Timeline July 1402

Events in July 1402 2

• 1402 Battle of Ankara -- Timur captures Bayezid I At the Battle of Ankara (28 July 1402), the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur (Tamerlane) defeats and captures the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I -- the only Ottoman sultan ever taken prisoner. Timur dismembers the Ottoman state, restoring the Anatolian beyliks the Ottomans had absorbed. Bayezid dies in captivity (1403). The Ottoman succession crisis (the Interregnum, 1402-1413) sees Bayezid's sons fight a civil war. Mehmed I emerges victorious and reunites the empire. The Timurid intervention gives Constantinople a 50-year reprieve.
• 1402 Battle of Ankara -- Timur shatters the empire The Battle of Ankara (28 July 1402) is the greatest Ottoman military defeat before the 20th century. Timur (Tamerlane), the Turco-Mongol conqueror who has already destroyed Delhi, Baghdad and Damascus, faces Bayezid I outside Ankara with an army of perhaps 140,000 including war elephants. The Anatolian beylik lords whom Bayezid had conquered defect to Timur mid-battle. Bayezid is captured -- reportedly kept in a cage, though this may be legend. He dies in captivity in 1403. Timur restores the Anatolian beyliks and withdraws east; the Ottoman state fragments into the territories of Bayezid's four sons.