Battle of Ankara

Two of the most powerful rulers of the late fourteenth century met on the Çubuk plain outside Ankara, in central Anatolia, on 28 July 1402. The Central Asian conqueror Tamerlane, also known as Timur, crushed the army of the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I and took the sultan prisoner. The defeat almost destroyed the young Ottoman Empire and plunged it into a decade of civil war among Bayezid's sons.

Timur, a Turco-Mongol from Transoxiana, in today's Uzbekistan, had built the Timurid Empire into the strongest power in Central Asia since Genghis Khan. In the 1380s and 1390s his armies conquered much of Persia, ravaged the steppes of southern Russia and Ukraine in 1395–96 and sacked Delhi in 1398. Bayezid, meanwhile, ruled over Christian vassals in the Balkans as well as lands in Anatolia, and in 1402 his forces were campaigning in Europe and blockading Constantinople.

The quarrel began when Bayezid demanded tribute from an emir who was loyal to Timur, which Timur took as a personal insult. In 1400–01 he seized Sivas from the Ottomans and parts of Syria from the Mamluk Sultanate, then turned towards Anatolia.

Contemporary writers gave fantastic numbers, up to 800,000 or even 1.6 million for Timur. Modern historians suggest that Timur had around 140,000 men, mostly cavalry, along with some 32 war elephants. Estimates for Bayezid's army range from about 85,000 to 120,000. It included Janissaries, troops from the Anatolian principalities, a large contingent of recently subdued Tatars, and Christian vassals from the Balkans, among them the Serbian prince Stefan Lazarević.

In the summer of 1402 Bayezid abandoned the blockade of Constantinople and marched east through intense heat. His generals urged a defensive stance, but he chose to advance. Timur slipped around the Ottoman army, rested his men and occupied the camp and water sources the Ottomans had left behind. When Bayezid arrived near Ankara on 28 July, his troops were exhausted and short of water. Timur is also said to have diverted the Çubuk stream, the main water supply for both armies.

The Ottomans opened with a heavy attack, which was met by volleys from Timur's horse archers. The Serbian heavy cavalry fought hard, breaking through the enemy lines several times, and later escaped with one of Bayezid's sons and part of the treasury. Elsewhere the Ottoman line fell apart when the Tatars and the troops of the Anatolian principalities deserted to Timur. Bayezid fled to the hills with a few hundred horsemen but was surrounded and captured. Ottoman losses are estimated at 40,000 to 50,000, and Timurid losses at 15,000 to 40,000.

Bayezid died in captivity in March 1403, the only Ottoman sultan ever to be taken prisoner in person. Timur marched to the Aegean coast and captured Smyrna from the Knights Hospitaller. The Ottoman state fractured as Bayezid's sons fought one another for the throne, a struggle that lasted until 1413.

Our 1400 map shows the Ottoman and Timurid empires shortly before the battle, with the Ottomans straddling the Balkans and Anatolia.