Şehzade Alaeddin Ali Çelebi (Prince Alaeddin Ali Çelebi) was a son of Murad II and the elder brother of Mehmed II (the Conqueror). He was born in Edirne in 1425 and died in 1443, at the age of seventeen or eighteen. He spent most of his short life in the seats of the sanjaks, first at Kütahya and then at Amasya. The sources return again and again to the point that he was his father's favorite son and was being raised as the prince who would one day take the throne. His death, on the other hand, has given rise to accounts that differ with one another over both the place and the cause.

Birth and Family

Alaeddin Ali was born in Edirne in 1425. His father was Murad II, the sixth sultan of the Ottoman dynasty. According to some sources his mother was Murad's second wife; her name is not known, though she is said to have been a sister of Karaca Pasha. Since this information rests on a single general source, it should be treated with caution. Karaca Bey's name comes up in the discussions of the prince's death as well: some accounts speak of him as "Dayı Karaca Bey" (Uncle Karaca Bey), and the commander who prevented Murad from withdrawing during the Battle of Varna is mentioned under the same title.

The prince held a special place among Murad's children. Studies based on Halil İnalcık and Franz Babinger record that he was his father's favorite and that Murad cherished a particular affection for him, while his brother Mehmed appears in the same studies as a headstrong prince who did not occupy so large a place in his father's heart. Murad is spoken of as having regarded him as "the son he loved and trusted most." Some writers describe him as the heir apparent whom his father was training, and claim that the chronicles of the period describe his education in greater detail than that of his brother Mehmed; this last claim is the writers' own assessment.

According to some sources, around 1437-1438 Alaeddin Ali married Selmin Hatun, a daughter of Şadi Beyzade Mahmut Şah, and had a daughter named Selvi. We have not been able to verify this against a primary source. On the other hand, it is reported that the Amasya historian Hüseyin Hüsameddin asserted that the prince was killed together with his two sons, and another account writes that two of his children were carried dead out of the palace. These accounts cannot be reconciled with the report of a family with a single daughter. There is no reliable document concerning the prince's marriage and children.

Education and His Lala

In Ottoman custom a prince was entrusted from childhood to the care of a lala (tutor-guardian) and learned the business of government by seeing it at work in his sanjak. Alaeddin Ali's lala was Yörgüç Pasha. Yörgüç Pasha's name also lives on in the memory of the city of Amasya: in Selim Özcan's list of the mosques of Amasya, the "Yörgüç Pasha Mosque" is given the date 1428. The same study records that Yörgüç Pasha was sent to the wardenship of Edirne in 1435. According to another account Yörgüç Pasha died in 1441 and Paşazade Mehmed Efendi was appointed lala in his place; this date and name rest on a single source and should be read as reported information, not as established fact.

The prince's teacher is said to have been Hatipzade Tâceddin İbrahim Efendi. There is a clue in support of this name: many of the masters of Mehmed II's time, among them Hızır Bey and Hatibzade Tâceddin İbrahim, are counted among the pupils of Molla Yegân, who served as müfti and judge under Murad II. A good number of scholars from Arabia, Turkestan and the Crimea had also come to Ottoman lands in Murad's reign. That the prince's teacher came out of this learned circle gives an idea of the level of his education, but we have no direct document on what Alaeddin Ali actually studied.

The Sanjak Years: Kütahya, Saruhan and Amasya

The prince's sanjak appointments are not given in the same way in the sources. According to local records in Kütahya, Alaeddin Ali was sanjak governor of Kütahya from 1433 to 1438 (836-841 in the Hijri calendar), with Yörgüç Pasha as his lala. It also belongs to this period that the French traveler Bertrandon de la Broquière wrote of meeting, in the residence of Alaeddin, son of Sultan Murad II, at Kütahya, an officer who had fought in France. According to this account, when his brother Şehzade Ahmed, the sanjak governor of Amasya, died, Alaeddin Ali was sent from Kütahya to Amasya. Another sequence gives him Saruhan in 1437-1442 and Amasya in 1442-1443, and names Mehmed as his predecessor at Amasya.

This last point is tied to another dispute. Selim Özcan writes that after the death of Şehzade Ahmed, the eight-year-old Mehmed (the future Conqueror) was appointed to Amasya in 1438, but he also notes that Halil İnalcık finds the claim that Mehmed was sanjak governor of Amasya doubtful. Other publications give the year 1440 and the age of fifteen for the appointment to Amasya; since the same group of sources also contains the date 1442, the sequence is not consistent within itself. It is not possible to reduce this contradictory sequence to a single firm chronology. What the sources have in common is this: Alaeddin Ali was sanjak governor of Amasya before his death, and he came to the post after the death of his brother Ahmed.

Murad's own life is closely bound up with this sanjak as well. Murad II was born in Amasya in Dhu al-Hijja 806 (June 1404), and when he turned twelve he was sent to Amasya with the governorship of the province of Rûm, which embraced the districts of Amasya, Tokat, Sivas, Çorum and Osmancık. That Murad was born in Amasya makes Alaeddin Ali's coming there one link in the long relationship the dynasty had formed with this sanjak. According to Özcan, twelve princes in all served at the head of this sanjak.

The Amasya Years

Before Alaeddin Ali, his elder brother Ahmed had served here as sanjak governor for about three years and had died in Amasya in 1438. In this respect the fate of the two brothers crosses at Amasya: one died in this city, while the other walked from the governorship of this city into a campaign and into death. It is known that Şehzade Ahmed too died in his father's lifetime, but we have found no text that reliably describes how Murad reacted to this death or how long afterwards Alaeddin Ali came to Amasya.

The sources at our disposal contain no detailed and documented information on Alaeddin Ali's administration at Amasya, his palace, his council, or any building or endowment of his. This section will not be filled out with invented detail. In a footnote of Özcan's, an "Alaeddin Ali Mosque (1436)" is named among the small mosques (mescit) of Amasya. But the year 1436 falls a year before the prince's appointment to Amasya, and it is possible that the mosque belongs to another person of the same name. We found no document linking it to the prince, and so nothing certain can be said about this mosque.

The Amasya Princes Museum has a wax figure of Alaeddin Ali. Today the city remembers this young prince chiefly through that representation and through his place within its identity as a "city of princes."

The Karaman Campaign of 1443

In 1443 Karamanoğlu İbrahim Bey, on receiving news of the Ottoman defeat in Transylvania, marched against Akşehir and Beyşehir. Murad II at once set out with the kapıkulu troops, and Prince Alaeddin marched as well with the Amasya forces. The Ottomans plundered and ravaged the province of Karaman, Konya and Larende included; but Murad, mindful of the situation in Rumelia, signed a peace and returned to Edirne. The account of İdris-i Bitlisî runs along the same lines: as Murad marched to take revenge on İbrahim Bey, he had also summoned his son, Prince Alaeddin, from Amasya. According to another account the prince joined the campaign on his father's orders, with the sipahis under his command.

In the passage Neşri relates, the Karamanoğlu is said to have fled to Taşili, and the words "Alaeddin Çelebi laid Larende waste together with his father" appear. This statement is not explicitly tied to the prince; but the fact that Bitlisî and later accounts name the prince who took part in the campaign by the same name strongly suggests that the person Neşri meant was Alaeddin Ali. According to Neşri the Ottoman forces behaved with extreme harshness on this campaign, and it is said that no Ottoman bey until then had wrought such destruction. Afterwards İbrahim Bey's wife İlaldı Hatun, that is, Murad's sister, came with her vizier to ask pardon for her husband. All the writers agree that İlaldı Hatun and her vizier Server took part in these peace talks. It is also recorded that the Karaman campaigns took place in 1442-1443 and in 1444, that the chronicles confuse these campaigns with one another, and that the Treaty of Yenişehir is dated July 1444.

After this campaign the prince returned to Amasya and died soon afterwards. The records at Kütahya write that the prince returned to Amasya after the campaign against the Karamanids and died a short while later, in 1443, at the age of eighteen. According to another account he came as far as Bursa on the return, then his sanjak took him back again to Amasya, and the news of his death reached Murad shortly after the latter had returned to Edirne. Where and how exactly the death took place differs in the sources.

His Death: The Contradiction Among the Sources

Place and Date of Death

  • Some sources write that Alaeddin Ali died "near Bursa" in a riding accident on his return from the Karaman campaign.
  • According to some studies the prince died in June 1443 "on returning to Amasya"; the records at Kütahya too mention the return and speak of Amasya.
  • The encyclopedia entry on Murad II writes that after the struggle at the Zlatitsa Pass (24 November 1443), while Murad was dealing with the Hungarians, "the news that his son Alâeddin Ali Çelebi, whom he loved and trusted much, had died in Amasya" reached him. That is, this account places the death in Amasya.

The prince's burial in the Muradiye Complex at Bursa does not remove this contradiction. It is possible that a prince who died in Amasya was brought to Bursa, but we have seen no source that confirms it. For this reason we cannot state the place of death with certainty.

Manner of Death

  • The accident account: According to the narrative of the Byzantine historian Chalkokondyles, the prince, while mounting quickly during a deer hunt, caught his foot, fell to the ground, broke his neck and died on the spot. Many sources too say "an accident while mounting." Some writers note that in the Ottoman sources the prince is sixteen years old, while the Byzantine historian Doukas speaks of a young and handsome prince of eighteen, and that no known health problem existed.
  • The murder account: Franz Babinger described this death as "a secret that will probably never be solved." According to a report that has been handed down, at Varna in 1444, when Murad wished to leave the battlefield, the janissary agha Kurtçu Doğan rebuked the Anatolian beylerbey who was holding the bridle of the sultan's horse with the words "You have killed Sultan Alaeddin." This sentence is taken as an indication that the prince died by assassination and not by accident; but what the janissary agha meant, and how far the saying can be trusted, remain open to debate. In the encyclopedia entry on Murad II, the man who prevented Murad's withdrawal at Varna appears as Dayı Karaca Bey. The man called the beylerbey and Dayı Karaca Bey may be the same person, but the sources do not explicitly join them.
  • Court circles and theories of revenge: Some writers set out theories about the part played in the death by the faction around Murad, by the Serbian princess Mara, and by İskender Bey, the sanjak governor of Nikopol. According to these writers Murad had İskender Bey's father put to death in 1437 and had the eyes of Mara's brothers put out with hot irons in 1441, and for this reason it is suggested that they may have wished to take revenge. That Mara was a bride sent to Edirne in 1433 by the Serbian despot Branković with a dowry of 400,000 ducats, and that she played an important part in the Hungarian truce of 1444, is recorded in encyclopedic sources. These theories are not proven. The accusation of the child Mehmed is also part of these discussions, but it is a weak possibility; the same writers find the claim illogical, noting that Mehmed was only a ten-year-old child when his elder brother died.
  • His maternal uncle Karaca Bey: It is said that in some Ottoman history books one comes across reports that Alaeddin was killed by Dayı Karaca Bey; there is no information about the reason.
  • The claim of Hüseyin Hüsameddin: Hüseyin Hüsameddin of Amasya claimed that devshirmes who did not want him to take the throne had the prince killed together with his two sons; he did not, however, offer any evidence to support it.

The sources of the period give little information on this subject. Some studies, for their part, refer to the death directly as a "killing," and note that Oruç Bey, Lütfi Pasha and Hoca Sadeddin reflect the great effect this death had on Murad. The date of death is given as June 1443. What is certain is this: the prince died young in 1443, and the true cause is still disputed.

The Father's Grief and the Fate of the Throne

The death of Alaeddin Ali shook Murad II deeply. According to the records at Kütahya, after the peace made with the enemy Murad handed the government of the state to Mehmed and withdrew into seclusion. In August 1444 (Jumada al-Awwal 848), at Mihalıç, before the kapıkulu troops and the beys, Murad formally abdicated in favor of his son Mehmed II and turned to a life of asceticism and piety around Bursa. It is thought that the death of his eldest son and the opposition he met from the marcher lords must have weighed in this decision; that is, this is an inference and is not based directly on a document. A study based on İnalcık also reports that this death caused Murad's renunciation of the throne.

This decision did not ease the state. When Murad withdrew, leaving the throne to a child of twelve, the state fell into a grave crisis. Çandarlı Halil Pasha gained great power, the other viziers and Mehmed's lalas lined up against him, and the Crusader attack came with greater force than ever. The Battle of Varna was fought on 10 November 1444, and the Ottomans won the victory. On the handing over of the throne the records say this: Şehzade Ahmed had died in his father's lifetime, Alaeddin Ali had died in 1443, and Mehmed remained as the prince to whom Murad could leave the throne.

His Tomb

Alaeddin Ali's grave is in the Muradiye Complex at Bursa. The grave lies in a room adjoining the east wall of the tomb of Murad II; the sarcophagus was placed in this room, which is reached by passing through the tomb. In the Simavlılar quarter of Bursa, Murad built a zaviye (dervish lodge) and a madrasa around his mosque, completed in Muharram 830 (November 1426), and the deed of endowment for these, dated 22 Shawwal 833 (14 July 1430), has come down to us. The tombs of Murad II and of his son Alaeddin are here as well; this corner of Bursa bears the name Muradiye.

Murad's will is connected with the prince's memory. In the will he had drawn up on 9 Jumada al-Awwal 850 (2 August 1446), Murad records that he wished to be buried in Bursa "beside the grave next to my late son Ali," that a tomb be built open to the sky, so that rain could fall on it, that none of his descendants who died should be buried beside him, and that he freed all his slaves. According to another account the will asked that the funeral take place on a Thursday, with the body laid directly in the earth, and that he be buried near his son Alaeddin, though not too near. Murad died at Edirne on 3 February 1451, at the age of forty-eight, and was brought to Bursa. This will is interpreted as an indication that Murad never forgot the grief for his son.

His Place in the Memory of Amasya

No concrete work that Alaeddin Ali left to Amasya is known. But in the years when princes lived in Amasya the city became a dynastic town, and Alaeddin Ali is one of the short-lived members of this dynastic tradition. His memory in the city today is limited to the wax figure in the museum.

Chronology

1425: Born in Edirne.

1433-1438: Sanjak governor of Kütahya (according to local sources; some sources give Saruhan in 1437-1442).

1438: His elder brother Şehzade Ahmed dies in Amasya.

1440: Sanjak governor of Amasya (according to some sources; others give 1442).

1443: Murad II's Karaman campaign after the attack of Karamanoğlu İbrahim Bey; the prince is on campaign with the Amasya forces.

June 1443: Death on the return from the Karaman campaign (the sources differ on the place).

August 1444: Murad II abdicates in favor of his son Mehmed.

10 November 1444: Battle of Varna.

2 August 1446: The will of Murad II.

3 February 1451: Murad II dies at Edirne; he is buried at Muradiye in Bursa.

Sources

Academic studies

  • "Murad II", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, islamansiklopedisi.org.tr. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Selim Özcan, "Amasya'da Sancak Beyliği Yapan Şehzadeler Döneminde Amasya Şehri", Amasya Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi, issue 5.
  • "Osmanlı ile Karamanlı Arasında Bir Kadın: İlaldı Hatun", Belleten, belleten.gov.tr. belleten.gov.tr

Official sources

  • "Kütahya'da Yetişen Osmanlı Şehzadeleri", Kütahya Governorship (kutahya.gov.tr). kutahya.gov.tr

Other sources

  • "Şehzade Alâaddin", Vikipedi (Turkish). tr.wikipedia.org
  • "Kütahya'nın Şehzadeleri: Alaaddin Ali Çelebi", Dumlupınar Gazetesi.
  • Ahmet Anapalı, "Fatih'in Abisi Şehzade Alaaddin Ali Öldü'rüldü' mü?", Haber7. haber7.com
  • "Fatih'in Ağabeyi Şehzade Alaeddin Ali Çelebi'nin Esrarengiz Ölümü", Yeni Akit. yeniakit.com.tr
  • "Fatih Sultan Mehmed'in Hikmete Sığınması Üzerine", Milli Mecmua 32, May-June 2023 (İSAM).