The Gazi Chelebi ( tr, Gazi Çelebi, "Warrior Gentleman") was the nickname of a naval commander who controlled the
Black Sea
The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Rom ...
port of
Sinop Sinop can refer to:
* Sinop, Turkey, a city on the Black Sea
** Sinop Nuclear Power Plant, was planned in 2013, but cancelled in 2018
** Battle of Sinop, 1853 naval battle in the Sinop port
*** Russian ship ''Sinop'', Russian ships named after the ...
in the first decades of the 14th century.
His epitaph in the Pervâne Medrese in Sinop states that he was the son of Mas’ud, probably the Mas’ud Bey kidnapped by the
Genoese in 1298–99. The Gazi continued his predecessor's policy of harassing Genoese shipping in the Black Sea, and together with the Grand Komnenos (Emperor) of Trebizond
Alexios II, was likely responsible for raids on the Genoese port of
Kaffa in the
Crimea
Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a pop ...
between 1311 and 1314. When
Ibn Battuta visited Sinop in either 1332 or 1334, the town had passed into the hands of the
Jandarid Bey Ibrahim, but the memory of the Gazi Chelebi was still vivid. Inhabitants said that he possessed a talent for swimming under water and piercing the hulls of enemy galleys during battle. He did this with such stealth, they said, that the sailors did not know what had happened until their ships started to sink. In one memorable episode, probably in 1324, the Gazi used this method to sink several Genoese ships raiding Sinop's harbor, capturing their entire crew. The Sinopians also remembered that the Gazi Chelebi enjoyed smoking “an excessive quantity of hashish.”
[Ibn Battutah, ''The Travels of Ibn Battuta'', trans. Sir Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1962), 466-7]
His tomb is in
Pervane Medrese in Sinop.
References
{{Anatolian Beys
People from Sinop, Turkey
Admirals of the medieval Islamic world
14th-century rulers in Europe
Year of birth missing
Year of death missing
History of Sinop, Turkey