Bayezid II

Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (r. 1481-1512)

• Born: December, 1447, or January, 1448
• Birthplace: Demotika, Ottoman Empire (now in Turkey)
• Died: May 26, 1512
• Place of death: En route to Demotika, Ottoman Empire (now in Turkey)

Although not among the great sultans of the Ottoman Empire, Bayezid II filled an important transitional role, in which much of his time was spent trying to unsuccessfully respond to conflicts with the East. The fame of his father as well as the symbolic memory of his namesake would have made it difficult for Bayezid to earn a reputation for strong rule or aggressive foreign policy.

Early Life

Little or nothing is known about the early life or education of Bayezid (bi-eh-ZEED) II prior to his first official appointment to a key government training post. This appointment occurred a few years before the death of his father, Mehmed II, the more famous sultan who conquered Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) in 1453, a few years after Bayezid’s birth.

As governor of Amasya Province (between Ankara and the Black Sea), Bayezid received important military experience, particularly at the distant Battle of Otluk Beli in 1473. This encounter marked a turning point in the long Ottoman struggle to subdue the Turkmen populations in the zone spanning western Iran and eastern Anatolia that had rallied around the famous tribal chief Uzun Hasan.

The most significant chapter of Bayezid’s early life came when his father died in 1481. His younger brother Cem (or Jem), governor of Karaman, with its influential religious capital Konya, challenged Bayezid’s right to succeed. This succession struggle would go on, in various forms, for some fourteen years. Bayezid’s claims were apparently supported by the main imperial military forces and high officials of the “new” capital at Istanbul. Cem’s challenge depended on a number of different sources of resistance, and it even included attempts to establish alliances with influences far from the Ottoman imperial homeland. Thus, Cem first tried, but failed, to defeat Bayezid with the support of Egyptian Mamlūk forces provided by Sultan Qāytbāy of Cairo. He then sought refuge with the Knights of Saint John on their island fortress at Rhodes. The knights decided not to join in the succession fray but turned Bayezid’s brother over to the French kingdom. Several Christian states’ use of the Ottoman pretender as their possible preferred ally over the next ten years forced Bayezid to keep close surveillance over his army to avoid possible betrayals. This limitation on the sultan’s power in the early years of his reign (at least until Cem’s death in 1495) held the Ottomans back from carrying out the major yearly military campaigns that had characterized most reigns to and including that of Mehmed II.

Life’s Work

Bayezid scored some early successes in maintaining and even expanding Ottoman control over key Balkan zones (capture of Herzegovina in 1483, seizure of the lower Danubian fortress of Kilia in 1484, and increased control over the Dniester River approaches to Crimea on the north coast of the Black Sea). The new sultan did not possess for some years, however, sufficient strength to fortify his southeastern provinces against the threat of Mamlūk forays into agriculturally rich Cilicia. By 1491, an inconclusive peace was signed that would leave this southeastern zone in an indecisive position until Bayezid’s son and successor Selim I marched into the area with force.

Bayezid’s main attentions prior to the rise of Ṣafavid Iranian threats to his eastern imperial flank would remain tied to Balkan Europe and the Krim Tatar zone of the north Black Sea coast, where Poland’s kings aimed at making Moldavia (now part of Romania) a Slavic dependency. This was a claim that Bayezid would only reverse militarily in 1499. During the same period, he became seriously engaged in the Aegean Sea itself, where the Ottomans faced a formidable trade and military rival in the powerful city-state of Venice.

Perhaps to divert attention from rising heterodox religious discontent and sedition in the eastern provinces, Bayezid pursued an openly aggressive policy toward his closest Christian rival, Venice. The break began in 1491, when the Venetian balyos (the diplomatic representative recognized by his father after the 1453 conquest) was expelled from Istanbul. Political tensions turned to material frustrations when, in 1496 (one year after the death of his rebellious brother Cem), Bayezid closed Ottoman ports to Venetian trade. For the next four years, clashes with the ships of Venice occurred throughout the eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean zones.

This protracted war of maritime encounters, which Pope Alexander VI would have liked to expand into a full-scale crusade, had an important effect on Bayezid’s priorities as ruler. First, it made it necessary for the Ottomans to spend money on the development of seaports in western Turkey. Also, a new supreme naval commander, Kemal Reis (a former pirate captain whose ships had raided as far west as France and Spain), was named head of a largely rebuilt and heavily armed Ottoman navy.

The peace that was finally signed in 1502 restored most of Venice’s trading privileges but limited its physical control of key ports considerably: Only Albania on the Adriatic and the Morea (southern Greece) could be called Venetian preserves in Ottoman territory by the first years of the sixteenth century. A second major repercussion of these years of Ottoman emphasis on naval development was a gradual assimilation of Mediterranean renegade captains into Turkish service. In addition to Kemal Reis, Bayezid encouraged a number of other important raiders (gazis) to pledge loyalty to his sultanate. Among these would be some of the great captains of the next generation, whose home ports were in North Africa. These would, by the end of Bayezid’s son’s reign, play a major role in attaching the provinces of Algiers, Tripolitania, and, eventually, Tunisia to the Ottoman realm.

Bayezid himself, however, did not live to see the rebirth of expansive Ottoman military power under his son Selim or, especially, Selim’s successor Süleyman the Magnificent . Many historians note that, after the Venetian peace of 1502, Bayezid tended to withdraw more and more from direct management of imperial matters. This decision to retreat from direct responsibilities of rule offered the possibility for Bayezid to live a contemplative life. He was himself interested in music and poetry, and invited a number of recognized scholars of history, science, and religion to frequent his court in Istanbul. One of these, Kemal Pasha Zade, wrote a commissioned history of the Ottoman Empire under Bayezid’s auspices.

There were, however, negative factors that stemmed from Bayezid’s decision to let others take responsibility for key affairs of state. On the one hand, apparently the influence of certain less tolerant religious leaders who were protégés of the court rose. This even went to the point of allowing zealots to denounce violently their rivals with the tacit and sometimes direct support of the sultan. On the other hand, increasing social and religious ferment in the Ottoman eastern Anatolian provinces, spurred on by unorthodox proponents of Shia Islam under the banner of Ṣafavid shah Ismāՙīl I, had spread considerably by the early 1500’s. The sultan’s lack of a determined policy of reaction nearly assured that a party of political opposition to him would emerge.

Bayezid’s approach to the problem of Shia heterodoxy and its willingness to sponsor anti-Ottoman rebellions in far-flung provinces was to try to convince Ismāՙīl to respect the integrity of a single unified community of Islam. By 1508-1509, the futility of expecting Ismāՙīl to reason with the Ottoman sultan was apparent: Ismāՙīl invaded Iraq and added it to Ṣafavid domains. Concerned Turkish military leaders feared that Syria and perhaps Ottoman Cilicia would be next. When an Ottoman army led by Grand VizierՙAlī Pasha and Prince Ahmed only barely succeeded in expelling Ismāՙīl’s supporters from the southeast province around Kayseri (August, 1511), a party of militant opposition to Bayezid’s rule began to plan his overthrow.

Although, as Bayezid’s eldest son, Ahmed should have been considered the legal successor, military professionals most anxious to see a strong force dispatched to the East preferred the candidacy of Selim. Bayezid’s appointment (in 1507) of Ahmed to the same Amasya provincial governorate that he had held prior to defending his claim to the succession in 1481 seemed to be a sign that the sultan was unaware of such preferences. Thus, Selim and his supporters decided not to await Bayezid’s demise before claiming the throne. They revolted against Bayezid and divided the army against itself. Several incidents of open clashes occurred before Bayezid was formally deposed (April, 1512). Only a month later, while attempting to return to forced exile at his birthplace in Demotika, Bayezid died, presumably of natural causes.

Within a year after Bayezid’s demise, his son Selim (the Grim) had begun to mount a major military reconquest of threatened Ottoman provinces in the East. In only two years, Ismāՙīl would be defeated and a military route opened for Selim’s conquest of the core countries of Arabistan: Syria and Egypt.

Significance

The reign of Bayezid II demonstrates that, despite the obvious imperial determination and military capacities of the Ottoman Empire, certain signs of internal dissension that would paralyze the political apparatuses of state in later centuries were already present in 1500. One of these is represented by the divisive influence of Cem’s fourteen-year-long challenge to his brother’s succession. Intrigues involving supporters of different scions of the Ottoman family as claimants to the throne had not been unknown before this date but had never affected so many different interest groups, both domestic and foreign.

Another negative characteristic of Bayezid’s reign that would be repeated again and again in later centuries was his tendency to delegate active authority to govern. The sultan’s retirement to the intellectually and aesthetically rarefied atmosphere of the imperial court left the field open for self-seeking politicians, military authorities, and religious zealots to play a larger role in high Ottoman affairs than had been possible under his predecessors. Although Selim’s overthrow of his father in 1512 prepared the way for a reversal of these trends during the next two great reigns, the elements operating in Bayezid’s period of rule would return to weaken many of the original bases of Ottoman imperial authority in the seventeenth century.

Bibliography

Brummett, Palmira. Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Seeks to integrate Ottoman history into European, Asian, and world history by demonstrating the importance of inherited Euro-Asian trade networks to the development and expansion of the Ottoman Empire, as well as the effects of continual commercial struggles between the empire and other world trading powers on all aspects of imperial and mercantile history. Includes illustrations, maps, bibliography, glossary, and index.

Creasy, Edward S. History of the Ottoman Turks. London: R. Bentley, 1878. Reprint. Karachi, Pakistan: S. M. Mir, 1980. A detailed historical work based on the massive mid-nineteenth century German classic by Von Hammer-Purgstall. The author states that he not only abridged Von Hammer but also incorporated a wide range of other sources, including memoirs of Europeans who witnessed the events described. Includes illustrations, fold-out maps, bibliographic references.

Fisher, Sidney N. The Foreign Relations of Turkey, 1481-1512. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1948. One of the most complete and detailed studies of Bayezid, emphasizing relations with foreign powers, both European and Muslim.

Har-el, Shai. Struggle for Domination in the Middle East: The Ottoman-Mamluk War, 1485-1491. New York: E. J. Brill, 1995. An in-depth account of Bayezid’s war with the Mamlūk Empire, detailing the foundations of the conflict in the fourteenth century, a step-by-step account of the war itself, and some discussion of the second and conclusive war that occurred less than a decade after Bayezid’s reign. Includes illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, index.

Inalcik, Halil. “The Rise of the Ottoman Empire.” In The Cambridge History of Islam, edited by P. M. Holt, Ann K. S. Lambton, and Bernard Lewis. Vol. 1. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1970. The most concise survey of the entire early period of Ottoman expansion, with a specific section on Bayezid. The material on Bayezid is useful both for its cultural foci and for its discussion of social subgroupings, especially that of the Turcomans.

Itzkowitz, Norman. Ottoman Empire and Islamic Tradition. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972. Contains a short but complete subchapter on Bayezid and chronological coverage of sultanic reigns. Three other sections deal with various Ottoman institutions such as bureaucracy and provincial structure, which shed light on conditions, practical and legal, faced by Bayezid.

Shaw, Stanford J. Empire of the Gazis: The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1280-1808. Vol. 1 in History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Of several general works on Ottoman history, this volume is a good resource on Bayezid’s reign. Provides useful information on key cultural questions, including undercurrents of religious discontent and some elements of courtly literature from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

Turnbull, Stephen. The Ottoman Empire, 1326-1699. New York: Routledge, 2004. This history of Ottoman rule, imperial expansion, and military tactics focuses especially on the struggle for the Balkans and battles against European powers. Includes illustrations, maps, index.