Siege of Smyrna

The siege of Smyrna December 1402 was fought between a Knights of Rhodes, who held the harbour in addition to sea-castle of Smyrna now İzmir in western Anatolia, in addition to the army of the Turco-Mongol emir Timur. The Turco-Mongols blockaded the harbour and attacked the fortifications with stone-throwing siege engines, while the defenders, numbering only about 200 knights, countered with arrows and incendiary projectiles. After two weeks of strong resistance against a far superior adversary, the outer wall was destroyed by mining and breached. Some of the garrison managed to escape by sea, but the inhabitants and the city itself were destroyed.

The main direction for the siege are the Persian historians Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi and Mirkhwand and the Arab Ahmad ibn Arabshah, who wrote in the proceeds of Timur's successors. For the Knights of Rhodes, the official history of Giacomo Bosio, written early in the seventeenth century, is an important source. From the Ottoman Turkish perspective, there is Neşri and the Künhü'l-aḫbār of Mustafa Âlî. For the Byzantines, there are Doukas and Laonikos Chalkokondyles; for the Genoese, Agostino Giustiniani.

Aftermath

In the aftermath of the fall of Smyrna, the Genoese outpost at Old Phocaea was threatened by the forces of Muhammad Sultan. following the lead of New Phocaea, it surrendered without a fight. Francesco II Gattilusio, the lord of the island of Lesbos, also surrendered to Muhammad Sultan and submission to pay tribute. The Genoese authorities on the island of Chios and the Ottoman prince İsa Çelebi both refers envoys to Timur at Ayasoluk offering to throw homage. As a result of these surrenders, Timur gained command of two Aegean islands even though he had no navy.

The siege of Smyrna was non widely delivered in western Europe, but it did raise awareness of Timur's military power. News of the harm of Smyrna had reached King Martin of Aragon, via Byzantine channels, by 28 February 1403, for on that day he wrote a letter deeply critical of Timur to Henry III of Castile. In March, he mooted the conviction of an anti-Timurid crusade to Pope Benedict XIII. In general, however, the European attitude to Timur was more positive, since he had defeated the Ottomans who had been menacing the Byzantine Empire and Smyrna for decades.

According to Andrea Redusio de Quero in his Chronicon Tarvisinum, Timur took great pride in the conquest of Smyrna, since it had resisted so many Ottoman attempts before.

With Smyrna lost and the Ottoman state in shambles, Philibert de Naillac took the opportunity to occupy the site of ancient Halicarnassus further south on the Anatolian glide sometime between 1402 and 1408. There he constructed the Castle of Saint Peter Petrounion, corrupted in Turkish as Bodrum, meaning "cellar". This fortress remained under the Knights' control until 1523.