On 28 July 1402, on the Çubuk Plain north-east of Ankara, the armies of Bayezid the Thunderbolt and Timur met in battle. Regarded as one of the largest wars ever fought between two Muslim states in Turkish history, the engagement pushed the Ottomans into a civil war that would last eleven years. At first glance the link between the battle and Amasya looks like a side detail. Yet on that day Amasya was the sanjak seat of Bayezid's son Çelebi Mehmed, the prince was among the reserve forces of the Ottoman army, and once the state had fallen apart it was again Amasya that became the firmest foothold of the Ottomans in Anatolia. What the city lived through in these years is the story of a community that shut its gates on a governor appointed by Timur, put its scholars through an examination before a delegation Timur had sent, and in the end called its own prince back from Bolu.

Background to the Battle

Several overlapping causes lay behind Timur's turn toward Anatolia. Having built an empire stretching from Anatolia to India, Timur wished to bring Anatolia into his sphere of conquest, while the Ottomans laid claim to the same lands. The death of the Mamluk Sultan Barquq prepared a suitable ground for Timur to eliminate the two states he regarded as rivals, Egypt and the Ottomans of Anatolia. After Timur took Baghdad in 1399, the Jalayirid Sultan Ahmed and the Qara Qoyunlu chief Qara Yusuf fled to the Ottomans. Timur demanded their return, Bayezid refused, and insulting letters passed between the two rulers. When Mutahharten, the emir of Erzincan and an Ottoman tributary, went over to Timur, the tension rose further.

Amasya at this time lay behind the Ottoman eastern front in Anatolia. The region around Sivas, Tokat and Amasya had passed to the Ottomans after the death of Kadı Burhaneddin in 1398. Çelebi Mehmed had been sent to Amasya at the end of the 1390s, though the sources differ slightly on the details. According to one account, Ahmed Bey, the emir of Amasya, worn down by the pressure of Kadı Burhaneddin, the ruler of Sivas, announced that he would hand the city to the Ottomans, and Bayezid sent the prince with a force of thirty thousand. Encyclopedic entries instead state that in June 1399 Mehmed was appointed governor of the province of Rum, which took in Amasya, Tokat, Sivas and Ankara and had formerly belonged to the Eretnid dynasty. In both accounts Mehmed was, by 1402, the young and seasoned sanjak governor of the Ottomans in this region.

Hüsameddin ties this appointment directly to the danger from Timur. In his view Timur's first policy was to seize lands by taking their old lords under his protection, and for that reason it was judged unsafe to leave the local Kutlu Şah dynasty in place, with Kutlu Pasha at Sivas and his cousin Mustafa Bey at Amasya. In Shawwal 801 Çelebi Mehmed was appointed governor of Amasya and another prince governor of Sivas; Kutlu Pasha was settled with his family at Bursa and Mustafa Bey at Edirne. The prince arrived in Amasya in the month of Dhu al-Qadah with a sekbanbaşı and a sufficient body of janissaries. Hüsameddin writes that he was born in 788 and was thirteen years old when he came to Amasya; encyclopedic entries give his birth as 1386 or 1387. Gömlüoğlu Ali Pasha, the beylerbey of Konya, is named as his lala (tutor-guardian), Kutlu Pasha's brother Yâkût Pasha as his second lala and warden of the province, and Niğdelioğlu Sofi Bayezid Çelebi as his teacher. The end of a local emirate that had lasted fifty-four years created a mood in the city favourable to the Ottoman dynasty, and old families such as the Gümüşlüzâde, Sunkurzâde, Torumtayzâde and Halifetzâde had become its strongest supporters.

The Fall of Sivas and the Eastern Frontier

Timur came before Sivas guided by the Aq Qoyunlu lord Qara Yuluk Osman Bey and by Mutahharten. The city was defended by Malkoçoğlu Mustafa Bey. Sivas held out for eighteen days and surrendered on the promise that no blood would be shed. Once inside, however, Timur had the defenders thrown into trenches and buried alive, and the city was burned and razed. Because he lacked sufficient information about Bayezid's strength, he went no further despite the urging of the Anatolian beyliks. He took Malatya and Behisni by way of Elbistan and set out on his Syrian campaign in 1401.

The first echo of the disaster at Sivas was heard in Amasya. Hüsameddin writes that Amasya turned into a scene of the Last Judgement with those fleeing Sivas, and the traces of this flight can be followed one by one in his biographical volumes. Muslihzâde Tâceddin Çelebi, an Amasya madrasa teacher who had been sent to Sivas as its judge, took refuge in Amasya when the city fell and became judge of Sivas a second time while Çelebi Mehmed ruled Amasya. One of the former treasurers of the province of Rum likewise fled to Amasya during Timur's attack on Sivas and died there in 804. In these biographies the date of the event varies between the end of 802, 803 and the beginning of 804, a detail that shows Hüsameddin compiling his entries from different endowment deeds and biographical dictionaries.

Caught unprepared, Bayezid could not reach Sivas in time, but he came to the vicinity of Kayseri against a possible invasion. While Timur was in Syria he went to the eastern frontier and took Erzincan and Kemah. These moves broke the relationship between the two rulers completely. On 13 March 1402 Timur sent an envoy from Tabriz with a set of demands: that Kemah be returned to Mutahharten, that the lands taken from the Anatolian beys be restored, that one of the princes be sent to him and that the cap and belt he would give as signs of vassalage be accepted, and that Qara Yusuf be handed over. Bayezid accepted none of them. Timur then gathered his entire army and entered Anatolia. According to Hüsameddin one column of the army marched on Ankara by way of Kemah, Erzincan, Niksar, Canik and Çankırı, the other by way of Erzincan, Sivas, Tokat and Kayseri, so that the province of Amasya found itself surrounded on every side by Timur's troops. Some local records also state that Amasya was besieged by Timur's soldiers for seven months, but no such siege appears in Hüsameddin's detailed account.

Preparations and Order of Battle

Bayezid came to terms with the Byzantine emperor, lifted the siege of Constantinople, and brought his army before Ankara in two columns. Wishing to position his army, which consisted mostly of infantry, in rugged terrain, he marched to the area of Akdağmadeni and Kadışehri and planned to meet Timur there. Timur, kept informed of every Ottoman movement by his spies, learned that the Tokat side was being held and changed his route. He reached Ankara by way of Kayseri and Kırşehir and laid siege to the fortress. Bayezid, by a rapid march through Kalecik and Ravlı, a route Timur had not expected at all, came down to the village of Melikşah on the Çubuk plain. Timur was surprised, but because Bayezid did not attack at once, he shifted position during a single night and formed a new front.

Çelebi Mehmed's joining of this army is told separately in Hüsameddin. The prince put himself at the head of the troops he had gathered and, with his entire household, left Amasya for Ankara in Dhu al-Qadah 804, that is, at the beginning of the summer of 1402. He left Yâkût Pasha behind as warden of Amasya and deputy governor. The biographical volumes of the same work, however, state that the deputy governorship during the war was held by the aged emir Emîneddin Mehmed Bey, known in the city as the "Great Çeribaşı"; the two records suggest that the military and civil administration of the city lay in two different hands, but this cannot be established with certainty. Among the Amasya men with Mehmed were emirs of the prince's household such as Yahşi Bey's son Bayezid, Taşanzâde Ahmed, Hacı Beyzâde Kâsım and Osman Paşazâde Hasan Bey.

That the battle took place on Friday, 28 July 1402 is most probably correct, though some accounts also give 20 July. Hüsameddin writes that the battle began on Friday, the nineteenth of Dhu al-Hijjah 804; when calculated, this date falls on 20 July, and Hijri records of this kind are one source of the discrepancy between the two dates. The sources give widely differing figures for the strength of the armies. Timur's army is put at 160,000. For the Ottoman army, the text of Timur's victory proclamation gives 70,000, while another historian gives 90,000. Timur's army, made up mostly of cavalry, had more than thirty elephants. A Serbian contingent of 20,000 also stood on the Ottoman side.

Bayezid commanded the centre in front of the janissaries, together with the azaps and timar-holding sipahis. On the right wing were the Anatolian provincial troops and the armoured units of the Serbian despot Stefan Lazarević, and on the left wing the Rumelian troops under Süleyman Çelebi. Çelebi Mehmed was positioned behind the Ottoman line with the Black Tatars and the reserve forces.

28 July 1402

At the start of the fighting, which lasted all day, the Ottoman sipahis repelled the first volley of arrows from the troops of Ebubekir Mirza on Timur's right wing. What upset the balance were the Anatolian elements in the Ottoman ranks. Through his spies Timur had drawn the Black Tatars to his side. Units belonging to the Anatolian beyliks, first of all the Germiyan soldiers, also crossed over to their former lords who had earlier taken refuge with Timur. Thirst also took a heavy toll on the Ottoman side. Timur had camped on the bank of the Çubuk stream, and he is said to have had the springs and streams around it poisoned and destroyed. With both wings lost, the Ottoman army gathered into a single division at the centre.

In the afternoon the Grand Vizier Çandarlı Ali Pasha, Murad Pasha and the Janissary Agha Hasan Agha left the field together with Süleyman Çelebi. Çelebi Mehmed, with a charge by his reserve forces, managed for a time to throw Timur's left wing into disorder. When Timur reinforced that wing with armoured Samarkand units, the success did not last. Toward the afternoon prayer Mehmed withdrew with his own forces and went toward Amasya, the seat of his sanjak. The forces of Mustafa Çelebi were scattered and he himself disappeared, and it was later learned that he had fallen into Timur's hands and been taken to Samarkand. İsa Çelebi also left the field. Bayezid, with about three thousand men remaining, kept fighting, tried in the evening to break out from Çataltepe, and was captured near Mahmutoğlan when his horse stumbled. His son Musa Çelebi was seized together with his father.

Amasya had sent a large share of its emirs into this battle along with its prince. In Hüsameddin's biographical volumes the number of Amasya emirs whose entries carry the note "died in the Timur war in 804" or "went missing in the Timur war" is surprisingly large. Bayezid Pasha's brother İsa Bey and his brother-in-law Hamza Bey were among those who fell; İsa Bey's orphaned son Hamza was raised by his uncle Bayezid Pasha. Âbâdoğlu Hacı Mehmed Bey, the Turkmen lord of the Hakala district, distinguished himself in the battle and was among those who managed to come back after the rout. Alp Arslanzâde Alp Arslan Bey is recorded to have shown courage in Çelebi Mehmed's column and to have won the prince's trust by it. These names show that the Amasya circle that would gather around Mehmed in the Interregnum was made up of men who had fought side by side on the field of Ankara.

Çelebi Mehmed's Withdrawal

The road Çelebi Mehmed took after the battle is not described in the same way in the sources. According to one account the prince, after the afternoon prayer, withdrew with his own forces directly to Amasya, the sanjak seat. In another, his troops wanted to fall back to Bursa, but experienced pashas dissuaded him from the attempt, and Mehmed followed the developments after the battle from Bolu. In this second account the return to Amasya takes place in 1403, at the call of the city. The exact route has not been fully established by documents, but both accounts agree that the prince turned toward the Amasya region.

Hüsameddin adopts the second account. In his telling, while each of the Ottoman princes scattered in a different direction, Mehmed went to Bolu and waited there for events to unfold, hiding himself from Timur's wrath. The biographical volumes state that Bayezid Pasha went to Bolu with the prince after the battle and in 805 brought him safely to Amasya. The contemporary Byzantine historian Doukas tells a far more striking scene: Bayezid Pasha carried the prince, still a child, on his back away from the battlefield and brought him to Amasya by begging and gathering bread from the villages. Doukas's account cannot be confirmed by other sources and should be read as a tradition. All the sources nevertheless agree that Bayezid Pasha was the man closest to the prince in these years.

The reasons for this choice are easy to understand. Timur's grandson Muhammad Sultan Mirza was sent to Bursa with a force of thirty thousand, the city was plundered and burned, and Bayezid's wife and two daughters were taken captive. The Italian merchant Gerardo Sagredo, who was in Bursa at the time, reported to Venice that the Timurid army reached the city on 3 August 1402. With western Anatolia in such turmoil, the prince had his own sanjak in the east, and that the ulema and the notables of Amasya stood close to him is clear from the events that followed. The fall of Bursa also brought a new wave of refugees to Amasya: a scholar teaching at the Murâdiye madrasa fled to Amasya before Timur entered Bursa, and Divriklizâde Şeyh Yâr Ali Çelebi, who held the office of şeyhülislam in Bursa, returned to Amasya as well. Kutlu Pasha and Torumtayzâde Kaya Pasha, who had escaped the field of Ankara alive, also came to the city.

Yâkût Pasha and Kara Devletşah

Victorious at Ankara, Timur gave the lands Bayezid had taken back to the Anatolian beyliks. From Erzincan to Caria, where the Menteşe territory lay, the old beyliks revived. Amasya was not left out of this distribution. In the prince's absence the city's notables had recognised Yâkût Pasha as their emir; Hüsameddin writes that he became great emir of Amasya in Muharram 805, that is, in August 1402. Yâkût Pasha was the son of the former Amasya emir Hacı Kutlu Şahzâde Süleyman Şah and had been raised in the Ottoman palace ever since the province passed under Ottoman rule. Timur, however, gave Amasya to a bey named Tâceddin Devletşah.

Called Kara Devletşah in some sources, this man had accepted Timur's sovereignty and was one of the local dynasties that defied Ottoman authority. Hüsameddin gives his background in detail. Kara Devletşah was the son of Devletşahoğlu Melik Nâsıreddin Bahtiyar Bey, who had ruled Ankara before the Ottomans. When Murad I's commander Sunkur Pasha took Ankara, Bahtiyar Bey fled with his son to Amasya and took refuge with Hacı Şâdgeldi Pasha. Kara Devletşah, whose childhood was spent under the protection of the Amasya emirs, later rebelled, raided villages in the Çorum area, went over to Kadı Burhaneddin, and from time to time attacked Tokat with Tatar troops. According to one record in Hüsameddin's biographical volumes, the Amasya emir Devâtdâr Ahmed Pasha had himself died in a clash with him. This past makes the hard resistance the people of Amasya showed him understandable.

Kara Devletşah came with some twelve thousand horsemen, pressed up to the northern gorge of Amasya, came down to the village of Hakala and occupied Suluova. The city's notables had sworn not to let him into Amasya. For a time, therefore, Amasya had two governors: Yâkût Pasha held the city and the citadel, while Kara Devletşah held the area outside the city and its surroundings. The people of Amasya had seized and closed the gorges. At the head of the alliance in the city stood scholars such as the mufti Gümüşlüzâde Pîr İlyas, the sheikh of the Hânkâh-ı Mesûdî Şihâbeddin Ahmed, known as "Sarı Şeyh", the madrasa teacher Şemseddin Ahmed, known as "Şeker Çelebi", and Lâdikli Tâceddin İsrâfil Çelebi. The judge of Amasya, though ill, had joined the alliance, and his deputy Bedreddin Mahmud Çelebi acted in his place. Outside the city the emir of Lâdik, Mesud, the emir of Mecidözü, Hacı Turkad, and the Taşanzâde lords of Köprü also stood against Kara Devletşah.

Devletşah's men are said to have plundered the towns and villages of the Amasya region. Hearing of this alliance, Kara Devletşah appealed to Timur and obtained a decree addressed to the notables of Amasya. The people of Amasya in turn sent Timur a letter of supplication. In the form Hüsameddin gives it, the letter said: "Send us an ordinary slave and we will obey, but spare us obedience to the tyrant Kara Devletşah." These lines make it plain that Amasya did not reject Timur's sovereignty, only the man he had appointed.

The Examination of the Scholars

According to the account Hüsameddin bases on Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi, Timur then sent a Timurid prince called Kara Mehmed Sultan, together with his teacher Nu'mâneddin Abdülcebbâr el-Mu'tezilî, to Amasya at the head of a sizeable military force. Hüsameddin calls this prince Timur's son in one place and his grandson elsewhere; whether he is the same person as the grandson Muhammad Sultan Mirza sent to Bursa could not be determined from the sources. On the day the delegation reached the city, in the middle of Rabi al-Awwal 805, that is, in the autumn of 1402, Yâkût Pasha, seeing himself in great danger, left Amasya, went to Bolu and reported the situation to the prince. Abdülcebbâr was known as a scholar who had served as arbiter between Taftazani and Sayyid Sharif Jurjani.

The delegation gathered the notables and scholars of Amasya together, asked why they had resisted the khan's decree, and put to the scholars ten questions on difficult points of the rational and transmitted sciences. According to a record quoted from Kâtib Çelebi's unfinished biographical dictionary, it was Timur's custom to test the scholars of every place he came to, sparing the town from destruction and plunder if the questions were answered, and having the city plundered and its people killed if they were not. The mufti Pîr İlyas answered every question without hesitation and, according to the same record, saved Amasya from the calamity of plunder. Şemseddin Ahmed Çelebi, called Şeker Çelebi, who spoke three languages, and Pîr İlyas's nephew Gümüşlüzâde Şemseddin Ahmed Çelebi are also said to have distinguished themselves in this examination. Hüsameddin adds that Ibn al-Shihna also described this testing custom of Timur's.

Though the outcome of the examination was the city's deliverance, its price was heavy. Amasya was condemned to a heavy indemnity in the name of the campaign expenses of the delegation and its troops, and the people paid it at once. By a decree from Timur, Pîr İlyas and his nephew Şemseddin Ahmed were sent to Shirvan; Timur had not found it fitting for such a scholar to remain in Amasya. Sarı Şeyh, sensing evil in Kara Mehmed Sultan's conduct, fled to Emîr Şeyh el-Müeyyedî, the governor of Aleppo, and Şeker Çelebi to Jerusalem; some, like Lâdikli İsrâfil, went into hiding. Sarı Şeyh's disciple İlik Dede also hid in the countryside around Amasya and came out only after Çelebi Mehmed had reached the city. When Emîr Şeyh became sultan of Egypt, Sarı Şeyh became his imam, and he died at Damascus in 815.

The delegation's second decision concerned the emirate. The scholars' explanations persuaded Kara Mehmed Sultan to give up Kara Devletşah. The aged Great Çeribaşı Emîneddin Mehmed Bey, who was serving as deputy governor, was to be raised to the emirate, but he withdrew, pleading his age. In his place his nephew Şâdgeldi Bey, son of Devâtdâr Ahmed Pasha and son-in-law of Bayezid Pasha, became great emir of Amasya at the end of Rabi al-Awwal 805. Known among the people as Şâdgeldi Bey the Second, this emir was counted as the fifth great emir of Amasya from the Kutlu Şah line. The office of mufti left vacant by Pîr İlyas passed to Gümüşlüzâde Celâleddin Abdurrahman Çelebi, who is named both as his nephew and as his son-in-law.

The Summoning of the Prince from Bolu

Although Kara Devletşah learned that Şâdgeldi Bey had been appointed, he neither gave up his claim to the emirate, nor left Hakala, nor stopped his plundering. Nor was there any force in the city able to drive him out. According to Hüsameddin, İnaloğlu İbrahim had at this time seized Tokat, Köpekoğlu Süli Çorum, Gözleroğlu Ali Lâdik, and other lords of the Köpekoğlu family Turhal and Artukâbâd. Köpekoğlu Süli had joined Timur's army with a band he had raised on his own and had received the emirate of Çorum from Timur after the battle. After long deliberations the leading emirs of Amasya and the council of scholars decided to summon the prince Çelebi Mehmed from Bolu. The reasoning was plain: the prince had troops with him, and the command of those troops was made up of Amasya's own men.

The conditions of the decision had also been discussed. According to Hüsameddin, the prince was asked to renounce the pleasures and drink to which he was accustomed, and not to let his slaves loose upon the people. Sunkurzâde Yusuf Âsâyiş Bey, known as "Enişte Âsâyiş Bey", who was both nephew and son-in-law of Bayezid Pasha's father Yahşi Bey, took charge of the delegation and went to Bolu. Meanwhile İsfendiyar Bey, the ruler of Kastamonu, was trying to bind Amasya to himself through Şâdgeldi Bey, his sister's son, and promising to remove Kara Devletşah. The notables of Amasya did not accept the offer. The lord of Osmancık, however, had gone over to İsfendiyar.

Hüsameddin's volumes give no single name for the person who initiated the invitation. In one place Enişte Âsâyiş Bey heads the delegation; in the biography of the prince's teacher Sofi Bayezid he is the real cause of the summons; in Şâdgeldi Bey's entry it is Bayezid Pasha who recommends the summons, while in Bayezid Pasha's own entry he is the man who brought the prince safely from Bolu; and in the entry on Şâh Bula Hatun the initiative is credited to her brother İsa Bey. This variety may stem from the fact that the biographical sections of the work were built largely on family endowment deeds and family memories; each family brought forward its own elder's share in this critical decision. What all the records share is that the decision is attributed to a council of the city's scholars and emirs.

When İsfendiyar Bey heard that the prince had set out for Amasya, he placed another of his nephews, Kutaroğlu Kara Yahya Bey, in ambush near Osmancık. With the prince were Ali Pasha, Yâkût Pasha and Bayezid Pasha with some five hundred horsemen, and they broke this force of a thousand horsemen and reached Osmancık. The judge of Gümüş, Hacı Halil Efendi of Osmancık, met the prince at Osmancık, secured the safety of the roads and the submission of the lord of Osmancık, then took him to the town of Gümüş and lodged him in his mansion. Together with Âbâdoğlu Hacı Mehmed Bey of Hakala, emir of Merzifon and Gümüş, they watched Kara Devletşah's situation at Hakala. Hacı Mehmed Bey's brother Abdullah Bey lived at Hakala, and Hasan Bey, one of the younger members of the family, was known for his judgement and courage.

The end of Kara Devletşah is told in the sources with differing details. According to Hüsameddin's history volume, the prince's forces made a surprise attack while Kara Devletşah and his retinue were made drunk at a banquet prepared by the Hakala family; Devletşah was killed and his horsemen scattered. The biographical volumes of the same work state that Hacı Mehmed Bey, together with his brother, beguiled Devletşah's force and brought about his killing, while Halil Efendi's entry says that the prince attacked with five hundred brave men, took Kara Devletşah prisoner and had him executed, and routed some eight thousand of his troops. Some local records say only that Çelebi Mehmed fought and defeated him and that Devletşah died on the battlefield. According to yet another account, the prince moved on Amasya with a force of about a thousand men and removed Kara Devletşah in a sudden attack. Though the details diverge, the result is the same: Timur's governor of Amasya was killed at Hakala, and the prince, his road now open, entered the city in 1403.

The people of Amasya came out before Hakala to welcome the prince. Hüsameddin quotes the following scene from the history of İdris-i Bitlisî: before the gorge of Amasya the notables asked the prince to repent of drink and pleasure, declaring that if he accepted they would make every sacrifice for him. Mehmed was greatly pleased by this offer; he dismounted, performed his ablutions, and after praying two rak'as repented in the presence of the mufti and the notables and entered Amasya. Hüsameddin dates the prince's entry into the city to Shawwal 805, that is, to the spring of 1403. This first success laid the foundation of Mehmed's later position in the years of the Interregnum.

The Relationship with Timur

The relationship with Timur matters here. It is reported that Mehmed accepted Timur's sovereignty and thereby legitimised his rule in the Tokat and Amasya region. The prince, invited by Timur, was twice blocked on the road by Turkmen beys; he reported the situation and apologised, and Timur is said to have sent him a red-stamped diploma, a crown, a belt and a robe confirming his rule over Amasya, Tokat and Sivas. The first coins bearing the names of both Timur and Çelebi Mehmed were struck at Amasya in 1403. These coins, which serve as documentary evidence, show that Amasya in those years was a centre nominally subordinate in Timur's name but actually governed by an Ottoman prince.

As Halil İnalcık relates, during the siege of İzmir, between December 1402 and January 1403, Timur gave Süleyman Çelebi a yarlık for the lands on the far side of the Straits; Mehmed, summoned to Kütahya for a meeting, did not or could not obey the order. Hüsameddin tells the same relationship from Amasya's point of view. In his account Timur summoned the prince, who had proved his ability at Amasya, to his presence through an envoy named Hace Muhammed, ostensibly in order to make him his son-in-law. The notables of Amasya did not think it wise to answer the summons, but neither did they think it prudent to give an open refusal to so harsh a ruler as Timur. The prince travelled with the envoy as far as Osmancık, staged attacks arranged through secret instructions to the lords along the road showed the envoy that it was impossible to go further, and the prince's teacher Sofi Bayezid was sent with valuable gifts to Timur's presence as envoy. The blocking of the road by Turkmen beys and the apology that followed share the same core in both accounts; in Hüsameddin's version the blocking is an Amasya ruse.

In establishing his authority there, Mehmed is reported to have been supported by the ulema and the city's notables, while the local beys had neither prestige nor the legitimacy an Ottoman prince possessed. Mehmed secured their submission in return for confirming their ownership of the lands they held. That the system of property and timars in the region after the Battle of Ankara rested on this compromise became a serious problem for him when Ottoman centralism was re-established. Hüsameddin's text, for its part, presents Mehmed as an independent emir outwitting Timur and does not bring his dependence on Timur to the fore; this difference of emphasis should be read with the author's Amasya-centred perspective in mind.

Government from Amasya

With the prince's arrival a new governing circle was formed in Amasya. According to the record Hüsameddin bases on Ibn Hajar's Kitâb al-Inbâ, Gömlüoğlu Ali Pasha became the prince's lala and vizier, Yâkût Pasha beylerbey and warden of Amasya, the judge of Gümüş Hacı Halil Efendi nişancı (chancellor), and Gümüşlüzâde Hace Celâl Çelebi treasurer. The teacher Sofi Bayezid Çelebi was outwardly the prince's tutor and in reality the counsellor of the reign. To console Şâdgeldi Bey, who had stepped down, his sister Şehzade Hatun, the youngest daughter of Devâtdâr Ahmed Pasha, was married to the seventeen-year-old Mehmed; Şâdgeldi Bey himself was moved with his family to İznik in 816. Hüsameddin writes that this lady is believed to have been the mother of Prince Murad, born at the end of 806.

The emirate of Amasya thus became a broad domain taking in Amasya, Sivas, Tokat, Çorum, Canik, Karahisar-ı Şarkî and Ankara, with the city of Amasya as its centre. From then on the prince took the Amasya, Sivas and Tokat region, the area known as Rûmiye-i Suğrâ; through campaigns against Turkmen beyliks in Canik such as the Kubadoğulları, İnaloğulları and Taşanoğulları, and against local warlord bands called Köpekoğlu and Gözleroğlu, he widened his borders as far as Tokat and Sivas. On the prince's return to Amasya the first task was the removal of Köpekoğlu Süli; his band scattered in the fight with the people of Amasya, and Süli was caught and hanged in 807. The independent rule of Kubadoğlu Alâeddin Ali Bey at Samsun and of İnaloğlu İbrahim Bey on the plain of Tokat was likewise ended by forces sent from Amasya; according to Hüsameddin this clearing was completed in 806, that is, in 1403-1404. The name of the village of Ortaklar is said to come from a grant made to Ortak Bey, who suppressed the Köpekoğulları.

The new government's greatest difficulty was money, for Timur had collected the gold and silver in people's hands on one pretext or another. According to Hüsameddin, Mağribî İlyasoğlu Bedreddin Mahmud Çelebi was striking silver akçes at the mint left from Hacı Şâdgeldi Pasha's time, while paper money called "çav" or "çavik" was also put into circulation. The same author relates, citing Atâ Bey's Enderun Tarihi, that a military corps divided into sipahis and janissaries was founded in Amasya, that the troops drilled on the city's archery ground and held manoeuvres at Suluova, and that young men whose moustaches could not hold an iron comb were not taken into the army. The çavik, the anecdote of the iron comb and the new cannons invented in Amasya that Hüsameddin mentions could not be confirmed in other sources and should be read as the author's own reports.

Amasya in the Years of the Interregnum

Bayezid died at Akşehir on 8 March 1403. After Timur withdrew from Anatolia, the princes entered into struggle with one another. Süleyman held power in Edirne, İsa around Bursa and Balıkesir, Musa for a short time in Bursa, and Mehmed took up rule at Amasya as a ruler dependent on Timur. The state had shrunk to roughly the borders of the time of Orhan Gazi, except for Çorum, Amasya and Tokat. Amasya was not merely a preserved portion of this reduced state but a centre in its own right. After sitting quietly at Amasya for a time, Mehmed proposed to his brother İsa that they share Anatolia; when İsa refused, they met at Ulubat and Mehmed won. He entered Bursa and proclaimed his rule (1404). Having taken Bursa, he also had his father's body and his brother Musa brought there.

When Süleyman crossed from Rumelia into Anatolia, Mehmed lost Bursa and Ankara. Each time the place he withdrew to was Amasya and Tokat. What allowed Mehmed to hold on despite repeated defeats was the support of the Turkmen and Tatar troops of this region and of the local notables. These forces also formed an important part of his army in the war against Musa in 1413. The date of Musa's passage to Rumelia by way of Wallachia is given as 1406 in one source and 1409 in another. What the sources tell us is that Mehmed, with so limited a region in his hands, could advance only by playing his brothers against one another.

On 5 July 1413 Mehmed defeated Musa and began to rule the Ottomans alone once again. The man who gathered the scattered state at the end of the Interregnum was the prince who had stood in the rear with his reserve forces at Ankara and then withdrawn to Amasya. For this reason Mehmed is counted in Ottoman history as the second founder of the state. According to Hüsameddin, when he took the throne at Edirne he appointed Hacı Halil Pasha, who had come from the judgeship of Gümüş, as grand vizier, Bayezid Pasha as beylerbey of Rumelia and Yörgüç Pasha as beylerbey of Amasya; Bayezid Pasha became grand vizier only after Halil Pasha's death in 820. Encyclopedic entries, by contrast, show Bayezid Pasha as grand vizier from 1413. Whichever order is correct, the upper ranks of the restored state were largely the men of the Amasya years. When Mehmed died in 1421, his eldest son Murad, then governor of Amasya, was summoned to Bursa, and through Bayezid Pasha's precautions the news of the death was kept secret for forty days until he arrived.

Consequences for Amasya

The battle's effect on Amasya ran in two directions. The city was first left under a bey appointed by Timur within an Anatolia that Timur had redistributed, and the people were not content with this. Then, by calling its own prince, it returned to the Ottoman line. Because the state had shrunk to the borders of Orhan Gazi except for Çorum, Amasya and Tokat, these three centres count among the territories the Ottomans kept in Anatolia. Mehmed's rule centred on Amasya was later continued by the fact that Murad too served as governor in the same city.

The return of the scholars sent to Shirvan also left a deep mark on the Amasya of the Interregnum. Pîr İlyas stayed about four years in Baku with Pîr Sadreddin Mûsâ eş-Şirvânî, received from him the Halveti license to guide disciples, and returned to Amasya after Timur's death. The date of his return is given in one place in the work as 807 and elsewhere as 808 and the beginning of 809. The treasurer Hace Celâl Çelebi built a Halveti lodge for him in the Gümüşlüzâde quarter. Pîr İlyas died in Shawwal 813. His nephew Şemseddin Ahmed Çelebi, exiled with him, presented his work on ethics, the Mir'âtü'l-Mülûk, to Çelebi Mehmed, became his chief secretary, and in the years of the reign rose as high as nişancı.

Çelebi Mehmed's building activity in Amasya also bears the marks of the post-Interregnum period. His vizier Yakub Pasha had the Yakub Pasha (Çilehane, Halvetî) Madrasa built in 1412, and its cell section, which served as a dervish lodge until 1622, was later incorporated into the madrasa. Another of his viziers, Bayezid Pasha, had the Bayezid Pasha Madrasa built in 1419; it served within the mosque and has survived to the present. The endowment deeds of Bayezid Pasha's mosque, soup kitchen and madrasa in Amasya bear the dates 1418 and 1420. After Mehmed took the throne in 1413, the Halîliye Madrasa in Gümüşhacıköy and the Çelebi Mehmed Madrasa in Merzifon were also built. Hüsameddin records that Yâkût Pasha too had an endowment deed drawn up at the beginning of 810 for the lodge, soup kitchen and school he had completed in Amasya. These works are the lasting traces that a dynasty regaining its footing after the Battle of Ankara left in the Amasya region.

A literary witness to the Interregnum also emerged in Amasya. The anonymous text known as the Ahvâl-i Sultan Mehemmed, which narrates Çelebi Mehmed's struggles from the Battle of Ankara to the end of the Interregnum, was regarded by Halil İnalcık as a work written with the help of the prince's own account, and he proposed that it belonged to the poet Ahmedî, who was in Amasya at the time. Before the Battle of Ankara Ahmedî had gone to Sivas in the retinue of Süleyman Çelebi; after the battle he attached himself to Süleyman at Edirne, and after Süleyman's death, already past eighty, he came to Amasya, drew close to Çelebi Mehmed and died there in 815. The attribution is not regarded as settled, but it is possible that one of the first Ottoman accounts of the battle and its aftermath was written in the Amasya region.

In general the Battle of Ankara broke the Turkish unity in Anatolia and delayed the state's conquests and the conquest of Constantinople by nearly half a century. Timur's army plundered a number of cities, and the order the Ottomans had built was shaken. After the battle Timur sent victory proclamations to the kings of France and England, announcing his success against the Ottoman ruler whom the European kings had been unable to defeat. In this storm Amasya became one of the bases that kept the Ottoman presence in Anatolia alive. In Hüsameddin's words, foremost among those who repaired within so short a span as eleven years the blow Timur had dealt were the people and notables of Amasya and Tokat; though this verdict carries an Amasya man's pride, it agrees with the events of the Interregnum.

Chronology

1398: After the death of Kadı Burhaneddin, the Sivas, Tokat and Amasya region came under Ottoman administration.

June 1399: Çelebi Mehmed was sent as governor of the province of Rum, covering Amasya, Tokat, Sivas and Ankara.

1399: Timur took Baghdad; Jalayirid Ahmed and Qara Yusuf took refuge with the Ottomans.

1400 (approx.): Timur besieged and took Sivas and massacred its defenders; refugees from Sivas took shelter in Amasya.

13 March 1402: Timur conveyed his demands to Bayezid through an envoy from Tabriz; they were refused.

June 1402 (Dhu al-Qadah 804): According to Hüsameddin, Çelebi Mehmed set out from Amasya for Ankara with his household, leaving Yâkût Pasha in the city.

28 July 1402: Battle of Ankara on the Çubuk Plain; Bayezid was captured, and Çelebi Mehmed withdrew toward Amasya (the date 19 Dhu al-Hijjah 804 given by Hüsameddin corresponds to 20 July).

3 August 1402: The Timurid army reached Bursa.

August 1402 (Muharram 805): Yâkût Pasha became great emir of Amasya; Timur gave Amasya to Kara Devletşah.

October 1402 (Rabi al-Awwal 805): Kara Mehmed Sultan and Abdülcebbâr came to Amasya; the scholars were examined, Pîr İlyas was sent to Shirvan, and Şâdgeldi Bey became emir.

8 March 1403: Bayezid died at Akşehir.

1403: Çelebi Mehmed removed Kara Devletşah and entered Amasya; he received a diploma and robe of honour from Timur; the first coins in the names of Timur and Mehmed were struck at Amasya.

1404: Mehmed defeated İsa Çelebi and proclaimed his rule at Bursa.

1404-1405 (807): Köpekoğlu Süli was captured and hanged.

1412: The Yakub Pasha Madrasa was built in Amasya.

5 July 1413: Mehmed defeated Musa and ended the Interregnum.

1419: The Bayezid Pasha Madrasa was built.

1421: Çelebi Mehmed died; Bayezid Pasha concealed the death until Murad, coming from Amasya, took the throne.

Bibliography

Primary sources

Academic studies

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Online sources