1. In 1410, Murad II came along with his father to the Ottoman capital, Edirne.
19 Facts About Murad II
1. 2.
Murad II remained at Amasya until the death of Mehmed I in 1421.
3.
Murad II was solemnly recognized as sultan of the Ottoman Sultanate at sixteen years of age, girded with the Sword of Osman at Bursa, and the troops and officers of the state willingly paid homage to him as their sovereign.
4.
Many Ottoman soldiers joined him, and he defeated and killed the veteran general Bayazid Pasha, whom Murad II had sent to fight him.
5.
Murad II then crossed the Dardanelles to Asia with a large army but Murad out-manoeuvered Mustafa.
6.
Murad II had to abandon the siege of Constantinople in order to deal with his rebellious brother.
7.
Murad II then declared war against Venice, the Karamanid Emirate, Serbia and Hungary.
8.
Murad II won the Crusade of Varna in 1444 against John Hunyadi.
9.
Murad II relinquished his throne in 1444 to his son Mehmed II, but a Janissary revolt in the Empire forced him to return.
10.
In 1450 Murad II led his army into Albania and unsuccessfully besieged the Castle of Kruje in an effort to defeat the resistance led by Skanderbeg.
11.
When Murad II ascended the throne, he sought to regain lost Ottoman territories that had reverted to autonomy following his grandfather Bayezid I's defeat at the Battle of Ankara in 1402 at the hands of Timur.
12.
Murad II needed the support of both the public and the nobles "who would enable him to exercise his rule", and utilized the old and potent Islamic trope of the ghazi king.
13.
Murad II drew from the noble behavior of the nameless Caliphs in the Battalname, an epic about a fictional Arab warrior who fought against the Byzantines, and modelled his actions on theirs.
14.
Murad II was careful to embody the simplicity, piety, and noble sense of justice that was part of the ghazi king persona.
15.
Those of you who kill will be ghazis"; before the Battle of Varna, Murad II repeated these words to his army, saying "Those of us who kill will be ghazis; those of us who die will be martyrs.
16.
Murad II successfully painted himself as a simple soldier who did not partake in royal excesses, and as a noble ghazi sultan who sought to consolidate Muslim power against non-Muslims such as the Venetians and Hungarians.
17.
Murad II's reign saw a period of great economic development, with an increase in trade and a considerable expansion of Ottoman cities.
18.
Murad II has a broad and brown face, high cheek bones, a round beard, a great and crooked nose, with little eyes.
19.
Murad II was the sultan who conferred on his sons and their male descendants the title of Sehzade, meaning "descendant of the Sah", replacing the simple honorific of Celebi.