Bayezid I

born с 1360

died March 1403?, Akşehir, Anatolia

Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (1389–1402).

After succeeding his father, Murad II (d. 1389), Bayezid expanded Ottoman control of the shrinking Byzantine Empire by conquering vast tracts of territory in the Balkans, thus securing his rule south of the Danube. From 1391 to 1398 he blockaded Constantinople (modern Istanbul), and he crushed the Hungarian Crusaders at the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396. He then sought to widen Ottoman control over Anatolia. Defeated by Timur at the Battle of Ankara in 1402, Bayezid died in captivity. He was succeeded by his son, Mehmed I, after an interregnum of some 10 years.

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▪ Ottoman sultan

byname  Yildirim (The Thunderbolt)  

born c. 1360

died March 1403, Akşehir, Ottoman Empire

      Ottoman sultan in 1389–1402 who founded the first centralized Ottoman state based on traditional Turkish and Muslim institutions and who stressed the need to extend Ottoman dominion in Anatolia.

      In the early years of Bayezid's reign, Ottoman forces conducted campaigns that succeeded in controlling vast Balkan territories. Later, Venetian advances in Greece, Albania, and Byzantium (Istanbul) and the extension of Hungarian influence in Walachia and Danubian Bulgaria compelled Bayezid to blockade Constantinople (1391–98), to occupy Tirnova, in what is now Bulgaria (July 1393), and to conquer Salonika (Thessaloníki) (April 1394). His invasion of Hungary in 1395 resulted in a Hungarian-Venetian crusade against the Ottomans. Bayezid inflicted a crushing defeat on the crusaders at Nicopolis (Nicopolis, Battle of) (Sept. 25, 1396).

      To build a strong Islāmic and Turkish base for his domain, Bayezid began to widen Ottoman suzerainty over the Turkish-Muslim rulers in Anatolia. He annexed various Turkmen emirates in Anatolia and defeated the Karaman emirate at Akçay (1397). These conquests brought Bayezid into conflict with the Central Asian conqueror Timur (Tamerlane), who claimed suzerainty over the Anatolian Turkmen rulers and offered refuge to those expelled by Bayezid. In a confrontation between Bayezid and Timur in Çubukovası near Ankara (Ankara, Battle of) (July 1402), Bayezid was defeated; he died in captivity.

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