Ottoman sultan (1413–1421) who reunited the empire after the ruinous Interregnum that followed the defeat by Timur, earning renown as the "second founder" of the Ottoman state.
Mehmed I was Ottoman sultan from 1413 to 1421, and is remembered as the restorer, or "second founder", of the Ottoman Empire. He came to power out of chaos: in 1402 his father Bayezid I had been crushed and captured by Timur at the Battle of Ankara, and the Ottoman state had shattered into rival principalities ruled by Bayezid's feuding sons.
Through a decade of civil war — the Ottoman Interregnum — Mehmed outlasted and defeated his brothers to reunite the empire under his sole rule by 1413. He restored order, rebuilt the army and administration, and put down the dangerous religious and social revolt of Sheikh Bedreddin, leaving to his son Murad II a reconstituted and stable state.
Mehmed was born about 1386, a son of Sultan Bayezid I. He was still a young man in 1402 when the Mongol conqueror Timur destroyed the Ottoman army at the Battle of Ankara and took Bayezid prisoner, an unprecedented catastrophe that dissolved the Ottoman state. Timur parcelled out Anatolia among the old beyliks and among Bayezid's sons, and when Bayezid died in captivity in 1403 those sons fell to fighting one another for the inheritance.
Mehmed, governing in the north-central Anatolian region of Amasya, was one of the contenders in the long struggle that followed, known as the Ottoman Interregnum.
Mehmed I is remembered as a patient, resilient, and constructive ruler — a survivor of a decade of fratricidal war who emerged not embittered but bent on rebuilding. Where the Interregnum might have ended the Ottoman enterprise altogether, Mehmed had the tenacity to outlast his rivals and the statesmanship to knit the shattered realm back together.
The sources credit him with courage in the field, shrewd diplomacy, and, notably, a reputation for justice and moderation in victory that helped reconcile the divided lands and loyalties of the empire. He was also a pious patron of religion and architecture, whose Green Mosque and Green Tomb at Bursa are among the masterpieces of early Ottoman art. He is the archetype of the rebuilder-king, whose achievement lay less in conquest than in restoration.
The Ottoman Interregnum was a war of brothers. Mehmed contended first against his brother İsa, then against Süleyman, who held the European provinces, and finally against Musa, who had seized Rumelia. One by one Mehmed defeated them: he overcame Süleyman, and in 1413, with allies including the Byzantines and Serbs, he defeated and killed Musa, becoming sole ruler of a reunited empire.
As sultan, Mehmed set about consolidation rather than expansion. He rebuilt the army and the central administration, restored Ottoman authority over the Anatolian beyliks and Balkan vassals, and in 1416 crushed the syncretic religious and social revolt led by the learned Sheikh Bedreddin, which had threatened the state from within. He fought to secure his frontiers but avoided overreach, husbanding the recovering empire's strength.
Mehmed I died at Edirne on 26 May 1421, still only in his mid-thirties, and was buried in the magnificent Green Tomb he had built at Bursa. He was succeeded by his son Murad II, who inherited a stable and reunified empire ready to resume its expansion.
Mehmed I is remembered as the saviour and "second founder" of the Ottoman Empire. By reuniting the state that Timur's victory had shattered, he ensured that the Ottoman enterprise — which might easily have ended in 1402 — survived to become a world empire. The stable, reconstituted realm he handed to Murad II set the stage for the resumption of conquest that would culminate, a generation later, in his grandson Mehmed II's capture of Constantinople.