Timur reviews his troops on the plain of Sivas before the battle of Ankara, on two facing pages of a Zafarnama, the book of his victories, painted in 1436Image: Unknown artist, Zafarnama of 1436 · Public domainTimur crushes the Ottoman army at Ankara and captures Sultan Bayezid
By 1400 two conquerors were closing in on each other in Anatolia. The Ottoman sultan Bayezid I, nicknamed ‘the Thunderbolt’ for the speed of his campaigns, had overrun much of the Balkans and eastern Anatolia and was blockading Constantinople. From the east came Timur, the Turkic ruler of Samarkand, whose armies had already sacked Delhi and Baghdad. Each sheltered the other’s enemies, and in 1402 Timur marched into Ottoman lands. The armies met near Ankara on 20 July 1402. Timur’s force was much larger, and Bayezid’s men arrived tired and short of water after Timur cut off their supply. Some of the Anatolian troops in the Ottoman army went over to Timur, and although Bayezid’s Serbian allies fought hard, the sultan was defeated and taken prisoner. He died in captivity the next year. His sons fought one another for the throne for more than a decade before the Ottoman state recovered under Mehmed I.
Source: Britannica: Battle of Ankara (1402) ↗
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