The Ottoman sultan who made a Byzantine emperor pay him tribute
Murad I took Adrianople in the 1360s, made it his capital and pushed Ottoman power deep into the Balkans. By the end of his reign Serbian princes, the Bulgarian tsar and even Byzantine emperor John V Palaiologos were paying him tribute. He died at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389.
Born on 29 June 1326 to Orhan Gazi and Nilüfer Hatun, a concubine of Greek descent, Murad came to power in 1362 after the death of his elder half-brother Süleyman Pasha. He was nicknamed Hüdavendigâr, from a Persian word meaning devotee of God, used here in the sense of sovereign. Ottoman writers styled him Sultan of sultans, Bulgarian and Serbian sources called him Tsar, and a Genoese document dubbed him lord master of the Turks.
He reorganised the state into two provinces, Anatolia in Asia Minor and Rumelia in the Balkans. His forces faced Karaman in Anatolia and Serbs, Bulgarians, Albanians and Hungarians in Europe. On September 26, 1371, his lieutenant Lala Şâhin Paşa, first governor of Rumelia, defeated Serbian brothers Vukašin and Uglješa, who had set out to drive the Turks from Adrianople. Sofia fell in 1385, but a year later Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović beat an Ottoman force at Pločnik.
Marriage served diplomacy. After Bulgaria became a tributary, Murad wed Kera Tamara, daughter of Tsar Ivan Alexander, in 1376, and in 1389 he married Maria, daughter of John V, while her sisters married his sons. One daughter was married to the ruler of Karaman in 1378 in a failed bid to end their war.
His death is wrapped in competing stories. Contemporary sources record only that both he and Lazar died at Kosovo in 1389. Later accounts, written decades afterwards, blame the Serbian knight Miloš Obilić, some saying he feigned defection, while most Ottoman chroniclers place the killing after the fighting had ended. His son Bayezid took command and had his brother Yakub killed, leaving himself sole heir. Murad's internal organs were buried on the battlefield at a site locals regard as holy, and the rest of his body lies in his tomb complex in Bursa.
Source: Murad I
