthodoxy rather than spiritual figures per se. This distinction sometimes caused tensions with Sufi mystic orders like the Bektashis affiliated with the elite Janissary corps, who competed for spiritual proximity to the sultan.

But generally, the religious institutions in the Ottoman capital, like madrasas and Sufi lodges, coexisted in a syncretic relationship bridging esotericism and scholasticism.  As Sufism spread through Anatolia, devotional practices like ritual dance, poetry, and sacred music were found to be expressed alongside academic curricula supported by Ottoman patronage. Sufi writings shaped intellectual life, while Ottoman court chronicles blended spiritual destiny and empirical chronology, framing dynastic expansion through a lens of sacred Islamic prophecy.

When Murad II became sultan in 1421, his three-decade reign oversaw this intricate balancing of spiritual and secular authority.  Though a scholarly peacemaker more inclined towards intellectual and religious pursuits, he proved a tireless military campaigner, repeatedly summoned from contemplative retreat to stabilize borders, quell uprisings, and defend against foreign invasions. His pragmatism suited his extensive public works agenda, rebuilding urban centers like Edirne and Bursa through tax revenues and his personal treasury. Robust bureaucracy took shape through the vakıf charitable trusts and the provincial sancak military-feudal system under his watch. Detailed cadastral surveys and population registers facilitated efficient revenue extraction, while the mercantile economy gained from infrastructure projects along the overland silk routes bypassing Constantinople.

Murad faced many threats over his 30-year reign as the empire matured. He blockaded and eventually captured Thessaloniki from the Venetians in 1430. His campaigns subdued the final Anatolian beyliks of Aydin, Menteshe, and Germiyan under Ottoman control. In the Balkans, the Despots Lazar and Branković saw their Serbian domains systematically absorbed while Ottoman suzerainty enveloped Bosnia and Wallachia.

However, Murad's greatest challenge emanated from the Kingdom of Hungary. As papal calls for anti-Ottoman crusades resounded across Europe, successive Hungarian kings sought to establish a Danubian empire by fusing Byzantine and Slavic territories for Christendom. In 1443-44, the Crusade of Varna nearly breached the Balkans. Yet the Hungarians lacked coordination and faced internal dynastic feuds that left their kingdom vulnerable. Murad proved a tenacious adversary, overcoming tactical setbacks to shatter the Crusade at the decisive Battle of Varna in 1444, where the Hungarian king Vladislav fell in combat.

Murad's military prowess proved equally vital in confronting domestic threats. From Janissary mutinies over pay to vassal uprisings in Albania, Serbia, and Morea, his strategic skills preserved hard-won Ottoman territorial integrity. His final years saw declining health, yet he secured two landmark victories - at Kosovo in 1448 before turning his attention westward to Epirus and Albania in 1448-49. Upon his death in 1451, the succession passed smoothly to his son Mehmed, known later as Mehmed the Conqueror.

Unlike his father Murad's penchant for statecraft and dialogue, Mehmed II was laser-focused on one overriding ambition - conquering Constantinople. This had been an obsession for him since his turbulent youth. He experienced a really problematic childhood, rootless and marred by his father's neglect, in keeping with the Ottoman tradition of isolating princes in provincial postings away from the capital. His lowly birth from a slave mother left him with a real insecurity complex and sense of alienation, made worse by Murad's obvious prejudices against his younger sons. Despite religious tutoring from pious instructors, the precocious but resentful Mehmed gravitated more towards unconventional strains of Persian Shi'ism and occult philosophy - much to the Sunni establishment's dismay. His arrogant attitude sparked constant conflicts with the court, clergy and military during his brief apprenticeship governing the Rumeli region.  Halil, his father's formidable grand vizier, bore the brunt of the young scion's insolence until a Janissary mutiny checked his impetuosity.

Yet Mehmed's detractors had underestimated his sheer willpower and drive. As soon as he inherited the sultanate, he swiftly neutralized threats from pretenders and rebellious factions through selective force and political maneuvering. He ensured Janissary loyalty by hugely increasing their pay while forming new elite troops beyond their control. With his household soldiers secured, he could focus all his energies on realizing his supreme obsession - the final conquest of Constantinople.

In the next episode, we will examine Mehmed II’s character and the Ottoman state he came to rule as sultan.

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