The Ottoman Empire ••• 143to other Muslim empires. The trouble came when Bayezid began conquer¬
ing nearby Turkish principalities in Anatolia. His eastward push angered
Timur, who was invited into Anatolia by dispossessed Turkish amirs. The
armies of Bayezid and Timur clashed near Ankara in 1402. The Ottoman
sultan, deserted by his Turkish vassals, was defeated and taken prisoner. His
newly won Anatolian lands were restored to their former rulers. Bayezid
died in captivity, and four of his sons started quarreling over what was left
of the Ottoman Empire.
After an eleven-year interregnum, Mehmet I (r. 1413-1421) overcame his
brothers and started to rebuild the empire. Toward that end, he had to fight
new wars against the Turkish amirs in Anatolia, the Venetian navy in the
Aegean Sea, and a Christian ex-vassal in the Balkans. He also suppressed
revolts by a popular Sufi leader and by a Byzantine hostage who claimed to
be his lost brother and hence the true sultan. Murad II (r. 1421-1451)
pressed farther into Europe but was stymied by the Hungarians. After sev¬
eral Ottoman setbacks between 1441 and 1444, the king of Hungary was en¬
couraged to call a crusade, just when Murad had turned over his throne to
his twelve-year-old son, Mehmet. The Christians reached the Black Sea port
of Varna, whereupon Murad came out of retirement to take charge of the
Ottoman army and defeat the latter-day Crusaders. Having resumed the sul¬
tanate, Murad led expeditions against John Hunyadi of Transylvania and
Skanderbeg of Albania, two Christian warriors whose resistance to the
Turks would make them legendary among their people.
The Ottoman Zenith
When Mehmet II (r. 1451-1481) regained his throne, he was influenced by a
vizier, a Greek Christian by origin, who urged him to conquer Constantino¬
ple. They soon built a castle on the European side of the Bosporus, facilitat¬
ing Ottoman movement between Anatolia and the Balkans while cutting the
Byzantines off from any aid they might receive from their Christian allies at
Trebizond, a Black Sea port city (see Map 9.2). In 1453 Mehmet did what so
many Muslim rulers since Mu'awiya had tried: He laid siege to the walled
city of Constantinople. But this time the Ottoman ships and guns succeeded
where earlier Arab and Turkish attacks had failed. Constantinople was
taken, pillaged for three days, and converted into the new Ottoman capital.
The city, which gradually came to be called Istanbul, was repopulated with
Turks, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews. Soon it grew as rich as it had ever been
under the Byzantines. The Greek patriarch gained civil and religious author¬
ity over all Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Monophysite