Sheikh Bedreddin

Sheikh Bedreddin (1359–1420) (Ottoman Turkish: شیخ بدرالدین‎) was a famous Muslim Sufi theologian and charismatic preacher who led a rebellion against the Ottoman Empire in 1416. His full name was Sheikh Bedreddin Mahmud Bin Israel Bin Abdulaziz.

He was a son of the local Turkish Muslim judge and his converted Greek wife in the Anatolian city of Simav or in the European Simavna (today Ammovounon in Greek Thrace), Bedreddin's father (whose name was Israel) was the great-great son of the Seljuk Sultan of Rum Kaykaus II and Kadı of the town. Some historians believes that his paternal grandmother was jewish because of the name of his father. His mother was Malak Hatun. Bedreddin began his education in this town. Later he went to Bursa and then to Cairo, where he heard lectures on astronomy, mathematics, logic, and philosophy. He studied law and other Islamic subjects. While in Cairo, he was tutor to the son of the Mamluk Berkuk, the first sultan of the Burji dynasty. He married Jazeba Hatun, a Mamluk princess.

Sheikh Bedreddin’s (b. 1358/9) father was Turkish and his mother Greek. His father Israel studied jurisprudence in Samarkand before returning to Thrace where he is thought to have joined Hadji Ilbeg, a Turcoman marcher lord. Hadji Ilbeg took the city of Didymoteichon some years before Adrianople fell (1361). As one of Hadji Ilbeg's commanders Bedreddin's father seems to have been rewarded with the castle of Simavna, being assigned to it as commander and jurist. Here he married the vanquished Byzantine commander's daughter.

...
Wikipedia