The story of Şehzade Ahmed ends on the plain of Yenişehir, but the story of his family does not end there. Ahmed governed Amasya for nearly thirty years, and his children paid for their father's defeat in different lands: one was killed in Amasya, one took refuge in Iran, two died of plague in Egypt, and the youngest was strangled in Cairo after fighting against his uncle in the Mamluk army. Ahmed's own life is told in a separate biography; here he appears only as far as is needed to understand his sons. Şehzade Murad is the subject of a separate article and is mentioned only briefly. The emphasis falls on the two sons who occupy the least space in the sources, Osman and Kasım.

Ahmed's Sons

The number and names of the children of Ahmed, the eldest son of Bayezid II, vary from source to source. According to the general view he had at least seven sons and four daughters. The sons are listed as Süleyman, Alaeddin, Osman, Murad, Ali, Mehmed and Kasım; although Ali and Mehmed are said to have been born in 1499 and 1500 and to have been killed in 1513, these two names could not be confirmed by an independent source. Among Ahmed's consorts, Sittişah Hatun, Gülçiçek Hatun, Bülbül Hatun and Feraşad Hatun are mentioned. It is known that Osman's mother was Sittişah Hatun; the mothers of the other children cannot be told apart with certainty.

After 1509 some of the sons took up posts in small sanjaks around their father's. According to the sources, Osman was at Osmancık in 1509-1513, Alaeddin at Bolu, and Süleyman in the area around Çorum. The eldest son, Murad, had been born in Amasya in 1495 and was left in the city as his father's deputy when Ahmed set out toward Istanbul upon being invited to ascend the throne. The appointment of a grandson to a sanjak reserved for the sons of sultans is a striking exception among the governors of Amasya. Raised in a prince's palace, in a system where the sanjak was regarded as a school of administration, these children expected a future tied to their father's rise; when the rise did not come, that future disappeared.

The Course of the Struggle for the Throne

To understand the fate of the sons, one must briefly look at the last two years of the father. As Bayezid grew older he wished to leave the throne to Ahmed, the eldest son he loved most; but military circles refused to see anyone enthroned during the sultan's lifetime, and the main support went to Selim. Selim became sultan in Istanbul in April 1512, after Bayezid withdrew from the throne. Ahmed did not accept this outcome, behaved like a sovereign in Konya, and sent his sons in two directions: Alaeddin to seize Bursa, and Murad to the Safavid ruler Shah Ismail. Alaeddin had the sermon read in his father's name in Bursa, but when the people of Bursa asked the new sultan for help in June 1512, he abandoned the city and fled.

Selim spent the winter in Bursa and in the meantime set about eliminating his rivals within the dynasty. First he lured his brother Korkut into revolt with letters written in the voice of his own pashas, and around March 1513 had him strangled by the chief gatekeeper Sinan Ağa. Then it was Ahmed's turn. Ahmed, who believed letters announcing that Selim's pashas would come over to his side, met Selim's regular, firearm-equipped army at Yenişehir on 24 April 1513. The sources disagree on army sizes; one account gives 20,000-30,000 men for Ahmed and 8,000-10,000 for Selim. Ahmed was defeated, captured and killed by strangulation with a bowstring. His body was buried in the Muradiye Complex in Bursa.

Şehzade Osman

Among Ahmed's sons, Osman is the prince whose connection to Amasya is most plainly recorded. His mother was Sittişah Hatun; he is said to have been at the sanjak of Osmancık in 1509-1513. While his father withdrew to Konya and prepared against Selim, the forces of Nur Ali, who was attached to the Safavid caliphs, were roaming the Tokat and Sivas region, and complaints of oppression and taxation, reflected in Selim's spy reports, were being voiced in Amasya. These reports were written against Ahmed's family and cannot be considered an impartial observation. In some accounts Osman too is mentioned as his father's deputy in Amasya; considered together with Murad's deputyship, this shows that it cannot be determined exactly in whose hands authority in the city rested within the family.

Osman's death is told in two different ways in the sources. According to the first account, Osman was at the Battle of Yenişehir with his father, was captured together with him after the defeat, and was strangled with a bowstring by Sinan Ağa; 24 April 1513 is given as the date of death. According to the second, Osman had remained in Amasya and was killed in the city on Selim's orders; publications adopting this view give the date as 14 April 1513. The contradiction could not be settled, but both accounts tie Osman to Amasya. His body is said to have been buried at the Sultan Bayezid Mosque in Amasya; while his father lies in Bursa and his brothers in Egypt and Iran, his burial beside the mosque built by his grandfather is notable as the one grave of the family left in Amasya among its scattered tombs.

Information about Osman in the sources is limited. What is known is that he stood by his father and was among the first to pay the price of his defeat. Selim's dynastic policy followed a clear line: he had eliminated the sons of Şehinşah, Mahmud and Âlemşah, and then turned to Ahmed's line. According to Haldun Eroğlu, the princes Selim had killed include Ahmed's son Osman and his grandson Mustafa. These two names show how the new sultan's resolve to cleanse the dynasty reached the house of Amasya.

The Grandsons: Mustafa and Mehmed

Among Ahmed's grandsons, the ones most often mentioned are Murad's sons Mustafa and Mehmed. According to one publication, both were killed in Amasya: Mehmed in September-October 1512, Mustafa on 14 May 1513. This information rests on the work of Nevin Zeynep Yelçe and could not be confirmed by an independent source. Some publications claim that a son of Murad named Mehmed Çelebi and a son of Korkut were also killed; Mehmet Akman does not accept this view. A daughter of Murad named Asitanşah Sultan also appears in the records. It appears that the grandsons remained in Amasya after their father withdrew to Iran; on what grounds, and who exactly was targeted by Selim's decisions, is not made clear by the documents.

Şehzade Murad in Brief

Murad was born in Amasya in 1495 and was left in the city as deputy when his father went to Istanbul. According to the sources, he joined the Anatolian campaign of the caliph Nur Ali in 1512; according to the reports of Selim's spies, Shah Ismail planned to put him forward as a candidate for the Ottoman throne. When this support did not materialize, he settled in Iran and is said to have died of natural causes on 16 October 1519 in Kashan or Isfahan; some sources claim he was killed by Shah Ismail. It is also noted that Safavid support for him is counted among the causes that led to the Battle of Chaldiran. Murad's detailed life is told in his own biography.

Alaeddin and Süleyman

After Yenişehir, Alaeddin and Süleyman fled to Egypt. Alaeddin is said to have served in the sanjak of Bolu, to have married his cousin Neslişah Hanımsultan, and to have had a daughter; Süleyman had two daughters. Both are recorded as having died of plague in Cairo, with the dates of death given as April-May 1513: 24 April for Süleyman and 14 May for Alaeddin. Both are said to have been buried at the Havşi Sultan Mosque. Three sons of the same family thus died of disease outside Ottoman lands, in Egypt and Iran; those killed directly at Selim's hand are counted as Osman and two grandsons.

Şehzade Kasım: The Ottoman Prince Who Fought Against the Ottomans

Ahmed's youngest son, Kasım, is the least known and the most striking in fate among the members of this family. None of the Ottoman chronicles has any information about Kasım; his life can be traced almost only through the work of the Mamluk historian Ibn Iyas, Badāʾiʿ al-zuhūr. Haldun Eroğlu's article on this work describes Kasım as the first Ottoman prince to fight against the Ottomans in the army of a foreign state. Ibn Iyas writes that Kasım was 17 years old at his death; by this figure he was born around 1501. Uzunçarşılı, however, accepts that he was 13 in 1516, while a calculation based on Ibn Iyas's statement gives 15. Nothing is known about Kasım's life before 1516 or about his role in the struggle between his father and Selim.

According to Ibn Iyas, Kasım fled Ottoman territory together with his tutor in Jumada al-Awwal 922 (June 1516), came to Aleppo, and came under the protection of the Mamluk sultan Qansuh al-Ghawri. Qansuh took him to Cairo; his aim was to hold a card against Selim as a sultan whose relations with the Ottomans had soured. According to Ibn Iyas, Selim was greatly troubled by Kasım's being alive, because a large part of the Ottoman army wanted Ahmed's son to take the throne, and in case of defeat there was no other prince for them to go to. It is written that Selim fell into a suspicious state of mind because of this concern.

Qansuh tried this calculation at Marj Dabiq in the summer of 1516. Kasım took his place in the Mamluk army beside the caliph and took part in the battle in person; the Ottoman source Idris-i Bitlisi, although he describes the battle at length, says nothing at all about Kasım. The Mamluk army was defeated and Qansuh died on the battlefield. His successor Tomanbay showed Kasım close attention, as his predecessor had. Learning of a group that had been charged with killing Kasım, Tomanbay took him along, settled him in the Citadel of the Mountain in Cairo, and took on the daily expenses of the prince and his retinue. At the Battle of Ridaniya in January 1517, Tomanbay placed a unit under Kasım's command and asked him to stand beneath the Mamluk banner.

The Ottoman army won at Ridaniya. Tomanbay withdrew with Kasım to the Said region of Egypt; when Tomanbay was captured some time later and executed, Kasım fled and for a long time nothing was heard of him. Ibn Iyas writes that in this period the prince hid in the region of Egypt called the Green Mountain and survived several assassination attempts. After the Egyptian campaign Selim had returned to Istanbul and had appointed Hayır Bey as governor of Egypt. It is supposed that Selim had not forgotten the matter of eliminating Kasım and gave this task to Hayır Bey.

Kasım was captured on Friday 17 Muharram 924 (29 January 1518), after the slave retainers with him informed Hayır Bey and Gümüş Boğa. His clothes were taken off, he was dressed in a black robe and his face was covered; Ibn Iyas attributes this to the fear that, on hearing the news, the Ottomans would intervene in the region at once. The prince, taken to the citadel, was thrown into prison. Hayır Bey met with the Ottoman emirs in Egypt; these emirs were Faik Bey, Sinan Bey, Mustafa Bey and the deputy commander of the citadel, Hayrettin Bey. Hayır Bey wanted to report the news to Selim at once, but Faik Bey objected: he argued that the Turkmens might act to rescue Kasım, that unrest might break out in Egypt, and that they themselves might be killed. The debate went on until evening, and in the end it was decided that the prince should be killed. The executioner was summoned and Kasım was strangled. The next day, 30 January 1518, the body was brought down from the citadel.

The funeral prayer for Kasım was led at the Havşi Sultan Mosque by the Shafiʿi chief judge; the commander of the emirs announced through heralds that prayers would be performed in all the mosques. After the prayer his turban was placed on his body, a white banner was raised, and the bier was carried on the shoulders of the emirs and buried beside his elder brothers. Eroğlu notes that Kasım cannot have been killed without Selim's order, since the killing of members of the dynasty without the ruler's permission was not an accepted practice; it may be said that Selim gave the decision tacitly and that the Ottoman emirs in Egypt complied.

An interesting note of Ibn Iyas concerns how the news of the death was received in Istanbul. According to him, Selim rejoiced at the news even more than at the death of Tomanbay, because the people wanted Kasım to take the throne after Selim. It is also reported that, so that Selim would be certain the prince was dead, his head was cut off before burial and sent; while relating this report, Ibn Iyas adds that both the people of Egypt and the Ottoman people grieved at the prince's death. These accounts rest on a single source and are not confirmed in Ottoman records.

Daughters and Family Ties

Among Ahmed's daughters, the sultanas Kamerşah, Fatma, Fahrihan and Hanzade are mentioned. Kamerşah had been married to Damat Mustafa Bey, sanjak governor of Midilli, and is said to be buried beside her father. Fatma Sultan married Sultanzade Mehmed Bey in 1508, was widowed in 1511, and in 1512 followed her brother Murad to Iran and joined Shah Ismail's harem. Thus some of Ahmed's children were laid to rest in Iran, some in Egypt, and some in Amasya and Bursa; this dispersal shows how quickly a branch of the dynasty was scattered across geography.

In the Shadow of Dynastic Law

What happened to Ahmed's family was no coincidence but the outcome foreseen by Ottoman dynastic law. The provision in the law code of Mehmed the Conqueror that deemed fratricide appropriate for the order of the world gave the prince who took the throne the means to eliminate his rivals. This practice led many sultans to kill their brothers and other members of the dynasty, and Selim followed the same path. As Eroğlu notes, princes' claims to the throne were a familiar phenomenon; there are examples such as Cem's exile to Italy and Şehzade Bayezid's flight to Iran. None of these princes, however, had fought against the Ottomans in the army of a rival state. Kasım's place in the Mamluk ranks at Marj Dabiq and Ridaniya is therefore regarded as a first.

What Remains in Amasya

Today the visible trace of this family in Amasya is small. Osman is said to be buried at the Sultan Bayezid Mosque; Ahmed lies in the Muradiye Complex in Bursa, and his other sons were laid to rest in Egypt and Iran. During Ahmed's governorship Amasya gained complexes, a circle of poets and a lively court; the details are in Ahmed's biography. The story of his sons shows the end of this period: the prince's palace had been the place where a branch of the dynasty was raised, but that branch's survival lasted only a few years.

Chronology

1495: Murad is born in Amasya.

1499-1501: Given as the birth years of Ali, Mehmed and Kasım (not certain).

1509-1513: Osman is at the sanjak of Osmancık.

April 1512: Selim becomes sultan.

June 1512: Alaeddin's hold on Bursa ends.

1512: Murad joins the movement of the caliph Nur Ali and heads for Iran.

Around March 1513: Korkut is killed.

14 April 1513: Osman is said to have been killed in Amasya.

24 April 1513: Battle of Yenişehir; Ahmed is captured and strangled.

April-May 1513: Süleyman and Alaeddin die of plague in Cairo.

14 May 1513: Murad's son Mustafa is said to have been killed in Amasya.

June 1516: According to Ibn Iyas, Kasım arrives in Aleppo.

Summer 1516: Battle of Marj Dabiq; Kasım takes part in the Mamluk army.

January 1517: Battle of Ridaniya.

29-30 January 1518: Kasım is captured and strangled.

16 October 1519: Murad dies in Iran.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Other sources

Online sources