the black death in early ottoman territories - Bilkent University

spread relentlessly over Asia Minor. The devastation caused by the civil war in the
years 1341-1347 between John V Paleologus and John VI Cantacuzenos might
have rendered Thrace and Macedonia vulnerable to the epidemic.
A century later, during the unsuccessful siege of Belgrade by Murad in
1440, losses in the Ottoman army were partly due to plague according to Doukas:
Belgrad'ı altı ay karadan ve nehirden muhasara ettiği halde, hiç bir şey
kazanamadı. Bilâkis çok zararlara düçar oldu. Vezirlerden ve kullarından
bir çoklarını vaba hastalığından ve kaleden makinalarla atılan mermi
isabetinden kaybetti. 373
According to Biraben, the Ottoman army were also to have brought plague along
during the siege by Murad's successor Mehmed II of Ragusa in 1464. But the
victorious Ottomans behaved cautiously and avoided to enter the defeated city,
which by that time had also become infected. 374 Whether reports of the siege were
fabricated or not, fact is that plague was a common scourge for any army or navy.
According to a note in the diary of Malipiero, the Ottoman fleet suffered from
plague too. It was reported to have left Istanbul for the Black Sea on the 20th May
of 1475, badly equipped and amorbada or plague-stricken. 375 The following year,
in 1476, Mehmed the Conqueror reportedly had to end the siege of Boğdan
because of the many losses in his army due to plague. 376 His successors would
have to cope with the same problem. During Selim's campaign in the year 1514, a
prisoner interrogated by the Master of Rhodes informed that Selim's army had
373 Dukas, Bizans Tarihi, 128.
374 Biraben, Les hommes et la peste en France et dans les pays européens et méditerranéens, Vol.
1, 140 and 145. The source of this story is not indicated by the author. However, Babinger's
authorative work on Mehmed the Conqueror, claims this report of an enormous Ottoman army
threatening a siege of the city by ambassadors from Ragusa was fabricated. Babinger, Mehmed the
Conqueror and his Time. Edited by William C. Hickman. New Jersey : Princeton University Press.
1978.
375 Malipiero, Annali veneti dall' anno 1457 al 1500, 111.
376 İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Tarihi, Vol II, 4. edition, Ankara, 1983, page 80, as quoted
by Kılıç, Orhan. Genel Hatlarıyla Dünyada ve Osmanlı Devletinde Salgın Hastalıklar, 100-101.
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