Şehzade Bayezid

Şehzade Bayezid
An Ottoman miniature showing Suleiman the Magnificent with his son, Şehzade Bayezid
Born	19 September 1525 Constantinople, Ottoman Empire
Died	September 25, 1561 (aged 35–36) Qazvin, Safavid Empire
Burial	Melik-i Acem Türbe, Sivas
Issue	Şehzade Orhan Şehzade Osman Şehzade Abdullah Şehzade Mahmud Şehzade Muradhan Mihrimah Sultan Hatice Sultan Ayşe Sultan Hanzade Sultan
House	House of Osman
Father	Suleiman the Magnificent
Mother	Hürrem Sultan
Religion	Islam

Şehzade Bayezid (1525 – September 25, 1561) was an Ottoman prince as the son of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his legal wife Hürrem Sultan. He unsuccessfully revolted to win the throne of the Ottoman Empire. After the death of three of Suleiman's sons, only Bayezid and Selim were alive. By the course of the 1550s, when Suleiman was already in his 60s, a protracted competition for the throne between Bayezid and Selim was evident. Angered by Bayezid's disobedience stemming from around the same years, Bayezid had fallen in disfavour with his father as opposed to his brother Selim (who would eventually succeed as Selim II). After a staged rebellion, which was suppressed in 1559 by Selim (who was further aided by Suleiman and Sokollu Mehmet Pasha) he fled to the neighbouring Safavid Empire, where he was wholeheartedly and lavishly received by Tahmasp I. However, in 1561, upon continuous insistment of Suleiman throughout the entire period of his exile, and by the means of several large payments, Tahmasp allowed Bayezid to be executed by an Ottoman executioner.

Bayezid born in 1525 in Constantinople (Istanbul) during the reign of his father, Suleiman the Magnificent. His mother was Hürrem, an Orthodox priest's daughter, who was sultan's concubine in that time. At the time of his birth, Bayezid had three elder full-brothers, Mehmed (born 1521), Abdullah (born 1522), and Selim (born 1524), and one elder half-brother Mustafa (born 1515). In 1533 or 1534, breaking a two-century-old tradition, his father freed and legally wed his mother.

As a court rule, şehzades were appointed to govern a province in order to gain administrative experience. Bayezid became a governor of an Anatolian province (Turkish: sanjak). However, during his father's 12th campaign to Nakhchivan, part of modern Azerbaijan, in 1553, he was assigned to rule in Edirne, the Ottoman capital in European part, to control Rumelia, European territories of the empire, in the absence of his father. During the campaign, Şehzade Mustafa, was executed upon Sultan's order. The news of execution caused unrest in all parts of the empire and an impostor, claiming to be the executed Mustafa, rebelled against Suleiman in Rumelia. Although the rebellion was subdued by a vizier, Suleiman suspected that his son Bayezid was deliberately slow to react.