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Cem Sultan (also spelled Djem or Jem) or Sultan Cem or Şehzade Cem (22 December 1459 – 25 February 1495, ; ; ; ), was a claimant to the Ottoman throne in the 15th century.
Cem was the third son of Sultan Mehmed II and younger half-brother of Sultan Bayezid II, and thus a half-uncle of Sultan Selim I of Ottoman Empire.
After being defeated by Bayezid, Cem went in exile in Egypt and Europe, under the protection of the Mamluk Sultanate, the Knights Hospitaller of St. John on the island of Rhodes, and ultimately the Pope.
Contrary to Sharia, which prohibits any unnecessary delay in burial, Mehmed II's body was transported to Constantinople, where it lay three days. His grand vizier Karamanlı Mehmet Pasha – believing himself to be fulfilling the wishes of the recently deceased Sultan – attempted to arrange a situation whereby the younger son Cem, whose governing seat at Konya was closer than his brother Bayezid's seat at Amasya, would arrive in Constantinople prior to his older sibling and be able to claim the throne.
However, Bayezid had already established a political network of influential (two of whom were his sons-in-law), the janissaries, and those opposed to the policies of Mehmed II and the grand vizier. In spite of Karamanlı Mehmet Pasha's attempts at secrecy, the Sultan's death and the grand vizier's plan were discovered by the Janissary corps, who supported Bayezid over Cem and had been kept out of the capital after the Sultan's death. As a result, the Janissary corps rebelled, entering the capital, and lynched the grand vizier.
After the death of Karamanlı Mehmet Pasha, there was widespread rioting among the janissaries in Constantinople as there was neither a sultan nor a grand vizier to control the developments. Understanding the danger of the situation, former grand vizier Ishak Pasha took the initiative of beseeching Bayezid to arrive with all due haste. In the meantime, Ishak Pasha took the cautionary measure of proclaiming Bayezid's 11-year-old son, Sehzade (prince) Korkut, as regent until the arrival of his father.Finkel, 2006, pp. 81–82.
Prince Bayezid arrived at Constantinople on 21 May 1481, and was declared Bayezid II. Only six days later, Cem captured the city of Inegöl with an army of 4,000. Sultan Bayezid sent his army under the command of vizier Ayas Pasha to kill his brother. On 28 May Cem had defeated Bayezid's army and declared himself Sultan of Anatolia, establishing his capital at Bursa. He proposed to divide the empire between him and his brother, leaving Bayezid the European side. Bayezid furiously rejected the proposal, declared that "between rulers there is no kinship," and marched on to Bursa. The decisive battle between the two contenders to the Ottoman throne took place on 19 June 1481, near the town of Yenişehir. Cem lost and fled with his family to the Mamluk Cairo.
In Cairo, Cem received a letter from his brother, offering Cem one million akçes (the Ottoman currency) to stop competing for the throne. Cem rejected the offer, and in the following year he launched a campaign in Anatolia under the support of Kasım Bey (Qāsım Beğ), heir of the ruling house of Karaman, and the Sanjak-bey of Ankara. On 27 May 1482 Cem besieged Konya but was soon defeated and forced to withdraw to Ankara. He intended to give it all up and return to Cairo but all of the roads to Egypt were under Bayezid's control. Cem then tried to renegotiate with his brother. Bayezid offered him a stipend to live quietly in Jerusalem but refused to divide the empire, prompting Cem to flee to Rhodes on 29 July 1482.
Therefore, the Knights took the money and betrayed Cem, who thereafter became a well-treated prisoner at Rhodes. Afterwards, Cem was sent to the castle of Pierre d'Aubusson in France.
Cem spent a year in the Duchy of Savoy. After the death of King Louis XI of France (30 August 1483), who had refused to accept a Muslim in his lands, the Knights of Saint John transferred him to Limousin (D'Aubusson's birthplace). Cem spent the next five years there, mostly at Bourganeuf. He was well treated, but essentially a captive (a fortified tower was constructed to house him). Bayezid II negotiated both with D'Aubusson, to have Cem returned to Rhodes, and with representatives of the new French monarch, Charles VIII, to have him kept in France. When the king of Hungary and Pope Innocent VIII sought custody of the prince, the Pope prevailed, and Cem arrived in Rome on 13 March 1489.
Pope Innocent VIII unsuccessfully attempted to use Cem to begin a new crusade against the Ottomans.Finkel, 2006, p. 87. The Pope also tried to convert Cem to Christianity, without success. Cem's presence in Rome was useful nevertheless, because whenever Bayezid intended to launch a military campaign against Christian nations of the Balkans, the Pope would threaten to release his brother.
In exchange for maintaining the custody of Cem, Bayezid paid Innocent VIII 120,000 crowns (at the time, equal to all other annual sources of papal revenue combined), a relic of the Holy Lance (which allegedly had pierced the side of Christ), one hundred Moorish slaves, and an annual fee of 45,000 ducats. Much of the costs associated with the Sistine Chapel were paid with funds from the Ottoman ransoms.Duffy, 2006, p. 196.
It is rumored that he was poisoned by the Pope who was forced to give up his valuable hostage.
Sultan Bayezid declared national mourning for three days. He also requested to have Cem's body for an Islamic funeral, but it was not until four years after Cem's death that his body was finally brought to the Ottoman lands because of attempts to receive more gold for Cem's corpse. He was buried in Bursa.
===Depictions of Cem===
An account of Cem's captivity—and of the political machinations that kept him captive—forms the basis of the historical novel, Francesca: Les Jeux du Sort (1872), written by the Haitian writer and political exile, Demesvar Delorme.Delorme, Demesvar. Francesca: Les Jeux du Sort. Paris: E. Dentu, Libraire-Editeur, 1872.
Cem's life also served as inspiration for a character in the book The Damned Yard
/ref> Cem Sultan appears as one of the main characters in a multiple-layered narration and serves as a metaphor for the human condition.
Bulgarians Ottoman historian Vera Mutafchieva, inspired by Cem Sultan's importance in European politics of the 15th century, wrote a novel ( The Case of Cem) about him in 1967. The book strives for historical accuracy and has been translated into Turkish, German, Romanian, Polish, Russian, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, French, Estonian, Greek and Croatian. An English translation by Angela Rodel was published in 2024.
In 1969 was released historical adventure film Malkoçoğlu Cem Sultan, which directed by Remzi Aydın Jöntürk, the character of Cem Sultan, was portrayed by Cihangir Ghaffari.
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