Murad I

According to the Ottoman sources, Murad I's titles includes Bey, Emîr-i a’zam (Great Emir), Ghazi, Hüdavendigâr, Khan, Padishah, Sultânü’s-selâtîn (Sultan of sultans), Melikü’l-mülûk (Malik of maliks), while in Bulgarian and Serbian sources he was referred to as Tsar. In a Genoese document, he was referred to as dominus armiratorum Turchie (Master lord of Turks).[4]

Murad I was illiterate and could not even sign his own name. In 1353, Murad I signed a treaty by dipping his hand in ink and impressing it with his finger marks.[5]

Map of the conquests of Murad I

Murad fought against the powerful beylik of Karaman in Anatolia and against the Serbs, Albanians, Bulgarians and Hungarians in Europe. In particular, a Serb expedition to expel the Turks from Adrianople led by the Serbian brothers King Vukašin and Despot Uglješa, was defeated on September 26, 1371, by Murad's capable second lieutenant Lala Şâhin Paşa, the first governor (beylerbey) of Rumeli. In 1385, Sofia fell to the Ottomans. In 1386 Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović defeated an Ottoman force at the Battle of Pločnik. The Ottoman army suffered heavy casualties, and was unable to capture Niš on the way back.

Tomb of Sultan Murad on Kosovo field

Tomb of Sultan Murad

In 1389, Murad's army defeated the Serbian Army and its allies under the leadership of Lazar at the Battle of Kosovo. There are different accounts from different sources about when and how Murad I was assassinated. The contemporary sources mainly noted that the battle took place and that both Prince Lazar and the Sultan lost their lives in the battle. The existing evidence of the additional stories and speculations as to how Murad I died were disseminated and recorded in the 15th century and later, decades after the actual event. One Western source states that during first hours of the battle, Murad I was assassinated by Serbian nobleman and knight Miloš Obilić by knife.[6][7] Most Ottoman chroniclers (including Dimitrie Cantemir)[8] state that he was assassinated after the finish of the battle while going around the battlefield. His older son Bayezid, who was in charge of the left wing of the Ottoman forces, took charge after that. His other son, Yakub Bey, who was in charge of the other wing, was called to the Sultan's command center tent by Bayezid, but when Yakub Bey arrived he was strangled, leaving Bayezid as the sole claimant to the throne.

In a letter from the Florentine senate (written by Coluccio Salutati) to the King Tvrtko I of Bosnia, dated 20 October 1389, Murad I's (and Jakub Bey's) killing was described. A party of twelve Serbian lords slashed their way through the Ottoman lines defending Murad I. One of them, allegedly Miloš Obilić, had managed to get through to the Sultan's tent and kill him with sword stabs to the throat and belly.[9]

Sultan Murad's internal organs were buried in Kosovo field and remains to this day on a corner of the battlefield in a location called Meshed-i Hudavendigar which has gained a religious significance by the local Muslims. It has been vandalized between 1999–2006 and renovated recently. His other remains were carried to Bursa, his Anatolian capital city, and were buried in a tomb at the complex built in his name.[10]

He established the sultanate by building up a society and government in the newly conquered city of Adrianople (Edirne in Turkish) and by expanding the realm in Europe, bringing most of the Balkans under Ottoman rule and forcing the Byzantine emperor to pay him tribute. It was Murad who established the former Osmanli tribe into an sultanate. He established the title of sultan in 1363 and the corps of the janissaries and the devşirme recruiting system. He also organised the government of the Divan, the system of timars and timar-holders (timariots) and the military judge, the kazasker. He also established the two provinces of Anadolu (Anatolia) and Rumeli (Europe).

He was the son of Orhan and the Valide Hatun Nilüfer Hatun, daughter of the Prince of Yarhisar, who was of ethnic Greek descent.[11]

• Harris, Jonathan, The End of Byzantium. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-300-11786-8
• Imber, Colin (2009). The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power (Second ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-1370-1406-1.

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References:

Media related to Murad I at Wikimedia Commons

• "Murad § Murad I" . Encyclopædia Britannica. 19 (11th ed.). 1911. p. 14.