The Battle of Ankara (1402)

At the end of the 14th century two Turkic rulers stood at their height: Timur in the east and Bayezid I in the west. Bayezid had absorbed the Anatolian beyliks, whose lords had fled to Timur. Bayezid's demand for tribute from an emir loyal to Timur, and the harsh letters the two exchanged, led to war. In 1400 Timur took Sivas.

On 28 July 1402 the armies met on the Çubuk plain near Ankara. At the critical moment the Black Tatar contingents in Bayezid's army and the troops from the Anatolian beyliks, seeing their former lords in Timur's ranks, went over to him. The Serbian allies and the Janissaries fought to the end, but Bayezid was captured.

Bayezid died in captivity at Akşehir in 1403. The Ottoman state fell into an eleven-year war among his sons, the Interregnum, and the Anatolian beyliks were restored. Mehmed I reunited the state in 1413. Ankara delayed the conquest of Constantinople by about half a century, and is remembered as one of the most painful examples in Turkic history of two great powers weakening each other.