A Prisoner of his Ambitions: Bayezid “the Thunderbolt”

Abstract

The Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Ankara (1402) constitutes one of the breaking points in Ottoman history. This defeat stopped the Ottoman expansion in Anatolia and the Balkans and drove the empire into chaos in such a way that it would take half a century for the empire to recover. This situation that put the state on the verge of collapse traumatized early Ottoman histories and the vanquished of the battle, Bayezid I, the “Thunderbolt,” became the first Sultan to have been critici- zed on account of his wrong strategy. The Sultan’s swift implementation of reforms created a large number of discontented people and the negative light in which he was depicted by contemporary historians seems to have been affected by the post-1402 trauma. It was not only the Ottoman historians, but also their non-Ottoman colle- agues that depicted a different Bayezid I. It appears that his actions that provoked resentment were not driven by personal ambition; but rather he followed an imperial strategy that would later be implemented by his successor, Mehmed II.