1402: The Battle of Ankara - 2003: The Battle of Baghdad
Is Saddam Hussein the Reincarnation of Sultan Bayezid I?
Timur-ilenk ("Timur the Lame") or Tamerlane was the Turkmen or Tatar sovereign of Samarkand whose whirlwind assault on the nascent Ottoman Turkish Sultanate, just as it was about to extinguish finally the moribund Byzantine Empire, resulted in the stunning defeat of Sultan Bayazid I in 1402 at the Battle of Ancyra.
His regime momentarily shattered, Bayazid was taken prisoner by Tamerlane, who, after some further displays of horrendous violence, withdrew without making any permanent conquest. Bayazid died some two years later, still a captive. Legends developed that Tamerlane imprisoned the proud Bayazid in an iron cage, debauching his wives before his eyes to add to his humiliation; and some said that the Turkish Sultan committed suicide in despair.
Excerpted from:
findarticles.com
Bayezid/Bajazet's Iron Cage
These events are described by Knolles in his History of the Turkes (1638; pp. 220-221). Tamerlane first treated Bajazet with marked respect, but his courtesy was returned with a haughty pride. Knolles continues:
Behold, Bajazet the terrour of the world, and as he thought, superior to fortune, in an instant with his state in one battell overthrown into the bottom of misery & despaire; and that at such time as he thought least, even in the middest of his greatest strength. It was three days (as some report) before he could be pacified, but as a desperat man still seeking after death, & calling for it: neither did Tamerlane after he had once spoken with hm, at all afterwards curteously use him, but as of a proud man causd small account to be made of him: And to manifest that he knew how to punish the haughty, made him to be shackled in fetters and chains of gold, and so to be shut up in an yron cage made like a grate, in such sort as that he might on every side be seen; and so carried him up and downe as he passed thorow Asia; to be of his own people scorned and derided. And to his further disgrace, upon festivall daies used him for a footstoole to treat upon, when he mounted to horse: and at other times scornfully fed him like a dog, with crums fallen from his table. A rare example of the uncertainty of worldly honour, that he unto whose ambitious mind Asia and Europe, two giant parts of the world, were too little, should be now carried up and downe cooped up in a little yron cage, like some perillous wild beast. All which Tamerlane did not so much for the hatred to the man, as to manifest the just judgement of God against the arrogant folly of the proud. It is reported, That Tamerlane being requested by one of the Noblemen that might be bold to speake unto him, to remit some part of his severity against the person of so great a Prince, answered, That he did not use that rigor against him as a King, but rather did punish him as a proud ambitious tyrant, polluted with the bloud of his owne brother.
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