Bayezid II

Bayezid II (born December 1447/January 1448?, Demotika, Thrace, Ottoman Empire—died May 26, 1512, Demotika) was an Ottoman sultan (1481–1512) who consolidated Ottoman rule in the Balkans, Anatolia, and the eastern Mediterranean and was the first Ottoman sultan challenged by the spread of the Safavid empire of Persia.

Bayezid II was the elder son of the sultan Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople (see Fall of Constantinople). On the death of his father in 1481, his brother Cem contested the succession. Bayezid, supported by a strong faction of court officials at Constantinople, succeeded in taking the throne. Cem eventually sought refuge with the Knights of Saint John at Rhodes and remained a captive until his death in 1495.

Under the new reign an immediate reaction set in against some of the policies of Mehmed II. Influenced by the ʿulamāʾ, Islamic religious scholars, and by the great officials aligned with them, Bayezid restored the Muslim properties (awqāf; singular waqf) dedicated to religious and charitable purposes that Sultan Mehmed had taken over for the state. Bayezid also rejected his father’s marked pro-European orientation by such acts as removing from the imperial palace the paintings that Italian artists had executed for Mehmed II.

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At the same time, Bayezid II continued the territorial consolidation that his father had begun. Herzegovina, in the Balkans, was brought under direct Ottoman control in 1483. The occupation, in 1484, of two fortresses on the estuaries of the Danube and the Dniester rivers strengthened the hold of the Ottomans over the land route to Crimea, where the khan of the Crimean Tatars had been, in name at least, a vassal of the sultan since 1475. The war of 1499–1503 directed against the Venetian empire in the Levant and in the Balkans carried the process of consolidation still further. It resulted in the Ottoman conquest of Venetian strongholds in Morea (Peloponnesus) and on the Adriatic shore—a triumph amply justifying the program of naval construction that Bayezid had approved in the years before the beginning of the war.

With the expansion of his rule over much of Anatolia, Bayezid had earlier come into conflict with the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt and Syria, each side striving to dominate the ill-defined border zones dividing them and to maintain under effective control the small principalities established there. While a Turkish fleet had sufficed to dismantle a large part of Venice’s empire, Bayezid, fearing that an alliance of Christian powers using his brother Cem might be formed against him, committed only a modest force against the Mamluks. The long land war ended in a stalemate.

More formidable still was the situation that arose in the lands to the east of Anatolia. In 1499 the adherents of the Safavids, a heretical order of Islam, had set out to establish in Persia a powerful regime under their master Ismāʿīl I. The religious teaching of the Safavids had met with great success among the nomadic Turkmen tribes of Anatolia, whose warriors formed the main element in the armies of Shah Ismāʿīl (or Esmāʿīl). It was evident that the propaganda of the Safavids, if allowed to continue without hindrance, might well undermine Ottoman rule within the Asian lands. The danger was underlined in 1511, when the adherents of the shah rose in rebellion against the Ottomans in Anatolia.

At this same time a dispute over the succession broke out between Bayezid’s sons. One of them, Selim, the governor of Trebizond, went to Crimea in 1511, secured aid there from the Tatar khan, and then crossed the Danube into the Balkans. Defeated in battle against Bayezid, Selim fled to Crimea. Meanwhile, the Safavid rebellion had been put down, and Ahmed, another son, who had shared in the victory, marched toward Constantinople. Failing to gain the support of the Janissaries (elite military guards), he turned back to bring most of Anatolia under his control. Bayezid, fearing that Ahmed might seek assistance from Shah Ismāʿīl and unable to resist pressures from some of his advisers and from the corps of Janissaries, who favoured Selim, recalled Selim from Crimea and abdicated (April 1512) in his favour. Bayezid died the following month.

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Bayezid II was a pious Muslim, strict in his observance of the precepts of the Qurʾān and the Islamic law. During his reign, much of the state revenue was devoted to the building of mosques, colleges, hospitals, and bridges. He also supported jurists, scholars, and poets, both within and outside the Ottoman Empire. In temperament “molto melancolico, superstizioso e ostinato” (“very melancholic, superstitious, and stubborn”), in the words (1503) of the Venetian ambassador, Bayezid was interested in philosophical and cosmographical studies.