Timur crushes Bayezid I at Ankara, and the empire collapses into civil war
The Ottomans' most feared sultan is captured by a Central Asian conqueror, and his sons spend a decade fighting each other for the throne.
Quick facts
- Sultan captured
- Bayezid I (r. 1389-1402)
- Victor
- Timur (Tamerlane) of the Timurid Empire
- Aftermath
- Ottoman Interregnum, 1402-1413
- Reunification
- Mehmed I sole ruler from 1413
What happened
Sultan Bayezid I, nicknamed Yildirim, the Thunderbolt, had spent his reign since 1389 expanding into the Balkans and crushing a European crusader army at Nicopolis in 1396. His refusal to submit to the Central Asian conqueror Timur, who had already taken the Ottoman city of Sivas and territory from the Mamluks, brought Timur's forces into Anatolia. At the Battle of Ankara on 20 July 1402, Timur's larger army defeated Bayezid's forces and captured the sultan himself. Bayezid died in captivity within a year. With no clear successor recognized by all factions, the empire fell into the Ottoman Interregnum, an eleven-year civil war among Bayezid's surviving sons that ended only when Mehmed I emerged as sole ruler in 1413.
Why it matters
Ankara came close to ending the Ottoman state outright only a century after its founding, since Timur's victory temporarily restored several Anatolian beyliks the Ottomans had already absorbed. That the empire survived the interregnum and resumed its Balkan and Anatolian expansion within a generation set the pattern for how it would later recover from other catastrophic defeats.
How we know
World History Encyclopedia's dedicated entry on Timur dates the battle and Bayezid's capture; its overview of Ottoman battles and conquests places the defeat and the following Interregnum in the empire's own chronology of near-collapse and recovery.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Timur · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Battles & Conquests Of The Ottoman Empire (1299-1683) · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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