Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium, episode 329, buying time.

Last time, Manuel Paliologos became emperor and refused to answer a summons from his overlord, the Ottoman Sultan.

The Vassilafs was tired of living in fear.

The Sultan, Bayazit, did not respond with a hot head.

Instead, he set up an effective blockade of Constantinople and

settled in to starve the Romans out. The siege lasted for eight years and would surely have succeeded

without divine intervention. Improbably, the city was saved by the post-Mongol warlord Timor,

in a strange replay of the Battle of Manzikerd,

the rising power of Iran clashed with the Empire of Anatolia,

delivering the same crushing result.

Bayazit was captured alive,

and a disastrous civil war would tear the Ottomans apart,

just as the Romans had experienced 200 years earlier.

The arrival of Timor really was a godsend for the Romans.

Not only did he defeat the Ottomans in battle, but he undid all the work

of Baezit's campaigns in Asia. After his victory, Timor traveled around Anatolia, restoring all

the Baliks which the Ottomans had subordinated, confining the sultans to their original stomping

grounds in Bithynia.

Allegedly, he had Biasit carried around in an iron cage

until the unhappy Sultan died in early 1403.

Biasit had sired at least 12 sons,

and they would spend the next 20 years murdering one another until only

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