Young Vlad III, Part 2: Captive in the Ottoman World – Where He Lived

How did the boy born in Sighișoara, Transylvania, come to spend most of his youth among the people who threatened his homeland?

1442 – 1448: Captive in the Ottoman world, while his life hung in balance, young Vlad’s fate depended not only on the actions of his older brother and father, but also on the shifting alliances and ambitions of European powers beyond his reach.

To understand young Vlad before he became Dracula, we must follow not only the castles and courts of Wallachia, but the roads, mountain passes, fortresses and foreign courts that shaped him. The places he lived tell part of the story. The places where he was held, fought, fled and returned tell the rest.

We left young Vlad III, age 12, and his little brother Radu, age 5, in sultan’s custody as a guarantee of their father’s loyalty. It is 1443, Vlad Dracul had just recovered the throne of Wallachia with Ottoman help.

Anatolia, 1440s: Young Vlad III, captive in the Ottoman world

Although the surviving sources do not allow us to trace his movements year by year, Ottoman chronicler Âşıkpaşazâde (Derviş Ahmed Âşıkî, c. 1400–1484) gives us a rare glimpse into the beginning of young Vlad’s captivity in his Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân. He records that Vlad Dracul was imprisoned at Gallipoli while his two sons, Vlad and Radu, underage, were sent to Eğrigöz, a fortress in the province of Germiyan in Anatolia.

So while he was the sultan’s hostage, moving between Gallipoli and Eğrigöz, Vlad III learned its language, customs and military culture from the inside. When he eventually returned to Wallachia he was no longer simply the boy who had left it.

Beyond this, the surviving sources become far less precise. Later writings associate the young Vlad with other Ottoman locations but they do not allow us to reconstruct his movements from fortress to fortress with certainty.

One such place is Edirne, alongside the future Mehmed II.

We do know is that Vlad was educated in languages, religion, literature, logic, and military skills, including horsemanship. Such an education would have been appropriate for high-born hostages. Princes were valuable political assets, not ordinary prisoners, and their treatment reflected their rank.

The education of Mehmed II offers a useful comparison.

Sultan Murad II understood that a future ruler needed more than military training; he required knowledge of religion, history, law, geography, and the cultures of the people he would govern. Mehmed studied under some of the finest minds in the Islamic world and received instruction in mathematics, astronomy, languages, and geography, among others. He was also fascinated by maps, particularly those depicting Constantinople…

If Vlad and Mehmed did spend part of their youth within the same Ottoman world, they would have been exposed to very different but overlapping forms of princely education. Both were ambitious young men being prepared for power. Whether they actually studied together, however, is uncertain, and it would be dangerous to turn that possibility into fact, no matter how tempting it is for a historical fiction writer…

Vlad’s years in Ottoman custody definitely brought him into close contact with Ottoman society and its system of power. He would have encountered a world in which authority was tightly organised and military strength served politics as much as warfare. His later knowledge of Turkish and Latin is consistent with the broad education expected of a prince.

Yet whatever comforts he was afforded could not erase the essential truth: Vlad was a hostage.
His freedom depended upon his father’s loyalty.
He was growing up under Ottoman supervision at a formative age, not as an ordinary prisoner, but as the son of a Wallachian prince whose presence helped guarantee his father’s obedience.

Anatolia and the Ottoman court therefore became part of the landscape of Vlad’s adolescence—a world far removed from the fortified Saxon towns of Transylvania. His captivity had placed him inside the society he would later fight.

The important point is not to imagine a particular lesson, teacher, or prison cell for which the sources give us no evidence, but to understand the world in which Vlad found himself. He was learning about the future enemy of Wallachia from within the Ottoman Empire: not merely how the Ottomans fought, but how they ruled, how they organised power, and how they thought.

Vlad III at Tokat

Tokat fortress, in central Anatolia, is another place traditionally associated with Vlad’s imprisonment. Perched above the city on a steep rocky height, its position makes the landscape itself part of its defence.

Later Ottoman accounts associate the fortress with the imprisonment of politically dangerous prisoners, but the precise chronology of Vlad’s supposed confinement there remains uncertain.

Evliya Çelebi described Tokat Castle as rising on a high rocky peak, its walls surrounded by deep gorges and its gates guarded day and night. His description belongs to a much later period, but it conveys something of the fortress’s forbidding position.

“A 362-step stairway made of cut stone descends to the river. The Ayyar Rock on the west side is inclined to the castle. And there is only Yıldırım Han Mosque within the citadel but no inn, bathhouse or marketplace, for as it is a high castle that soars into the sky, not every man can climb to it in an hour.

“For the same reason, its gate is always closed day and night. But the heavily armed gatekeepers always keep watch since all the valuable goods of the residents of the city lying beneath are kept in the castle. All criminals and murderers are imprisoned there. Karak Castle serves as a dungeon for the Noble Jerusalem, but Tokat Castle seems like the Kahkaha Castle of Persia.”

Vlad’s captivity continued through the years when his father’s position became increasingly precarious.

What can be followed with greater confidence is the larger journey: a young Wallachian prince moving through an empire whose language and culture he had to absorb, while his freedom depended upon decisions made by men far more powerful than himself.

To understand why a young prince and his younger brother would be left by their parents at the court of an enemy, it is crucial to understand the world they lived in.

1443 Witnessed Balkan’s military expedition known as the Long Campaign

In September 1443, János Hunyadi launched what became known as the Long Campaign into the Balkans, forcing Vlad Dracul once again to navigate between the two competing powers. Vlad II could not afford to openly break with the Ottomans while his two younger sons, Vlad and Radu, remained in their hands.

Records by the Byzantine historian Doukas suggest that the brothers may have been released after this campaign, but the chronology of their captivity remains uncertain.

1444, again – or still – at the Ottoman court

In 1444, although the Treaty of Adrianople (between the Hungarians, the Ottomans, the Poles and the Serbians) would have freed all war prisoners, the Ottomans required Vlad Dracul again to provide a hostage to the sultan that will guarantee his true-faith.

Again, Vlad II faced an agonizing choice. Rather than send his eldest son, Mircea, he sent both Vlad and Radu. Thus the two boys were once again placed formally in Ottoman custody, young Vlad now entering the years of his adolescence under the shadow of the sultan’s court.

This uneasy peace between the great powers of the eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire did not last.

Encouraged by the Long Campaign’s momentum and urged by papal legates who argued oaths made to non-Christians were invalid, King Władysław III of Poland and Hungary breaks the peace (a decision that will lead to his death on the battlefield on 10 November).

Under these circumstances—due to the Christians’ failure to honor the peace—the two princely hostages, Vlad and Radu, were taken by order of Sultan Murad II to the fortress of Egrigöz in the province of Anatolia.

Against all odds, Vlad III and Radu survived. Murad II apparently recognised that they were more useful alive than dead: their continued captivity was a powerful guarantee that Vlad Dracul would honour his obligations and maintain his neutrality.

Yet life at the Ottoman court was not to be taken for granted.

In 1439, for example, Murad’s armies captured Smederevo, the fortress capital of Serbia—the homeland of one of his wives, Mara, who had been married to the sultan in part to protect it. Additionally, her eldest brother, Grgur, Ottoman governor in Serbia, was accused of plotting against the sultan and blinded at Murad’s order, along with Mara’s other brother, Stefan.

Summer 1444: Murad II abdicates. His youngest son Mehmed II (aged 12-13) becomes the new sultan.

1444, November: the Battle of Varna

When Pope Eugenius IV called for a new crusade against the Ottomans, Hunyadi again demanded that Vlad Dracul join the campaign. Hoping to save his youngest sons, Dracul refused to lead his forces in person but he sent his eldest son, Mircea, with a contingent of Wallachian cavalry.

On 10 November 1444, the Christian army met the Ottomans at Varna.

Mircea, who was no more than 16 years old, was accompanied by an experienced tutor who had taken part in the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396 and was familiar with the Turks’ style of warfare.

According to some historians, during the battle the Sultan reportedly sent a message to Mircea threatening to kill his younger brothers if he did not cease fighting—a tactic that prompted the Romanians’ withdrawal.

Other historians say that it was Vlad Dracul who ordered Mircea to withheld from directly engaging with the ottoman troops, to save the lives of his two younger brothers.

Nevertheless, the crusaders were decisively defeated. King Władysław III of Poland and Hungary was killed, while Hunyadi barely escaped with his life.

1446: Murad II returns to power. He will be sultan for five more years, until his death.

For the young Vlad and Radu, still held as hostages in the Ottoman world, the Varna battle could have had deadly consequences. Sultan Murad II understood, however, that the two princes were more valuable alive. Their continued captivity gave him a powerful means of keeping their father obedient.

In the aftermath of Varna. Vlad Dracul was forced to renew his accommodation with the Ottomans, strengthening their influence over Wallachia and reinforcing the precarious bargain on which his rule depended: his throne survived, but his sons remained in Ottoman hands.

It is possible that, from 1447 onward, Vlad and Radu were moved from Eğrigöz to Sultan Murad II’s court at Adrianople (Edirne) next to the prince Mehmet (Fatih Sultan Mehmet), where Vlad III received training for a certain period of time. If so, this would have marked an important change in the young princes’ lives. They were no longer simply hostages held in an Anatolian fortress, but were brought into the centre of Ottoman political life, where they could observe the machinery of an empire from close at hand.

A contemporary observer, George of Hungary, who lived within the Ottoman Empire between 1438 and 1458, described the remarkable mixture of young men gathered around the sultan: prisoners of war, Christian boys taken through the devşirme system to become Janissaries, and hostages sent by tributary states. He was struck above all by the concentration of power in the hands of the sultan. Even the empire’s highest officials and princes, he observed, were ultimately servants appointed by the ruler rather than independent lords.

For Vlad, this was an education no Wallachian court could have provided. He was growing up inside a political system in which loyalty, military ability and absolute obedience could carry a man to the highest office—and disobedience could cost him everything. The young prince was learning not merely how the Ottomans fought, but how they ruled.

“he had no love for the Turks and that his upbringing at both Eğrigöz and Edirne had been viewed by him as a strategic means to an end—he would learn everything he needed to know about Ottoman battle tactics, and when the time was favorable, and he occupied the throne in Târgoviște, he would use the Turks’ own methods of warfare against them.”

April 1447: Vlad and Radu return home, to Targoviste, where internal war loomed

Vlad II Dracul remained caught between two opposing empires, but this uneasy balance could not last.

In Targoviste, the Draculesti ruling line had, by now, many enemies: local wealthy groups who wished to get their hands on the land of Draculesti and their supporters, and the Transylvanian Saxon merchants who wanted exemptions from paying customs duties in Wallachia. The Saxons’ increasing powers had them infiltrated in the town council as well as ruling the neighboring city of Câmpulung.

And no Transylvanian Saxon liked the Ottomans – or those who took their side.

But when the sultan held his children, what was a father to do?

1447: Murdering Vlad Dracul

By late 1447, Hunyadi was once again determined to challenge Vlad Dracul, whose accommodation with the Ottomans remained an obstacle to Hungarian ambitions in the region.

In December 1447 Hunyadi invaded Wallachia against “the wicked Vlad” and his intervention helped ignite a revolt among the Wallachian boyars opposing Vlad Dracul. Vladislav II, a rival claimant from the Dănești faction, joined the opposition.

The combined pressure of Hunyadi’s forces, Vladislav’s supporters and the rebellious council members (probably Transylvanian Saxons) proved too much for Vlad Dracul. He attempted to flee with his younger sons, Vlad and Radu, but Vlad Dracul was captured near Bălteni village and killed before 16 December 1447 – when Hunyadi was already back in Kronstadt (Brasov).

Some historian say that Vlad Dracul covered the escape of his younger sons, Vlad III and Radu, who managed to escaped. They reached the fortress of Giurgiu (built by their grand-sire, Mircea the Elder, but now in Ottoman hands) and found refuge at the sultan’s court…

Vlad Dracul’s eldest son, Mircea, 19, was notso lucky. He was seized at Târgoviște by the rival boyars, blinded and buried alive.

What about young Vlad III, by now 17 years of age?

Other historians believe that Vlad and Radu survived because they were still at the Ottoman court. For teen Vlad, this meant that Anatolia remained his world while his family and dynasty were being destroyed in Wallachia.

His formative years had been thus divided between two worlds: the Christian lands he had been born to rule and the Ottoman Empire in which he was being held as a guarantee of his father’s loyalty.

When Vlad III eventually returned to Wallachia, he would know the Ottoman world not as a distant enemy, but as a place in which he had lived, learned and… survived.

His life thereafter would be defined, again, by movement: from the Ottoman world back towards Wallachia; from Wallachia into Transylvania, via Moldavia; through the Hungarian court and its fortified towns; across the Carpathians again and again, sometimes as a fugitive, sometimes as a claimant, sometimes as a prince.

Vlad III will soon rule Wallachia, but climbing on its throne did not came to him easily:

“‘Why does it have to be so damn hard?’
‘How else would you now that it was worth it?'”

I think the above quote from the TV series Bones sums it up pretty much.

Why I chose a photo my son took in Dec 2025 of Istanbul’s New Mosque located near Galata Bridge on the Golden Horn as image header for this blog post?

I thought that a photograph of Istanbul’s New Mosque beside Galata Bridge on the Golden Horn makes a fitting cover because it immediately evokes the Ottoman world Vlad was forced to enter.

The mosque’s soaring minarets and shiny domes with golden spires (alems) suggest the power and grandeur of the empire, while its comparatively new appearance hint at promise and new beginnings.

Yet beneath those stone roofs lies another world—private, guarded and largely unseen—much like the hidden life of a young prince whose fate was being decided behind the walls of the Ottoman court.

The Golden Horn itself becomes a quiet metaphor: a beautiful surface concealing the currents beneath.

Thank you again for traveling with me today. Next time we will follow young Vlad back in Wallachia.

How far Vlad III would have traveled by age 17, by horse?

Part 1:
Sighisoara – Targoviste: 225 km
Targoviste – Edirne: 463 km (and return)
Târgoviște – Gallipoli: 650 km
Gallipoli – Eğrigöz: 365 km
Eğrigöz – Targoviste: 883 km

Part 2:
Eğrigöz – Tokat: 743 km
Tokat – Edirne : 994 km
Edirne – Targoviste: 462km
Targoviste – Giurgiu – Edirne: 466 km

On the 3rd of September we will join Vlad III on his lonely return to Targoviste, when he reclaimed its most desired throne for the first time and discover where else he lived.

About the research:
Patricia Furstenberg is a Romanian-born historical fiction author whose Blood of Kings, Heart of Shadows series explores medieval Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavia. Her research takes her into the history, folklore, landscapes and forgotten stories behind the fiction.