Siege of Smyrna

The Siege of Smyrna (December 1402) was fought between the Knights of Rhodes, who held the harbour and sea-castle of Smyrna (now İzmir) in western Anatolia, and 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 sources for the siege are the Persian historians Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi and Mirkhwand and the Arab Ahmad ibn Arabshah, who wrote in the service 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.

Smyrna had been captured by a crusade in 1344 and became a Papal city. The Turks continued to control the inland acropolis, however, but the sea-castle allowed the crusaders to control the harbour. From 1374, the Knights of Rhodes were in charge of its defences. In 1400, Timur launched a war against the Ottoman Empire that culminated in his victory at the Battle of Ankara on 20 July 1402.

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