Dimitris J. Kastritsis: The Sons of Bayezid. Empire Building and Representation in the Ottoman Civil War of 1402-1413.
Scharlipp, Wolfgang-E.
Dimitris J. Kastritsis: The Sons of Bayezid. Empire Building and
Representation in the Ottoman Civil War of 1402-1413. Leiden, Boston:
Brill, 2007. The Ottoman Empire and its Heritage, vol. 38. 250 pp. ISBN 978 90 04 15836 8.
The work concentrates on the period of the Ottoman Empire following
the defeat by Timur. The author's main interest is to show that the
years intervening before the new stabilisation of the empire in 1413
should not be seen as an "interregnum" but as a fully-grown
civil war. He argues that the term interregnum "detracts from the
importance of these years, reducing them to a dark interlude between the
reigns of Bayezid I and Mehmet I ... (XI)." According to Kastritsis
these years have been seen as an interlude between more stable reigns,
which created the impression that they were rather a time of chaos. He
claims that exactly the opposite was true, that the Ottoman realm was
divided between rival claimants to the throne, who carried out coherent
politics including diplomatic relations with foreign powers.
Before describing the situation of the empire during these years
and the activities involved, the author gives a thorough account of the
research done up to now. He then gives a survey of the sources used, and
underlines that one of the reasons why this period has not yet been
covered in the detail which it deserves, lies in the nature of these
sources which require a knowledge of Ottoman, Persian, Greek, Latin,
Spanish, Old Serbian and the Venetian dialect of Italian.
The author starts his description of what he calls civil war by
describing the situation Timur left behind, saying that Timur spent half
a year touring Anatolia, reinstating members of the beylik dynasties as
his vassals. In this way, several beyliks were reconstituted; an
important statement demonstrating that Timur was not exclusively a
bloodthirsty destroyer but also a political planner, as these activities
guaranteed the preservation of local rule and thus stability.
By treating the situations in different areas, in Anatolia and in
the Balkans, the author gives a useful insight into the relations of the
conflicting parties, those of the Ottoman rulers towards each other on
the one side and those between the Ottomans and other powers, like the
Hungarians, Venice et cetera on the other side. These chapters show both
the rivalries as well as the different alliances which were built up by
the various parties.
The author comes to the conclusion that Ottoman attitudes on
succession in general differed significantly from the period of the
interregnum or civil war, compared especially with those of the time of
Mehmet the Conqueror fifty years later. They are rather comparable to
Inner Asian tribal empires, for the basic principle of their succession
system was the rule of the most talented member of the royal family. The
policies of the rival princes differed from the Inner Asian paradigm in
so far as each prince aimed at becoming his father's sole
successor.
Kastritsis' work is a thorough study of a period of the
Ottoman Empire, which has up to now only been treated in articles with
no effort to gain a comprehensive picture of the whole period. The
author of this book has successfully filled this gap.
Wolfgang-E. Scharlipp
University of Copenhagen
