BAYEZID II. sultan of Turkey, was the son of Mohammed II., whom he succeeded in 1481. Before he could establish himself on the throne a long struggle ensued with his brother Prince ) em and he succeeded only after pacifying the janissaries with a large placebo. Being routed, Jem fled for refuge to the Knights of St. John at Rhodes, who, in spite of a safe-conduct granted to him, accepted a pension from Bayezid as the price for keeping him a close prisoner (see AUBUSSON, PIERRE D').
By common consent Prince Jem was ultimately entrusted to Pope Innocent VIII., who used him not only to extract an annual tribute from the sultan, but to prevent the execution of Bayezid's ambitious designs in the Mediterranean. The prince, who had lived on excellent terms with Alexander VI., died at Naples in Feb. 1495, possibly as the result of excesses in which he had been deliberately encouraged by the pope.
Bayezid showed little of the aggressive spirit of his warlike predecessors; and Machiavelli said that another such sultan would cause Turkey to cease being a menace to Europe. He abandoned the attack on Rhodes at the first check, made concessions for the sake of peace to Venice, and reduced the tribute due from Ragusa. His wars were of the nature of raids on the Dalmatian coast and into Croatia, Hungary, Moldavia and Poland. The threat of the growing power of Venice, which had acquired Cyprus in 1489, at last roused him to a more serious effort ; and in 1499 the war broke out with the republic, which ended in 1502 by the annexation to Turkey of Lepanto and Modon, Coron and Navarino in the Morea. Bayezid himself conducted the siege of Modon in The comparative inactivity of Bayezid as regards Europe was partly due to preoccupation elsewhere. In the south he was threat ened by the dangerous rivalry of Sayf ad-Din, the Mameluke sul tan of Egypt, who had extended his power northwards as far as Tarsus and Adana. In 1488, the Mamelukes gained a great victory over the Ottomans, but in 1491 a peace was made which was not again broken till after Bayezid's death. From Persia too, where the decisive battle of Shurur (1502) had raised Ismail to power, dan ger threatened the sultan, and the latter years of his reign were troubled by the spread, under the influence of the new Persian power, of the Shiite doctrine in Kurdistan and Asia Minor. The forces destined to maintain his authority in Asia had been en trusted by Bayezid to his three sons, Ahmed, Corcud and Selim; and the sultan's declining years were embittered by their revolts and rivalry. Soon after the great earthquake of 1509, which laid Constantinople in ruins, Selim, the ungovernable pasha of Trebi zond, appeared before Adrianople, where Bayezid had sought refuge. The sultan had designated Ahmed as his successor, but Selim, though temporarily defeated, succeeded in winning over the janissaries, and Bayezid abdicated. He was responsible for the erection of several very fine mosques. That specially known by his name was built in I 505 at Constantinople and is still standing.
See J. B. Bury in the Cambridge Modern History, vol. i. chap. iii. and bibliography p. 700.