Bayezid I succeeds murdered Murad

June 1389

Hours after his father's assassination on the battlefield of Kosovo, the new Ottoman sultan ordered the strangulation of his own brother Yakub to forestall succession war, establishing a grim precedent of fratricide that would haunt the dynasty. Bayezid would campaign relentlessly across Bulgaria, Greece, and Anatolia, earning the nickname Yildirim, the Thunderbolt, until Timur shattered him at Ankara.