Although Bayezid II seems to be much less than a glorious Sultan as opposed to military ambitions of his father and his son, it would be difficult to overstate the historical importance of his influence for the rise of Ottoman culture in the new capital of the empire. Trained in a wide range of disciplines, he was not only a poet who collected a divan (poetry collection) with the penname Adli, but also a generous patron who regularly supported more than 146 artists and scholars as opposed to his father Mehmed II’s 12, based on gift registeries and salary books. During his 31 years of reign, besides the abundant production of scholarship, literature and visual arts, Ottoman Turkish was established as the major medium for the literary culture and thanks to his master teacher Seyh Hamdullah, Istanbul was embellished with calligraphy in Ottoman style. Apart from his evident enthusiasm for arts and sciences, his personal life story registers the making of a statesman from being a bohemian Prince to a traditionally Islamic Sultan who is the major benefactor of his subjects. With the intention of mapping out the early modern culture production of the Ottoman empire, this paper traces the life of Bayezid as a man of letters in regard to his education and his relationship with his entourage such as Mueyyedzade and Kemalpasazade. The assumption is that an investigation and a comparative analysis of Bayezid’s literary history such as the poetry and/or calligraphy he produced, the people he chose to support as artists and scholars, the books he commissioned will show not only the networks behind the intellectual production but also the Ottoman artistic taste developed during this period, which has social, economic and political implications.

Bayezid II (1481-1512) might rightly be called as a son of Amasya, the North Central Anatolian city where he spent all his childhood, adolescence and early adulthood as its prince-governor between 1454 and 1481. After his move to Istanbul, Bayezid II cherished Amasya by personally undertaking and encouraging his court members to patronize major construction projects in the city. He also sent his heir apparent, Prince Ahmed (d.1514) as the governor of the city. During his years away from Amasya, Bayezid II surrounded himself with natives of city and the larger Rum region where it is located. His reign witnessed the ascendance of socio-religious, academic, political and artistic networks that originated around his princely court in Amasya and significantly contributed to the formation of Ottoman artistic, scholarly and religious idiom in the subsequent decades. This paper will focus on a significant member of the Amasyan network in Istanbul, the Müeyyedzade brothers. Müeyyedzade Abdürrahman (d.1516), a member of the Ottoman learned hierarchy, not only had a distinguished legal career but also became an important patron of poetry. His brother, Müeyyedzade Abdürrahim on the other hand became the head of a Sufi lodge that was frequented by the Sultan himself. A close examination the family origins, careers and the networks of the Müeyyedzade brothers will reveal how a non-political network flourished in Anatolia was transplanted to and grew within the nascent Ottoman imperial urban platform, i.e. Istanbul. In doing so, it aims to contribute to the study of often ignored non-political networks of Ottoman Istanbul during its formative years in the fifteenth century.

While it is not unknown that Bayezid II generously supported scholars and poets, and that he carefully commissioned first histories of the Ottoman house as part of his broader political and ideological agenda, the commensurable interest of him in patronizing “the science of stars” has not been acknowledged yet. This is not surprising, considering the marginalization of the history of astrology in Ottoman and/or Islamic studies. However the study of astrologers and their texts could open new vistas in the political, cultural, and intellectual history of the period. The courts of Eurasian rulers including Muslims almost always enjoyed accompaniment of astrologers, and Ottoman polity is not an exception. Nonetheless it is possible to argue especially in the case of Bayezid II that there is a persevering attempt to cultivate the science of stars, which would further result in the institutionalization of the office of court astrologer/astronomer. The underlying concern of this paper is to bring to the fore the astrologers/astronomers serving the court of Bayezid II. Based upon the gift and payment registers from the mid to the end of Bayezid II's reign and available astrological almanacs submitted to the palace, this study aims first to identify these craftsmen; secondly understand the nature of their relationship with the court, and finally suggest that the knowledge and discourse of 'future' produced by these astrologers were taken seriously in court circles in a politically and culturally contested age.

OTTOMAN-MAMLUK RELATIONS AND THE COMPLEX IMAGE OF BAYEZID II Modern scholarship has generally presented B?yez?d II (r.1481-1512) as a “weak,” “peace-loving,” and “pious” ruler. B?yez?d is considered weak and peace-loving in part because he seemingly discontinued, perhaps even disowned, the expansionist and centralizing policies of his father Meh?med II (r.1451-1481). This article challenges this portrayal by focusing on Ottoman-era narratives of three influential historical episodes: the early days of B?yez?d’s rule (1481-1482), the conquests of Kilia and Akkerman (1484), and the Ottoman-Mamluk war (1485-1492). An analysis of these three episodes, with a special focus on the Ottoman-Mamluk war, shows that a multi-layered reassessment of B?yez?d is necessary in order to evaluate the impact of his polices both on fifteenth-century Ottoman politics and on Ottoman-Mamluk relations. Describing B?yez?d as a peace-loving ruler does not do any justice to his territorial ambitions as manifested not only in his military campaigns such as the Ottoman-Mamluk war, but also in the ways the chroniclers depicted him as their patron. These portrayals show that B?yez?d distanced himself from his father’s disliked policies while embracing some aspect of his father’s and even his great-grandfather’s popular images. The glorious memories of these two predecessors particularly aided the chroniclers in explaining their patron’s criticized decision to wage war against the Mamluks. Using these clear examples of its complexity and constructed nature, this article argues that B?yez?d’s image still awaits an exhaustive analysis of his entire reign.