LXV.

CHAP. prince. He fought by his father's fide in the battle of Angora: but when the captive fultan was permitted to enquire for his children, Moufá alone could be found; and the Turkish hiftorians, the flaves of the triumphant faction, are perfuaded that his brother was confounded among the flain. If Muftapha efcaped from that difaftrous field, he was concealed twelve years from his friends and enemies; till he emerged in Theffaly, and was hailed by a numerous party, as the fon and fucceffor of Bajazet. His firft defeat would have been his laft, had not the true, or falfe, Muftapha been faved by the Greeks, and restored, after the deceafe of his brother Mahomet, to liberty and empire. A degenerate mind seemed to argue his fpurious birth; and if, on the throne of Adrianople, he was adored as the Ottoman fultan; his flight, his fetters, and an ignominious gibbet, delivered the impoftor to popular contempt. A fimilar character and claim was afferted by feveral rival pretenders; thirty persons are faid to have fuffered under the name of Muftapha; and these frequent executions may perhaps infinuate, that the Turkish court was not perfectly fecure of the death of the lawful prince. 2. After his father's captivity, Ifa 73 reigned for fome time in the neighbourhood of Angora, Sinope, and the Black Sea; and his ambaffadors were difmiffed from the presence of Timour with fair promises and honourable gifts. But their mafter was foon deprived of his province and life, by a jealous bro

2. Ia;

73 Arabshah, tom. ii. c. 26. whose testimony on this occafion is weighty and valuable. The existence of Ifa (unknown to the Turks) is likewise confirmed by Sherefeddín (1. v. c. 57.) ther,

LXV.

3. Soliman

A. D.

1403

1410.

ther, the fovereign of Amafia; and the final event CHA P. fuggested a pious allusion, that the law of Mofes and Jefus, of Ifa and Moufa, had been abrogated by the greater Mahomet. 3. Soliman is not numbered in the lifts of the Turkish emperors: yet he checked the victorious progress of the Moguls; and after their departure, united for a while the thrones of Adrianople and Bourfa. In war he was brave, active, and fortunate: his courage was foftened by clemency; but it was likewife inflamed by prefumption, and corrupted by intemperance and idlenefs. He relaxed the nerves of discipline, in a government where either the fubject or the fovereign must continually tremble: his vices alienated the chiefs of the army and the law ; and his daily drunkenness, fo contemptible in a prince and a man, was doubly odious in a disciple of the prophet. In the flumber of intoxication, he was furprised by his brother Moufa; and as he fled from Adrianople towards the Byzantine capital, Soliman was overtaken and flain in a bath, after a reign of seven years and ten The inveftiture of Moufa degraded 4. Moufa, months. 4. him as the flave of the Moguls: his tributary kingdom of Anatolia was confined within a narrow limit, nor could his broken militia and empty treasury contend with the hardy and veteran bands of the fovereign of Romania. Moufa fled in difguise from the palace of Bourfa; traversed the Propontis in an open boat; wandered over the Walachian and Servian hills; and after fome vain attempts, ascended the throne of Adrianople, fo recently stained with the blood of Soliman. VOL. XII. E

In

A. D.

1410

LXV.

5. Mahomet I.

A. D. 1413

$421.

5.

CHAP. In a reign of three years and a half, his troops were victorious against the Chriftians of Hungary and the Morea; but Moufa was ruined by his timorous difpofition and unfeafonable clemency. After refigning the fovereignty of Anatolia, he fell a victim to the perfidy of his minifters, and the fuperior afcendant of his brother Mahomet. The final victory of Mahomet was the juft recompenfe of his prudence and moderation. Before his father's captivity, the royal youth had been entrusted with the government of Amafia, thirty days journey from Conftantinople, and the Turkish frontier against the Christians of Trebizond and Georgia. The castle, in Afiatic warfare, was esteemed impregnable; and the city of Amafia, which is equally divided by the river Iris, rifes on either fide in the form of an amphitheatre, and reprefents on a fmaller fcale the image of Bagdad. In his rapid career, Timour appears to have overlooked this obfcure and contumacious angle of Anatolia; and Mahomet, without provoking the conqueror, maintained his filent independence, and chafed from the province the laft ftragglers of the Tartar hoft. He relieved himfelf from the dangerous neighbourhood of Ifa; but in the contefts of their more powerful brethren, his firm neutrality was refpected; till, after the triumph of Moufa, he stood forth the heir and avenger of the unfortunate Soliman. Mahomet obtained Anatolia by treaty and Romania by arms; and the foldier who prefented him

74 Arabfhah, loc. citat. Abulfeda, Geograph. tab. xvii. p. 302. Bufbequius, epift. i. p. 96, 97. in Itinere C. P. et Amafiano. with

5*

CHA P.

LXV.

Reign of

Amurath

with the head of Moufa was rewarded as the benefactor of his king and country. The eight years of his fole and peaceful reign were ufefully employed in banishing the vices of civil difcord, and restoring on a firmer bafis the fabric of the Ottoman monarchy. His laft care was the choice of two vizirs, Bajazet and Ibrahim ", who might guide the youth of his fon Amurath; and fuch was their union and prudence, that they concealed above forty days the emperor's death, till the arrival of his fucceffor in the palace of Bourfa. 1451, A new war was kindled in Europe by the prince, or impoftor, Muftapha; the firft vizir loft his army and his head; but the more fortunate Ibrahim, whose name and family are still revered, extinguished the laft pretender to the throne of Bajazet, and closed the scene of domestic hostility.

In these conflicts, the wifeft Turks, and indeed the body of the nation, were strongly attached to the unity of the empire; and Romania and Anatolia, fo often torn afunder by private ambition, were animated by a ftrong and invincible tendency of cohesion. Their efforts might have inftructed the Christian powers; and had they occupied with a confederate fleet, the ftreights of Gallipoli, the Ottomans, at least in Europe, must have been speedily annihilated. But the fchifm of the Weft, and the factions and wars of France and England, diverted the Latins from this generous enterprise:

75 The virtues of Ibrahim are praised by a contemporary Greek (Ducas, c. 25.). His defcendants are the fole nobles in Turkey: they content themselves with the administration of his pious foundations, are excufed from public offices, and receive two annual vifits from the fultan (Cantemir, p. 76.).

A. D.

1421

Feb. 9.

Re-union Ottoman empire,

of the

A. D.

1421.

4

CHAP. they enjoyed the present respite, without a thought LXV. of futurity; and were often tempted by a mo

76

mentary intereft to ferve the common enemy of their religion. A colony of Genoefe ", which had been planted at Phocæa" on the Ionian coaft, was enriched by the lucrative monopoly of alum 78; and their tranquillity, under the Turkish empire, was fecured by the annual payment of tribute. In the last civil war of the Ottomans, the Genoefe governor, Adorno, a bold and ambitious youth, embraced the party of Amurath; and undertook with feven ftout gallies to transport him from Afia to Europe. The fultan and five hundred guards embarked on board the admiral's ship; which was manned by eight hundred of the braveft Franks. His life and liberty were in their hands; nor can we, without reluctance, applaud the fidelity of Adorno, who, in the midst of the paffage, knelt before him, and gratefully accepted a discharge of his arrears of tribute.

76 See Pachymer (1. v. 29.), Nicephorus Gregoras (1. ii. c. 1.), Sherefeddin (1. v. c. 57.), and Ducas (c. 25.). The laft of thefe, a curious and careful obferver, is entitled, from his birth and ftation, to particular credit in all that concerns Ionia and the islands. Among the nations that resorted to New Phocæa, he mentions the English (yyλnvos); an early evidence of Mediterranean trade.

77 For the spirit of navigation, and freedom of ancient Phocæa, or rather of the Phocæans, confult the 1st book of Herodotus, and the Geographical Index of his last and learned French translator, M. Larcher (tom. vii. p. 299.).

78 Phcoxa is not enumerated by Pliny (Hift. Nat. xxxv. 52.) among the places productive of alum; he reckons Egypt as the first, and for the second the isle of Melos, whofe alum mines are defcribed by Tournefort (tom. i. lettre iv.), a traveller and a naturalift. After the lofs of Phocæa, the Genoefe, in 1459, found that useful mineral in the isle of Ifchia (Ifmael. Bouillaud, ad Ducam, c. 25.).

They