JOOS VAN GHISTELE SEYAHATNAMESİNDE (1491) SULTAN II. MEHMED’İN ÖLÜMÜ VE ŞEHZADELERİN TAHT KAVGASI
SULTAN MEHMED II’S DEATH AND THE CROWN PRINCE’S BATTLE FOR THE THRONE IN JOOS VAN GHISTELE’S TRAVEL WRITING (1491)

Summary/Abstract: This article mainly analyses the pilgrimage narrative of the Burgundian nobleman Joos van Ghistele, written by Ambrosius Zeebout in 1491. Zeebout compiled a series of accounts on Sultan Mehmed II’s death, his funeral, and the succession war between the crown princes, Cem and Bayezid. In this article, the value of this Burgundian travel account as a historical source is measured by comparing it with the records kept by the contemporary Ottoman chroniclers. Particularly, the information provided by the Burgundian text about the funeral ceremony of Sultan Mehmed II, which is not mentioned in the Ottoman chronicles, constitutes an important contribution to fifteenth-century Ottoman historiography. Furthermore, this article also focuses on the nature of the distinction between the sultan and the ‘bureaucracy,’ and the complex forms of conflicting, overlapping, and complementing power relations within the Ottoman ruling class. These power relations gradually took shape within the fifteenth-century Ottoman state system and in its turn also influenced its formation. In short, this article refutes the widely held misapprehension which defined the Ottoman state in terms of ‘despotic sultanism’.

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