marcus milwright and evanthia baboula - bayezid's cage a re-examination of a venerable academic...

Bayezid’s Cage: A Re-examination of a Venerable

Academic Controversy 1

MARCUS MILWRIGHT AND EVANTHIA BABOULA

Abstract

This article discusses a story that has enjoyed a long life in scholarly literature, drama, and the visualarts: the alleged caging of the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I Yildirim (r. 1389–1402) by the CentralAsian conqueror, Temur (r. 1370–1405). Attention is focused on the evolution of scholarly discourse onthe existence (or otherwise) of the cage. The period from the late seventeenth to the first half of thetwentieth century is looked at in particular detail. The debate around the captivity of Bayezid is onlyfully understood when it is located within a larger historical framework, namely the changing politicalrelationships between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire from the fall of Constantinople in1453 until the nineteenth century.

The sixth-century version of the Liber Pontificalis contains a reference to a request made by acertain Lucius, a second-century king of “Britanio”, to pope Eleutherius (r. c.174–89). In hisEcclesiastical History of the English People Bede (d. 735) identifies this event as the first evidencefor the conversion of the British to Christianity. He writes: “This pious request was quicklygranted, and the Britons received the Faith and held it peacefully in all its purity and fullnessuntil the time of the emperor Diocletian”. Bede’s narrative was later embellished by Geoffreyof Monmouth (d. c.1155) and became a central plank of English theological debates duringthe Reformation.2 The historicity of Lucius was finally demolished in the mid nineteenthcentury, but it was not until 1904 that the origins of the legend were established. A. vonHarnack discovered that one of the sources for the Liber mentions Britium, the name of thefortress of Edessa ruled in the second century by Lucius Aelius Septimus Megas Abgar IX.He concluded that a later scribe of the Liber had mistakenly rendered “Britio” in the source

1The authors would like to thank Dimitris Kastritsis for sharing his expertise in early Ottoman historiographyand for translating a passage from the chronicle of Ashikpashazade. Robert Irwin kindly commented upon a draftof this article and also permitted us to read the typescript of a lecture concerning European views on Orientaldespotism. We are also indebted to Filiz Tutuncu Caglar for making a summary translation of an article by theTurkish scholar, Fuad Koprulu.

2On the story of Lucius, and his importance in English theology, see Felicity Heal, “What can King Luciusdo for you? The Reformation and the Early British Church”, English Historical Review, CXX.487 (June, 2005),pp. 593–614. The quote from Bede appears on p. 595 (Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People I.4).

JRAS, Series 3, 21, 3 (2011), pp. 239–260 C© The Royal Asiatic Society 2011

doi:10.1017/S1356186311000204

240 Marcus Milwright and Evanthia Baboula

text as “Britanio”.3 This example illustrates the fragile foundations on which remarkablytenacious legends can be built. Most of all, stories and legends persist because they remainmeaningful for later audiences.

In this article we discuss another story that has enjoyed a long life in scholarly literature,drama, and the visual arts: the alleged caging of the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I, Yildirim(r. 1389–1402 and d. 1403) by the Central Asian conqueror, Temur (r. 1370–1405, andotherwise known as Timur-i Lang, or in European sources as Tamerlane). A full analysis ofthe range of primary sources on this event – Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Greek, Latin, Italian,German, and Spanish to name just some of the languages employed by the relevant authorsof the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries – is beyond the scope of this article. Rather, ourattention is devoted to the evolution of scholarly discourse on the existence (or otherwise)of the cage, with a particular focus on the period from the late seventeenth to the first halfof the twentieth century. Significant are the sources available to the scholars who wrote onthis subject and the ways in which they exploited them. Like the example of King Lucius,scholarly debate around the captivity of Bayezid must be located within a larger historicalframework, particularly the changing relations between the polities of Christian Europe andthe Ottoman Empire between the second half of the fifteenth century (following the fall ofConstantinople in 1453) and the nineteenth century.

Historical Events and Later Representations

On 28 July 1402 (19 Dhu al-Hijja 804) the armies of sultan Bayezid and Temur met on thefield of Cubuk Ovasi near to Ankara. Marking the culmination of a long-standing disputeover the control of the former territories of the Rumi Saljuqs, the battle of Ankara hadbeen preceded by Temur’s conquest of the Anatolian city of Sivas in 1400 and Bayezid’sretaliatory strike against Erzincan. Relations between the two men had not been improvedby a bitter exchange of embassies in the previous years and by Bayezid’s support of the BlackSheep Turkomen. True to his epithet, Yildirim (“the thunderbolt”), Bayezid appears to haverushed to battle without proper preparation of his forces. Arriving at Cubuk Ovasi he foundTemur’s engineers had dammed off the available water and had built substantial rampartsaround their own positions. Desertions further weakened Bayezid’s position, and the finalresult of the battle was a decisive defeat for the Ottoman army with many thousands ofsoldiers left dead on the battlefield.4

The battle of Ankara is one of the most important conflicts of the late Medieval period;the impact of the battle can be detected in the political history of the region in the decadesafter 1402. Some of the more immediate effects of the battle can be briefly summarised:first, sultan Bayezid was captured following the battle and died in captivity in 1403; second,the removal of the sultan sparked off a civil war between his sons that was only resolved withthe accession of Mehmed I in 1413; third, the Ottoman empire itself was for several decades

3Heal, “King Lucius”, p. 614. Citing A. Von Harnack, “Der Brief des britischen Konigs Lucius an den PapstEleutherus”, Sitzungsberichte der Koniglich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, I (1904), pp. 909–916.

4For a description of this battle, see Herbert Gibbons, The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire: A History of theOsmanlis up to the Death of Bayezid I (1300–1403) (Oxford, 1916), pp. 249–254. On this conflict and the widermilitary engagement between Bayezid and Temur, see Marie-Mathilde Alexandrescu-Dersca, La campagne de Timuren Anatolie, Publicatiunile Institutului de Turcologie 1 (Bucharest, 1942).

Re-examination of a Venerable Academic Controversy 241

greatly reduced in the extent of its territories and its political influence; and fourth, thedefeat of the Ottoman army relieved the siege of Constantinople and ensured the survivalof the diminutive Byzantine empire for another half a century.5

Despite the existence of a wide array of primary textual sources in Persian, Arabic,Ottoman Turkish and European languages, there remains considerable uncertaintyconcerning what actually transpired when the defeated sultan was brought to the campof Temur in the evening after the battle. Persian, Turkish and Greek sources concur that thesultan was bound in some manner, and it seems likely that Temur ordered that these bondsbe removed while he conducted an interview with his captive. Another recurrent themeis that Bayezid, heedless of his precarious situation, answered the questions posed to himin a haughty manner that displeased Temur. While it had been the latter’s practice to seekoaths of submission and re-establish vanquished princes as Timurid vassals in their formerterritories, it is clear that Bayezid was not released from captivity. He died some months laterin 1403 and, at the request of his sons, his body was transported to a mausoleum in Bursa.

We will return to the accounts of Bayezid’s captivity written by Arabic, Persian, Turkish,and Greek authors later in the article, but first it is necessary to examine the ways in whichthis event was represented in Western Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.6

The earliest European accounts, which include those of Johannes Schiltberger (d. after 1429)who was captured by Temur’s army before being allowed to return to his native Germanyand Jean Boucicault (d. 1421), governor of Genoa in the early years of the fifteenth century,provide little detail concerning the treatment of the Ottoman sultan beyond the facts of hiscaptivity and death. Neither mentions the employment of a cage to imprison Bayezid.7 Theambassador of Henry of Castille, Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo (d. 1412), who visited Temur inSamarqand in September-November 1404, has nothing to add on the existence or otherwiseof a cage. Clavijo was in Constantinople soon after the return of Manuel II Palaeologos(r. 1391–1425) from his European trip in July 1403. Clavijo met both the emperor andmembers of the Byzantine court during this visit.8 Had reports of the caging of Bayezidreached Constantinople by the time of Clavijo’s visit, one might have expected him to havementioned it. Notably, none of the Greek primary sources written in the first decade of thefifteenth century contains a reference to the captivity of the Ottoman sultan.9

5On the Ottoman civil war, see Dimitris Kastritsis, The Sons of Bayezid: Empire Building and Representation inthe Ottoman Civil War of 1402–1413, The Ottoman Empire and its Heritage 38 (Leiden and Boston, 2007). On theimmediate aftermath of the battle of Ankara, see pp. 44–78.

6For an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources dealing with the life of Temur, see: MicheleBernardini, “The historiography concerning Timur-i Lang. A bibliographical survey”, in Italo-Uzbek ScientificCooperation in Archaeology and Islamic Studies: An Overview, (ed.) Samuela Pagani (Rome, 2003), pp. 137–196.

7Johannes Schiltberger, The Bondage and Travels of Johannes Schiltberger, a Native of Bavaria, in Europe, Asia, andAfrica, 1396–1427, trans. J. Buchan Telfer with notes by P. Bruun (London, 1879), pp. 20–21 (cap. 12–13); Boucicault,Histoire du Mareschal de Boucicault, (ed.) Guillaume de Voys (La Haye, 1711), pp. 107–109; J. Delaville Le Roulx, LaFrance en Orient au XIVe Siecle: Expeditions du Marechal Boucicaut (Paris, 1886), p. 394.

8Ruy Gonzalez di Clavijo, Embassy to Tamerlane, 1403–1406, trans. Guy Le Strange (London, 1928), pp. 24,129–137. On the last years of Bayezid’s siege of Constantinople, see: Dionysios Hadjopoulos, “Le premier siege deConstantinople par les Ottomans de 1394 a 1402” (PhD dissertation, University of Montreal, 1980), pp. 184–207.

9This material has been analysed in a paper by Evanthia Baboula entitled “Greek sources on the life ofTamerlane”, delivered at the Byzantine Studies conference at the University of Toronto in 2007. This paper is beingprepared for publication.


It is clear, however, that more graphic stories were circulating in Europe in the first halfof the fifteenth century because they appear in sources such as the Chronicon Tarvisinum andthe letters of the Italian humanist, Poggio Bracciolini (d. 1459), in his De Varietate Fortunae.Probably composed around the time of the death of pope Martin V (r. 1417–31), Bracciolini’stext makes the following comment about the treatment of Bayezid: “caveaque in modum fereinclusum per omnem Asiam circumtulit”.10 More influential than either of these, however,was the account of the fate of the Ottoman sultan in Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini’s (PopePius II, r. 1458–64), Asiae Europaeque elegantissima descriptio, composed in the late 1450sand early 1460s and first published in Paris in 1509.11 Piccolomini brought together the keyelements that were to remain fundamental to the European narrative for some two centuries:first, the sultan (often known in European writings as Bajazet) was placed in an iron cage;second, he was forced, like a dog, to eat scraps from under the table of Temur; and, third,Bayezid was employed as the “Scythian” ruler’s mounting block when the latter got ontohis horse.12 Further elaborations can be found in later histories such as the history of theTurks composed by Theodore Spandounes (Spandugino, d. after 1538). The first version ofhis history was written in Italian and completed in 1509. A French translation by Balarin deRaconis was published in 1519. In this version Spandounes alleges the use of chains of goldand that the sultan was employed as Temur’s mounting block.13 It is only in later revisions ofthe text that Spandounes adds the reference to the cage.14 He also includes a lurid descriptionof the public humiliation of Bayezid’s wives and concubines by Temur (Sachatai):

When Sachatai got back to “Scytia” he staged a magnificent triumph for his victory over Bayezidand a great assembly attended by almost all of the lords and princes of Scytia; and the cagecontaining Bayezid was brought in. Then [Sachatai] did something very out of keeping with hisgrandeur and noble character. He had Ildrim’s wife, who was also his prisoner brought in and he

10Chronicon Tarvisinum = Chronica composita ab eloquentissimo viro ser Andrea de Redusiis de Quero cancellariocommunis Tarvisii, cols. 741–866 in: Ludovico Muratori (ed.), Rerum Italicarum scriptores, vol. 19 (Milan, 1731),see cols. 800–801; Poggio Bracciolini, De varietate fortunae (ed.) and commentary by Outi Merisalo, SuomalaisenTiedeakatemian Toimituksia. Annales Academicae Scientiarum Fennicae. Series B, no. 265 (Helsinki, 1993), book 1,ll.643–644 (p. 108). The Vitae Pontificum of Bartolomeo Platini (Sacchi), first published in Venice in 1479, mentionsthat Bayezid was led in chains but does not refer to a cage. See The Lives of the Popes from the Time of Our SaviourJesus Christ to the Reign of Sixtus IV, trans. Paul Rycaut (London, 1685), p. 335. Another early source detailingthe captivity and mistreatment of the Ottoman sultan (but without mention of the cage) is: Annales estenses =Chronica nova illustris et magnifici Domini Nicolai Marchionis Estensis & c., cols. 905–1096 in Muratori, (ed.) RerumItalicarum scriptores XVIII (Milan, 1731). See col. 974.

11Cosmographie Pii Papae in Asiae et Europae eleganti descriptione (Paris, 1509).12The two relevant sections appear in “Asia” cap. 30 (“Regem omnium potentissimum Pazaitem [Bayezid]

Turcorum dominum cum pari equitum numero et magnis peditum copiis fineis suos tutantem apud Armenos preliosuperatum ducentis millibus hominum interfectis vivum caepit, caueque in modum fere inclusum per omnem Asiamcircumtulit egregium et admirandum humanarum rerum spectaculum”) and “Europe” cap. 4 (“Pazaitem cathenavinctum prandens quasi canem sub mensa sua comedere iussit, ascensurus equum eo tanquam scabello usus est”).See: Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Opera quae extant omnia (Basel, 1571), pp. 313, 394–396. The readings given abovediverge somewhat from the 1571 edition. See Merisalo, “Introduzione: Il De varietate fortunae”, in Bracciolini,Fortunae, p. 194.

13Theodore Spandouginos, La genealogie du grant Turc a present regnant (Paris, 1519), chapter 5 (unpaginatedtext). He writes: “et tint cestuy Aldrin tout le temps de sa Vie enchaisne de chaisnes dor: & a chascune fois quilvouloit monter a cheval ou en son chariot – le faisoit conduyre devant luy / & en duy mettant le pied sur lespaullesailloit”.

14On the history of the text, see: Donald Nicol’s introduction in Theodore Spandounes, On the Origins of theOttoman Empire, trans. Donald Nicol (Cambridge, 1997), pp. xvii-xviii. His two revisions were completed in 1531

and 1538. Printed editions of the 1538 recension were published in Lucca (1550) and Florence (1551).


caused her clothes to be ripped down to her navel so that she showed all her pudenda; and hemade her wait upon and serve food to his guests. Ildrim, seeing his wife thus shamed, bewailedhis fortune and wanted to kill himself at once. But he had no knife or other means. So he bangedhis head against the iron bars of his cage so hard that he dispatched himself miserably.15

Constantine Mikhailovic of Ostrovica (d. after 1563), who had served in the Ottoman armyand spoke Turkish, also alleges that Despina was forced to serve drinks to the guests ofTemur as a means to humiliate sultan Bayezid. Mikhailovic claims that the sultan poisonedhimself using his own finger ring. No reference is made to the use of a cage and, in commonwith the Persian sources, Mikhailovic’s account indicates that Temur was upset by Bayezid’ssuicide.16

It is worth emphasising that, aside from early primary sources such as Schiltberger, Clavijo,Boucicault, Jean of Sultaniyya (fl. late 14th to early 15th century), and Stefan Lazarevic,Despot of Serbia (r. 1402–27), the European authors mentioned above can hardly be viewedas reliable sources on Timurid or Ottoman history.17 The last generation of Byzantinehistorians – Laonicus Chalcocondyles (d. 1490), Michael Ducas (d. c.1470), and GeorgePhrantzes (also Sphrantzes, d. c.1478) – appear to have been better informed about Turkishhistory than their contemporaries in the Catholic West, probably as the result of direct orindirect access to primary sources in Turkish, Persian or perhaps Arabic.18 By contrast, onlyone Western European scholar of the sixteenth century, Johannes Leunclavius (d. 1593),is known to have consulted Turkish chronicles (see below). A few scholars of Ottomanhistory – most notably Paolo Giovio (d. 1552) – tried to remedy their lack of knowledgeof Middle Eastern written sources by seeking out oral testimony of those who had travelledto the Middle East and visual sources (such as the painted portraits of sultans producedin Turkey).19 Where these (often highly inaccurate) European histories are more valuable,

15According to Donald Nicol’s translation in: Spandounes, On the Origins of the Ottoman Empire, pp. 23–24.16The Czech text was first published in Litomyasl in 1565 under the title, Historya neb Kronyka Turecka od

Michala Konstantina z Ostrowicze. For an English translation, see Konstantin Mikhailovic (Constantine of Ostrovica),Memoirs of a Janissary, trans. Benjamin Stolz with historical notes by Svat Soucek, Michigan Slavic Translations 3

(Ann Arbor, 1975). The relevant passage appears on p. 53. Temur’s reaction to the sultan’s suicide is recorded thus:“The Great Khan, seeing such an evil deed as this, that he had poisoned himself, said in their language: ‘Yaban kaltilgendizina kimisstur’, which means ‘A crazy man, that he should take his own life. I meant to let him go back homehonorably, and I am sorry that he put an end to himself so vilely’. Then the Great Khan let all his men go, andhaving respectfully dispatched Despina, had her accompanied all the way back to Brusa, to her land. Thus endedthe Turkish war with the Tartars”.

17For the account of Jean of Sultaniyya, see H. Moranville, “Memoire sur Tamerlan et sa cour, par unDominicain, en 1403”, Bibliotheque de l’Ecole des Chartes LV.5 (September-October 1894), pp. 433–464 (esp. pp. 458–459). On Stefan Lazarevic, see: Lebensbeschreibung des Despoten Stefan Lazarevic con Konstantin dem Philosophen, (ed.)Maximilian Braun, Slavo-Orientalia. Monographienreihe uber die Wechselbeziehungen zwischen der slavischenund orientalischen Welt 1 (Wiesbaden and ‘S-Gravenhage: Otto Harrassowitz and Mouton and Co., 1956),pp. 16–21.

18For a brief summary of the writings on Turkish history by the last generation of Byzantine historians, see SirSteven Runciman, “Byzantine historians and the Ottoman Turks”, in Historians of the Middle East, (eds.) BernardLewis and Peter Holt (London and New York, 1962), pp. 271–276. On the discussion of Temur with a particularemphasis on the writings of Chalcocondylas, see Nicolaos Nicoloudis, “Byzantine historians on the wars of Timur(Tamerlane) in Central Asia and the Middle East”, Journal of Oriental and African Studies VIII (Athens, 1996),pp. 83–94.

19On the study of Islamic history in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, see Vernon Parry, “Renaissancehistorical literature in relation to the Near and Middle East (with special reference to Paolo Giovio)”, in Lewis andHolt, (eds.), Historians of the Middle East, pp. 277–289; Linda Klinger, “The Portrait Collection of Paolo Giovio”,2 vols. (PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1991); Margaret Meserve, “From Samarkand to Scythia:


however, is in gauging the perceptions of the Islamic world among the literate elite of Europeduring the period of the great military successes of the Ottoman empire. Clearly, from itsfirst appearance in the second quarter of the fifteenth century the idea that Bayezid had beenconfined in a cage proved highly attractive to Europeans as they looked anxiously towardthe seemingly inexorable expansion of the Turkish polity.

The sufferings of Bayezid also found expression in Europe in the visual and dramatic artsfrom the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. While most printed books on Turkishhistory were not illustrated, woodcut prints showing the fate of the Ottoman sultan appearin works such as Philip Lonicer’s Chronicon Turcicorum (1578). Depictions of the capture andcaging of Bayezid were painted for the Neues Palais in Potsdam (by Andrea Celesti) andSchloss Ambras in Graz (by Carl Franz Caspar or Andreas Raemblmayer). Tapestries werealso produced on these themes in Antwerp during the seventeenth century.20 In Tamburlainethe Great, first performed in 1587, the dramatist, Christopher Marlowe (d. 1593), made hisBayezid function as the footstool to the Scythian ruler’s throne. The confrontation betweenTemur and Bayezid was explored by later playwrights, most successfully by Nicholas Rowe(d. 1718) in his Tamerlane, a Tragedy (first performed in 1701). Robert Irwin notes that Rowe’sTamerlane was performed annually on 5 November (the date of William of Orange’s landingin England) until 1815. Thus, for Protestant English audiences the glorious Tamerlane stoodfor William III (r. 1688–1702) while Bayezid represented Catholic monarchy – the Frenchruler, Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715), and presumably also the deposed Stuart King James II(r. 1685–88).21 Several operas and even a ballet were also composed on the life of Temurand his conflict with Bayezid.22

Clearly most of this literary and visual material is pure invention, and careful examinationcan reveal the initial points of reference. For instance, in about 260 CE the Roman emperorValerian (r. 253–60) suffered the indignity of becoming the mounting block of the Persianshah Shapur (r. 240–72). The event can be seen on a monumental rock relief at Tang-iChogan near Bishapur in Iran, while both Valerian and Philip the Arab (r. 244–49) appearin submissive poses before Shapur on a relief at Naqsh-i Rustam. More relevant for thepresent purposes is the fact that the fate of Valerian became, for Christian moralists fromLactantius (d. c.325) in the fourth century through to Giovanni Boccaccio (d. 1375) in hisDe Casibus virorum illustrium (1355–74), a symbol of both the transience of earthly power and

Reinventions of Asia in Renaissance geography and political thought”, in Pius II, ‘el-piu expeditivo pontifice’:Selected Studies on Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (1405–1464), (eds.) Zweder von Martels and Arjo Vanderjagt (Leidenand Boston, 2003), pp. 13–39; Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks(Philadelphia, 2004).

20For references to these works, see: Walter Denny, “Images of Turks in the European imagination”, in WalterDenny et al., Court and Conquest: Ottoman Origins and the Design of Handel’s Tamerlano at the Glimmerglass Opera(Kent, OH., 1999), pp. 3–18 (esp. pp. 6–9); Marcus Milwright, “So despicable a vessel: Representations of Tamerlanein printed books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries”, Muqarnas, XXIII (2006), pp. 337–338 n. 3.

21Robert Irwin, “Oriental despotism in eighteenth-century European literature” (unpublished typescript). Onthis theme, see also: Michael Curtis, Orientalism and Islam: European Thinkers on Oriental Despotism in the Middle Eastand India (Cambridge and New York, 2009). On Rowe’s play, see: Donald Clark, “The source and characterizationof Nicholas Rowe’s Tamerlane”, Modern Language Notes LXV.3 (March 1950), pp. 145–152.

22Milwright, “So despicable a vessel”, p. 317.


divine retribution for the Roman emperor’s treatment of Christians.23 This event is recordedin visual form in illustrated manuscripts and printed versions of Boccaccio’s text (and thepopular translation by John Lydgate entitled, The Fall of Princes, completed in 1438–39).24

Marlowe’s vision of Bayezid as the footstool to the throne appears earlier in the woodcutfrontispiece to the 1570 edition of John Foxe’s (d. 1587) Actes and Monuments of these Latterand Perillous Days (also known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs) in which Henry VIII (r. 1509–47)makes similar use of pope Clement VII (r. 1523–34).25

While it is possible to strip away much of the extraneous detail from these Europeanaccounts, three accusations – that the sultan was imprisoned in an iron cage, that his haremwas subjected to public indignities in his presence, and that his humiliations caused him tocommit suicide – are not easily explained away simply as literary references to earlier events.The first of these, Bayezid’s imprisonment in a cage, has stimulated the greatest amount ofacademic controversy from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth century. The nextsection of this article establishes the scholarly dramatis personae and how the debate overthe existence of the cage has evolved over this long period. The final section re-examinessome of the oft-quoted primary sources in Greek and Arabic. We state from the outset that,despite the confident assertions made by numerous scholars, we do not believe that thesources allow for a definitive resolution concerning the existence or otherwise of the cage.Of greater interest is the issue of the precise sources and methods employed by the manyhistorians who concerned themselves with the fate of the Ottoman sultan.

From d’Herbelot to Koprulu: Changing Academic Viewpointson Bayezid’s Cage

Modern studies of Ottoman and Timurid history exhibit little interest in the alleged cagingof Bayezid I by Temur. Passing over the question in silence, they tend to record simplythat the sultan died in captivity.26 There are good reasons for this lack of elaboration;it is the fact that Bayezid’s capture resulted in a debilitating civil war that is of primarysignificance in the historical record. Today it is left to more journalistic books such as JustinMarozzi’s Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World (2004) to revive the question ofthe cage.27 The point here is not to denigrate a readable and competent piece of popularhistory, but to establish that the sources carefully marshalled by Marozzi in support of his

23Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum, edited and translated J. L. Creed (Oxford, 1984), 5.2–4; GiovanniBoccaccio, De casibus virorum illustribus 8.2. For an illustration of the relief at Naqsh-i Rustam, see: Peter Brown,The World of Late Antiquity: From Marcus Aurielius to Muhammad (London, 1971), p. 19 no.11.

24For Lydgate’s discussion of the fate of Emperor Valerian, see Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, (ed.) H. Bergen, 4

volumes (Washington, DC., 1923–27), iii, pp. 835–837. The visual representations of the humiliations of bothValerian and Bayezid will be presented by MM in a forthcoming paper.

25Illustrated in Michael Hattaway (ed.), A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture (Oxford, 2002),p. 369 pl.2.

26For example, see Stanford Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Volume 1: Empire of the Gazis.The Rise of the Ottoman Empire, 1280–1808 (London and New York, 1976), p. 35; Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire,1300–1481 (Istanbul, 1990), pp. 54–55; idem, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power (Basingstoke,2002), p. 17; Beatrice Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization (Cambridgeand New York, 1989), p. 73.

27Justin Marozzi, Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World (Cambridge, MA. and New York, 2004),pp. 335–337. The question of the cage is also dealt with in Patrick John Balfour (Lord Kinross), The OttomanCenturies: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire (London, 1977), p. 76.


interpretation (he concludes that the cage was a fiction) are largely the same as those employedby Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (d. 1856) in the first volume of Geschichte des osmanischenReiches (1827). Many of these arguments are advanced earlier by Edward Gibbon (d. 1794)in the final volume of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1778). In turn, both reliedupon the collation of written sources presented in Barthelemy d’Herbelot de Molainville’s(d. 1695) Bibliotheque orientale, ou dictionaire universel (published in 1697 after having beencompleted by Antoine Galland [d. 1715], the famous translator of the Thousand and OneNights).

D’Herbelot’s Bibliotheque orientale makes a good starting point for an analysis of the scholarlydebate over the caging of Bayezid.28 The scope of d’Herbelot’s reading of Arabic, Persian,and Turkish sources far exceeded that of any previous reference work on Islamic history.In the introductory section to his encyclopaedia he claims to have consulted the writingsof four key authors on the life of Temur: Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Arabshah (d. 1450),Muhammad ibn Khavand Shah (Mirkhvand, d. 1498), Ghiyath al-Din Khvandamir (d. 1534

or 37), and Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi (d. 1454). Of these, only Ibn ‘Arabshah’s Kitab al-‘aja’ib al-maqdur f� akhbar T�mur was available in printed form (both in Arabic and Frenchtranslation).29 It is also evident that he is aware of some of the Turkish histories of thefifteenth and sixteenth centuries, although he does not name them in the list of authors hehad consulted. D’Herbelot mentions the captivity of Bayezid briefly in the entry devotedto Temur (Timour), but the bulk of his comments on this question appear in the entryentitled, “Baiazid, ou Abu Iezid Ben Morad Gazi”.30 Without giving specific citations tohis sources, d’Herbelot assembles a reconstruction of the encounter between Bayezid andTemur in which the latter treats his captive with respect, offering him a meal in his tent.They have a conversation that encompasses such issues as the government of empires and thevissicitudes of fate. The discourse finishes with Temur posing a question; d’Herbelot writes:

But having finished the conversation with a request as to what would have been the treatmenthe would have received had he fallen into the same disgrace; this Sultan, who was naturally shy,replied that he would have locked him [Temur] in an iron cage, and carried him about in thisstate among all the provinces of his empire.

The victor, surprised by the brutality of his prisoner’s response, took at the same time theresolution to treat him as he [Temur] would have been treated had he fallen into his [Bayezid’shands] . . . 31

28Edward Pococke (d. 1691) should perhaps be credited as the first true Orientalist to concern himself withthe caging of Bayezid, though his comments in the supplement to his history of Barhebraeus are not extensive.See: Edward Pococke (ed.), Supplementum historiae dynastiarum in quo historiae orientalis series a Gregorii Abu’l-Faragii(Oxford, 1663), p. 45 no.4. On the history of European and North American Orientalist scholarship, see RobertIrwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies (London, 2006, reprinted 2007).

29The two editions of Ahmad b. Muhammad ibn ‘Arabshah’s text are Ahmedis Arabsiadae: Vitae et rerum gestarumTimuri, qui vulgo Tamerlaini dicitur historia, (ed.) Jacobus Golius (Leiden, 1636); L’histoire du grand Tamerlan, trans.Pierre Vattier (Paris, 1658).

30Barthelemy d’Herbelot, Bibliotheque orientale ou dictionaire universel (Paris, 1697), pp. 175–176 (Baiazid),pp. 877–888 (Timour).

31D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque orientale, p. 176: “ . . . mais ayant termine la conversation par une demande qu’il luifit sur le traitement qu’il auroit recu de lui en cas qu’il fut tombe dans la meme disgrace; ce Sultan, qui etoit d’unnaturel farouche, lui repondit qu’il auroit enferme dans la cage de fer, et fait porter en cet etat dans toutes lesprovinces de son Empire.


According to d’Herbelot’s account, Temur was unable to take Bayezid all the way toSamarqand because of the latter’s death in 804 (this should be 805). D’Herbelot concludes bynoting that some Turkish historians claim the sultan died by his own hand. As alreadynoted, Leunclavius was able to exploit these sources with the aid of a translator, oneJohannes Gaudier (known as “Spiegel”) in his Annales sultanorum Othmanidarum (1588).Leunclavius also claims considerable familiarity with Medieval Greek histories.32 He recordsthe conversation between Temur and Bayezid in similar terms to d’Herbelot, and his versionwas then repeated in Jean-Jacques Boissard’s (d. 1602), Vitae et icones sultanorum (1596) andRichard Knolles’ (d. 1610) The generall Historie of the Turkes (1603).33

The first of the major Persian historians of this period to be made widely available toEuropean scholars was Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi. His panegyric biography of Temur, theZ. afarnama, was translated into French by Alexandre Petis de la Croix (d. 1751) and publishedunder the title Histoire de Timur-bec in 1722. An English translation of this edition appearedin the following year.34 According to Yazdi, Bayezid was brought as a prisoner with hishands tied into the presence of Temur. The latter was touched by pity and compassion, andordered the sultan’s hands to be freed before they started their conversation. Temur’s graciousmanner leads Bayezid to admit the fault of his actions, and the remainder of Yazdi’s accountemphasises the good treatment of Bayezid prior to his death from apoplexy (an event thatapparently much affected Temur as he had intended to replace the Turkish sultan on histhrone).35 Petis de la Croix was well aware of the stories regarding the caging of Bayezid.Adopting a more critical stance to the available Islamic sources than one sees in D’Herbelot’sentry on Bayezid and the works of other earlier writers, Petis de la Croix remarks in theintroduction to his translation:

As Timur-Bec had defeated the Turks and Arabs from Syria, and he had taken even the SultanBajazet, it is small wonder he was mistreated by the Historians of these Nations, who in defianceof truth, and against the dignity of history, have fallen into [treating] this subject with greatexcess. We see by the lecture of Condemir, and of many other historians, that everything theyhave written of the origin and adventures of Timur-Bec, are fables and that their animosityagainst the Prince made them invent [these]. So to destroy completely the fable, we will attach[to him] the name of Timur-Bec, and lose that of Tamerlane which has been adopted.36

Le vainqueur surpris d’une reponse si brutale de son prisonnier, prit meme temps la resolution de lui faire lememe traitement qu’il auroit recu de lui, s’il etoit tombe entre ses mains . . . ”

32Johannes Leuclavius, Annales sultanorum Othmanidarum (Frankfurt, 1588), pp. 24–25. His Greek sources arelisted in the last page of the index (unpaginated). He gives the following list: ‘‘Chronica diuersa manuscripta,Graeca, Latina, Germanica’, Emanuel Musicius Atheniensis, Georgius Hustius Illyricus, Georgius Pachymerius,Nicephorus Gregoras, Nicetas Choniates, Nicolaus Nicolaides Delphinas, Nicolaus Sophianus, ‘Origines vrbisConstantinopolitanae liber m.s’., Petrus Bizarus, Philippus Callimachus, ‘Praetor Graeciae, manuscr’., ThomasSpanduginus Cantacuzenus, Zonaras, Zosimus Comes, Zygomalas Protonotarius Graecus”.

33Jean-Jacques Boissard, Vitae et icones sultanorum Turcicorum (Frankfurt, 1596), f. 13r; Richard Knolles, TheGenerall Historie of the Turkes (London, 1603), pp. 220–221.

34Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi, Histoire de Timur-bec, connu sous le nom du grand Tamerlan, empereur des Mogols etTartares, trans. Alexandre Petis de la Croix, 4 vols. (Paris, 1722). The English translation of the French edition wasmade by John Darby under the title, The History of Timur-Bec, known by the Name of Tamerlain the Great, Emperor ofthe Moguls and Tartars (London, 1723).

35Yazdi, Histoire de Timur-bec, iv, p. 65 (chapter LX).36Petis de la Croix’s introduction in Yazdi, Histoire de Timur-bec, i, pp. xvii-xviii. “Comme Timur-Bec avoit

vaincu des Turcs & les Arabes de Syrie, qu’il avoit pris meme le Sultan Bajazet, il ne faut pas s’etonner qu’il ait etemaltraite par les Historiens de ces Nations, lesquels au mepris de la verite, & contre la dignite de l’histoire, sont


The person identified as “Condemir” in this passage is Demetrie Cantemir, Voivode ofMoldavia (d. 1723), whose influential The History of the Growth and Decay of the OttomanEmpire was translated into English in 1734–35. Cantemir followed the prevalent view thatBayezid had been confined in a cage.37 In the footnote to the paragraph quoted above Petisde la Croix’s offers further thoughts on the cage:

These are passionate historians who invented the fable of the iron cage, in which they say thevictor had placed Bajazet. And it was followed by several Europeans, but we see the fallacy in [thewriting of] our author (Yazdi), who is contemporary, and reports to the contrary, that Timur-Becalways treated Bajazet as his equal, and that he restored to him all the honours due to the mostimportant kings.38

Additional support for Petis de la Croix’s positive assessment of Temur’s conduct was providedlater in David Price’s (d. 1835), Chronological Retrospect, or Memoirs of the principal Eventsof Mahommedan History (1811–21), a three-volume work largely based on translations ofMirkhvand’s vast history, Tar�kh-i rawz. at al-S. afa.39 Differing only in relatively minor details(such as the cause of sultan’s death from asthma and inflammation of the throat) from Yazdi’sversion of events, Price’s collation of Mirkhwand and other Persian authors appears to havebeen little noted by the nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars who have dealt withBayezid’s cage. This oversight may have been because Yazdi’s biography was so entrenchedin European scholarship by this time, and was perhaps also due to the fact that in theChronological Retrospect it is very difficult to prise apart the original translations from thetranslator’s commentary. Mirkhvand is now regarded as an important source on the lifeof Temur because of his use of first-hand testimony. In this respect, his assertions – basedon the testimony of an eye-witness, Sayyid Ahmad Tarkhan, brother-in-law of Shahrukh(r. 1405–47)40 – that Bayezid was brought bound into Temur’s presence, but that he wassubsequently unmanacled and never confined in a cage, carry considerable weight.41 An

tombez sur ce sujet dans de grand exces. On voit par la lecture de Condemir, & de quantite d’autres Historiens,que tout ce qu’ils ont ecrit de l’origine & des avantures de Timur-Bec, sont des fables, que leur animosite contre cePrince leur a fait inventer. Ainsi pour detruire entierement la fable, nous nous attacherons au nom de Timur-Bec,& laisserons celui de Tamerlan qu’elle avoit adopte”.

37Demetrie Cantemir (Kantemir), The History of the Growth and Decay of the Ottoman Empire. Part One: Containingthe Growth of the Ottoman Empire from the Reign of Othman the Founder, to the Reign of Mahomet IV. That is, from theyear 1300, to the Siege of Vienna, in 1683, trans. N. Tindall (London, 1734–35). On the reign of Bayezid, see PartOne, pp. 46–57. Cantemir’s discussion of the cage appears on p. 55.

38Petis de la Croix’s introduction in Yazdi, Histoire de Timur-bec, i, p. xvii note (a). “Ce sont ces Historienspassionez qui ont invente la Fable de la cage de fer, dans laquelle ils disent que le Vainqueur fit mettre Bajazet& il ont ete suivis par plusieurs Europeens: mais on en voit la faussete dans notre auteur, qui est contemporain,& qui rapporte au contraire, que Timur-Bec traita toujours Bajazet comme son egal, & qu’il lui fit rendre tousles honneurs qui sont dus aux plus grands Rois”. Elsewhere Petis de la Croix notes his awareness of the Frenchtranslation (by Pierre Vattier) of Ibn ‘Arabshah. He also remarks that he became aware of Clavijo’s work only afterhe had completed his translation.

39Muhammad b. Khvand Shah b. Mahmud (Mirkhvand), Chronological Retrospect or Memoirs of the principalEvents of Mahommedan History, from the Death of the Arabian Legislator, to the Accession of the Emperor Akbar, and theEstablishment of the Moghul Empire in Hindustaun, trans. David Price, 3 vols. (London, 1811–21). The relevant eventsappear in vol.iii.1, pp. 393–423.

40Mirkhvand, Chronological Retrospect, iii.1, p. 394. Shahrukh granted land to Sayyid Ahmad Tarkhan in810/1407–08. See Manz, Rise and Rule, p. 140.

41For the relevant events in a modern edition, see Mirkhvand, Tar�kh-i rawz. at al-S. afa (ed.) Riza Quli KhanHidayat and Jamshid Kiyanfar (Tehran, 2001), ix, pp. 5026–5039.


edition of Khvandamir’s chronicle, Hab�b al-siyar, was published in 1857, but it had nonoticeable impact upon the debate.42

The increasingly critical evaluation of source material is a feature of later scholarlycontributions in the second half of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth century. Voltaire(Francois-Marie Arouet, d. 1778) turned his attention to the question of the treatment ofBayezid in Chapter 75 of his Essai sur l’histoire generale (1756 and translated into English in1782). Without citing specific primary sources, he asserts that the cage is not mentioned byPersian or Arab authors, and appears in the Turkish chronicles “perhaps in order to renderTamerlane odious; or rather because they copied it from the Greek historians”. His Temuris very much the magnanimous ruler drawn by Yazdi, and this characterisation leads Voltaireto conclude that “it is difficult to reconcile the iron cage, and the base affront done toBajazet’s wife, with the generosity which the Turks attribute to Tamerlane”. He extends hisscepticism to all Islamic sources noting that “Oriental” historians often put grandiose wordsinto the mouths of their subjects.43

Voltaire’s assessment of the problems inherent in the interpretation of Islamic histories isnoted approvingly by Edward Gibbon in the final volume of the Decline and Fall.44 Strayingwell beyond his remit of writing the history of the Roman empire through to the fall ofConstantinople in 1453, Gibbon devotes considerable attention to aspects of Islamic andAsian history. His fascination with the Mongols has been discussed by David Morgan,45 andit is little surprise that he should also have been intrigued by the personality and achievementsof Temur. Unable to read Arabic or Persian, Gibbon went to considerable effort to consultall of the published translations of Middle Eastern histories, supplementing this with anextensive knowledge of primary sources in Greek and Latin. His treatment of the caging ofBayezid represented the most comprehensive examination yet of the primary sources, andwas undertaken with his characteristic acuity. He notes that the story of the iron cage wasemployed in past times as a moral lesson, and that it “is now rejected as a fable by modernwriters, who smile on vulgar credulity”.46 In order to come to his own conclusion, however,Gibbon sifts through the information in the primary sources at his disposal.

Gibbon’s assesses the potential veracity of those writers who claim the good treatmentof Bayezid and of those who assert that Temur confined him in a cage. Emphasis isgiven to Yazdi’s positive portrayal of Temur’s behaviour, particularly in view of its earlycomposition (in the 1420s) and the consistencies evident between the Z. afarnama and otherPersian accounts cited by d’Herbelot. Gibbon is, however, wary of the “flattery” that, in his

42Ghiyath al-Din ibn Humam al-Din Khvandamir, The Habeeb-os-seear: Being the History of the World from theearliest Times to the Year of the Hejira 930 A.D. (Bombay, 1857).

43According to translation in Voltaire, An Essay on universal History and the Manners and Spirit of Nations from theReign of Charlemagne, to the Age of Lewis XIV, trans. Mr Nugent (Edinburgh, 1782), pp. 87–88. For the French text,see Essai sur les moeurs et l’esprit des nations et sur les principaux faits de l’histoire depuis Charlemagne jusqu’a Louis XIII,tome 1, (ed.) Rene Pomeau (Paris, 1963), pp. 805–806.

44Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, (ed.) J. B. Bury, second edition(London, 1902), vii, pp. 60–65.

45David Morgan, “Edward Gibbon and the East”, Iran, XXXIII (1995), pp. 85–92. Also Rolando Minuti,“Gibbon and the Asiatic barbarians: Notes on the French sources of The Decline and Fall”, in Edward Gibbon,Bicentenary Essays, (ed.) David Womersley, Studies on Voltaire in the Eighteenth Century CCCLV (Oxford, 1997),pp. 21–44.

46Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vii, p. 60.


opinion, pervades such sources, and turns his attention to evidence in favour of the cage. Inaddition to the quotes of Poggius Bracciolini, Gibbon adduces other references to the cagein European writings of the first three decades of the fifteenth century. He then addressesthe important Arabic source, Ibn ‘Arabshah, whose history of Temur is characterised byGibbon as “florid and malevolent”. That said, he is struck by the correspondence betweenthe broadly contemporaneous testimonies of Europeans like Bracciolini and Ibn ‘Arabshahin the matter of the cage. Ibn ‘Arabshah also adds details concerning the humiliation of theconcubines and wives of Bayezid. Of the Greek historians Gibbon singles out Phrantzes,partly on chronological grounds, but mainly because he was sent in 1429 as an ambassador toMurad II (r. 1421–44, 1446–51) and, therefore, may have conversed with elderly janissarieswho had also been imprisoned by Temur. According to Gibbon (and many later scholars),Phrantzes is the one fifteenth-century Greek historian to refer to the employment of a cageto confine sultan Bayezid. Lastly, referring to the Turkish historians who write about thecage, Gibbon remarks, “ . . . some credit may be allowed to national historians, who cannotstigmatise the Tartar without uncovering the shame of their king and country”.47 Facedwith two conflicting bodies of evidence Gibbon seeks for a “fair and moderate” conclusion.He writes:

I am satisfied that Sherefeddin Ali [Yazdi] has faithfully described the first ostentatious interview,in which the conqueror, whose spirits were harmonized by success, affected the character ofgenerosity. But his mind was insensibly alienated by the unseasonable arrogance of Bajazet; thecomplaints of his enemies, the Anatolian princes, were just and vehement; and Timour betrayeda design of leading his royal captive in triumph to Samarcand. An attempt to facilitate his escape,by digging a mine under the tent, provoked the Mogul [sic] emperor to impose a harsher restraint;and, in his perpetual marches, an iron cage or waggon might be invented, not as a wanton insult,but as a rigorous precaution.48

The severity of this treatment leads Gibbon to conclude that Temur could be heldresponsible for the Ottoman sultan’s untimely death.49 Both Voltaire and Gibbon portraythe actions and character of Temur in a relatively positive light. Their comments should beseen in the wider context of the debate concerning Oriental despotism in eighteenth-century Europe. In their favourable assessment of some Muslim rulers Voltaire andGibbon can be grouped with such Orientalists as Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron(d. 1805) and Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (d. 1838) on the opposite side of the Europeanview of despotism from Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu (d. 1755).50 Furtherconfirmation of the statesmanlike character of Temur was provided by the publication ofA Specimen of the civil and military Institutes of Timour, or Tamerlane (1780), translated froma Persian manuscript by Joseph White. Although it is now recognised as a work of theMughal court in the seventeenth century, the Institutes of Timour exerted some influenceover scholarly views of Temur in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.51 Notably,

47Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vii, p. 64.48Ibid.49Ibid.50Irwin, “Oriental despotism”; Curtis, Orientalism and Islam, pp. 72–102.51John White (trans.), A Specimen of the civil and military Institutes of Timour, or Tamerlane (Oxford, 1780). An

improved English translation was made by Major William Davy (1783) and a French translation was completed by


Gibbon had also written admiringly of the law code (yasa) attributed to Chinggiz Khan(Genghis Khan, d. 1227), even comparing it to the Constitutions of Carolina (1669) by JohnLocke (d. 1704) and Anthony Ashley-Cooper, first earl of Shaftesbury (d. 1683).52

An influential contribution to the study of the primary sources dealing with Bayezid’s cagewas made by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall in the first volume of his Geschichte des osmanischenReiches (1827).53 Aside from his examination of the Turkish historians, Ashikpashazade(d. 1481), Mehmed Neshri (d. c.1520), and Hoca Sa’d al-Din Efendi (d. 1599), the keyelement of his argument is philological. He focuses his attention on the meaning of theTurkish word, qafes, that was commonly understood to mean simply “cage”. Relevant toois the Arabic term qafas used by Ibn ‘Arabshah in his life of Temur. Crucially, Von Hammerpoints out that qafes (he transcribes the word as kafes) does not simply have to be read as“cage” (Kafich), but can also be understood as “a barred room” (ein vergittertes Zimmer) or “abarred litter” (Sanfte). He argues that this misunderstanding has led to the perpetuation ofthe “fairytale” (Mahrchen) of the iron cage in the writings of Ibn ‘Arabshah, Phrantzes andnumerous Western European historians.54 Von Hammer points to a passage in the chronicleof Neshri that is translated in Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches as, “Timur liess eine Sanftemachen, in der man ihn (Bajesid) wie in einem Kafes zwischen zwey Pferden trug”.55 Thus,Neshri’s account appears to be specifying a litter held between two horses. In addition, thisterm was often applied to the litters used to carry women of the harem, and could even beapplied to the residence (Wohnung) of the princes in the palace of Constantinople. In thislast context, qafes implies also the ritual seclusion that was established around the sultan andthe princes of the Ottoman dynasty. According to Von Hammer’s interpretation qafes losesmost of its negative connotations. Thus, Temur’s actions were, as is implied in the Persianaccounts, consistent with the necessary respect for the dignity of this royal captive.

While Von Hammer-Purgstall’s analysis of the Turkish word qafes was widely acceptedthroughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, a note of dissent was offered byGustav Weil in Volume 5 of his Geschichte der Chalifen (1862).56 Weil pointed to the fact thatthe Arabic term qafas lacks the secondary meanings found in Ottoman Turkish. He concludedthat Ibn ‘Arabshah, an author conversant with Turkish source material, would have beenable to substitute a suitable Arabic term for “litter” (or, at least, some further clarification inthe text) if that were what he actually wanted to indicate. Weil’s scepticism concerning VonHammer’s approach is echoed by Herbert Gibbons (d. 1934) in The Foundation of the Ottoman

Louis Langles (1787). For a critical assessment of the Institutes, see Gergely Csiky, “The Tuzukat-i Timuri as a sourcefor military history”, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungarium, LIX.4 (2006), pp. 439–491.

52Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vii, p. 4 n. 8.53Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches. Erster Band: Von der Grundung des osmanischen

Reiches bis zur Eroberung Constantinopels, 1300–1453 (Pest, 1827), pp. 317–323. Von Hammer also later translated partsof the Seyahatname of Evliya Celebi (d. 1682), including the section in which the author repeats the story of theconversation that led to the caging of Bayezid by Temur. See Narrative of Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa in theseventeenth Century by Evliya Efendi, trans. Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (London, 1846), i, p. 29.

54Writing earlier in the century the Marquis de Salaberry d’Irumberry put forward the claim that the referenceto the cage in Ibn ‘Arabshah’s text was an interpolation by his Turkish editor and translator, Nazmi-zade. SeeHistoire de l’empire Ottoman, depuis sa fondation jusqu’a la paix de Yassi, en 1792, 4 vols. (Paris, 1813), iv, pp. 200–201.Cited in Gibbons, Foundation of the Ottoman Empire, p. 255 n. 1.

55Von Hammer, Geschichte, p. 320.56Gustav Weil, Geschichte des Abbasidenchalifats in Egypten, Vol. II ( = Geschichte der Chalifen Vol. V) (Stuttgart,

1862), p. 96.


Empire (1916). Gibbons also suggests that for Bayezid the humiliation of being placed in a“harem litter like a woman” would have been no less than being placed in a cage meant fora wild beast.57

Two points may be offered in support of Weil’s viewpoint. The first relates to the semanticrange of qafas in Medieval Arabic sources. For scholars of the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth century there existed two readily accessible reference works – Edward Lane’s(d. 1876) Arabic-English Lexicon (1863–93) and Reinhart Dozy’s (d. 1883), Supplement auxdictionnaires arabes (1881) – that offered definitions for qafas as well as examples of primarytexts in which the word appears.58 Curiously, we have found no evidence that these workswere consulted by any scholar writing about the caging of Bayezid. Lane’s Lexicon doesrecord a meaning of “a thing composed of two curved pieces of wood between which is anet”, but this does not appear to be something sufficiently substantial to carry or enclose aman. Furthermore, the first definitions offered in this entry in the Lexicon indicate relativelysmall objects such as a cage or coop (made of wood or reeds) for confining birds or animals.Lane also notes that the word can refer to the “the cage-formed structure of the bones ofthe thorax”. The second point is that had Ibn ‘Arabshah intended his use of qafas to bear themeanings it carries in Turkish, one might have expected the word to have been repeated insubsequent retellings of the captivity of Bayezid by other Arab historians. No mention of aqafas is found in Ibn Taghribirdi’s (d. 1470) account of these events in al-Nujum al-zahira f�muluk misr wa’l-qahira, even though he was personally acquainted with Ibn ‘Arabshah.59 IbnTaghribirdi records only that the sultan appeared before Temur “hobbling in shackles (qaydpl. quy d)” and that he was held in this manner at the time of his death in prison in themonth of Dhu al-Hijja 805 (June 1403).60

Between the 1860s and the 1940s most of the significant contributions to the debate overthe caging of Bayezid focused upon the information in the earliest Turkish histories.61 Therelevant sections of Neshri’s account of the Ottoman dynasty were edited with a Germantranslation by Theodor Noldeke (d. 1930) in 1861.62 Franz Babinger (d. 1967) producedan edition of the chronicle by ‘Uruj b. ‘Adil (fl. late fifteenth century) in 1925 whichwas exploited by Nicholas Martinovitch in a short article published in the Journal Asiatique

57Gibbons, Foundation of the Ottoman Empire, p. 255 n. 1.58Edward Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, derived from the best and most copious Eastern sources (London, 1863–93,

reprinted Cambridge, 1984), book 1, p. 2551; Reinhart Dozy, Supplement aux dictionnaires arabes (Leiden, 1881), ii,p. 391. Lane’s Lexicon made extensive use of the monumental eighteenth-century dictionary of classical Arabic, Tajal-‘Arus, first published in Cairo in 1888/89–90.

59For the biography of Ibn ‘Arabshah and his relations with other fifteenth-century scholars, see McChesney,Robert, “A note on the life and works of Ibn ‘Arabshah”, in Judith Pfeiffer and Sholeh Quinn (eds.), History andHistoriography of Post-Mongol Central Asia and the Middle East: Studies in Honor of John E. Woods (Wiesbaden, 2006),pp. 205–249. Also J. Pedersen, “Ibn ‘Arabshah”, Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition (Leiden, 1960–2002), ii, p. 711.

60Abu al-Mahasin ibn Taghribirdi, Abu ’l-Mahasin ibn Taghrı Birdı’s Annals entitled, al-Nujum az-Zahira fı MulukMisr wal-Kahira (Vol. VI, part I, No. 1) , (ed.) William Popper, University of California Publications in SemiticPhilology VI.1 (Berkeley, 1915), pp. 83–84. Translated by William Popper as History of Egypt, 1382–1469. Part II,1399–1411 A.D. Translated from the Arabic Annals of Abu l-Mahasin ibn Taghrı Birdı, University of California Publicationsin Semitic Philology XIV (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1954), pp. 61–62.

61Discussions of the cage also appear in histories of the Ottoman sultanate and of the Byzantine empire duringthis period, but none advances new primary source material. For example, see: Edwin Pears, The Destruction ofthe Greek Empire and the Story of the Capture of Constantinople by the Turks (London, 1903), pp. 144–145; Gibbons,Foundation of the Ottoman Empire, pp. 254–256 and notes.

62For the reference to the qafes made for Bayezid, see: Theodor Noldeke, “Auszuge aus Nesri’s Geschichte desosmanischen Hauses”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, XV (1861), p. 367.


in 1927.63 ‘Uruj b. ‘Adil records the alleged conversation in which Bayezid, in answerto Temur’s question of what would have happened if their situations had been reversed,carelessly responded that he would have imprisoned his captive in an iron cage (qafes). Thisremark seals his fate as Temur immediately orders a cage to be made in order to confine theOttoman sultan. Martinovitch confidently asserts that this relatively early account (in fact,written several decades after the earliest European references to the cage) definitively solvesthe question of the cage. He appears to have been unaware that European scholars includingLeunclavius in the late sixteenth and d’Herbelot in the late seventeenth century were alreadyaware of Turkish sources recording this supposed conversation. In his article Martinovitchalso surveys the Russian publications that discuss Bayezid’s cage.

The last major salvo in this scholarly controversy was penned by the Turkish scholar,Mehmet Fuad Koprulu (d. 1966) for the journal, Belleten. Entitled, “Yildirim Beyazıd’ınesareti ve ıntıhari hakkinda” (‘On the story of Bayezid Yildirim’s captivity and suicide”),Koprulu’s article represents the most sustained Quellenkritik of the Turkish, Persian, andArabic sources that discuss the treatment of Bayezid from his initial capture through to hisdeath. A second article by the author revisiting the question of Bayezid’s alleged suicideappeared in the 1942 issue of Belleten.64 Split into two halves (the first dealing with thecage and the second with the allegation that the Ottoman sultan killed himself), the 1937

article starts with a brief summary of the major primary sources and of the interpretationsoffered by earlier scholars. Koprulu disagrees with Von Hammer’s conclusion that the cagewas no more than a legend. He also questions Martinovitch’s assertions and the reliabilityof Babinger’s edition of ‘Uruj b. ‘Adil as a tool for the study of the period. In commonwith Herbert Gibbons he believes that the question of the historicity of the cage “is yet farfrom being resolved”.65 Notable too is the praise he has for Edward Gibbon’s undogmaticmethodology and conclusions regarding the cage.

Koprulu’s analysis of the Turkish sources is of great importance.66 He divides the accountsinto those that make no mention of the cage or seek to discount its existence from those thatwrite of it as an historical event. The first group includes the very earliest Ottoman chronicles,Sukrullah’s Behcat-ul Tevarikh and the history of Muhammad b. Haci Halil Konevi’im, andother later works by Idris Bitlisi, Ibn Kemal (Kemalpashazade), and Sa’d al-Din Hoca.What holds this first group together is that they were either court historians (who hada vested interest in expunging evidence of the humiliation of a sultan of the dynasty) orsimply writers aiming to praise the Ottoman rulers. Sa’d al-Din, considered by Kopruluas an official historian of the Ottoman state, went to particular lengths to try to show thecage to be a rumour (including consulting Yazdi’s Zafarnama), and his scepticism probably

63Franz Babinger (ed.), Die fruhosmanischen Jahrbucher des Urudsch, Quellenwerke des islamischen Schrifttums2 (Hannover, 1925), pp. 35–36; N. Martinovitch, “La cage du Sultan Bayazid”, Journal Asiatique CCXI.1 (July-September 1927), pp. 135–137. He translates the relevant section of ‘Uruj’s chronicle on p. 137. A version of thesame story appears (without an attribution to a specific author) in Henry Keene and Thomas Beale, An OrientalBiographical Dictionary (London, 1894, reprinted New York, 1965), p. 99 (“Baiazid I”).

64Mehmet Fuad Koprulu, “Yildirim Beyazıd’ın esareti ve ıntıhari hakkinda”, Belleten. Turk Tarıh Kurumu, I.2(1937), pp. 591–603 (on the cage, see pp. 591–598); idem, “Yildirim Bayezıd’ın ıntıhari mes’elesı”, Belleten. TurkTarıh Kurumu, VII (1943), pp. 591–599.

65Koprulu, “Yildirim Beyazıd’ın esareti”, p. 592.66Ibid,. pp. 592–595.


influenced the approach taken by Von Hammer. Among this first group Koprulu identifiesone exception: Sehnameci Lokman who in the late sixteenth century wrote that “Timurhad a cage made out of iron that looked like a throne (taht) and put Yildirim in it”. AsKoprulu notes, although the account claims the object looked like a throne, it is clearly a typeof cage (qafes).

The second group is composed of independent historians from among the Anatolian Turkswho felt no need to praise the Ottoman sultans. These include the anonymous, Tevarikh-iAl-i Osman, the histories of ‘Uruj, Ashikpashazade, Muhyiddin, Lutfi Pasha, Neshri, and theverse history of Hadidi. Ashikpashazade’s account is interesting in that he claims it to havebeen based on the testimony of a left-handed individual who was in the service of Bayezidfrom the battle of Ankara through to his death in captivity. While Von Hammer inferred itwas a palanquin – not a cage – that was made for the Ottoman sultan, Koprulu draws attentionto Ashikpashazade’s actual statement: “the cage was not a palanquin (taht-i revan) that wasmerely aimed for the transportation of the captive sultan, but a vessel that would preventhim from escaping”.67 From these sources Koprulu concludes that the rumour about thecage was circulating in Anatolia in the early fifteenth century. According to Koprulu furtherconfirmation of this comes from the chronicle of Phrantzes, who had visited the Ottomancourt in 1429 and Ibn ‘Arabshah, who had also spent time in Anatolia and was conversantin Turkish. Another Arabic historian, Ibn Iyas (d. after 1521), also records the story of thecage in his chronicle, perhaps drawing on Ibn ‘Arabshah or traditions circulating amongthe Ottoman conquerors of Egypt. Koprulu mentions the Greek historian, Spandounes, asanother who had been in Turkey and had close relations with Ottoman court circles (thoughKoprulu was unaware that the earliest published editions of Spandounes’ history lack anyreference to the cage – see above).

On the basis of his analysis of the sources Koprulu concludes that the cage was mostprobably an historical fact. He favours the reconstruction offered by Edward Gibbon.That the Persian sources – he cites Yazdi, Nizam al-Din Shami (fl. 1404) and Hafiz ‘Abru(d. 1430) – make no mention of can be explained by their desire to show Temur in thebest possible light. The omission of the cage from many of the Byzantine and WesternEuropean accounts is not seen by Koprulu as sufficient reason to deny its existence. Finally,he identifies examples from Arabic and Persian chronicles of the caging or placing in chainsof captured princes and sultans. In addition, Koprulu cites an example of similar treatmentof Christian merchants from the writings of Jean de Joinville (d. 1317), companion of Louis

67Koprulu, “Yildirim Beyazıd’ın esareti”, p. 593. Dimitris Kastritsis kindly provided a translation of the relevantpassage in Ashikpashazade’s chronicle. Significantly, the Turkish author claims to derive his information from a first-hand source, a soldier in Bayezid’s elite guards. It reads: “Question: Oh dervish, since you yourself were not at thatbattle [i.e. Ankara] from whom are you transmitting this story? Answer: There was a naib in Bursa named KocaNaib, who was one of Bayezid Khan’s solaks [elite guards] and was with him when he was taken prisoner. He wasalso with him in Aksehir when he passed away. I asked him ‘how did Timur keep Bayezid?’ and he answered, ‘hehad a litter [taht-i revan)] constructed, like a cage [qafes] suspended between two horses. Whenever they travelled,[Timur] had [Bayezid] transported [in the litter] in front of him, and when they camped he had him placed infront of his own tent’. This Koja Naib I am talking about went to Sultan Mehmed, who gave him the commandof the castle of Amasya, and when he got old Sultan Murad brought him to Bursa and gave him a naibship. I havenot transmitted most of his story, for that would make my account too long”. For the original Ottoman Turkish,see Friedrich Giese (ed.), Die altosmanische Chronik des Asikpasazade auf Grund mehrerer neuentdeckter Handschriften(Leipzig, 1929), p. 71.


IX (r. 1226–70) on the Seventh Crusade, and the popular Sufi verse that “the physical bodyis an iron cage that imprisons the spirit”.68

While no major advances have been made in the analysis of Islamic primary sourcessurrounding the captivity of Bayezid since Koprulu’s 1937 article, mention should be madeof the collation of European and Middle Eastern primary sources offered in Marie-MathildeAlexandrescu-Dersca’s 1942 publication, La Campagne de Timur en Anatolie (1402).69 MicheleBernardini has conducted the most detailed analysis of the primary and secondary sources onthe cage in recent years, also making numerous important observations about the portrayal ofthe conflict between Temur in European dramatic traditions.70 Most of the significant Arabic,Persian, and Turkish sources are now available in critical editions. An English translation ofIbn ‘Arabshah’s life of Temur by John Sanders was published in 1936, and modern popularbiographies of Temur were written by Harold Lamb (1928) and Hilda Hookham (1962).71

Adam Knobler has brought to light additional European primary sources dating from thelast years of Temur’s rule.72 Lastly, the question of Bayezid’s cage has also been explored byscholars of Christopher Marlowe. The most thorough examination of the sources consultedby Marlowe is provided by Una Ellis-Fermor (d. 1958) in the introduction to her editionof Tamburlaine the Great (1930).73 Although she incorrectly identifies the chronicle of theArmenian, Het‘um (d. c.1311), as a primary source for the life of Temur (this final section ofthe early printed versions of Les flors des histoires is, in fact, a later addition74), her discussionof the sources is, nevertheless, intriguing as a guide to what an educated reader of the latesixteenth century would have been able to learn about the lives of Temur and Bayezidthrough consultation of European printed books.

Re-evaluating the Greek and Arabic Sources

It is beyond the scope of this article to present a critical analysis of all the primary sourcesdealing with the treatment of Bayezid during this captivity. A detailed examination of thepertinent material in the earliest Turkish histories is certainly required, and the Arabic,

68Koprulu, “Yildirim Beyazıd’ın esareti”, pp. 597–598.69See “Appendice IV: La cage de fer”, in Alexandrescu-Dersca, Campagne de Timur, pp. 120–122.70Michele Bernardini, “‘Tamerlano e Bayezid in gabbia’. Fortuna di un tema storico orientale nell’arte e nel

teatro del Settecento”, in La Conoscenza dell’Asia e dell’Africa in Italia nei secoli XVII e XIX, a c, vol. III.2 , (eds.)U. Marazzi and A. Gallotta (Naples, 1989), pp. 729–760. See also idem, “Tamerlano protagonista orientale delSettocento europeo”, in Mappe della Letteratura Europea e Mediterranea, (ed.) Gian Mario Anselmi, Dal Barroccoall’Ottocento 2 (Milan, 2000), pp. 227–248; idem, “Tamerlano, i Genovesi e il favoloso Axalla”, in Europa e Islam trai Secoli XIV e XVI, (eds.) M. Bernadini, E. Garcia, A. Cerbo and C. Borrelli, Collana “Matteo Ripa” 17 (Naples,2002), pp. 391–426.

71Ibn ‘Arabshah, Tamerlane, or Timur the great Amir, trans. John Sanders (London, 1936, reprinted Lahore, 1976);Harold Lamb, Tamerlane, the Earth Shaker (New York, 1928); Hilda Hookham, Tamburlaine the Conqueror (London,1964).

72Adam Knobler, “Timur the (Terrible/Tartar) trope: A case of repositioning in popular literature and history”,Medieval Encounters VII.1 (2001), pp. 101–112 (esp. pp. 101–104).

73Una Ellis-Fermor, “Sources of the play”, in Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, in two Parts, (ed.)Una Ellis-Fermor (London, 1930), pp. 17–61. Other investigations of the sources employed by Marlowe in thewriting of Tamburlaine the Great include Ethel Seaton, “Fresh sources for Marlowe”, The Review of English Studies,V.20 (October 1929), pp. 385–401; Samuel Chew, The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England during the Renaissance(Oxford, 1937), pp. 469–470.

74Beatrice Manz, “Tamerlane’s career and its uses”, Journal of World History, XIII.1 (2002), p. 12 n. 26; Milwright,“So despicable a vessel”, p. 338 n. 15.


Persian, and Eastern European primary accounts also warrant further attention. What willbe offered in this section is a re-evaluation of the Greek and Arabic sources that have mostfrequently been employed by Orientalists in their discussions of the alleged caging of theOttoman sultan.

The major Greek historians of the last phases of the Byzantine empire have often beencited in the debate over the existence of Bayezid’s cage. While the Greek sources of the earlyfifteenth century and the biography of Mehmed II (r. 1444–46, 1451–81) by Critovoulosof Imbros (d. c.1470) have nothing to add to what is known elsewhere,75 the histories ofDucas, Chalcocondyles, and Phrantzes deserve more attention than they have previouslybeen given. In his chronicle Ducas provides a relatively detailed account of the battle ofAnkara and its aftermath. He makes the following remarks about the capture of Bayezid bythe troops of Temur (he calls them Scythians):

And Bayezid’s misfortunes became so great that the Scythians approached him and told him“Descend from the horse, lord Bayezid, and come. Temir-chan is calling you”. Then, eventhough he did not want to for the horse was Arabian and very valuable, he descended from thehorse. They laid [a saddle] on a small pony (�� ), sat him on it and took him awayto Temir-chan.

When he (i.e. Temur) was informed that Bayezid had been captured, he ordered the setting upof a tent, and sat in the tent playing chess with his son, declaring that “I do not care at all aboutBayezid’s capture since through my immeasurable force I [already] had him like a small sparrowin a trap ( � �� )”.76

Ducas continues with an account of the first meeting between Temur and Bayezid in whichthe former treats his captive graciously. Temur places him in tents and orders the digging of aditch around them, with soldiers stationed both inside and outside this boundary. Followingan attempt to mine under the tent and release the Ottoman sultan, Temur takes furthermeasures. Most pertinently, Ducas claims, “Since then a large prison was made for him andiron collars and handcuffs (�� ε��) for the night”.77 It was in thiscondition that Bayezid finally died, possibly poisoning himself. Ducas concludes his accountnoting that Temur had intended to take Bayezid back to “Persia” in order to exhibit to hispeople the “sort of beast he had gained power over”.78 Chalcocondyles offers less of interest,though he does mention that, following his capture and first interview with Temur, Bayezidwas paraded on a mule (�� ) around the Timurid army camp. He also confirms thedetail that Despina (called by him “Lazar’s daughter”) “was paraded with him in the camp,and they had her pour wine opposite her husband”. Like Ducas he records the digging of atunnel under the tent of the Ottoman sultan.79

75For the Byzantine perspectives on the life of Temur, see Nicoloudis, “Byzantine historians”; Baboula, “Greeksources”. For Critovoulos, see History of Mehmed the Conqueror by Kritovoulos, trans. Charles Riggs (Princeton, NJ.,1954). On the battle of Ankara and the capture of Bayezid, see Part I.78 (pp. 30–31).

76Michael Ducas, Istoria = Ducas. Istoria Turco-Bizantina (1341–1462), (ed.) Vasile Grecu. Scriptores Byzantini1 (Bucharest, 1958), pp. 29–435 (the quoted passage is 16.8–9). For an English translation, see: Decline and Fall ofByzantium to the Ottoman Turks, trans. Harry Magoulias (Detroit, 1975), pp. 95–96.

77Ducas, Istoria, 16.12.78Ibid., 17.779Laonicus Chalcocondylas, Laonici Chalcocondylae. Historiarum demonstrationes, (ed.) E. Darko, vol. I (Budapest,

1922), pp. 149–150. For the Greek text with parallel English translation, see: A Translation and Commentary of the


Phrantzes has the least to say. In the Chronicon minus he merely records that “the amirBayezid was killed by Temir on 28 July”.80 The content and brevity of Phrantzes’ treatmentof this theme accords well with one of the earliest Turkish sources to deal with events in thefirst decade of the fifteenth century, the anonymous work entitled Ah.val-ı Sultan Mehemmedbin Bayez�d H

˘an (translated recently under the title, “The Tales of Sultan Mehmed, Son of

Bayezid Khan”). Completed soon after the termination of the civil war in 1413, this semi-mythic biographical text differs in character from conventional chronicles. It perhaps reflects,however, the sort of retelling of events that Phrantzes may have encountered when he sentas ambassador to sultan Murad II in 1429. In common with the chronicle of Phrantzes, “theTales of Sultan Mehmed” deals with the fate of sultan Bayezid in the first few lines. Thefirst paragraph deals with the victory of Temur at the battle of Ankara, and the scattering ofthe Turkish forces. Mehmed had found his way back to Rum, and from there he receivednews that his father had been taken captive and that the whereabouts of his brothers wereunknown. The author continues by quoting the words apparently uttered by Mehmed inwhich he laments the collapse of the empire of Osman, and concludes with the followingstatement: “My father the sultan has been captured by the enemy. Past pleasures have turnedto pain, and joy has been replaced by grief”.81

The more extensive account of events can be found in another Greek work, basedon Phrantzes’ original history, known as the Chronicon maius. As has been recognised byscholars of Byzantine history since the 1930s (but was unknown to the authors surveyed inthe previous section), the Chronicon maius is an expansion of Phrantzes’ text by MakariosMelissenos (or Melissourgos, d. 1585), metropolitan of Monemvasia. The Chronicon maiuswas written in Naples where Makarios and his brother Theodoros had fled after leadingan unsuccessful insurrection against Ottoman rule in the Peloponnese in the aftermath ofthe battle of Lepanto in 1571. Makarios Melissenos may also have travelled to Spain.82

Like the history of Spandounes, another emigre Greek, Melissenos’ Chronicon maius betraysan awareness of sixteenth-century Italian writing on Turkish history.83 The first printededition of Melissenos’ history (credited to Phrantzes) appeared in Venice in 1604. A criticaledition containing both the Chronicon minus and Chronicon maius was prepared by VasileGrecu (d. 1972) and published in 1966. Melissenos places the alleged caging of Bayezid after

“Demonstrations of Histories” (Books I-III), translated and edited by Nicolaos Nicoloudis, Historical MonographsXVI (Athens, 1996). The conflict between Bayezid and Temur appears in Book III (pp. 319–327).

80Georgios Phrantzes, Chronicon minus = Georgios Sphrantzes. Memorii, 1401–77, (ed.) Vasile Grecu. ScriptoresByzantini 5 (Bucharest, 1966), pp. 2–146 (the quoted passage is in cap. 1). For an English translation, see TheFall of the Byzantine Empire: A Chronicle of George Sphrantzes, 1401–77, trans. Marios Philippides (Amherst, 1980),pp. 1–2.

81Dimitris Kastritsis, trans., The Tales of Sultan Mehmed, Son of Bayezid Khan [Ah. val-ı Sultan Mehemmed binBayez�d H

˘an], Sources of Oriental Languages and Literatures 78 (Cambridge, MA., 2007), p. 1. On the date of

the text, see also idem, The Sons of Bayezid: Empire Building and Representation in the Ottoman Civil War of 1402–1413(Leiden, 2007), pp. 28–33.

82On the biography of Makarios Melissenos, see: Philippides, “Introduction”, in Phrantzes, The Fall of theByzantine Empire, pp. 8–10.

83For another example of a Greek chronicle conspicuously influenced by Italian historical writing, see MariosPhilippides (translated and edited), Byzantium, Europe, and the early Ottoman Sultans, 1373–1513. An anonymous GreekChronicle of the seventeenth Century (Codex Barberinus Graecus 111), Late Byzantine and Ottoman Studies IV (NewRochelle, NY., 1990). For Bayezid’s capture, humiliation, and death in captivity, see II.31–36 (pp. 31–32). Whilethe text includes the European inventions of Bayezid being bound in golden chains and that he was forced to beTemur’s footstool, no mention is made of a cage.


his first interview with Temur (Demiris). The Ottoman sultan’s haughty responses seal hisfate: “When Demiris heard Bayezid’s arrogant words he was angered and made an iron cell(��u�� ), put him inside and after a while killed him”.84

One of the most powerful pieces of evidence in favour of the caging of Bayezid is thetestimony of Ibn ‘Arabshah. Although the evident hostility to Temur in the Kitab al-‘aja’ib al-maqdur f� akhbar T�mur means that it cannot be viewed as an unbiased text on the subject, therelatively early date of composition (in the 1430s) and Ibn ‘Arabshah’s knowledge of Persianand Turkish sources give his account considerable credibility. What is curious, however, ishow little attention has been paid to what Ibn ‘Arabshah actually writes in his description ofthe capture and subsequent humiliations of Bayezid. The crucial passage in this respect relatesto the moment in the aftermath of the battle of Ankara when the sultan was apprehended.Before reviewing the words Ibn ‘Arabshah uses, it is also worth noting that, unlike thePersian and Turkish histories, he does not discuss the first time that the Ottoman sultanis brought into the presence of Temur. Instead, the brief mention of Bayezid’s capture isfollowed by two short chapters discussing the ensuing chaos within the Ottoman territoriesand the feuding of the sultan’s surviving sons. Following this, Ibn ‘Arabshah records Temur’spractice of daily bringing the shackled Bayezid into his presence. According to his accountTemur “received him with kind and cheerful speech and marks of pity, then derided andmocked him”.85 It is on the occasion of a public banquet that Bayezid endured the addedindignity of witnessing his wives and concubines serving as cupbearers to Temur’s guests.Much of this detail is recorded in abbreviated form by Ibn Taghribirdi.86

Therefore, in Ibn ‘Arabshah’s version of events the reference to the cage (qafas.) appearsbefore the first recorded meeting between Bayezid and Temur and not after they have alreadyconversed (as is suggested in the Turkish accounts). Equally significant is the precise contextin which the term qafas. is employed. The relevant passage reads (according to the Sanderstranslation):

Then their arms being exhausted and the front line and reserves alike decimated, even the mostdistant of the enemy advanced upon them at will and strangers crushed them with swords andspears and filled pools with their blood and marshes with their limbs and Ibn Othman (Bayezid)was taken and bound with fetters (muqayyad) like a bird in a cage (ka’l-t.ayr fi’l-qafas.).87

In order to render the last clause into idiomatic English, Sanders changed the expressionfrom the definite article (as it appears in the Arabic) to the indefinite article. If one examinesthis clause in both the modern Arabic edition and the English translation, the most naturalinterpretation would be that “like” (ka) refers not simply to “a bird” but to “a bird in a cage”.In order to transform it to mean that Bayezid was indeed placed within a cage, one mightexpect “fi’l-qafas.” to be placed before “ka’l-t.ayr”, and not after. In any case, what this clauseis being compared to (using ka) is the present situation of Bayezid following his capture: that

84Makarios Melissenos (Pseudo-Phrantzes) Chronicon maius = Georgios Sphrantzes. Memorii, 1401–77, (ed.) VasileGrecu, Scriptores Byzantini 5 (Bucharest, 1966), pp. 150–448 (the quoted section is on p. 224).

85Ibn ‘Arabshah, Tamerlane, p. 188 (chapter 26).86Ibn Taghribiri, al-Nujum, vi, pp. 83–84.87Ibn ‘Arabshah, Tamerlane, pp. 183–184 (with additions from the Arabic). For the Arabic text, see: Ibn

‘Arabshah, Ajaib al-maqdur f� nawa’ib T�mur, (ed.)‘Ali Muhammad ‘Amr (Cairo, 1399/1989), p. 200.


he is bound or shackled (muqayyad). There is no verb in the sentence that would indicatethe sense of being placed or confined within something. In other words, Ibn ‘Arabshah isevoking the image of a caged bird as a simile for the reduced state of the captured sultan.In this context it is also worth repeating that a common meaning attributed to the word,qafas., in Medieval Arabic is that of a cage or coop for birds (but not a large structure meantto imprison a man).88 If one looks elsewhere in Ibn ‘Arabshah’s text, it is apparent thathe frequently employed similes and metaphors as a means to heighten dramatic pitch. Bycontrast, the more sober historian, Ibn Taghribirdi, retained the content of Ibn ‘Arabshah’saccount, including the humiliating encounters between Bayezid and his captor, but omittedthe more literary flourishes such as the likening of the Ottoman sultan to a bird in a cage. Itis intriguing that Ducas also employs the motif of an ensnared bird in his report of Temur’sreaction to the capture of Bayezid. Ducas’ metaphor also appears in the narrative before theOttoman sultan is brought into the presence of Temur (though the context in which it isused is rather different from Ibn ‘Arabshah’s).

Why then have scholars persisted with this misinterpretation of Ibn ‘Arabshah’s text?The answer appears to lie in the overwhelming reliance (even by Orientalists conversant inArabic89 ) upon the earliest European translation, Pierre Vattier’s (d. 1667), L’histoire du grandTamerlan, published in Paris in 1658 rather than the Arabic edition produced by Jacob Golius(or Gool, d. 1667) and published under the Latin title, Vitae et rerum gestarum Timuri, in1636.90 In his translation Vattier introduces punctuation – a feature not found in Arabic textsprior to the twentieth century – which in this case significantly revises the original meaning.He translates the relevant passage rather freely as: “Le fils d’Othoman tomba dans le piege, etse trouva enferme, comme l’oyseau, dans la cage”.91 One may reasonably conclude that thesimple addition of two commas has affected more than three hundred years of scholarship;this punctuation led many readers to assume Ibn ‘Arabshah believed that Bayezid was, like abird, locked in a cage!92

In conclusion, it should be emphasised that the precise details of the captivity of Bayezidare of little importance to an understanding of the early evolution of the Ottoman empire.Furthermore, it will only be with a complete analysis of the available primary sources –particularly those in Turkish – that we may be able to form more accurate conclusionsconcerning the ultimate origins of the story of the cage as well as its historical veracity.One might ask, therefore, whether there is any value in pursuing what might seem likesuch a recherche topic. Perhaps the main reason for focusing upon this issue is the light thatit sheds on European Orientalist historiography in the early–modern and modern periods.Although scholars such as d’Herbelot, Voltaire, Gibbon, and Von Hammer had unburdenedthemselves of the baggage of Christian moral philosophy that conditioned the interpretationof Asian history in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they were not immune to other

88See note 58.89In this context it is relevant to note that Golius’ edition of the Kitab al-‘aja‘ib al-maqdur f� akhbar T�mur must

have been fairly well known among Arabists as it was commonly employed as a text for the teaching of Arabic. SeeIrwin, Lust of Knowing, p. 103.

90See note 29.91Vattier, L’Histoire, vi, p. 196.92The transformative role of punctuation in this case brings to mind the examples discussed by Lynne Truss in

Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to English Punctuation (London, 2003).


prejudices. In particular this can be seen in the changing evaluation of the personality ofTemur. During the Renaissance he had functioned both as the Machiavellian prince and the“scourge of God”,93 while in the eighteenth century it was not uncommon for scholars toview him in some respects as an embodiment of Enlightenment values. The coarse barbarityof parading a captured ruler in a cage fitted uncomfortably into this vision, and was eithersuppressed on linguistic grounds or justified as a somewhat reluctant response to the haughtybehaviour of Bayezid. Finally, another recurrent phenomenon uncovered in this researchis the willingness of scholars to cite one another rather than the original sources, formingchains of transmission not unlike the isnads found in the works of Islamic historians. Ofcourse, it would be dangerous to assume that any of us are immune to the same flaws.

Marcus Milwright

University of Victoria

Evanthia Baboula

University of Victoria

93On these themes, see Roy Battenhouse, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine: A Study in Renaissance moral Philosophy(Nashville, 1941). Also Milwright, “So despicable a vessel”, pp. 333–335.

marcus milwright and evanthia baboula - bayezid's cage a re-examination of a venerable academic...

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