The Ottoman Interregnum

1402 CE — Anatolia, Ottoman Empire

Today: Anatolia (the fracturing Ottoman realm)

After the conqueror Timur shattered the Ottoman army and captured the sultan himself, the sultan's sons fought an eleven-year civil war for the throne that nearly ended the young empire before one brother reunited it. To prevent such ruinous struggles, later Ottoman law would permit a new sultan to have his own brothers killed on accession — trading fratricide for a clear line of succession. It is the succession crisis in its rawest form: where no clear rule of inheritance exists, the throne is settled by blood.

Worth knowing: To stop wars of succession, one Ottoman sultan had 19 of his own brothers — some of them infants — strangled with a silk bowstring on the day he took the throne. It was, horribly, considered a reform.

Pattern: Succession / legitimacy crisis — The orderly transfer of power fails because no rule or claimant is accepted as legitimate.

Entry 143 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.