[637] Many authorities declare that Bayezid committed suicide by striking his head against the bars of his cage, being unable to support the sight of his wife’s disgrace. The humiliation to which Despina was subjected was often given in later times by the Osmanlis themselves as a reason why the house of Osman does not contract marriages. See above, p. 183, and note.
[638] Sherefeddin, iv. 65-7; Chalc., III, pp. 162-5; Duc., 17, pp. 77-8; Phr., 1. 26, p. 85; and the Ottoman historians.
[639] The Dominican Friar says that the Jews of Brusa sent a delegation of rabbis to inform Mohammed-Sultan that their religion was the same as his. He answered that their law was a good one, and that they should assemble all their people in the chief synagogue. He promised that no harm would come to them. When the Tartars entered the city, they sealed fast the doors of this synagogue, and set fire to it.
[640] Sherefeddin, iv. 37-48; Duc., 16, pp. 66-7.
[641] Seadeddin, i. 235.
[642] Sherefeddin, iv. 47, 52.
[643] Accounts of the capture of Smyrna: Sherefeddin, iv. 47-53; Chalc., III, p. 161; Duc., 18, p. 78; Hadji Khalfa, Djihannuma, fol. 1949; Arabshah, ii. 24. For date, see M. de Ste. Croix, in Acad. des Inscriptions, 2e série, ii. 566, 569.
[644] Ali Muhieddin, Leuncl. trans., in Migne, Patr. Graec., clix., 596. Schiltberger, p. 27, relates a similar massacre of children after the capture of Ispahan.
[645] Ducas, 18, p. 79.
[646] ‘Would that the day might dawn in which your Highness would profess the religion of Christ, and stand up in power as the champion of the Christian Church against the enemies of the cross.’ In the London archives, however, this passage, while legible, is cancelled. So it may not have gone in the copy of the letter sent to Timur. Cf. Wylie’s Henry IV, i. 316 and n. 4.