The execution of princes that accompanied changes on the throne is one of the gravest and most debated practices in the history of the Ottoman dynasty. Amasya, a city of princes, stood in a corner of the stage at almost every stage of this story. During the Interregnum Çelebi Mehmed waged his struggle against his brothers from here, Bayezid II received the news of his father's death here, Şehzade Ahmed governed this sanjak for nearly thirty years, and in the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent the fates of Şehzade Mustafa and Şehzade Bayezid also passed through Amasya. For this reason, in the city's memory the killing of princes is remembered as the story of familiar people who had lived in its streets and prayed in its mosques.

Understanding this memory requires seeing the past within its own conditions and approaching the suffering it contained with human compassion. Fratricide was justified by the concern to prevent the division of the state and was largely approved by the jurists of the age, yet the poets, the common people and the soldiers of that same age received it with deep grief. Amasya's mosques, tombs and local historical writing carry both of these faces together.

Uncertain Succession and the Roots of Fratricide

In their first centuries the Ottomans had no fixed rule of succession. In the old Turkish political tradition sovereignty was regarded as the common property of the dynasty, a conception known as ülüş. Since every male member of the dynasty was considered to have an equal claim to the throne, the death of a ruler was often the beginning of a long struggle between brothers. The legal historian Ekrem Buğra Ekinci recalls that the Hunnic, Göktürk, Karakhanid, Ghaznavid and Seljuk states fell apart largely for this reason, and writes that the Ottomans, having learned from this experience, drank the "bitter medicine" themselves. The practice popularly known as fratricide (kardeş katli) was the killing of members of the dynasty on the grounds of nizâm-ı âlem, that is, public order and the common good.

The roots of the practice reach back to the founding years of the state. According to tradition, Osman Gazi had his uncle Dündar Bey killed around 1298 for working against him and collaborating with the Byzantine lords of the region. Savcı Bey, son of Murad I, rose against his father and was defeated and put to death. When Sultan Murad fell at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, the leading men of the state swore allegiance to Bayezid and advised him to have his brother Yakub Çelebi killed at once. Yakub Çelebi is regarded as the first Ottoman prince killed solely for the sake of the state's stability although he had not rebelled. For several centuries after this, members of the dynasty were seen as a problem for the state in almost every reign, and princes who came forward with a claim to the throne often secured the backing of the Anatolian principalities, Byzantium or Venice.

The practice of sending princes out to the sanjaks made this rivalry both educated and armed. From a certain age each prince was sent to a sanjak as its governor, where he learned the business of government together with his lala (tutor-guardian) and his household. Since the prince who first reached the capital on his father's death took the throne, proximity to the centre became an advantage in itself. Behind each prince stood the military strength of his sanjak and a circle of supporters drawn from the palace, the ulema and the army. After Bayezid I (Yıldırım Bayezid) took Amasya, heirs apparent began to be sent to this sanjak, and Amasya thus came to be seen as one of the sanjaks closest to the throne. The other side of this privilege was that struggles for the throne were frequently linked with the city's name.

The Kanunname of Mehmed II and the Nizâm-ı Âlem Clause

A practice that had earlier rested on custom acquired a written basis with the famous clause in the Teşkilât Kanunnâmesi (law code of organisation) of Mehmed II (the Conqueror). The clause reads: "And to whichever of my sons the sultanate may fall, it is fitting that he put his brothers to death for the order of the world. Most of the ulema have also permitted it. Let them act accordingly." Ekinci draws attention to the choice of the word münâsibdir ("it is fitting") instead of lâzımdır or vâcibdir ("it is necessary", "it is obligatory"), and argues that the code granted the ruler a permission rather than imposing an obligation. The same scholar states that, contrary to the Byzantine historians, Mehmed II himself did not have a brother killed, since he had no living brother when he came to the throne.

Whether the code was authentic was also debated for a long time. Some scholars claimed that the text had been attributed to Mehmed II at a later date, but references in the chronicles of the period and the discovery of a new manuscript have strengthened the view, now prevailing in scholarly circles, that the text is genuine. The code did not introduce a rule of succession. It formulated the principle that the strongest and most fortunate prince would take the throne and that the other male members of the dynasty who might claim it could be eliminated. In Ekinci's words, this arrangement embedded the Islamic legal principle of the indivisibility of sovereignty in Ottoman political life, even at the cost of the lives of members of the dynasty.

The legal justifications for the practice were debated by the scholars of the age with reference to two distinct situations. The first was that of a prince who rose in revolt with a claim to the throne; armed rebellion against the legitimate ruler was considered bağy, and its penalty was death. The actions of Savcı Bey, Cem Sultan and Süleyman's son Şehzade Bayezid have been assessed within this framework. The second was the killing of princes who had not yet rebelled, out of fear that they might later cause civil strife (fitne). Most jurists placed this under the offence of spreading corruption and within the scope of discretionary punishment (ta'zir), and scholars who had served as şeyhülislam, such as Hoca Sadeddin Efendi, relied on the Qur'anic verses declaring that strife is worse than killing. In the same period there were also jurists who opposed this view, recalling that no one may be punished for a crime that might be committed in the future, and the basis of the practice in the sharia never won undisputed acceptance.

Amasya and Çelebi Mehmed in the Interregnum

Amasya's first great role in this history emerged during the Interregnum that followed the Battle of Ankara in 1402. Mehmed Çelebi, son of Bayezid I, had been sent in 1399 as governor of the province of Rûm, which included Amasya, Tokat, Sivas and Ankara. In the struggle for the throne that he entered with his brothers Süleyman, Îsâ and Mûsâ after the defeat at Ankara, Tokat and Amasya became his base. It is known that he had the support of the ulema and notables of Amasya as he established his authority against his rivals. When he lost Bursa and Ankara to Süleyman Çelebi in 1403-1404, he again withdrew to the Tokat-Amasya line.

The civil war, which lasted ten years, ended with the brothers being eliminated one by one. Îsâ Çelebi, after his defeat by Mehmed, met an end that the sources describe in different ways; Elizabeth Zachariadou states that he was killed by Süleyman in 1403. Süleyman Çelebi lost his life in 1411. Mûsâ Çelebi was defeated by Mehmed at Çamurluova on 5 July 1413, and while trying to flee to Wallachia, wounded, he was captured and strangled. Thus the prince who had set out from Amasya entered history as the sole master of the state under the name Sultan Mehmed I (Çelebi Mehmed). When the Timurid ruler Shahrukh wrote him a letter declaring that killing his brothers was contrary to custom, Mehmed's reply was long repeated: "My forefathers resolved certain difficulties through experience. Two sovereigns cannot dwell in one country."

The memory of the Interregnum years also forms an important part of local historical writing in Amasya. The third volume of Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar's Amasya Târihi describes Mehmed Çelebi's activities in the city at length, and later researchers frequently turn to this section.

From Amasya to the Throne: Bayezid II and Cem Sultan

Bayezid, son of Mehmed II, was sent to govern the sanjak of Amasya at the age of seven and remained in the city for many years. His son Selim, the future Selim I (Selim the Grim), was likewise born in Amasya while his father was its governor. When Mehmed II died in 1481, Bayezid was in Amasya, while his brother Cem had been in Konya as sanjak governor since 1474. Bayezid reached the capital first and ascended the throne. Cem, claiming that their father had chosen him and that Bayezid had seized power unjustly, raised an army, entered Bursa and proposed to his elder brother that they divide the realm. Under this plan he himself would rule Anatolia from Bursa, and Bayezid would rule Rumelia from Istanbul.

Bayezid rejected the proposal as dangerous to the survival of the state. Cem was defeated at Yenişehir on 22 June 1481 and fled to Egypt; after trying his fortune again the following year, he took refuge with the Knights of Rhodes on 29 July 1482. Passed from hand to hand among the courts of Europe like a hostage for the next thirteen years, the prince died near Naples on 25 February 1495, and it was rumoured that he had very probably been poisoned. His body was handed over to the Ottomans in 1499 and buried in the Muradiye cemetery in Bursa. Cem's son Oğuz Han was also killed, and on his death the prince wrote an elegy that reflects the grief of a sorrowing father. The Cem affair was the clearest example of how a prince left alive could become a political bargaining chip in the hands of hostile states, and it profoundly influenced the decisions of later generations.

Bayezid's tie with Amasya continued after he ascended the throne. The mosque complex (külliye) consisting of a mosque, madrasa, soup kitchen and ablution fountain that he had built in the city through his son Şehzade Ahmed was completed between 1481 and 1486. This complex would also hold the most tangible memorial of the dynastic tragedy that was to unfold a few decades later.

Şehzade Ahmed and the Fate of His Sons

Şehzade Ahmed, son of Bayezid II, is the prince who is thought to have been born in Amasya around 1466 and who governed this sanjak throughout his father's reign. After the death of his elder brother Abdullah in 1483 he was regarded, as the eldest surviving son, as his father's favourite, and most of the imperial council, led by Grand Vizier Hadım Ali Pasha, supported him. Known also as a poet and scholar, Ahmed was the patron of a literary circle in Amasya that included poets such as Mihrî Hatun. His brothers Korkud and Selim were in Antalya and Trabzon respectively, and the distance of the sanjaks from the capital largely determined whose chances in the succession were greatest. The sending of Selim's son Süleyman, at Ahmed's objection, to distant Kefe instead of Bolu near Istanbul further heightened the tension between the two brothers.

Selim did not accept this situation. Although he was defeated by his father's forces in 1511 and withdrew to the Crimea, Ahmed's conduct during the Şahkulu rebellion and the death of Hadım Ali Pasha in that rebellion shifted the balance. Ahmed took Konya and presented himself as a sovereign, then marched on the capital, but although he came as far as Üsküdar he could not enter the city because of the opposition of the Janissaries. The Janissaries in Istanbul openly declared that they wanted Selim. In 1512 Selim forced his father to abdicate. Bayezid II died on 10 June 1512 in the village of Abalar on his way to Dimetoka. Rumours that Selim had his father poisoned appear especially in Western sources, but they cannot be confirmed by other sources.

The Bursa Executions, Korkud and Yenişehir

After ascending the throne, Selim I gave priority to eliminating the brothers and nephews who might claim the throne. Ahmed at this time was acting as a sovereign in Konya and trying to seize Bursa by sending his son Alâeddin there. When Selim crossed into Anatolia, Ahmed withdrew from Afyon to Ankara, and from there to Amasya and Darende. When Selim came to Bursa on 23 November to spend the winter of 1512, he had Grand Vizier Koca Mustafa Pasha executed on the charge of corresponding with his elder brother. In the same days his nephews who were in the city, Mûsâ, Orhan and Emîr, sons of Şehzade Mahmud, together with Osman, son of Âlemşah, and Mehmed, son of Şehinşah, were also killed on the grounds of securing the sultanate. Their fathers had died earlier, and they themselves had taken no part in any struggle for the throne.

Next came the turn of Şehzade Korkud in Manisa. According to the account, some viziers and soldiers at the centre had written to Korkud saying they wished to see him as sultan, and Korkud had replied favourably, promising to raise their pay. When the letter fell into Selim's hands it meant the prince's end, and Korkud was seized and killed in 1513. Now only his elder brother Ahmed and Ahmed's sons remained before Selim. Ahmed had by then regained control of Amasya and, trusting the letters he received, marched on Bursa early in 1513. Routed in the battle fought on the plain of Yenişehir, the prince was captured and killed as he tried to flee the battlefield. The date of the battle is given in some sources as 15 April and in others as 24 April 1513. Ahmed's body was taken to Bursa and buried in the Muradiye, in the tomb that Selim I built for his brother; his mother Bülbül Hatun also lies in the same tomb.

Ahmed's Sons

Şehzade Ahmed is known to have had at least seven sons, and the lives of nearly all of them came to a tragic end between 1512 and 1518. Osman, governor of the sanjak of Osmancık, was killed in 1513. Süleyman and Alâeddin had taken refuge in Mamluk territory and died of plague in Cairo in 1513. Two young sons named Ali and Mehmed were also killed on Selim's orders in 1513. Kasım was killed in Cairo on 30 January 1518, after Selim's Egyptian campaign. Murad, who had served as governor of Bolu, took refuge with the Safavids and died in Ardabil around 1519; his sister Fatma Sultan had gone to Iran with him. Among the troubles on the eastern frontier in Selim's last years were the activities of his nephew Şehzade Murad. Some records based on the work of Nevin Zeynep Yelçe state that Murad's two sons, Mustafa and Mehmed, were also killed in Amasya in 1512-1513; this detail has not been adequately treated in Turkish sources.

The women of Ahmed's family also have a place in the city's memory. It is recorded, on the authority of Amasya Târihi, that Gülçiçek Hatun, one of the prince's consorts, is buried in Amasya. Thus Amasya, after hosting a princely court for nearly thirty years, became the city that also holds the graves of some of the members of that court.

The Tomb of Şehzade Osman

In the Sultan Bayezid II Complex in Amasya, to the southeast of the mosque and in line with its qibla wall, there is a small square tomb (türbe) covered by a dome. Built in alternating courses of cut stone and triple rows of brick, with a wooden entrance canopy in front, the structure was added to the complex later. The tomb is accepted as that of Şehzade Osman Bey, son of Şehzade Ahmed, who was put to death by Selim I in 1513. Local records, for their part, refer to it as the tomb of Osman, the son of Şehzade Ahmed who died young.

The sources disagree about the place and date of Osman's death. According to one account, he was with his father at the Battle of Yenişehir and, after the battle was lost, was captured and strangled. Records based on Yelçe, however, state that he was killed in Amasya on 14 April 1513 and buried at the Sultan Bayezid Mosque. Although the exact place of his death cannot be confirmed by documents, it is accepted that Osman lost his life young in 1513 and lies in Amasya beside the complex his father had built. The sources also name his mother as Sittişah Hatun. This small tomb, still standing in the city, is regarded as the most moving building left from Ahmed's years in Amasya.

Amasya in the Reign of Süleyman: Two Princes

After the reign of Selim I, Manisa came to the fore as the sanjak to which heirs apparent were sent, but Amasya retained its importance in the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent as well. Both of the princes sent to the city in this period, Mustafa and Bayezid, lost their lives on their father's orders. The link between each event and Amasya is different: Mustafa was summoned and killed while governing his sanjak from Amasya, whereas Bayezid came to Amasya unwillingly and conducted his rebellion from here.

Şehzade Mustafa

Şehzade Mustafa, Süleyman's eldest son, was removed from Manisa and sent to Amasya on 16 June 1541, and his mother Mâhidevran Sultan stayed with him. He was a prince loved by the army and the people. During the Nakhchivan campaign of 1553 the sultan summoned his son to his tent in the camp set up at Aktepe near Ereğli in the province of Konya, and Mustafa was strangled there on 6 October 1553. His body was sent to Bursa and buried in the Muradiye, and his young son Mehmed, who was in Bursa, was also killed. The prince's life in Amasya, his court and the events that led to his death are told in detail in a separate article on our site.

Mustafa's death added another layer to Amasya's memory of these events. On his return from the campaign Süleyman stayed in Amasya, and the Peace of Amasya, the first treaty concluded with the Safavids, was signed in this city in the spring of 1555. The Habsburg envoy Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq also met the sultan in Amasya. The words Busbecq wrote in his letters when speaking of Şehzade Mustafa are the most often quoted observation on the killing of princes by a foreign contemporary: to be the son of a Turkish sultan was a great misfortune, for when one of them ascended the throne the others had to prepare for death. The envoy adds that as long as the sultan had a living brother the demands of the Janissaries never ended, and that when their demands were refused they would shout, "May God preserve your brother."

Şehzade Bayezid's Years in Amasya

Şehzade Bayezid, Süleyman's son by Hürrem Sultan, entered into rivalry for the throne with his brother Selim after the death of their elder brother Mustafa. Bayezid also feared that the fratricide clause of the Kanunname of Mehmed II would be applied to him. When he lost his most powerful protector with the death of Hürrem Sultan on 15 April 1558, he began to gather supporters. Wishing to separate his sons, Süleyman on 6 September 1558 transferred Selim to Konya and Bayezid from Kütahya to Amasya, increasing the revenues of each by 300,000 akçe. Bayezid took this appointment as an insult, tried on various pretexts to remain in Kütahya, and set out only on 28 October at his father's insistence. Describing the move to Amasya as a journey "from paradise towards hell", the prince reached the city on 21 December 1558 after a long journey of fifty-five days.

In the months that followed Amasya became the centre of a rebellion. Bayezid raised paid troops known as yevmlü and, faced with his father's temporising promises, began to accuse him, saying, "Does one who is sultan tell lies?" Süleyman asked Selim to raise troops as well and sent Sokullu Mehmed Pasha and some of the beylerbeys (governors-general) to his aid. In the fatwas obtained from Şeyhülislam Ebüssuûd Efendi and other scholars, Bayezid was defined as a bâgī, a rebel who had renounced obedience to the sultan, seized fortresses, taken property from the people by force and raised troops, and his execution was declared obligatory. Coming from Amasya to Ankara, Bayezid arrived before Konya on 29 May 1559 with forces numbering some 30,000. The battle, which began on 30 May and lasted two days, was won by Selim's better-organised forces.

Bayezid hurried back to Amasya and sent the mufti Muhyiddin Cürcânî to his father to ask for forgiveness. Süleyman did not consider his son worthy of pardon and ordered his immediate arrest. Bayezid then left Amasya on 7 July 1559, taking with him his sons Orhan, Osman, Mahmud and Abdullah. As he approached the eastern frontier he defeated the sanjak governors who caught up with him at Sa'd Çukuru, but realising that he could find no shelter in Ottoman lands, he took refuge in Iran in mid-August. In Qazvin he was received by Shah Tahmasp with a splendid ceremony, but the shah soon dispersed his soldiers on the pretext that an assassination was being planned, and on 16 April 1560 had the prince imprisoned together with his sons.

After long negotiations it was agreed that 1,200,000 gold pieces would be paid to Tahmasp, that the fortress of Kars would be left to Iran, and that Selim would give a written pledge to remain on friendly terms with Iran when he became sultan. On 23 July 1562 in Qazvin Bayezid was handed over to Ali Ağa, Selim's chief çavuş, and strangled on the spot; his four sons met the same fate. Their bodies were brought to Sivas and buried outside the city walls, and this tomb, known as the Melik-i Acem Türbesi, has not survived. Bayezid's three-year-old fifth son, who was in Bursa, was also killed. The prince, who wrote poetry under the pen name Şâhî and gathered a circle of scholars and poets around him in Kütahya, composed a verse plea for forgiveness with the refrain "baba" (father) that was read in every corner of the country in his day. The Bayezid affair also led to administrative changes such as the spread of Janissaries across Anatolia as garrison troops and the granting of a sanjak only to the eldest of the princes. From then on Manisa became the sanjak of the heir apparent and only the heir was sent out to a sanjak; with this, the period in which Amasya stood out as a princely sanjak also came to a close.

That the killing of princes was regarded as lawful did not mean that society accepted these events emotionally. Jurist-historians such as Kemalpaşazâde, Hoca Sadeddin Efendi and Bostanzâde Yahya Efendi defended the practice on the grounds of nizâm-ı âlem, and at every critical moment, as in the Bayezid rebellion, fatwas were obtained. The poets, by contrast, wrote elegies that openly objected, especially after the death of Şehzade Mustafa. Taşlıcalı Yahyâ's lines "Bunun gibi işi kim gördü kim işitti aceb / Ki oğluna kıya server-i Ömer-meşreb" ("Who ever saw or heard of such a deed, I wonder, / that a lord of Umar's temper should slay his own son?") and Sâmî's couplet "Yok yere kan edesin ya'ni hilâfet bu mudur / Mustafâ n'oldı kanı n'eyledin â padişehim" ("To shed blood for nothing, is this what the caliphate means? / What became of Mustafa, what have you done with his blood, my sultan?") are cited as the voice of the conscience of the age. A chronogram was also composed for the event among the people with the words "mekr-i Rüstem" (the guile of Rüstem).

The reaction had a political side as well. A year after Mustafa's death, those who gathered around his name launched the revolt of the False Mustafa (Düzme Mustafa) in Rumelia. Süleyman, seeing that the reaction would focus on Grand Vizier Rüstem Pasha, removed him from office. Haldun Eroğlu notes that the reaction among the people and officials to Mehmed III's killing of his nineteen brothers on his accession in 1595 played a part in the abandonment of the practice. According to the count compiled by Ekinci, 61 princes lost their lives because of this tradition over more than six hundred years of Ottoman history: five in the fourteenth century, eight in the fifteenth, forty-two in the sixteenth, five in the seventeenth and one in the eighteenth. Twenty-two of these princes were killed because they had actually rebelled.

Different approaches to evaluating the practice exist today as well. Legal historians such as Ekinci argue that events must be considered within the conditions of their own time and that fratricide was a necessity resorted to in order to prevent the division of the state. Other researchers emphasise that the practice had a weak basis in the sharia, rested on customary law, and that punishing a person who had not yet committed a crime was incompatible with the general principles of Islamic law. The encyclopaedia article on Şehzade Mustafa likewise notes that the Ottoman sources' attribution of the event to an intrigue by Hürrem Sultan and Rüstem Pasha falls short of explaining why landless peasants and timar-holding cavalrymen gathered around the prince.

The End of the Sanjak System and Seniority

Towards the end of the sixteenth century the sending of princes to sanjaks was increasingly restricted and finally abandoned. Of the thirteen rulers who ascended the throne in the roughly three centuries from Orhan Bey to Ahmed I, eleven, all except Mehmed I and Selim I, had come to the throne as the eldest surviving son. For this reason, although not official, it had become a custom for the eldest son to be regarded as heir to the throne. When Ahmed I came to the throne in 1603, his brother Mustafa was left unharmed because Ahmed was still very young and it was not yet known whether he would leave an heir.

When Ahmed I died in 1617, the accession of his brother Mustafa I instead of one of his sons ended a three-century tradition. From then on the principle of ekberiyet and erşediyet, under which the eldest and most mature male member of the dynasty ascended the throne, took hold. Princes were no longer sent to sanjaks; they lived under supervision in Topkapı Palace, in apartments adjoining the Harem known as the Şimşirlik because they were surrounded by boxwood trees, and also called the kafes (cage). This order largely put an end to the killing of princes, but in its place it brought a new problem, the upbringing of princes in isolation from the world. Although there were exceptions, such as Murad IV sacrificing an innocent brother whom the soldiery wished to enthrone in order to suppress a revolt, fratricide is considered to have been effectively abandoned from the beginning of the seventeenth century.

This change also meant the close of an era for Amasya. The city, which had hosted princely courts for some two centuries from Bayezid I to the sons of Süleyman, lost this role with the end of the sanjak system. Amasya's title of "City of Princes" ceased to be the name of a living institution and became a memory expressing the city's historical identity.

The Killing of Princes in Amasya's Memory

In Amasya the memory of the killing of princes lives above all in its buildings. The Tomb of Şehzade Osman beside the Sultan Bayezid II Complex is the grave of a young prince lying in the shadow of the mosque his father built. Şehzade Ahmed himself lies in Bursa with his mother Bülbül Hatun, in the tomb his brother Selim I built for him. Octagonal, with an arched marble entrance in front, this tomb is decorated inside with blue-and-white border tiles and hexagonal turquoise and dark blue tiles. That the ruler who had a prince killed built a tomb for him is interpreted as an expression of the respect the dynasty showed its own dead and of its way of coming to terms with these sorrows. Şehzade Mustafa and Cem Sultan also lie in the same Muradiye cemetery, and Bursa became the last resting place of a considerable number of the princes who set out from Amasya.

The second layer of memory is written culture. Hüseyin Hüsameddin Yasar's Amasya Târihi recorded the details of these events, from Mehmed Çelebi's struggle in the city to Şehzade Bayezid's years in Amasya, together with local sources, and has become a source frequently consulted in encyclopaedia articles on the subject. Academic studies of the princes who governed the sanjak of Amasya recount, alongside the city's titles such as Medinetü'l-Hükemâ (City of Sages), Bağdâdü'r-Rûm (Baghdad of Anatolia) and Dârü'n-Nasr (Abode of Victory), the tragic fates of the princes raised here. Şehzade Bayezid's verse plea addressed to his father and the elegies written for Şehzade Mustafa are the best-known pieces of this literary memory.

For centuries the people of the city visited these tombs and prayed for the young princes who lie there. Today the presence among the city's museums of one bearing the name Şehzadeler Müzesi (Museum of the Princes) also shows the place of the institution of princehood in Amasya's historical identity. In this culture of remembrance, alongside the sultans who reached the throne, the stories of princes who never did, such as Ahmed, Osman, Mustafa and Bayezid, are also counted an inseparable part of the city's past.

In looking at this history, the soundest attitude is to try to understand events within the political and legal conditions of their own times while not losing sight of the human suffering they involved. Decisions taken for the sake of the unity of the Ottoman state cost the lives of young men who had grown up in Amasya's streets, studied in its madrasas and prayed in its mosques. The city's tombs and written memory carry these two truths together and remind us that history is the story of fragile human lives as well as of struggles for power.

Chronology

1389: Murad I falls at the Battle of Kosovo; Bayezid ascends the throne and his brother Yakub Çelebi is killed.

1399: Mehmed Çelebi is sent as governor to the province of Rûm, which includes Amasya and Tokat.

1402-1413: The Interregnum; Mehmed Çelebi fights his brothers from his base at Amasya and Tokat.

5 July 1413: Mûsâ Çelebi is captured and strangled after his defeat at Çamurluova.

1481: Mehmed II dies; Bayezid, governor of Amasya, ascends the throne and the struggle with Cem begins. Construction of the Sultan Bayezid II Complex in Amasya begins (1481-1486).

22 June 1481: Cem Sultan is defeated at Yenişehir.

25 February 1495: Cem Sultan dies near Naples.

10 June 1512: Bayezid II, having abdicated, dies in the village of Abalar.

November-December 1512: Selim I has his nephews Mûsâ, Orhan, Emîr, Osman and Mehmed killed in Bursa.

1513: Şehzade Korkud is captured and killed.

15 April 1513: Battle of Yenişehir (24 April in some sources); Şehzade Ahmed is captured and killed. His son Şehzade Osman is also killed the same year and buried in Amasya.

30 January 1518: Ahmed's son Şehzade Kasım is killed in Cairo.

16 June 1541: Şehzade Mustafa is sent to the sanjak of Amasya.

6 October 1553: Şehzade Mustafa is strangled in the army camp near Ereğli in the province of Konya.

1555: Süleyman stays in Amasya; the Peace of Amasya is signed with the Safavids.

21 December 1558: Şehzade Bayezid arrives in Amasya from Kütahya.

30 May 1559: The Battle of Konya begins; Bayezid is defeated.

7 July 1559: Bayezid leaves Amasya with four of his sons and takes refuge in Iran.

23 July 1562: Şehzade Bayezid and his four sons are killed in Qazvin.

1595: Mehmed III has his nineteen brothers killed on his accession.

1617: On the death of Ahmed I his brother Mustafa I ascends the throne; the principle of seniority begins to take hold.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Hüseyin Hüsameddin [Yasar], Amasya Târihi, vol. III.

Academic studies

Official sources

Books

  • O. G. de Busbecq, Türk Mektupları (Turkish translation by Hüseyin Cahit Yalçın), Istanbul 1939.

Other sources

Online sources