Bıyıklı Mehmed Pasha (; died 24 December 1521) known as Fatih Pasha, was an Ottoman

serdar Serdar may refer to * Serdar (given name) * Serdar (surname) Serdar is a surname of the following notable people: * Can Serdar (born 1996), German-Turkish football midfielder * Emerîkê Serdar (1935–2018), Kurdish-Yezidi writer from Armenia * I ...

and governor of

Diyarbakır Diyarbakır is the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey. It is the administrative center of Diyarbakır Province. Situated around a high plateau by the banks of the Tigris river on which stands the historic Diyarbakır Fortress, it is ...

Early life

There is little information about his origin and early life, but there is claim that he was descended from the Turkoman

Aq Qoyunlu The Aq Qoyunlu or the White Sheep Turkomans (, ; ) was a culturally Persianate society, Persianate,Kaushik Roy, ''Military Transition in Early Modern Asia, 1400–1750'', (Bloomsbury, 2014), 38; "Post-Mongol Persia and Iraq were ruled by two trib ...

tribe. He was probably educated in the

Enderûn (, from Persian language, Persian , ) was the term used in the Ottoman Empire to designate the "Inner Service" of the imperial court, concerned with the private service of the Ottoman sultans, as opposed to the state-administrative "Outer Service ...

Military career

After the

Battle of Chaldiran The Battle of Chaldiran (; ) took place on 23 August 1514 and ended with a decisive victory for the Ottoman Empire over the Safavid Empire. As a result, the Ottomans annexed Eastern Anatolia and Upper Mesopotamia from Safavid Iran. It marked ...

(1514), he commanded the East Front against the

Safavid The Guarded Domains of Iran, commonly called Safavid Iran, Safavid Persia or the Safavid Empire, was one of the largest and longest-lasting Iranian empires. It was ruled from 1501 to 1736 by the Safavid dynasty. It is often considered the begi ...

s from 1515 to 1521. In this campaign, he captured the

Mardin Mardin (; ; romanized: ''Mārdīn''; ; ) is a city and seat of the Artuklu District of Mardin Province in Turkey. It is known for the Artuqids, Artuqid architecture of its old city, and for its strategic location on a rocky hill near the Tigris ...

Raqqa Raqqa (, also , Kurdish language, Kurdish: ''Reqa'') is a city in Syria on the North bank of the Euphrates River, about east of Aleppo. It is located east of the Tabqa Dam, Syria's largest dam. The Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine city and b ...

Mosul Mosul ( ; , , ; ; ; ) is a major city in northern Iraq, serving as the capital of Nineveh Governorate. It is the second largest city in Iraq overall after the capital Baghdad. Situated on the banks of Tigris, the city encloses the ruins of the ...

and other important cities of the Southeastern Anatolia and Northern

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...

regions. He defeated the

army twice in the Battle of Ovacık (1515) and the Battle of Koçhisar (1516). He commanded the Ottoman left flank at the

Battle of Marj Dabiq The Battle of Marj Dābiq (, meaning "the meadow of Dābiq"; ), a decisive military engagement in Middle Eastern history, was fought on 24 August 1516, near the town of Dabiq, 44 km north of Aleppo (modern Syria). The battle was part of t ...

against the

Mamluk Mamluk or Mamaluk (; (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural); translated as "one who is owned", meaning "slave") were non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-so ...

army. After this battle, he returned to the eastern front to continue his campaign against the Safavids. During his campaign, he became a Vizier Governor of Diyarbakır after the siege and capture of Diyarbakır.Mehdi İlhan, 140 He commanded this front until his death in 1521.

References

Citations

Sources

* Mehdi, İ. (2015). Amid (Diyarbakır). Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu. *Mehdi, İ. (1981). Diyarbakır Fatihi ve Beylerbeyi Bıyıklı Mehmed Paşa. * Hoca Sadeddin Efendi. (1585). Tâcü’t-Tevârîh - IV. İstanbul * Göyünç, N. (1969). XVI’ncı Yüzyılda Mardin Sancağı. İstanbul: İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi. {{DEFAULTSORT:Bıyıklı Mehmed Pasha Year of birth missing 1521 deaths Pashas Ottoman people of the Ottoman–Persian Wars Turks from the Ottoman Empire Ottoman governors of Diyarbekir