At the end of the fourteenth century AD, the Ottoman Empire was expanding at the expense of the Byzantine Empire in the Balkans, led by its most famous sultans at the time, Murad I, who fell as a martyr in the Battle of Kosovo "Kosovo". his parents and grandparents;

In his era, the state faced one of its most serious challenges, which was the famous Mughal Sultan Tamerlane's invasion of the Middle East.

Within a short period, the Mongols were able to enter Iran, Iraq and the Levant, and their forces reached the Caucasus and Azerbaijan, and Tamerlane did not care about the strength of the Ottoman Empire, so his forces entered Anatolia like a storm.

Sultan Bayezid I did not seem to confront his opponent, so the famous battle of Ankara took place between the Mongols and the Ottomans, which ended with the defeat of the Ottomans and the capture of Bayezid II, and his slaughter at the hands of the Mongols in 1403 AD.

Era of the Ottoman period

Although Tamerlane did not stay in Anatolia for long, as he preferred to withdraw from it in order to focus on establishing the pillars of his rule in Iraq and the Levant, and striving to conquer Sindh and India, the Mongol invasion had serious effects on the structure and unity of the Ottoman Empire;

As the sons of Bayezid monopolized the areas of their rule, and none of them recognized the authority of the other, the most famous of them at that time were "Muhammad Shalabi" the first in "Amasya", "Issa" in "Bursa", and "Suleiman" in "Edirne", while "Mustafa" fled. Later, he was captured by the Byzantines, who decided to use it later to ignite a new civil strife within the Ottoman Empire.

The civil war between the three brothers continued for eleven continuous years, known in Ottoman history as the "Fetret devri", a dangerous stage in the history of the Ottomans that witnessed a great decline in their power and prestige, until Tamerlane took a fourth son of Sultan Bayezid captive in the battle of Ankara, who Prince Musa Shalabi, then when he saw the conflict between the brothers in Anatolia and Rumeli (Ottoman Europe), he was released [1].

At the end of this bitter and bloody phase, Prince Muhammad Shalabi was able to reunite Anatolia and Rumeli under his authority, and in this way the Ottoman Empire regained its unity again in 1413, and Muhammad Shalabi’s reign continued until his death in 1421, and many Ottoman historians consider Sultan Muhammad Shalabi, or Mehmed I, Ibn Bayezid al-Othmani, the second founder of the Ottoman Empire[2].

Murad II in the face of the storm

With the death of Sultan Muhammad Shalabi I in 1421 AD/824 AH, his son and heir Murad II rose to the helm of the rule of the Ottoman Empire when he was still seventeen years old.

At that time, he was faced with two serious challenges;

The first was his distance from the capital, Edirne, when he was governor of the city of Amasya, and the second was the appearance of his uncle, "Mustafa Shalabi," who declared himself sultan in Edirne, after the Byzantine Emperor released him to reignite the Ottoman civil war as the Mughal Sultan Tamerlane ignited it before.

Soon, the army in Rumeli recognized Mustafa Shalabi's sultanate, and it remained for it only to annex the Ottoman Anatolia to its grip, and this could only be accomplished by defeating and killing his nephew, Sultan Murad II.

Indeed, Mustafa with his armies crossed the Gulf of Çanakkale from the Gallipoli region, until the Anatolian armies led by Murad and Rumeli led by Mustafa met on the outskirts of Bursa.

The Turkish historian "Yilmaz Oztuna" tells us that the two sides had no desire to fight, and the two sides began to look at each other without any of them brandishing their weapons. In Anatolia, Mustafa found no other way to escape until he reached Edirne, on the Balkan borders.

However, Murad II chased after him and was able to arrest and kill him, claiming that he had impersonated his uncle;

On the other hand, the Ottoman historians confirm that Mustafa was the real uncle of Murad II.[3]

When the young Sultan Murad II saw the betrayal of Byzantium and its ignition of a civil war between the sides of the Ottoman house to dismantle the state and work for its demise, he decided to take revenge on Constantinople (the Byzantine capital at the time);

He surrounded it with an army of 30,000 fighters.

The siege continued for a long time, and Murad II hoped to win their surrender for financial reasons.

But in the meantime, and at the instigation of the Byzantines to lift the siege on them, "Kocuk Mustafa" (Prince Mustafa the Younger), brother of Sultan Murad II, declared his rebellion and disobedience, and established himself as a sultan in "Iznik" in western Anatolia.

Immediately, Sultan Murad was forced to break the siege from Constantinople and head towards Iznik, and eliminated the movement of Kucuk Mustafa and inflicted the death penalty on him, but the Sultan soon discovered that the Byzantines instructed the princes of the Turkmen emirates that arose after the fall of the Anatolian Seljuks a century or more before that to rebel against the state Ottoman.

They were declaring loyalty and recognition of the sovereignty of the Ottomans over them before that, and for this reason Sultan Murad decided to crush their rebellion, and eliminate everything that reached his hand from those emirates, until he was able to eliminate all of them and erase them from history in the end, so he attached its lands to the Ottoman Empire, which gained stability and land He was new to Anatolia thanks to his decisiveness and speed[4].

The Balkan wars... and the rise of the conqueror to the throne during his father's life

Over the next twenty years, Sultan Murad II engaged in protracted wars with anti-Ottoman European powers in the Balkans, such as the Republic of Venice, which controlled several ports, especially Thessaloniki, in Greece for the Byzantines.

This is in contrast to the Hungarians, Serbs and Germans who began to form a crusader alliance under the auspices of the Pope of Rome to confront the “Ottoman danger” in the east and central European continent, in addition to the Byzantine Emperor “John Paleolog” VIII, who decided to roam Europe for loans and military aid, warning in the meantime of The rising threat of the Turks[5].

Sultan Murad II realized the danger of this European-Byzantine alliance against him, so he proceeded to attack his spearhead, and the military and commercial force closest to him, the Venetians in Thessaloniki, and he was able to annex Venice in 1430. Then Murad pursued an offensive policy in the Balkans instead of waiting for the enemy in his country. He realized that the lands south of the Danube in the Balkans were a danger to the Ottomans, and that his direct rule of them would make him safe from the evils of his foes stationed there.

The Balkans were formed at that time from a group of small independent emirates and states such as Bosnia, Serbia and Danubian Bulgaria, which were states that fell between the jaws of two major powers, the Ottoman power in the east and the Hungarian power in the west [6].

When the Ottomans noticed the increase in Hungarian influence in Serbia, they decided to announce an attack on it in 1434, and the death of the Hungarian king "Jigmund" helped them in this.

Then Sultan Murad II crossed the Danube River, which cuts through the Balkans, and by 1439 managed to control the Serbian principality, and since that date it became an Ottoman state.

The following year, Murad headed towards Belgrade - the capital of today's Serbia - which was subjected to Hungary at the time with the aim of annexing it to the Ottoman lands, but he was defeated by his Hungarian rival, "Johanna Hunyadi" who was very familiar with the methods and tactics of Ottoman combat.

As soon as the balance tilted in favor of the Hungarians in the Balkans, some of the Turkmen emirates, led by "Karaman", moved to seize many of their ancient properties that Murad II had previously annexed to the Ottoman Empire[7].

In the face of this Turkmen attack from Anatolia, which coincided with the Hungarian attack in the Balkans, Murad II resolved to pursue a policy of diplomacy and peace, and he signed peace with Hungary in 1444, and the Ottomans were forced to revive the Principality of Serbia again in exchange for the Hungarians not crossing the Danube River and abandoning their claims in Bulgaria .

Murad II returned to Anatolia, forced to confront the rebellion of the Karamanids, and then decided to conclude a peace treaty between the two sides.

However, the danger of internal wars remained. At the height of the Ottoman-Ottoman conflict during this “period stage” and then the Ottoman-Hungarian war, Prince Orhan, one of Sultan Bayezid’s grandsons, fled and sought refuge with the Byzantines. At that time, Sultan Murad decided to abdicate and appoint his son Muhammad The second in his place, who will be known after a few years as Muhammad Al-Fateh.

Apparently, the last twenty years of Murad II's life, which he lived through in wars and battles on the European and Anatolian fronts, tired and exhausted him, and although he was still forty years old, he decided to abdicate to his fourteen-year-old son, Muhammad.

But what Murad dreamed of of calm and free time for worship far away in the quiet city of “Magnesia” (in Greece today) he did not find and did not enjoy it for a long time;

The papacy and the Byzantine state quickly took advantage of these events and instructed the Hungarian King Hunyadi to head a European crusade against the Ottoman Empire, which consisted of the armies of Hungary, Poland, Germany, France, Venice, the Byzantine and the Papal states[8].

These armies crossed the Danube, and in view of the seriousness of these developments, the new Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror consulted the senior leaders of his state, headed by the Grand Vizier "Ganderli Khalil" Pasha, who insisted on summoning Sultan Murad II to ascend the throne again.

Indeed, Sultan Mehmed accepted this order, and rushed to send to his father, who returned to his throne again, and then rushed from the capital, Edirne, with an army of 40,000 fighters to the city of “Varna” (in today’s Bulgaria), and eventually managed to crush the Crusader armies, For this historic victory, great joy prevailed in the Islamic world.

The contemporary Mamluk historian Jamal Al-Din Ibn Taghri Bardi Al-Masry told us in his history “Accidents of Ages” about the fierceness of this battle and the number of its captives, quoting from the report that Sultan Murad sent to the Mamluk Sultan “Jamaq” in Cairo at the time, saying: “The news came from Murad. Bek that there was a great fight between him and a group of Banu al-Asfar, the like of which he has not witnessed these days, to the extent that more than ten thousand Muslims were killed, and as for the Banu al-Asfar, they are innumerable caliphs, and in the end God gave victory to the Muslims over them, and they were captured and killed, enslaved, and spoiled, and to God Praise be to Allah, and Ibn Othman captured five of the aforementioned great men of Bani Al-Asfar who had the solution and the contract in their kingdoms, and more than ten thousand captives, and the Muslims plundered a lot of money from them.”[9]

A batch of these prisoners was sent as a gift to the Mamluk Sultan in Cairo.

When Sultan Murad completed the task of eliminating the Crusader Alliance and returned to Edirne, he decided in the following year 1445 AD to abdicate again, but the great statesmen and the Janissary army did not accept this matter, and everyone insisted that the stability of the state in front of the external enemy depends on the presence of Sultan Murad II, and for this The reason Murad was forced to return for the third time to power in 1446 AD.

After the victory of Murad II in the "Varna" incident over the Crusader and European armies, a new problem emerged in the Balkans, especially in Albania, whose emir "Iskander Bey" declared rebellion, and the Ottomans had approved of its Christian princes in exchange for subordination to the Ottoman Empire.

For this reason, Sultan Murad and his son Muhammad headed towards Albania, until they reached Wadi Quswah in 1448 AD, and the Ottoman army was able to crush the Albanians and the Crusader armies that came to support them with the support of the Pope in Rome, and thus the last attempt of European countries to displace the Ottoman Turks from the Balkans failed.

Only two years after this pivotal incident in 1451 AD, Sultan Murad II died at the age of 47, most of which spent in the unification and expansion of the Ottoman Empire, and was praised by most of the Turkish and European historians, according to what the historian “Ismail Uzun Churchli” monitored in his book “History of the Ottoman Empire.” [10].

Historians differed as to the reasons that led Sultan Murad II to abdicate the throne to his son, Muhammad al-Fatih;

Some of them wrote that he wanted to devote himself to having fun and enjoying life, while others wrote that he sought from this to devote himself to worship and rest after long years of wars and bloodshed.

Some have said that one of the great men of Sufism - and they had a great influence in that era - announced to him that the conquest of Constantinople would be done by his son Muhammad, and for this reason Murad II wanted to see the impact of this conquest in his life, and then abdicated to his crown prince, the Conqueror of the throne, perhaps he would see The fulfillment of this prophecy [11].

Whatever;

Sultan Murad II set an outstanding example in the military and civil administration alike, as he was the first sultan of the sultans of Bani Othman who relinquished the throne to his son during his lifetime, and perhaps he wanted from behind that reassurance of the continuation of the state’s approach, expansion and stability after many years spent by him and his father before him In the reunification and expansion of the state and the prevention of dangers.

There is no doubt that his high upbringing of his son, Sultan Muhammad the Conqueror, had its effect.

After his father's death, he hastened to deal a fatal blow to the Byzantine Empire in its heart when Constantinople fell into his grip while he was still twenty-two years old, to become - to this day - Muslim Istanbul.

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Sources

[1] FAHAMEDDİN BAŞAR, FETRET DEVRİ, Diyanet İslam Anisklopediesi.

[2] Yilmaz Oztuna: History of the Ottoman Empire 1/116.

[3] Oztuna: Previous 1/120.

[4] The unknown Ottoman Empire, p. 109.

[5] Oztuna: Previous 1/123.

[6] Enalgic: History of the Ottoman Empire p.35.

[7] Ibid, p. 36.

[8] The unknown Ottoman Empire p. 110.

[9] Ibn Taghri Bardi: History of Incidents of Ages 1/110.

[10] İsmail Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı tarihi 1/451.

[11] The unknown Ottoman Empire p. 112, 113.