64 chapter 2
western and northern coasts of the Black Sea, as well as over the Ionian and
Adriatic coasts. Mehmed died in 1481, just after his vizier Gedik Ahmed Pasha
had seized Otranto, leading to fears in Europe of a campaign against Rome.
Mehmed’s confrontation with the Genoese and the Venetians, on the
one hand, and his unabashed expansion over the Muslim states of eastern
Anatolia, on the other, show his desire to create an empire with claims to uni-
versality. This imperial project, which had begun with the immediate trans-
fer of the capital to newly-conquered Istanbul, was enhanced by his internal
centralizing policies. Mehmed II’s reforms concerning the land and revenue
were referred to in the previous chapter;4 in the administrative field he also
abolished (or tried to abolish) the hereditary right of the old families to the
vizierial posts (beginning with Çandarlı Halil’s execution during the siege of
Constantinople) and started using converts (such as members of the Byzantine
imperial family)5 and devşirme recruits (such as Mahmud Pasha) in these
offices. His son Bayezid II’s sultanate (1481–1512) seemed, at least in the begin-
ning, to constitute a complete reversal of these policies: one of the new sultan’s
first acts was to reverse Mehmed’s confiscation of private and vakıf revenues
(an act which, as noted in the previous chapter, was hailed as a sign of generos-
ity by the champions of the old warlord and dervish aristocracy). His sympa-
thies with the dervish orders (all too happy to have their properties restored)
earned him the surname Veli (“the saint”); upon his ascension to the throne, he
brought to Istanbul a sheikh of the Halveti order with whom he had been on
good terms during his governorship in Amasya; thus, he initiated the presence
of this fraternity (which was to became one of utmost importance throughout
the next centuries) in the Ottoman capital.6
As far as external policy was concerned, Bayezid was a markedly more
peaceful sultan than his predecessor: part of this commitment to friendly rela-
tions with the West was due to the constant threat posed by his brother Cem,
held as a hostage on Rhodes, Rome, and later in France, until Cem’s death in
- To secure peace, Bayezid paid an annual tribute to Rome to ensure for
his brother was held safe and quiet, while he also abandoned Otranto and
concluded several truces with European states. However, Bayezid also waged
4 Oktay Özel (1999, 243) argues that the reform was small in extent and short-lived, and notes
that “the claim that similar fiscal reforms were carried out to a lesser degree under Selim
I and Suleiman the Magnificent ... should also be approached with caution”; however, one
cannot ignore the fact that the huge territories conquered under these sultans, and especially
Süleyman’s Balkan conquests, were distributed as miri land to timariots, thereby diminishing
the relative power of the warlords and dervishes reinstituted in their rights by Bayezid II.
5 Cf. İnalcık 1994a, 209–212; Lowry 2003, 115–130.
6 Clayer 1994, 18–19, 65–66, 154; Curry 2010, 68–72; cf. Terzioğlu 2012, 92–94; Karataş 2014.