Within the generation of Bayezid II's sons, Alemşah is one of the least remembered princes. He never took the throne, was not a party to the succession struggle, and did not gather around himself a following the way his brothers Ahmed, Korkud and Selim did. What is known about him, however, rests on rare documents that show the daily life of a prince: registers listing the revenues of a sanjak, orders sent from the capital, the list of books dispatched to him, elegies written by poets, and a long letter that his mother, Gülruh Hatun, wrote to the sultan. Most of what follows draws on Hamit Şafakcı's 2025 article, which brings these documents together; where sources contradict one another the contradiction is stated, and no attempt has been made to fill gaps that the documents leave open.

Alemşah was born in Amasya, but he did not serve as a prince-governor there. The city, where his father Bayezid had resided as sanjak governor for twenty-seven years, was his birthplace and the setting of his earliest childhood. His governorship took him to the south of the Aegean, to Menteşe, and then to Manisa.

Name and Family

Alemşah was one of Bayezid II's eight sons. In order of age the names given are Abdullah, Şehinşah, Alemşah, Ahmed, Korkud, Selim, Mehmed and Mahmud; some chronicles give this list with names missing or added. In the sources the prince appears as "Alem", "Alem Bey" and "Sultan Alemşah". According to Yılmaz Öztuna his full name was Mehmed Alemşah.

His mother was Gülruh Hatun. In some records the same lady appears as Gülendam Hatun; it was common for women of the dynasty to be known under more than one name. Because her endowment deed reads "Gülruh Hatun binti Abdülhay" (daughter of Abdülhay), she is said to have been of concubine origin. Necdet Sakaoğlu gave contradictory information about Gülruh; Şafakcı notes that these contradictions must stem from an oversight. Gülruh accompanied her son to his governorship and, after his death, lived in the Old Palace.

Alemşah's sister was Kamer (Kamerşah) Sultan. In 1491 her father granted her the village of Okçu (Siret) in Malkara as freehold. According to Sakaoğlu, Kamer Sultan was the wife of the chancellor Kara Davud Pasha (d. 1505); Bursa records show that she lies in the tomb of Gülruh Hatun.

Birth in Amasya

In the sources Alemşah's birth date appears as 871 in the Hijri calendar. Since that year corresponds to the period between August 1466 and July 1467, researchers have given 1466 or 1467; from this Şafakcı concludes that the prince was born in Amasya in 1466. Öztuna, by contrast, claims he was born in 1477. That view conflicts with the circumcision record of 1480 and with the appointment of his tutor in 1481, and so it should be treated with caution.

The link to Amasya is as follows. As a son of Mehmed the Conqueror, Bayezid had been sent very young, under the guidance of Hadım Ali Pasha, to the governorship of the Amasya sanjak, and he had lived in the city for about twenty-seven years until his accession in 1481. Amasya was then a center of learning; there Bayezid took lessons from teachers such as the Bayrami sheikh Şeyh Yavsî and learned calligraphy from Şeyh Hamdullah. His command of the right wing at the Battle of Otlukbeli in 1473 also belongs to these years. Gülruh Hatun looked after her son from his birth. There is no detailed document about the prince's childhood in Amasya; the sources do not say which teacher instructed him or in which palace he grew up. His city of birth is Amasya, and anything beyond that has no source.

His elder brother, Prince Ahmed, would in later years become the governor of Amasya and be regarded as the real heir to Bayezid's throne. Alemşah's path instead ran through the sanjaks of the south and west.

Circumcision

According to İbn Kemal, Mehmed the Conqueror had Şehinşah, Ahmed, Korkud, Mahmud, Alem, Selim and Cem's son Oğuzhan circumcised in 1480. Another account of the same event names those circumcised as Şehinşah, Alemşah, Ahmed, Selim and Oğuzhan. The list varies from source to source, but Alemşah's name appears in both. The place and details of the circumcision are not found in the source at hand.

Sanjak Training and Menteşe

In the Ottoman system, a prince's departure for a sanjak was a stage of his education. A prince who might one day head the state gained administrative experience in a small region and received a practical training in statecraft alongside his tutor, chancellors and treasurers. Menteşe (seat: Muğla) and Saruhan (seat: Manisa) were former beylik centers, and sending the prince there was also meant to help merge central and local administration.

After his father became sultan, Alemşah was sent to the Menteşe sanjak. Sources differ on the starting date. Anthony Alderson gives 1481; Öztuna says 1490 or 1481; another view holds that the prince also served in Muğla (1490) and in Kastamonu. Weighing all the data, Şafakcı adopts 1481-1502 for Menteşe and 1502-1503 for Saruhan. The record supporting 1481 states that his first tutor in that year was the vizier Yakub Pasha. In some accounts this figure is identified with the poet Yakup Pasha, whom Bayezid had known since his Amasya years and who later became sanjak governor of Bosnia; on his accession Bayezid appointed him atabey (tutor-guardian) to his son Alemşah. The Kastamonu appointment has not been confirmed by other sources. The claim reported by Zinkeisen, that Alemşah received gold from the provinces on the Iranian frontier, has likewise been judged unreliable, since the prince is known to have served only in Menteşe and Manisa.

Gülruh Hatun also went to the sanjak with her son. That a dynasty woman should stay with the prince in his sanjak also meant that she was held responsible for her sons' conduct; the sultan had personally ordered Gülruh to "keep" her son "in check".

His Retinue

The administration of a sanjak was the work not of the prince alone but of a large retinue, and the registers record the officials around Alemşah by name.

  • Tutors (lala): His first tutor was the vizier Yakub Pasha; Haydar Bey is also mentioned as a lala. On the death of Lütfü Bey, İbrahim Ağa was appointed to the post on 4 September 1497 and Çakırı Sinan Bey on 8 August 1498. Sinan Bey was assigned a has of 98,000 akçe from the Sarı zeamet attached to Alaşehir and 25,217 akçe from the Ula zeamet attached to Muğla, a total of 123,217 akçe, which later additions raised to 160,503 akçe. Lala Yunus, who built a mosque and a bridge at Balat, is also counted as the prince's tutor, physician and master of the horse, but this link is not stated explicitly in the registers.
  • Chancellors: Hacı Kasım, Kâtip Muslihiddin and Mustafa Bey. In 1487 Hacı Kasım held a timar of 12,660 akçe in Menteşe; it was later exchanged for a cemaat-i perakende attached to Köyceğiz, and after leaving the chancellorship he received a timar of 20,776 akçe in Edremit.
  • Treasurers: Ali Çelebi (October 1487), Üveys Bey son of Mahmud Bey son of Timurtaş Bey, and Şemseddin Çelebi son of Fenari, who replaced him on 31 December 1500. A has of 40,000 akçe from the villages of Dadya and Geyne was assigned to the treasurers.
  • Physician and teacher: His chief physician was Hoca Mevlânâ Ali, son of Acem Şemseddin Ahmed. In June 1501 the kadi of Edirne was informed that Mevlânâ Şemseddin, one of the physicians of the Edirne hospital, was to be sent. His teacher Hüseyin Efendi listed in a memorandum to the chief of the harem eunuchs what princes were expected to read.
  • Court secretary: Zekâî served as the prince's divan secretary.

Alemşah's men were not left stranded after his death. Officials such as Karagöz, whose re-enrollment among the cebeci was requested, and the drummer Yusuf were restored to duty and livelihood under Sultan Selim. Ahmed, one of Alemşah's cooks, was granted a timar of 1,500 akçe on 25 December 1523.

Administration in Menteşe

Alemşah governed the sanjak in constant correspondence with the capital. In appointments and timar proposals he had to obtain central approval and could not act with full independence. When the revenues of the Hatun Caravanserai Endowment at Tavas fell into other hands, the kadi of Muğla is known to have carried out an inspection on the prince's order. When Şeyh Seydi, his brother Abdi and Hacı Mahmud reported that they had lost the order exempting them from taxes, the order was renewed in June 1501 at the prince's request. An order sent to the prince's tutor and the kadi of Meğri asked for an investigation of a man named Resul, who was said to be trading with the Franks without the prince's permission.

Orders dated June 1501 show the security situation on the coast of Menteşe. It had been heard that six ships had attacked the district of Dadya and harmed people in places near Kemer; it was ordered that vigilance not be relaxed and that Muslims be protected from harm. After people coming from Rhodes seized the property and ships of Muslims and took some captives, an order was written to the lord of Rhodes for the release of the captives, and Alemşah reported the order he had sent to the Imperial Council. In July 1501 the prince was also ordered to move a timar holder named Çerneoğlu to the province of Rum, to guard against his abduction by the Venetians.

His income consisted of hass revenues and mukataa tax farms. According to a record of 12 December 1487, 100,464 akçe was added from Bayezid II's hass to Alemşah's hass; in August 1488, at the request that his income be increased, 80,334 akçe from the mukataas of the Mazun Barza and Güre Barza nomads, and in September 1488 the 100,000-akçe Güre Barza mukataa from the sultan's hass, were joined to the prince's hass. A record of December 1488 also counts within this hass the revenues of the customs of the province of Menteşe, of Köylük-i Künde, of the fisheries and groves of Lake Balat, and of the tahnhanes of Balat and Milas. In 1498, 59,296 akçe from the Pırnaz zeamet and its dependencies was registered, and in December 1499 a total of 186,915 akçe of hass from the Madran, Receb Kireniz and Gereme zeamets and one timar. These zeamets and timars were often taken from their holders without cause and joined to the prince's hass; the registers note this with the formula "taken without cause". In 1485 gifts such as gold-brocaded velvet caftans, a turban cloth and a sash were also sent to Alemşah by the hand of the gatekeeper İlyas.

The prince's presence left traces of building in some places. At Denizli (Lazıkiyye), the village of Gediklü was endowed on 26 April 1502 to the Kurşunlu Mescidi, which Alemşah had converted into a mosque. The mosque in the neighborhood of the same name was also known as the Sultan Alemşah Mosque. For the upkeep of the water brought to the mosque, the revenues of the village of Gediklü and of the Tegmür farmstead were set aside, and in 1530 Kasım, one of the prince's men, seized the village as a tax collector. Two fountains, one together with the mosque and the other inside the city walls, are also attributed to him. The prince also granted three dönüms of land at Urnaz to Yunus Halife, the founder of the Sûfîhane Mosque.

Books, Swords and the Mevlevi Circle

The lists of books sent to Alemşah show the prince's interests. Works of Qur'anic exegesis and hadith such as Tefsir-i Kadı and Mesâbîh and Meşârik, works of jurisprudence such as Hidâye and Nihâye and Vikâye, works of theology such as Mevâkıf and Makâsıd, works of philosophy such as Hikmetü'l-Ayn and Şerh-i İşârât, works on legal methodology such as Telvîh and Tavzîh, medical books such as Mucez and its commentary, the Sıhâh-ı Cevherî dictionary, and the Divan of Hüsrev with Nizâmî's Hamse appear in the same list. The rest of the list mentions a few fine rings, a dagger, knives, a sword, bows and reed arrows; the prince was also training in the martial arts. Another list names the Mutavvel, the Muhtasar, glosses on the Metâli, the divans of Kasım and Kemal and a Shahnameh; the same record also includes 60,000 akçe in cash, gold-brocaded velvets, caftans, and some slave boys sent from the palace and the novice corps. The document was thought to date from 1512, but the blessing used for the prince, "may his life be long" (tâle bekâhu), shows that it must predate 1503. The prince also asked for books himself when needed: he requested the medical books of Mevlânâ İsa Çelebi from the chief physician and the books that the sultan had given to his former chancellor Hacı Kasım.

Poets and scholars gathered around him. Şâhidî İbrahim Dede, who revived Mevlevism in Muğla, is known for converting the Seyyid Kemal Lodge (the Şâhidî Mosque) into a Mevlevi lodge. According to the account, Alemşah, while at Denizli, invited Sheikh Bedreddin with his disciples by letter; a neighborhood was assigned to them, and dhikr and sema were performed in a mosque that had formerly been a church. At a sermon Şâhidî gave in the mosque, Alemşah, his divan secretary Zekâî, the city's kadi and Paşa Çelebi, son of Çelebi Emir Adil, were present; after the sermon several people rose to the whirling dance, and Alemşah, deeply moved, bestowed many gifts on Şâhidî after the prayer. Şâhidî wrote the Lügat-i Şâhidî and sent it to the princes, worked on Leylâ vü Mecnûn and the Gulistan, and composed the Gülşen-i Tevhîd, selecting a hundred couplets from each volume of the Mesnevi and explaining each in five couplets. Âşık Çelebi describes him with the verse "Ask of his birth, he is of Muğla; ask of his path, he is a Mevlevi." The sources of these accounts are Mevlevi histories and a doctoral dissertation; the exact date of the events is not known.

The record in the Vatican manuscript of the Book of Dede Korkut is also associated with Alemşah's name, as is the collection of moral tales known as Hikâye-i Uc'ûbe ve Mahcûbe, which Sıdkî translated from Persian. The record attributes the work to Alemşah son of Bâyezîd Han of the House of Osman and gives its date as 918/1512-13; since the prince died in 1503, the date of the manuscript is problematic. Sâyilî also wrote a qasida for Alemşah in his Persian divan, completed in 1502, but the presentation of the divan to the sultan falls after the prince's death.

Gülruh Hatun's Letter

The most striking thing we know about Alemşah's life is the undated letter his mother Gülruh Hatun wrote to the sultan. The letter is held in the Topkapı Palace Archive under the number TS.MA.e. 745/89; it has become known through the publications of Çağatay Uluçay and İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, and later through Leslie Peirce's study of the women of the dynasty.

Gülruh begins by recalling Bayezid's order to keep their son in check; she writes that she has carried it out as best she could ever since, and that her son has grown into a brave young man. What is needed now, she says, is a Muslim tutor with good intentions, who will work to set right her son's religion and worldly affairs, always guide him toward good, and keep the troublemakers away from his door. The present tutor she considers the head of all mischief. According to the letter, this tutor, together with the teacher and the physician, seven people in all, brings the prince by means of drink to agree to things he would otherwise refuse. The prince's household is taken out to an open field with two pairs of drums, zurna and nakkare, and everyone, drinker and abstainer alike, is made to drink. While drunk, the prince signs documents contrary to law and sharia, and his men have done as they please. Bribery, favoritism and oppression have increased, and the people have been chained and paraded through streets and markets under the burning sun. Gülruh adds that they have taken her out of her role as his guardian, and that they have squandered the prince's treasury while she herself has gone a year without receiving her stipend. The prince recovered with difficulty after an illness of a month. The letter asks the sultan for help by requesting that these seven people be dismissed, warning that otherwise her son's household will be ruined altogether. Those named include, first, the tutor, then the master of the stirrup Yunus and the chief of the pantry Hızır; from outside, the teacher, the physician, the former chief of stipends İshak and the former chief of sipahi pages İlyas are mentioned. The tutor, for his part, answered the complaint by accusing the chief eunuch of the prince's harem.

Şafakcı notes that besides being a plea, the letter carries the mother's concern to protect her own position. Peirce likewise writes that the mother was more closely concerned than the father with her son's political future, that this was tied to her own future, and that the tutor may have reported the mother's conduct to the sultan along with the prince's. Where the responsibility lay is not certain: while accepting that the people around him set a bad example, Şafakcı also notes that this could not have been forced on the prince without his own consent. It is known that Bayezid himself had been reprimanded by his father Mehmed in his own princehood for using opium, and that there were members of the dynasty fond of pleasure. The counsel of Gülruh and her husband had no effect, and the habit broke the prince's health and led to his death at a young age.

The Move to Saruhan and Manisa

When his brother Korkud was transferred from Saruhan to the Antalya sanjak (late 1501 or early 1502), Alemşah left Menteşe for Manisa and became sanjak governor of Saruhan. Şafakcı reports that, upon Korkud's renunciation, Saruhan was given to Alemşah, who wanted it; after the prince's death, Mahmud was appointed in his place. Alderson, by contrast, gives the governorship of Manisa as 1507-1510, which does not fit the other data. That Alemşah was in Manisa in May 1502 can be understood from the documents.

The prince's palace at Saruhan had been built by Murad II in 1445; it covered a wide area and was surrounded by a brick wall, with buildings nearby where the men lived, and in summer the princes would go up to Bozdağ or the mountain of Manisa and stay in palaces they had built there. Alemşah asked for repairs to the Manisa palace, to the bridge over the Gediz and to the fortress of Karaca Foça; the reply from the capital stated that the palace had no need of repair, and that the other repairs were not yet due. According to Şafakcı, the prince was occupied mostly with learning in Menteşe, and his fondness for pleasure became pronounced in Saruhan.

Death

The date of death wanders in the sources between 908 and 918: 908/1502, the spring of 908, 909/1503, 916/1510, 917/1511 and 918/1512. Weighing all the data, Şafakcı concludes that he died in 1503. His grounds are these: a cloth shipment dated 3 Rebiülahir 909 (25 September 1503) was sent in the name of "Alem Bey's mother" and contains no statement about the prince's death; on 10 Şaban 908 (8 February 1503) Gülruh Hatun endowed 7,000 dirhams for the reading of the Qur'an for her son's soul and set aside her properties at Güzelhisar in Aydın for this purpose; and a report sent to the Venetian government on 29 March 1503 also indicates that the death preceded that date. The chronogram "Mâte Alemşâh Bey" given by Lâmiî Çelebi corresponds to 909; it has been noted that because Lâmiî lived in that period, this date should be taken into account.

The cause of death is uncertain. İdris-i Bitlisî relates that while he was in office at Saruhan, a burning fever seized his body near the city of Bergama, and that he died before the physicians could begin treatment. Other sources list tuberculosis, malaria, black fever or spotted fever as possibilities. Gülruh Hatun's letter, for its part, shows that drink and entertainment ruined his health. His age has been given as 36 or 47; taking the Hijri and Gregorian dates together, it can be said that he died at 37 or 38.

According to an account based on Fisher, on the news of his son's death Bayezid had the shops in Istanbul closed for three days and had alms distributed to the poor for several weeks for his soul. Lâmiî Çelebi and Revânî wrote elegies. Lâmiî's elegy, titled "Terci Mersiye-i Şehzade Mehemmed Alemşah bin Sultan Bayezid bin Sultan Mehemmed", ends with the line: "Kanı o şehriyâr ki her bendesi anun / Âlemde izz ü kadr ile bir padişâh idi." (Where is that ruler whose every servant was a king in the world in honor and rank.) Revânî's elegy says: "Şeb aldı egnine yine kara libâsını / Şehzâdenin meğer tutar ol dahi yasını." (Night has again put on its black garment, as if mourning the prince as well.) Sâyilî also wrote an elegy of thirty couplets. İdris-i Bitlisî praises him as worthy, in valor, strength of arm and statecraft, of the lords of the battlefield, and as foremost of his time in protecting the sharia and spreading virtue; the same source also writes that he took counsel openly and in private with the people of God, and that he spent all his effort on the affairs of religion and state.

Place of Burial

No record of a tomb of Alemşah at Manisa has been found. According to the sources, the prince was buried in the Muradiye Complex in Bursa. In the Tomb of Prince Mustafa, built in Muradiye in 1479, Prince Mustafa, Abdullah (1483), Cem (1499) and Alemşah (1503) were interred. Some sources point to the Tomb of Cem Sultan for his grave; Şafakcı states that the records point to the Mustafa Tomb. In his endowment deed dated 28 March-6 April 1504, Bayezid II established endowments in the names of Mustafa, Abdullah and Alemşah, stipulating daily Qur'an recitation for the souls of the princes and the wages of lamp oil, doorkeeper, collector and administrator.

The phrase "Sultan Alemşah Tomb" in the documents gives the impression that a separate tomb existed; what is meant, however, is the endowment established in the prince's name in the tomb at Muradiye. On 25 July 1514, on the death of Latif, who read one juz a day for two akçe at the "Tomb of Sultan Alemşah", his son Fethullah was appointed; and in 1551 new warrants were issued for positions of juz-reciter in this tomb. The balance of the Endowment of the Tomb of the Princes (Mustafa, Abdullah and Alemşah) for 1539-1566 shows that the villages attached to the endowment (Hotani, Çakaroz, Yeşen, Kabaağaç, Kayser, İlyaslar, Panbucak, Öyücek, Budam, Gürlüce, Dur Ali and Kavaklı) yielded a total income of 844,728 akçe, of which 282,357 akçe was cash and 559,371 akçe produce. This income was spent on a staff made up of a trustee, a clerk, a tomb keeper, three collectors and eight guards, on forty-five juz-reciters and hafizes reading from the Qur'an in rotation, on candles and lamp oil, on granary rents and on the repair of the tomb.

Family and Those Left Behind

The name of Alemşah's wife is mostly not given in the sources and appears as "Osman's mother"; only in Kâmil Kepecioğlu's Bursa Kütüğü is his wife named "Hurşid Hatun". His son Osman (Osmanşah, Osman Çelebi) was born in Menteşe in 1492. On his father's death the sultan took him into his care; after his education he made him sanjak governor of Çankırı on 16 March 1507, giving him 100,000 akçe in cash together with a horsetail standard, cloth, horse trappings, weapons, a horse, mules, camels and kitchen utensils. It is stated that he served in Çankırı until 16 December 1512 and that the Ravzatü'l-İslâm was written in his name. He was killed in 1513 and buried in the tomb of his grandmother Gülruh Hatun. Some sources attribute his killing to Selim the Grim; Şafakcı's article does not name the killer. In the registers of 1511-1513, 1,000 akçe a month was recorded for Osman's mother, and on 29 March 1513, 26,800 akçe a year.

On his daughters the sources diverge: the names Ayşe and Fatma are mentioned, while Uluçay says nothing is known of Ayşe Sultan. One daughter married Mehmed Çelebi, son of Sofu Sultan; on 31 March 1508, 1,249,147 akçe was recorded for "the dowry of Alem Bey's daughter". Mehmed Çelebi appears as sanjak governor of Kocaeli in 1510 and as mirliva of Biga in October 1511. In the register of 1511-1513 a girl is also recorded under the name "Hanzade Sultan, daughter of Sultan Alemşah", receiving 1,120 akçe a month and, from the stipend paid to women of the dynasty, 70 akçe a day. It is recorded that a grave of "Fatıma Hatun binti Sultan Alemşah" lies in the Tomb of Gülruh Hatun. The Ayşe and Fatma named in Gülruh's endowment deed, however, are daughters of Prince Mahmud. Because similar names were so often used within the dynasty, Şafakcı says caution is needed on this point. It is also known that Hafsa Sultan, on hearing of the plight of the grandchildren orphaned by Gülruh's death, wrote a letter to her son asking him to help Alemşah's daughters.

Gülruh Hatun lived in the Old Palace after her son's death. In 1513 she is recorded as receiving a stipend of 100 akçe a day; in the same record 32 akçe is written for the agha beside her and three for the gatekeeper. She congratulated Selim on his accession by letter. She was a benefactor who left revenues to the Fethiye Mosque and soup kitchen at Akhisar, to the mosque, teachers' house and school at Denizli, and to her endowments in Bursa. In 1530 the soup kitchen at Akhisar had 80 shops in the Köşk district attached to Güzelhisar in the Aydın sanjak and a caravanserai; one of the soup kitchen's revenues was the Şengeldi Bath. She had the Tomb of Gülruh Hatun in Bursa built in 1526 and died before 1528-29. In this tomb lie her own grave, that of her daughter Kamer Sultan, that of her grandson Osman and that of Fatıma Hatun.

No work, endowment or memory of place belonging to Alemşah has been found in Amasya in the sources; this absence is consistent with his not having served as prince-governor there. His tie to Amasya consists of his birth alone. In the years of Bayezid's governorship many of the princes were born in this city and then dispersed to different sanjaks; Alemşah was one of these children. While his elder brother Ahmed continued as governor of Amasya, he served in the sanjaks of the Aegean and died in 1503, before the earthquake of 1509 that struck Amasya and its surroundings and before the Qizilbash movements of 1512.

Chronology

1466 (or 1467): Birth in Amasya (an inference from the Hijri year 871; Öztuna gives 1477).

1480: According to İbn Kemal, he is among the princes circumcised by Mehmed the Conqueror.

1481: His father Bayezid II ascends the throne; the Menteşe sanjak and first tutor Yakub Pasha (the starting date is disputed in the sources).

1487 (12 December): 100,464 akçe is added to his hass in Menteşe.

1492: His son Osman is born in Menteşe.

1497 (4 September): İbrahim Ağa is appointed tutor.

1498 (8 August): Çakırı Sinan Bey becomes tutor.

1499 (15 December): 186,915 akçe of hass is registered from the Madran, Receb Kireniz and Gereme zeamets.

1501 (June): Orders concerning the raids on the Menteşe coast and the Rhodes affair.

1501 late / 1502 early: With Korkud's departure from Saruhan, Alemşah becomes sanjak governor of Saruhan.

1502 (26 April): The village of Gediklü is endowed to the Kurşunlu Mescidi.

1502 (May): He can be shown from the documents to be in Manisa.

1503 (8 February): His mother makes an endowment for the reading of the Qur'an for the soul of her "late" son.

1503 (29 March): A report sent to Venice shows that the death had occurred before this date.

1504 (28 March-6 April): The endowment deed in which Bayezid II establishes endowments in the names of Mustafa, Abdullah and Alemşah.

1507 (16 March): His son Osman becomes sanjak governor of Çankırı.

1513: Osman Çelebi is killed.

Sources

Academic studies

  • Hamit Şafakcı, "İlme ve Eğlenceye Düşkün Bir Şehzadenin Hayatı: II. Bayezid'in Oğlu Alemşah", Uluslararası Tarih Araştırmaları Dergisi (UTAD), 9(1), 2025, pp. 34-54. Information on İbn Kemal, İdris-i Bitlisî, Hoca Sadeddin, Uluçay, Uzunçarşılı, Peirce, Fisher, Alderson, Öztuna, Gökçe and the Ottoman Archive records on which the article draws is taken from that study.

Other sources

  • "II. Bayezid", Vikipedi (tr.wikipedia.org), supporting source. tr.wikipedia.org
  • "Gülruh Hatun", Vikipedi (tr.wikipedia.org), supporting source. tr.wikipedia.org
  • "Şehzade Alemşah", Vikipedi (tr.wikipedia.org), supporting source. tr.wikipedia.org

Online sources