Battle of Ankara (1402): Timur Defeats Sultan Bayezid I

The Battle of Ankara was fought on 20 July 1402 on the Cubuk plain north-east of Ankara in central Anatolia. The Central Asian conqueror Timur, known in Europe as Tamerlane, destroyed the army of the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I and took the sultan prisoner. The defeat plunged the young Ottoman state into a decade of civil war and gave the Byzantine Empire a last reprieve of half a century.

Background: two expanding empires

By 1400 Bayezid I, nicknamed Yildirim (“the Thunderbolt”), ruled a state that stretched from the Danube to central Anatolia. He had crushed a western crusade at Nicopolis in 1396, kept Constantinople under blockade, and annexed most of the Turkish principalities of western and central Anatolia. Their dispossessed rulers fled east to seek help.

Timur, a Turkic-Mongol warlord from Transoxiana, had built a vast empire from Samarkand through decades of campaigning in Iran, the Caucasus, the steppe and India, including the sack of Delhi in 1398. He saw himself as the heir of the Mongol tradition and claimed authority over the princes of eastern Anatolia. The two empires now met in the region around Erzincan and Sivas.

Each ruler sheltered the other’s enemies. Timur welcomed the exiled Anatolian beys whose lands Bayezid had seized, while Bayezid gave refuge to Ahmad Jalayir of Baghdad and the Qara Qoyunlu leader Qara Yusuf, both driven out by Timur. Bayezid also demanded the submission of Taharten, the ruler of Erzincan, whom Timur regarded as his own vassal.

An exchange of insulting letters made compromise harder. In August 1400 Timur took the Ottoman city of Sivas after a siege and had many of its defenders killed; Bayezid’s son Ertugrul died around this time. Timur then turned south to fight the Mamluks, sacking Aleppo and Damascus in 1400–1401 and Baghdad in 1401. Bayezid, who had already taken Malatya from the Mamluks in 1399, used the respite to strengthen his eastern frontier. In 1402 Timur returned to Anatolia to settle matters with the sultan.

The campaign and the battle

Bayezid gathered his army, including troops from his Balkan vassals, and marched east expecting to meet Timur near Sivas. Timur instead moved south-west through Kayseri and Kirsehir and appeared behind the Ottomans, laying siege to Ankara. Bayezid’s army had to march back in the summer heat and arrived tired and short of water.

Timur chose his ground carefully. Contemporary accounts say he diverted or controlled the local water sources, including the Cubuk stream, leaving the Ottomans thirsty. Bayezid is also said to have spent time hunting before the battle, though this story may reflect later criticism of the sultan.

Numbers are uncertain. Medieval chroniclers gave huge figures, while modern historians usually estimate the Ottoman army at roughly 70,000 to 120,000 men and Timur’s at a larger force, perhaps 90,000 to 140,000. Timur had a strong cavalry army, experienced commanders and, according to the sources, a small number of war elephants brought from India.

The decisive moment came early. The Tatar cavalry in Bayezid’s army went over to Timur, and the contingents of the recently conquered Anatolian principalities, including Aydin, Saruhan, Germiyan and Mentese, deserted to join their former lords, who were in Timur’s camp. The Ottoman flanks collapsed.

The Serbian knights of Stefan Lazarevic, Bayezid’s vassal and brother-in-law, fought hard and then withdrew in good order, taking one of the sultan’s sons with them. Bayezid held a hill with his Janissaries and personal guard until evening, then tried to escape. He was captured, together with his son Musa. His sons Suleyman, Isa and Mehmed escaped, while another son, Mustafa, disappeared and may have been killed or captured.

Key people

Timur (c. 1336–1405) was a member of the Turkic-speaking Barlas tribe of Transoxiana. Because he was not descended from Genghis Khan, he never took the title of khan and ruled through puppet Chinggisid khans, calling himself emir and “royal son-in-law” after marrying a Chinggisid princess. A lifelong injury to his right leg and arm gave rise to the Persian name Timur-i Lang, “Timur the Lame”, which became Tamerlane in European languages.

Bayezid I (ruled 1389–1402) came to the throne on the battlefield of Kosovo in 1389, when his father Murad I was killed. He had his brother Yakub put to death the same day, an early example of the fratricide that later became Ottoman practice. His speed on campaign earned him the name Yildirim, but his rapid annexation of fellow Muslim principalities made him enemies in Anatolia.

Stefan Lazarevic, prince of Serbia, was the son of Prince Lazar, who had died at Kosovo. As an Ottoman vassal he fought for Bayezid at Nicopolis and Ankara. After 1402 he received the Byzantine title of despot and became an independent ruler once more.

Bayezid’s captivity and death

Timur treated his prisoner with a mixture of courtesy and humiliation, according to differing sources. Bayezid was carried with Timur’s army as it plundered western Anatolia. He died in captivity at Aksehir in March 1403, probably in his forties; the cause is not certain, and later rumours of suicide are not reliable.

Timur restored the Anatolian beyliks to their former rulers and in December 1402 took Smyrna (Izmir) from the Knights Hospitaller. He then withdrew east, planning a campaign against Ming China, and died at Otrar in February 1405.

The Ottoman Interregnum

The defeat almost destroyed the Ottoman state. Bayezid’s surviving sons divided his lands and fought each other in a civil war now called the Interregnum (1402–1413). Suleyman Celebi held the European provinces from Edirne, while Isa, Musa and Mehmed contested Anatolia. Suleyman made concessions to Byzantium in the Treaty of Gallipoli in 1403, returning Thessaloniki and other territory.

Mehmed gradually defeated his rivals. On 5 July 1413 he defeated and killed Musa at Camurlu in present-day Bulgaria and reunited the realm as Mehmed I. Under his son Murad II the Ottomans recovered their lost ground, and the state that emerged proved more centralised and resilient.

Myths and facts

The best-known legend is that Timur kept Bayezid in an iron cage. Some 15th-century writers mention it, but many historians think it arose from a barred litter used to transport him, or from later embellishment. Christopher Marlowe’s play Tamburlaine the Great, first performed around 1587, fixed the image in European imagination.

A second story claims that Timur forced Bayezid’s Serbian wife, Olivera Despina, to serve at his table. This also appears in later accounts but cannot be confirmed.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1396, 25 September: Bayezid I defeats the crusaders at Nicopolis.
• 1400, August: Timur captures the Ottoman city of Sivas.
• 1400–1401: Timur sacks Aleppo, Damascus and Baghdad.
• 1402, 20 July: Timur defeats and captures Bayezid at Ankara.
• 1402, December: Timur takes Smyrna from the Knights Hospitaller.
• 1403: Treaty of Gallipoli between Suleyman Celebi and Byzantium; Bayezid dies at Aksehir in March.
• 1405, February: Timur dies at Otrar.
• 1413, 5 July: Mehmed I defeats Musa at Camurlu and ends the Interregnum.

Why it matters

The Battle of Ankara showed how fragile Bayezid’s rapid conquests had been, and it nearly ended the Ottoman dynasty. It delayed the fall of Constantinople by about fifty years and briefly revived the independent Anatolian principalities. The Ottomans’ recovery after 1413, built on institutions such as the Janissaries and the provincial cavalry, became one of the most remarkable comebacks in medieval history.