NOTE: Yahya was a pretender to the Ottoman throne and he was not the biological son of Murad III or Helen of Trebizond, who may be a fictitious character.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Sultan Yahya (1585–1649) was the alleged son of Ottoman Sultan Murad III.

Biography

Background

When his father, Murad, became Sultan, he followed the Ottoman custom of executing all of his brothers (potential rival claimants to the Ottoman throne). Yahya's mother, Safiye, was concerned that this could also eventually happen to him after the death of his father, so he was smuggled out of the empire, first to Greece, and then to present-day Bulgaria. He was then supposedly baptized at an Orthodox Christian monastery, where he lived for the next eight years of his life.[1]

Battle for Ottoman throne

Eventually, Yahya's two older brothers died, but in 1603, since Yahya had escaped the country to avoid fratricide, his nephew Ahmed I became the Ottoman sultan. Yahya believed that as the next oldest son of Murad III, he was next in line to be Ottoman Sultan and felt cheated out of his rightful destiny. He would dedicate the rest of his life to gaining the Ottoman throne. However, the standard Ottoman practice at the time for determining the succession was not birth order of sons; instead the Ottoman laws of succession to the throne stated that after the death of their father, the Ottoman princes would fight among themselves until one emerged triumphant.

From 1603 on, Yahya made frequent trips to northern and western Europe to gain support for his claim to the throne (visiting Florence, Madrid, Rome, Kraków, Antwerp, Prague, and other cities). At one point he managed to win the support of the Tatar Khan Shahin, and of the Cossacks as well.[2] Between 1614 and 1617, he schemed with Serbian Orthodox Christian bishops in the Sanjak of Prizren and Western Roman Catholic bishops and leaders as part of his strategy to gain the Ottoman throne. A few years later, with the assistance of Russian and Ukrainian cossacks, he led a fleet of 130 ships and unsuccessfully attacked Constantinople. He died in 1649 on the Montenegrin coast, where he was involved in a rebellion organized by the Roman Catholic bishops of Skodra-and-Bar.

References

1. Kosovo, A Short History (1998), Noel Malcolm -- Harper Perennial - pp. 121 - 122 ISBN 978-0-06-097775-7
2. Faroqhi, Suraiya (December 20, 2005). The Ottoman Empire and the World around it. I. B. Tauris. ISBN 978-0-857-73023-7.

Sources

Ostapchuk, Victor (1989). The Ottoman Black Sea Frontier and the Relations of the Porte with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Muscovy: 1622-1628. Harvard University. p. 92.
Королёв В. Н. (2007). Босфорская война. М.: Вече. ISBN 978-5-9533-2099-3.(in Russian) Усенко О. Г. (2006). "Ототоманус, или сын турецкого султана" (журнал) (6) (Родина ed.): 45—52. ISSN 0235-7089.(in Russian) Faroqhi S. (2005). The Ottoman Empire and the World around it. I. B. Tauris. ISBN 978-0-857-73023-7. Benzoni G. (2004). "JACHIA" (Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani). 61. Romа: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. ed. Alberto M. Ghisalberti.Template:Ref-it Catualdi V. (1889). Sultan Jahja dell'imperial casa ottomana od altrimenti Alessandro conte di Montenegro ed i suoi discendenti in Italia: Nuovi contributi alla storia della questione orientale. Chiopris.Template:Ref-it Catualdi V. (2013). Sultan Jahja dell'imperial casa ottomana od altrimenti Alessandro conte di Montenegro ed i suoi discendenti in Italia: Nuovi contributi alla storia della questione orientale. BiblioLife. ISBN 1295371448.Template:Ref-it Giammanco A.D. (2015). "(Self) Fashioning of an ottoman cristian prince: Jachia ibn Mehmed in confessional diplomacy of the early seventeenth century" (MA thesis in comparative history) (Central Europian University ed.). Levinsk. A. (1890). "Un adventurier turk au XVII ciecle (Sultan Yahya autrement dit le comte Alexandre de Montenegro)" (Revue bleue: politique et littéraire). XLV(1): 393—400 , 435—442.(in French) Malcolm N. (2002). Kosovo: A Short History. Pan. ISBN 0330412248. Peirce, Leslie P. (1993). The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195086775. Setton K.M. (1991). Venice, Austria, and the Turks in the Seventeenth Century. 192. American Philosophical Society. ISBN 0871691922.

Earlier about me page:

Yahya (1585–1649) was the third son of Ottoman Sultan Murad III. His mother Elena was a princess from the Byzantine Komnenós dynasty of Trebizond, a surviving branch of the Byzantine imperial family of the same name from Constantinople. When his brother, Mehmet, became Sultan, he followed the Ottoman custom of executing all of his brothers (potential rival claimants to the Ottoman throne). Yahya's mother was concerned that this could also eventually happen to him after the death of his father, so he was smuggled out of the empire, first to Greece, and then to present-day Bulgaria. He was then supposedly baptized at an Orthodox Christian monastery, where he lived for the next eight years of his life.[1] The father of "Sultan" Yahya, Ottoman Sultan Murad III in his royal robes.

Battle for Ottoman throne

Eventually, Yahya's two older brothers died, but in 1603, since Yahya had escaped the country to avoid fratricide, his nephew Ahmed I (the fourth-born) became Ottoman sultan. Yahya believed that as the next oldest son of Murat III, he was next in line to be Ottoman Sultan and felt cheated out of his rightful destiny. He would dedicate the rest of his life to gaining the Ottoman throne. However, the standard Ottoman practice at the time for determining the succession was not birth order of sons; instead the Ottoman laws of succession to the throne stated that after the death of their father, the Ottoman princes would fight among themselves until one emerged triumphant.

From 1603 on, Yahya made frequent trips to northern and western Europe to gain support for his claim to the throne (visiting Florence, Madrid, Rome, Kraków, Antwerp, Prague, and other cities). Between 1614 and 1617, he schemed with Serbian Orthodox Christian bishops in Kosovo and Western Roman Catholic bishops and leaders as part of his strategy to gain the Ottoman throne. A few years later, with the assistance of Russian and Ukrainian cossacks, he led a fleet of 130 ships and unsuccessfully attacked Istanbul. He died in 1649 on the Montenegrin coast, where he was involved in a rebellion organized by the Roman Catholic bishops of Skodra-and-Bar.[2]

Marriage and Descendants

He married in 1629 the Albanian Princess Anna Katharina a descendant of Skanderbeg and had three Children:

   Prince Maurizio

   Prince Alessandro

   Princess Elena (named after his Mother)

See also

List of unrecognized heirs of the Ottoman dynasty

References

Kosovo, A Short History (1998), Noel Malcolm -- Harper Perennial - pp. 121 - 122 ISBN 978-0-06-097775-7 Kosovo, A Short History (1998), Noel Malcolm -- Harper Perennial - p. 124 ISBN 978-0-06-097775-7