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Entry 143 of 240War

The Ottoman Interregnum

1402 CE/Anatolia/Ottoman Empire
Today Anatolia (the fracturing Ottoman realm)Span Ottoman Empire · 1299–1922 CE

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 knowingTo 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.
◆ The mechanismSuccession / legitimacy crisis

The orderly transfer of power fails because no rule or claimant is accepted as legitimate.

Also: Imperial overstretch

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