Count Alexander of Montenegro

Count Alexander of Montenegro (1585? –1648?), also known as Şehzade Yahya (sometimes spelled Jachia or Jahja), was an impostor and a self-claimed pretender to the Ottoman throne who claimed to be the son of Sultan Murad III.

Count Alexander of Montenegro
Born	1585 (self claimed) Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (self claimed)
Died	1648 (aged 62–63) Kotor
Burial	Kotor, Montenegro
Spouse	Anna Caterina of Drisht
Issue	Maurice Elena
Names Count Alexander of Montenegro Yahya bin Murad (self claimed)
House	House of Osman (self claimed)
Father	Murad III (self claimed)
Mother	Safiye Sultan (self claimed)
Religion	Orthodox, formerly Sunni Islam (claimed)

Biography

Background

According to Alexander's own writings, when his brother, Mehmed III, became Sultan, he followed the Ottoman custom of executing all of his brothers (potential rival claimants to the Ottoman throne). Yahya's mother Safiye was concerned that this could also eventually happen to him after the death of his father, so he was smuggled out of the empire, first to Greece, and then to present-day Bulgaria. He was then supposedly baptized at an Orthodox Christian monastery, where he lived for the next eight years of his life.^[1]

Battle for Ottoman throne

Alexander's narrative then claims that eventually, Alexander's two older brothers died, but in 1603, since Alexander had escaped the country to avoid fratricide, his nephew Ahmed I became the Ottoman sultan. Alexander believed that as the next oldest son of Murad III, he was next in line to be Ottoman Sultan and felt cheated out of his rightful destiny. He would dedicate the rest of his life to gaining the Ottoman throne. However, the standard Ottoman practice at the time for determining the succession was not birth order of sons; instead the Ottoman laws of succession to the throne stated that after the death of their father, the Ottoman princes would fight among themselves until one emerged triumphant.

From 1603 on, Alexander made frequent trips to northern and western Europe to gain support for his claim to the throne (visiting Florence, Madrid, Rome, Kraków, Antwerp, Prague, and other cities). At one point he managed to win the support of the Tatar Khan Shahin, and of the Cossacks as well.^[2] Between 1614 and 1617, he schemed with Serbian Orthodox Christian bishops in the Sanjak of Prizren and Western Roman Catholic bishops and leaders as part of his strategy to gain the Ottoman throne. A few years later, with the assistance of Russian and Ukrainian cossacks, he led a fleet of 130 ships and unsuccessfully attacked Constantinople. He died in 1648 or 1649^[2] on the Montenegrin coast, where he was involved in a rebellion organized by the Roman Catholic bishops of Shkodër and Bar.

None of Alexander's statements regarding his identity or his temptative to conquest of the Ottoman throne are supported by historical evidence, and he currently receives no academic credence.

Family

Alexander married an Albanian noblewoman named Anna Caterina of Drisht, the daughter of Duke Peter, Count of Drisht, in the early 1630s, when Yahya started calling himself Duke of that region. Anna Caterina was supposedly descended from the national Albanian hero Skanderbeg. They had two children, a son and a daughter:^[3]

• Maurice of Drisht (1635 - 1693). Born in Turin and dead in Palmanova as captain of Venice. He married Eleonora Romano of Gorizia and had two daughters:
  • Maria Anna of Drisht (1674 - 14 August 1694). Born in Palmanova, dead in Udine.
  • Elena of Drisht (4 August 1675 - 29 August 1727). Born in Palmanova, dead in Udine. She married Lucrezio Treo of Udine.
• Elena of Drisht (1638 - 1697). Born in Turin. In 1658 she married the pisan noble Andrea Biagi and had two children:
  • Caterina Biagi. She married Ottaviano Alasio of Pisa.
  • Vincenzo Biagi. Unmarried and without issue, he was captain under the King of Spain.

In popular culture

In the TV series "Muhteşem Yüzyıl: Kösem" Alexander was played by Berk Cankat. In the series, the name Alexander was an alias: his real name was Iskender and he was in fact a real son of Sultan Murad III and Safiye Sultan, saved from the execution of the Law of Fratricide by his mother. Having grown up believing himself a commoner, Iskender made no claim for the throne and expressed a great disinterest in becoming sultan. However, news of his true identity gave Sultan Ahmed's enemies a powerful potential claimant in whose name they might rise to rebellion, and so Iskender was executed under his nephew's orders.

References

1. Kosovo, A Short History (1998), Noel Malcolm -- Harper Perennial - pp. 121 - 122 ISBN 978-0-06-097775-7
2. Faroqhi, Suraiya (December 20, 2005). The Ottoman Empire and the World around it. I. B. Tauris. ISBN 978-0-857-73023-7.
3. Giammanco, p. 43, 60

Sources

• Ostapchuk, Victor (1989). The Ottoman Black Sea Frontier and the Relations of the Porte with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Muscovy: 1622-1628. Harvard University. p. 92.
• Королёв В. Н. (2007). Босфорская война (in Russian). М.: Вече. ISBN 978-5-9533-2099-3. Archived from the original on 2017-08-08. Retrieved 2017-08-08.
• Усенко О. Г. (2006). Ототоманус, или сын турецкого султана. Limba Română: Revistă Trimestrială (журнал) (in Russian) (6) (Родина ed.): 45–52. ISSN 0235-7089.
• Faroqhi S. (2005). The Ottoman Empire and the World around it. I. B. Tauris. ISBN 978-0-857-73023-7.
• Benzoni G. (2004). "JACHIA" (Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani) (in Italian). 61. Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |agency= ignored (help)
• Catualdi Vittorio (= Oscarre de Hassek) (1889). Sultan Jahja dell'imperial casa ottomana od altrimenti Alessandro conte di Montenegro ed i suoi discendenti in Italia: Nuovi contributi alla storia della questione orientale (in Italian). Trieste: G. Chiopris., reprinted in 2013 by BiblioLifeISBN 1295371448
• Giammanco A.D. (2015). "(Self) Fashioning of an Ottoman Christian Prince: Jachia ibn Mehmed in confessional diplomacy of the early seventeenth century" (MA thesis in comparative history) (Central European University ed.). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Levinsk. A. (1890). "Un adventurier turk au XVII ciecle (Sultan Yahya autrement dit le comte Alexandre de Montenegro)" (Revue bleue: politique et littéraire) (in French). XLV(1): 393–400, 435–442. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Malcolm N. (2002). Kosovo: A Short History. Pan. ISBN 0330412248.
• Peirce, Leslie P. (1993). The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195086775.
• Setton, Kenneth Meyer (1991). Venice, Austria, and the Turks in the Seventeenth Century. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society. ISBN 0-87169-192-2.
• Dorothy M. Vaughan, Europe and the Turk: A Pattern of Alliances, 1350-1700, Liverpool, 1954, pp. 220–236