The Bosphorus - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 463

in 1390 or a few years later. This is the Beyazit whom Marlowe makes
introduce himself as the Turkish Emperor:
Dread Lord of Afrike, Europe and Asia,
Great King and conquerour of Grecia,
The Ocean, Terrene, and the cole-blacke sea,
The high and highest Monarke of the world.
Tamburlaine, 1, 940 seqq.
But a few scenes later we find Tamburlaine entering in triumph and
“two Moores drawing Baiazeth in his cage, and his wife following
him.” Beyazit appears to have committed suicide soon after; and
the legend has it that in order to avoid the ignominy of seeing his
wife perform menial services for a possible conqueror, as Beyazit had
had to do, no subsequent Ottoman sultan ever contracted a legal
marriage. This tale is singularly unfounded since several later sultans
were in fact legally married, including Fatih Mehmet and Süleyman
the Magnificent.
The castle is a small one consisting of a keep and its surrounding
wall, together with an outer wall or barbican guarded by three towers;
parts of the barbican have been demolished. Gabriel suggests, on the
basis both of historical sources and methods of construction, that
only the keep and its wall were built by Beyazit, the barbican and
towers being added later by Fatih Mehmet at the same time that he
was building the fortress opposite. It is a pretty little castle and well
deserves the name of Güzelce, the Handsome or Charming One, by
which it was originally known. And the village which surrounds it
is very attractive; from the quiet and picturesque street that borders
the castle along the sea, there is one of the best views of the superb
fortifications of Rumeli Hisarı. In this street also is one of the very
few surviving namazgahs, or open air mosques; it consists simply of
a stone mihrab and a stone mimber standing at one end of a grassy
plot of ground surrounded by low walls. Since the namazgah is
mentioned in the Hadika but not by Evliya, one may take it that it
was established some time between 1660 and 1780. Unfortunately it
is in a rather dilapidated condition.