A Prisoner of his Ambitions: Bayezid “the Thunderbolt”

Abstract

e Ottoman defeat at the Battle of Ankara (1402) constitutes one of the breaking points in Ottoman history. is 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. is situation that put the state on the verge of collapse traumatized early Ottoman histories and the vanquished of the battle, Bayezid I, the “underbolt,” became the first Sultan to have been criticized on account of his wrong strategy. e 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 colleagues 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