Produced by Turgut Dincer, Chuck Greif and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
THE FOUNDATION OF THE
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
[Illustration: CONQUESTS OF MURAD & BAYEZID
IN THE BALKAN PENINSULA & OF BAYEZID IN ASIA MINOR]
THE FOUNDATION
OF
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
A HISTORY OF THE OSMANLIS UP TO THE DEATH OF BAYEZID I
(1300-1403)
BY
HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS, PH.D.
SOMETIME FELLOW OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1916
PREFACE
Four years of residence in the Ottoman Empire, chiefly in
Constantinople, during the most disastrous period of its decline, have
led me to investigate its origin. This book is written because I feel
that the result of my research brings a new point of view to the student
of the twentieth-century problems of the Near East, as well as to those
who are interested in fourteenth-century Europe. If we study the past,
it is to understand the present and to prepare for the future.
I plead guilty to many footnotes. Much of my text is controversial in
character, and the subject-matter is so little known that the general
reader would hardly be able to form judgements without a constant--but I
trust not wearisome--reference to authorities.
The risk that I run of incurring criticism from Oriental philologists on
the ground of nomenclature is very great. I ask their indulgence. Will
they not take into consideration the fact that there is no accepted
standard among English-speaking scholars for the transliteration of
Turkish and Slavic names? Wherever possible, I have adopted the spelling
in general usage in the Near East, and in English standard lexicons and
encyclopaedias. When a general usage cannot be determined, I have
frequently been at a loss.
There was the effort to be as consistent in spelling as sources and
authorities would permit. But where consistency was lacking in
originals, a consistent transliteration sometimes presented difficulties
with which I was incompetent to cope. Even a philologist, with a system,
would be puzzled when he found his sources conflicting with each other
in spelling, and--as is often the case--with themselves. And if a
philologist thinks that he can establish his system by transliterating
the _spoken_ word, let him travel from Constantinople to Cairo overland,
and he will have a bewildering collection of variants before he reaches
his journey’s end. I was not long in Turkey before I learned that
_Osman_ and _Othman_ were both correct. It depended merely upon whether
you were in Constantinople or Konia! After you had decided to accept the
pronunciation of the capital, you were told that Konia is the Tours of
Turkey.
My acknowledgements to kind friends are many. I am grateful for the
year-in and year-out patience and willingness of the officials of the
Bibliothèque Nationale during long periods of constant demand upon their
time and attention. Professors John De Witt, D.D., LL.D., of Princeton
Theological Seminary, Duncan B. Macdonald, Ph.D., of Hartford
Theological Seminary, and Edward P. Cheyney, Ph.D., LL.D., of the
University of Pennsylvania, have read portions of the manuscript, and
have made important and helpful suggestions. The whole manuscript has
been read by Professors Talcott Williams, LL.D., of Columbia University,
and R. M. McElroy, Ph.D., of Princeton University, who have not
hesitated to give many hours to discussion and criticism of the theory
that the book presents.
Above all, I am indebted for practical aid and encouragement in
research and in writing, from the inception of the idea of the book
until the manuscript went to press, to my wife, with her Bryn Mawr
insistence upon accuracy of detail and care for form of narrative, and
to Alexander Souter, D.Litt., Regius Professor of Humanity in Aberdeen
University, my two comrades in research through a succession of happy
years in the rue de Richelieu, rue Servandoni, and rue du Montparnasse
of the queen city of the world.
H. A. G.
PARIS, _September 1, 1915_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
OSMAN: A NEW RACE APPEARS IN HISTORY 11
CHAPTER II
ORKHAN: A NEW NATION IS FORMED AND COMES INTO
CONTACT WITH THE WESTERN WORLD 54
CHAPTER III
MURAD: THE OSMANLIS LAY THE FOUNDATIONS OF AN
EMPIRE IN EUROPE 110
CHAPTER IV
BAYEZID: THE OSMANLIS INHERIT THE BYZANTINE
EMPIRE 180
APPENDIX A
TRADITIONAL MISCONCEPTIONS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE
OSMANLIS AND THEIR EMPIRE 263
APPENDIX B
THE EMIRATES OF ASIA MINOR DURING THE FOURTEENTH
CENTURY 277
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 303
BIBLIOGRAPHY 319
INDEX 369
MAPS
PAGE
1. CONQUESTS OF MURAD AND BAYEZID IN THE BALKAN
PENINSULA AND OF BAYEZID IN ASIA MINOR _Frontispiece_
2. THE EMIRATE OF OSMAN 31
3. THE EMIRATES OF OSMAN AND ORKHAN 67
4. THE EMIRATE OF MURAD 113
5. TIMUR’S INVASION OF ASIA MINOR 247
6. THE EMIRATES OF ASIA MINOR IN THE FOURTEENTH
CENTURY 278
CHAPTER I
OSMAN
A NEW RACE APPEARS IN HISTORY
I
The traveller who desires to penetrate Asia Minor by railway may start
either from Smyrna or from Constantinople. The Constantinople terminus
of the Anatolian Railway is at Haïdar Pasha, on the Asiatic shore, where
the Bosphorus opens into the Sea of Marmora. Three hours along the Gulf
of Ismidt, past the Princes’ Islands, brings one to Ismidt, the ancient
Nicomedia, eastern capital of the Roman Empire under Diocletian. It is
at the very end of the gulf. From Ismidt, the railway crosses a fertile
plain, coasts the western shore of Lake Sabandja, and enters the valley
of the Sangarius as far as Lefké. Here it turns southward, and mounts
rapidly the course of the Kara Su, a tributary of the Sangarius, through
the picturesque town of Biledjik, to a plateau, at the north-western end
of which is Eski Sheïr, seven hours distant from Ismidt. Eski Sheïr is
the ancient Dorylaeum. It was here that Godfrey de Bouillon in 1097 won
from the Turks the victory that opened for his Crusaders the way through
Asia Minor.
From Eski Sheïr there are two railway lines. One, running eastward, has
its terminus at Angora, the ancient Ancyra, after thirteen hours of
rather slow running. The other, the main line, runs south to Afion Kara
Hissar, where the line from Smyrna joins it, and then south-west to
Konia, the ancient Iconium, which is the western terminus of the new
Bagdad Railway. The time from Eski Sheïr to Konia is fifteen hours.
From Lefké or from Mekedjé, near the junction of the Kara Su and the
Sangarius, one can drive in four hours west to Isnik (ancient Nicaea),
or in twelve hours to Brusa, which lies at the foot of Keshish Dagh
(Mount Olympus). Between Lefké and Eski Sheïr, where the railway begins
to mount above the river-bed of the Kara Su, is Biledjik. Between Eski
Sheïr and Biledjik is Sugut. West from Eski Sheïr, six hours on horse
across one low mountain range, lies Inoenu. South from Eski Sheïr, a day
by carriage, is Kutayia. There is a short branch line of the Anatolian
Railway to Kutayia from Alayund, two and a half hours beyond Eski Sheïr
on the way to Konia.
If one will read the above paragraphs with a map before him, he will
readily see that this country, the extreme north-western corner of Asia
Minor, corresponds roughly to the borderland between the Roman provinces
of Phrygia Epictetus and Bithynia, and is near to Constantinople. Eski
Sheïr, Sugut, and Biledjik are close to Brusa, Nicaea, and Nicomedia.
Owing to the convenient waterways furnished by the Gulfs of Mudania and
Ismidt, Brusa, Nicaea, and Nicomedia have always been within a day’s
sail of Constantinople, even in the periods of primitive navigation.
From the hills behind Eski Sheïr, Mount Olympus is the commanding
landmark of the western horizon. From Constantinople, Mount Olympus is
easily distinguishable even in dull weather.
It was this country, adjacent to Constantinople, and separated from the
rest of Asia Minor by rugged mountain ranges and the dreary, treeless
plateau stretching eastward towards the Salt Desert, which gave birth to
the people who, a century after their appearance, were to inherit the
Byzantine Empire and to place their sovereigns upon the throne of the
Caesars.
II
At the end of the thirteenth century, Asia Minor, so long the
battleground between the Khalifs and the Byzantines, almost entirely
abandoned by the latter for a brief time to the Seljuk emperors of Rum,
who had their seat at Konia, then again disturbed by the invasion of the
Crusaders from the west and the Mongols from the east, was left to
itself. The Byzantines, despite (or perhaps because of!) their
re-establishment at Constantinople, were too weak to make any serious
attempt to recover what they had lost to the Seljuk Turks. The Mongols
of the horde of Djenghiz Khan had destroyed the independence of the
Sultanate of Konia, and had established their authority in that city.
But they made no real effort to bring under their dominion the districts
north-west and west of Konia to which they had logically fallen heir.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, we find two Christian
kingdoms, Trebizond and Little Armenia, or Cilicia, at the north-eastern
and south-eastern extremities of the peninsula. In the north-western
corner, the Byzantines retained Philadelphia, Brusa, Nicaea, Nicomedia,
and the districts in which these cities were located--a narrow strip
along the Hellespont, the Sea of Marmora, and the Bosphorus. Asia Minor,
without even a semblance of centralized authority, was to him who could
gain and who could hold.
Had there been in Asia Minor in the latter half of the thirteenth
century a predominant element, with an historical past and with a strong
leader, we might have seen a revival of the sultanate of Konia. Or we
might have seen a revival of Hellenism, a grafting, perhaps, on fresh
stock, which would have put new foundations under the Byzantine Empire
by a reconquest of the Asiatic themes. But the Mongols and the Crusaders
had done their work too well. The Latins at Constantinople, and the
Mongols in Persia and Mesopotamia, had removed any possibility of a
revival of either Arab Moslem or Greek Christian traditions.
Sixty years of Latin rule at Constantinople, and in the lower portion of
the Balkan peninsula, had demonstrated the futility of any further
effort on the part of western Europe to inherit the Eastern Roman
Empire. The Mongols, the strongest cohesive military power at that time
in the world, had not been won to Christianity, and thus inspired with a
desire to re-establish for themselves the succession of the Caesars in
the Levant.[1] The Italians, imbued with the city ideal which had been
so fatal to the ancient Greeks, and divided into factions in their
cities, were beginning a bitter struggle for commercial supremacy in the
East that was to lose its vital importance from the discoveries of Vasco
da Gama, Columbus, and Magellan, and to render them impotent before the
Osmanlis after centuries of misdirected energy and useless sacrifice.
The last great crusade had passed by Asia Minor to spend itself in a
losing fight against the one remaining Moslem power.
As in other critical periods of history, then, an entirely new people,
with an entirely new line of sovereigns, must work out its destiny in
this abandoned country, or--to state what actually did happen--must
come, with a strength and prestige gained in Europe, to subdue it and to
possess it.
From the eighth to the thirteenth centuries a number of new ethnic
elements had entered Asia Minor. Except along the range of the Taurus
and in the valleys of rivers which emptied into the Aegaean Sea, the
Greek element, or more specifically, the Hellenic organization of
imperial institutions, had gone back to the coast cities from which it
had originally come. The progress of Moslem conquest, after driving
before it into Asia Minor the more zealous and militant Armenian and
Syrian Christians, had brought a considerable immigration, partly
Syrian, partly Arab, and varying in faith. The earlier Turks, who came
largely by way of Persia, with a period of settlement in that country,
belonged to the great Seljuk movement. They were nominally Moslems, and
very quickly became an indigenous element, because they had settled
themselves permanently in every place that had been opened up to Turkish
immigration by the Seljuk armies. So firmly rooted did they become that,
when the fortunes of war allotted again temporarily some of the places
which they inhabited to the Crusaders and to the Nicaean Byzantines,
they did not dream of moving out. This was the best country they had
ever seen and they had no intention of leaving it. When the Osmanlis
captured Brusa and Nicaea, they found many Moslems who had been there
for three generations. Simple-minded, tolerant of others, totally
unconscious of the privileges as well as of the obligations of an
organized society, the Turks of the earlier immigration neither opposed
nor aided in the political changes which have so frequently been the lot
of Asia Minor since their coming. This holds true of the Anatolian Turks
of the present day, and will be so as long as they remain illiterate and
uninstructed.
In the first quarter of the thirteenth century there was another great
migration towards Asia Minor, towards rather than into the peninsula,
because it partly scattered itself in the mountains of Armenia and
partly turned southward, going over the Taurus and Amanus ranges into
Cilicia and Syria. Some got as far as Egypt. The earlier Seljuk invasion
had been that of settlers following a victorious army. This invasion was
that of refugees fleeing before a terrible foe. For Djenghiz Khan and
his Mongol horde had come out of central Asia, and all who could, even
the bravest, fled before him. The lesson had been quickly learned that
to resist him meant certain death. Because it was a migration of
families, with all their worldly possessions, and because they had to
hurry and did not know where they were going, the great bulk of them did
not advance far.[2]
Most of the bands, after settling for some years in the mountains of
Armenia and in the upper valley of the Euphrates, were tempted by the
death of Djenghiz Khan to return home. The steep mountains and narrow
valleys of Rum had dissuaded them from trying for better luck farther
west. It was too much up hill and down dale for their cattle.[3] The
resolute and adventurous pushed on into Asia Minor, although in doing so
they must have lost or have left behind most of their women and children
and flocks. For they were small warrior bands, bent upon enlisting in
the army of Alaeddin Kaï Kobad, the last illustrious sultan of the Konia
Seljuk line--illustrious because he had not yet met the Mongols and was
looked upon by the fugitives as a possible saviour and avenger. Even if
they had not the intention of putting themselves under the protection of
Alaeddin when they set their faces westward, they must needs have come
into contact with him. For of the two roads into Asia Minor from
Armenia, the upper one lay through Sivas and Angora, and the lower
through Caesarea, Akseraï, and Konia. Whichever route they took would
lead them through the Seljuk dominions.
It is doubtful if Alaeddin viewed the appearance of these fighting
bands with any other emotion than that of alarm. In spite of their
undoubted skill as fighters, the Seljuk Sultan did not dare to enroll
many of them in his army. If he were defeated in battle, or if he should
die, he knew well that such vigorous mercenaries might upset his line.
He could rely upon their fidelity neither against the Kharesmians with
whom he was at that time fighting (many of them were from that Sultan’s
country), nor against the Mongols with whom he must soon measure his
strength. So he followed the policy dictated by prudence. Resisting the
temptation of using them in his own army, he granted to their leaders as
fiefs districts on the frontiers of his rapidly diminishing empire which
were hardly his own to give, where they would have to work out their own
salvation by mastering local anarchy in their respective ‘grants’, or,
like the Israelites of Canaan, fight for what had been allotted to them,
against the Byzantine Emperors of Nicaea.
Under these circumstances, the tribe of destiny would be that which
occupied the grant nearest Constantinople and the remnant of the
Byzantine Empire. The Turkish tribe which settled on the borders of
Bithynia, either by the direction and with the permission of Alaeddin
Kaï Kobad,[4] or independently of the Seljuks of Konia,[5] was that
whose first historic chief was Osman, the father of the Osmanlis.
With the other Turkish tribes, which succeeded in establishing
independent emirates, the Osmanlis did not come into contact until the
reign of Orkhan. So it is unnecessary to trace their fortunes here.[6]
III
There are no Ottoman sources to which the historian may go for the
origin of the Ottoman people and royal house, or for their history
during the fourteenth century. They have no written records of the
period before the capture of Constantinople.[7] Their earliest
historians date from the end of the fifteenth century, and the two
writers to whom they give greatest weight wrote at the end of the
sixteenth and the early part of the seventeenth century.[8] From the
point of view, then, of recording historical facts, one hesitates in our
day to follow the example of von Hammer, by setting forth at length,
after a scientific collation, the legends which the simple-minded
Osmanlis have always accepted without question. The Byzantines give us
nothing worthy of credence about the origin of the Osmanlis, for the
reason that they had no means of getting authoritative information. As
for the early European writers, their testimony is valuable only as a
reflection of the idea which Christendom had of the Osmanlis when they
were becoming a menace to European civilization.[9]
On the other hand, these legends are not to be ignored, as they have
been by the latest authoritative writer on Ottoman history.[10] Where
authenticated facts are lacking, traditions must be examined and
carefully weighed. This is essential when we are considering the origins
of a people. For no race has ever recorded its birth. The beginnings of
a people are so insignificant that they remain unnoticed in general
history until the attention of others is attracted to them by their own
achievements.
Who were the people that took upon themselves the name of Osman, their
chief, and whom we must, from the moment of their very first encounters
with the Byzantines, clearly distinguish from the other groups of
Anatolian Turks that had gathered around other leaders? Did they, at the
beginning of Osman’s career, have any distinct national consciousness?
Did they have any past? Did they start the foundation of a state with a
definite goal before them? Was there any other cause for their amazing
growth and success than the mere fact that they had the most fortunate
geographical position, on the confines of a decaying empire?
With the purpose, then, of suggesting an answer to some of these
questions, and paving the way for an answer to the others later on, what
the Osmanlis accept concerning their origin and their history before
1300 must be set forth and examined.[11]
In the year of the Hegira 616,[12] ‘because there was no more rest to be
found in all Persia’ for the Turks who had been forced out of the
Khorassan[13] by the approach of Djenghiz Khan, ‘all the wandering
Turks, fifty thousand families, followed their leader, Soleiman
Shah,[14] and set out for Rum. Then was Alaeddin I, son of Kaï Kosrew,
the builder of Konia, entered upon the rule of Rum. These fifty thousand
nomad families journeyed several years in the neighbourhood of Erzerum
and Erzindjian, changing from winter to summer quarters and plundering
the unbelievers who lived there. But ... finally ... Soleiman Shah
marched again towards his homeland, with the intention of passing
through the district of Aleppo. As they came to the neighbourhood of
Djaber, they wanted to venture across the Euphrates. Soleiman Shah drove
his horse into the river to seek a ford. The bank was rocky, so the
horse slipped and fell into the river with Soleiman Shah. His end was
regarded as a warning (decision) of destiny: it appeared to be the
command of God.... A part of these Turks remained to dwell there....
There was a division among the followers of Soleiman Shah. Some of them,
who now carry the name of Turcomans of Syria, went into the wilderness.
Others went towards Rum, and became ancestors of the nomad tribes who
still wander in Rum.
‘Soleiman Shah at his death left four sons: Sonkur tigin, Gundogdu,
Ertogrul, the champion of the faith,[15] and Dundar. Some of the Turks
followed these four brothers, turned themselves again in the direction
of Rum, and came to the ... source of the Euphrates. While Ertogrul and
Dundar remained there with about four hundred nomad families, the two
other brothers turned back again to their home.’ Ertogrul marched
farther into Rum, and settled near Angora at the foot of Karadjadagh.
From there he wandered to Sultan Oejoenu.[16]
Neshri now tells a story which is repeated by later Ottoman historians
as a fact. Neshri says that he heard this story from a ‘trustworthy’
man, who had heard it from the stirrup-holder of Orkhan, who, in turn,
had heard it from his father and his grandfather. This is worthy of
mention, for it is one of the very few instances where an Oriental
historian has taken the trouble to connect his facts with what might be
termed an original source:
‘As Ertogrul, with about four hundred men, was marching into Rum, Sultan
Alaeddin[17] was engaged in a fight with some of his enemies. As they
came near, they found that the Tartars were on the point of beating
Sultan Alaeddin. Now Ertogrul had several hundred excellent companions
with him. He spoke to them: “Friends, we come straight upon a battle. We
carry swords at our side. To flee like women and resume our journey is
not manly. We must help one of the two. Shall we aid those who are
winning or those who are losing?” Then they said unto him, “It will be
difficult to aid the losers. Our people are weak in number, and the
victors are strong!” Ertogrul replied, “This is not the speech of bold
men. The manly part is to aid the vanquished. The prophet says that he
shall come to the helpless in time of need. Were man to make a thousand
pilgrimages, he finds not the reward that comes to him when at the right
moment he turns aside affliction from the helpless!” Thereupon Ertogrul
and his followers immediately grasped their swords, and fell upon the
Tartars ... and drove them in flight. When the Sultan saw this he came
to meet Ertogrul, who dismounted, and kissed the Sultan’s hand.
Whereupon Alaeddin gave him a splendid robe of honour and many gifts for
his companions. Then gave he to the people of Ertogrul a country by name
Sugut for winter and the mountain range of Dumanij[18] for summer
residence. From this decides one rightly that the champion of the faith,
Osman, was born at Sugut. Then was Karadja Hissar, like Biledjik, not
yet captured, but was subject to Sultan Alaeddin. These were three
districts.’
Some time later, Ertogrul, acting as commander of the advance-guard of
Alaeddin’s army, defeated a force of Greeks and their Tartar
mercenaries, in a three days’ battle, and pursued them as far as the
Hellespont. Ertogrul’s force consisted of four hundred and forty-four
horsemen, which he commanded in person. After this battle Alaeddin
bestowed upon Ertogrul as fief the district of Eski Sheïr, comprising
Sugut on the north, and Karadja Hissar on the south, of Eski Sheïr.
Karadja Hissar was reported captured after an elaborate siege and
assault by Ertogrul when he first came into the country. But it is again
mentioned as one of the first conquests of Osman from the Christians
after his father’s death.[19] None of the Ottoman historians records any
progress of conquest during the long years of Ertogrul’s peaceable
existence. When he died, in 1288, Osman was thirty years old. He gave to
his son less than the Ottoman historians claim was his actual grant from
Alaeddin I. If their own records of Osman’s conquests after 1289 are
correct, we must believe that his tribe possessed only Sugut and a
portion of the mountain range lying directly west. When Ertogrul died,
they had no other village--not even a small mountain castle.
IV
After Ertogrul’s death there was an amazing change. Osman and his
villagers began to attack their neighbours, extend their boundaries,
and form a state. We cannot go on to a consideration of these events
without mentioning some traditions of this period which furnish us with
a clue to the explanation of this sudden change of a very small pastoral
tribe, leading a harmless sleepy existence in the valley of the Kara Su,
into a warlike, aggressive, fighting people.
Osman once passed the night in the home of a pious Moslem. Before he
went to sleep his host entered the room, and placed on a shelf a book,
of which Osman asked the title. ‘It is the Koran,’ he responded. ‘What
is its object?’ again asked Osman. ‘The Koran’, his host explained, ‘is
the word of God, given to the world through his prophet Mohammed.’ Osman
took the book and began to read. He remained standing, and read all
night. Towards morning he fell asleep exhausted. An angel appeared to
him, and said, ‘Since thou hast read my eternal word with so great
respect, thy children and the children of thy children shall be honoured
from generation to generation.’[20]
In Itburnu, a village not far from Eski Sheïr, and also not far from
Sugut, lived a Moslem cadi, who dispensed justice and legal advice to
those of his faith in that neighbourhood. He had a daughter, Malkhatun,
whose hand was demanded in marriage by Osman. But the sheik Edebali, for
a period of two years, persisted in refusing his consent to this
union.[21] Finally, Osman, when sleeping one night in the home of
Edebali, had a dream.
He saw himself lying beside the sheik. A moon arose out of the breast
of Edebali, and, when it had become full, descended and hid itself in
his breast. Then from his own loins there began to arise a tree which,
as it grew, became greener and more beautiful, and covered with the
shadow of its branches the whole world. Beneath the tree he saw four
mountain ranges, the Caucasus, the Atlas, the Taurus, and the Balkans.
From the roots of the tree issued forth the Tigris, the Euphrates, the
Nile, and the Danube, covered with vessels like the sea. The fields were
full of harvests, and the mountains were crowned with thick forests. In
the valleys everywhere were cities, whose golden domes were invariably
surmounted by a crescent, and from whose countless minarets sounded
forth the call to prayer, that mingled itself with the chattering of
birds upon the branches of the tree. The leaves of the tree began to
lengthen out into swordblades. Then came a wind that pointed the leaves
towards the city of Constantinople, which, ‘situated at the junction of
two seas and of two continents, seemed like a diamond mounted between
two sapphires and two emeralds, and appeared thus to form the precious
stone of the ring of a vast dominion which embraced the entire world.’
As Osman was putting on the ring he awoke.[22]
When this dream was told to Edebali, he interpreted it as a sign from
God that he should give his daughter to Osman in order that these
wonderful things might be brought about for the glory of the true faith.
So the marriage was arranged.[23]
That Osman and his people were good Moslems themselves, and of Moslem
ancestry, is not questioned by the Ottoman and Byzantine writers, and
seems to have been accepted as a matter of fact by the European
historians who have written upon the history of the Ottoman Empire.[24]
But it seems very clear that Osman and his tribe, when they settled at
Sugut, must have been pagans. There is no direct mention, in any
historical record, of the conversion to Islam of the tribes from the
Khorassan and other transoxanian regions which, in the beginning of the
thirteenth century, appeared on the confines of Asia Minor. The earlier
Turkish invaders entered the country only after they had already for
generations been in contact with Arabic Islam. Although they displayed
no great knowledge of or zeal for their religion and were free from the
fanaticism of the Saracens, the Seljuks were certainly Moslems.
But the Turks of the later immigration, from whom Osman sprang, had
never come to any great extent under the influence of Islam, even though
they had settled for some generations on the frontiers of Persia. If we
accept the testimony of the Osmanlis themselves concerning their descent
from Soleiman Shah, who had left Mahan with fifty thousand families, we
have a clear indication of their being non-Moslems from Neshri’s account
of the dispersion of this horde after the death of Soleiman Shah. He
says that some were ancestors of the Syrian Turcomans and others of all
the wandering tribes in Rum--the habitual nomads of his own day. The
testimony of travellers from the twelfth century onwards is overwhelming
in support of the pagan character of these tribes.[25]
The various Turkish tribes which entered Asia Minor at the same time as
that of Osman, and had penetrated into the western part of the
peninsula, soon found themselves in a Moslem atmosphere. They were few
in number. Nothing was more natural for them than to adopt the faith of
their Seljuk kinsmen. This they did, for exactly the same reason that
the Bulgarians, although they had originally a tendency towards Islam,
adopted Christianity.[26] It was so natural that it passed without
comment. These Turks were primarily warriors, indifferent to deep
religious feeling and conviction. So they could take on a new faith--if
we can say that they ever had a faith before--without any trouble or
without any noise being made over it. Between 800 and 1000 the Seljuks
changed their religion three times.[27] At the sack of Mosul, in 1286,
the Turks and Turcomans made no distinction between Moslem and
Christian, massacring the men and carrying off the women of both sects
alike.[28]
The tractability of the Turks, as of the Tartars and Mongols, in the
matter of religion was noted by every traveller, and was so well known
in western Europe that strenuous efforts were made by the popes at
various times from Djenghiz Khan to Gazan Khan to bring these Asiatic
hordes into the Christian fold. A united Christendom, even a united
Rome, might have seen its missionary work crowned with success.
Of the village and castle chieftains with whom Osman at the beginning of
his career lived on friendly terms, almost every one was a Christian.
His lot was cast with them. He was cut off from the decaying Seljuk
dominion of Konia. He had practically no intercourse with the other
Turkish emirs of Asia Minor.[29] His only serious foes were the Mongols,
pagans like himself, who had, at the very year of his birth, given what
seemed a death-blow to Islam in destroying the Khalifate at Bagdad in
1258, and who were, when Osman began his active career, plotting with
the Franks of the Holy Land to aid them against the Egyptian
sultanate--the last strong bulwark of Islam.
We see, then, the tremendous importance of these dreams of Osman, of his
meeting with Edebali, and of his marriage with Malkhatun. We cannot
regard these events in any other light than as recording, in a truly
Oriental way, his conversion to Islam. The interpretation of the dream
of the Holy Book strikes one immediately. Except in Seadeddin, the
religious significance of the moon and tree dream is overshadowed by the
romance of Osman and Malkhatun. Let us give to sheik Edebali his proper
place in history as the great missionary of Islam, who found for his
faith in its hour of dire need a race of swordbearers worthy of the task
of reconstituting the Khalifate and of spreading once more the name of
Mohammed in three continents.
It was the conversion of Osman and his tribe which gave birth to the
Osmanli people, because it welded into one race the various elements
living in the north-western corner of Asia Minor. The new faith gave
them a _raison d’être_. This conversion, and not the disappearance of
the Seljuks of Konia,[30] is the explanation of the activity of Osman
after 1290, as in sharp contrast with the preceding fifty years[31] of
easy, slothful existence at Sugut.
Ertogrul and Osman, village chieftain at Sugut, had lived the life of a
simple, pastoral folk, with no ambition beyond the horizon of their
little village. No record exists of any battle fought, of any conquest
made. Turks had already made their appearance in raids against the coast
cities of Asia Minor, upon the islands of the Aegaean Sea, and even in
the Balkan peninsula. But they were not the Turks of Osman. Until the
students of the later Byzantine Empire, and of the Italian commercial
cities in their relations with the Levant, make a clear distinction
between Turk and Osmanli, there will always be confusion upon this
point. Ertogrul had about four hundred fighting men.[32] There is no
reason to believe that Osman had more. His relations with his neighbours
were those of perfect amity.[33] There is no question of believer and
unbeliever.
Suddenly we find Osman attacking his neighbours and capturing their
castles. During the decade from 1290 to 1300 he extends his boundaries
until he comes into contact with the Byzantines. His four hundred
warriors grow to four thousand. We begin to hear of a people called, not
Turks, but Osmanlis, after a leader whose own name first appears at the
same time as that of his people.[34] They are foes of Greeks and Tartars
alike. They are definitely allied to Islam. They possess a missionary
spirit and a desire to proselytize such as one always finds in new
converts. Their unity among themselves, and their distinctively
different character from that of the other Turks of Asia Minor, becomes,
during the first sixty years of the fourteenth century, so marked that
Europe is forced to recognize them as a nation. Being more in the
presence of Europe than the other groups of Asia Minor, the Europeans
begin to call them simply Turks, and to take them as representing all
the Turks of Anatolia.
But they had never called themselves Turks until they got the habit of
doing so through the influence of European education upon their higher
classes, and because of the awakening since 1789 of the sentiment of
nationality among the subject Christian races. Mouradjea d’Ohsson, who
understood the Osmanlis better than any other European writer of his
day, wrote in 1785: ‘The Osmanlis employ the term “Turk” in referring to
a coarse and brutal man. According to the Osmanlis, the word Turk
belongs only to the peoples of the Turkestan and to those vagabond
hordes who lead a stagnant life in the deserts of the Khorassan. All the
peoples submitted to the Empire are designated under the name
“Osmanlis”, and they do not understand why they are called Turks by
Europeans. As they attach to this word the idea of the most marked
insult, no foreigner in the Empire ever allows himself to use it in
speaking to them.’[35]
V
Nor were the Osmanlis, until the reign of Bayezid, one hundred years
later, the strongest military and political factor in Asia Minor. The
Turkish emirates of Sarukhan, of Kermian, and especially of Karaman,
could match the Osmanlis in extent of territory and ability to defend
it.[36] We shall see later how the Osmanlis conquered their Anatolian
neighbours by a prestige won in Europe and by soldiers gathered in
Europe. One of the principal tasks of this book is to correct the
fundamental misconception of the foundation of the Ottoman Empire, which
has persisted to this day.[37] It seems to be a pretty generally
accepted idea that the Osmanlis were a Turkish Moslem race, who invaded
Asia Minor, and, having established themselves there, pushed on into
Europe and overthrew the Byzantine Empire. Nothing could be farther from
the truth. The Osmanlis were masters of the whole Balkan peninsula
before they had subjugated Asia Minor as far as Konia!
Osman and his people have no history until they come in contact with the
Byzantines. The Ottoman chroniclers, and the Byzantine and European
historians who have followed them, give at some length the early
conquests of Osman. But the accounts are fantastical, obscure, and
frequently contradictory. It is the story of a village chieftain, who
succeeded in imposing his authority upon his neighbours over an
increasingly wider area, until a small state was formed. But it is not
the same story as that of the other emirs who built up independent
states in the old Seljuk provinces. For Osman founded his principality
in territory contiguous to Constantinople, and by attacking
[Illustration: EMIRATE OF OSMAN]
and conquering the last fragments of the Byzantine possessions along and
in the hinterland of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmora. Osman’s
opponents were all Christians. Had he attacked his Turkish neighbours
first, had he gone south and east instead of north and west, in building
up his state, there would never have been a new race born to change the
history of the world.
It is impossible to state with any degree of certitude the conquests of
Osman before 1300. The record of village warfare, with its names of
localities which even the most celebrated Ottoman geographer could not,
three centuries later, identify,[38] is of no importance whatever. The
extent of Osman’s principality, when he and his people first appear in
history, was very insignificant. In 1300 he had succeeded in submitting
to his authority a part of ancient Phrygia Epictetus and Bithynia, whose
four corners were: south-east, Eski Sheïr; south-west, the eastern end
of Mount Olympus; north-east, the junction of the Kara Su and the
Sangarius; north-west, Yeni Sheïr. In 1299 Osman took up his residence
in Yeni Sheïr. This was the outpost of his principality, in a position
of extreme importance, about half-way between Brusa and Nicaea.[39] In
sixty years the tribe of Osman had advanced sixty miles from Eski Sheïr,
the old city, to Yeni Sheïr, the new city.[40] They held undisputed
sway only in the valley of the Kara Su,[41] and their important villages
and castles, Biledjik,[42] Itburnu, Inoenu, Sugut, AÏnegoel,[43] Karadja
Hissar,[44] Yundhissar, and Yar Hissar,[45] were all within a day’s
journey of each other.
In 1301, twelve years after Osman began to form his state, he fought his
first battle, and came into direct contact with the Byzantine Empire. At
Baphaeon,[46] near Nicomedia, the heterarch Muzalon, with 2,000 men,
attempted to check a raid the Osmanlis were making into the fertile
valley whose products contributed so greatly to the well-being of
Nicomedia. It was midsummer, just before the gathering of the
harvests.[47] In a pitched battle, the unarmoured horsemen of Osman
charged so speedily and so impetuously that they broke through the heavy
line of their opponents, and the Greek commander’s retreat was covered
only by the opportune arrival of Slavic mercenaries.[48] The Osmanlis
were too few in number to follow up this victory. It is hardly probable
that they made any attack on Nicomedia.[49] But they laid waste all the
districts into which they dared to venture.
VI
At this same time the emirs whose possessions bordered on the Aegaean
Sea began to press hard upon the Greek coast cities and those few cities
of the interior, such as Magnesia, Philadelphia, and Sardes, which still
acknowledged the authority of Byzantium. In the spring of 1302, Michael
IX Palaeologos came to Asia Minor to take command of the Slavic
mercenaries. At first the Turks were in consternation, if we can believe
Pachymeres, but when they saw the unwillingness of Michael to fight,
they grew bold, and compelled the Emperor to take refuge in Magnesia.
Michael’s unwillingness was not due to lack of courage, but because he
could not rely upon his Slavs. As true mercenaries, they were fighting
for pay, and there was no gold to give them. Michael’s father, the old
Emperor Andronicus II, had not sent him any money. In Constantinople the
Venetians were threatening to depose Andronicus; the almost annual
ecclesiastical quarrels, which form so large and wearisome and
disastrous a place in the last century and a half of Byzantine history,
were embarrassing him; and the treasury was empty. Even if there had
been money to send, it would have been a perilous undertaking, for the
Turkish pirates were swarming in the Sea of Marmora, and had even seized
the Princes’ Islands, which are within sight of the Imperial City.
When they saw that neither pay nor booty was forthcoming, and that they
were engaged in a hopeless struggle, the mercenaries forced Michael to
allow them to return to Europe. This was the last genuine personal
effort on the part of a successor of the Caesars to save the Asiatic
themes. It ended in ignominious failure. Not one battle had been fought.
The withdrawal of the Slavs was followed by an exodus of Greeks to the
Aegaean coast, and from there to Europe. Pachymeres claims that this
exodus was general. But we cannot accept the testimony of Pachymeres as
altogether trustworthy on this point. Many Greeks, for reasons which are
set forth later, remained in the coast districts of Asia Minor, and they
did not leave, to any noticeable extent, the territory in which Osman
was operating. The Turks, however, made a raid into all the islands
along the Aegaean littoral, and crossed over into Thrace, where for two
years the fields could not be cultivated.[50]
At this critical moment, had there been any united action on the part of
the Turkish emirs, Constantinople would probably have fallen an easy
prey to their armies and to their fleets. But each emir was acting for
himself, and was as much an enemy of his Turkish rivals as he was of the
Byzantine emperors. There is no instance in which any two of them joined
forces, and acted together. Throughout the fourteenth century the armies
defending the Byzantine Empire contained almost as many Turks as those
attacking it.
To the east and to the west Andronicus II, utterly unable to defend
himself, looked for aid. From this time on to the fall of Constantinople
the history of the Byzantine Empire becomes what the history of the
Ottoman Empire has been during the last hundred years. It is the story
of an uninterrupted succession of bitter internal quarrels, of attacks
by former vassals upon the immediate frontiers of its shrunken
territory, of subtle undermining by hostile colonies of foreigners whose
one thought was commercial gain, and of intermittent, and in almost all
cases selfishly inspired, efforts of western Europe to put off the fatal
day.
In the east, Andronicus expected much of Ghazan Khan. Were not the Turks
of Asia Minor vassals of the Mongol overlord? Andronicus sent envoys to
Ghazan to offer him the hand of a young princess who passed at
Constantinople as his natural daughter. Ghazan received them cordially,
accepted the proffered marriage alliance, and promised to exercise a
pressure upon the Turks of western Asia Minor.[51] This promise,
however, was not followed by any serious action. The Mongols were never
more than mere raiders in Asia Minor.[52] Before this marriage could be
consummated, Ghazan Khan died. The young princess was offered to and
accepted by his successor. It was a useless sacrifice. For in this first
decade of the fourteenth century the long struggle between Christian and
Moslem to win the Mongols ended, temporarily at least, in the conversion
of the Khans to Islam.[53]
From the west, Andronicus received aid of the most disastrous sort. When
Ferdinand of Aragon made peace with Charles d’Anjou, King of Sicily, in
1302, he got rid of his troublesome mercenaries by sending them to serve
the Byzantine Empire. Roger de Flor, typical soldier of fortune, who
could not be matched in his generation for daring, insolence, rapacity,
cruelty, and Achillean belief in his own invulnerability, arrived at
Constantinople with eight thousand Catalans and Almogavares, the former
heavy-armed plainsmen and mariners, the latter light-armed mountaineers
of northern Spain. They were true prototypes of the soldiers of Alva and
Cortes. Roger was made Grand Duke, and married to Princess Marie, niece
of Andronicus.
Almost immediately after their arrival, the Catalans became engaged in
such bloody conflicts with the Genoese of Galata, and robbed and
murdered the Greeks with such alacrity, that Andronicus hastened to turn
them loose in Asia. Roger established himself in the peninsula of
Cyzicus. Here his Catalans fell immediately to plundering the
inhabitants of the country, who soon found that they had passed from
Scylla to Charybdis, and carried heartrending tales of lust and greed
and massacre to Constantinople.[54] The one Greek general who was doing
anything noteworthy against the Turks was relieved of his spoils of war
by Roger.
In 1305, by a swift march to the relief of Philadelphia, which was being
besieged by Alisur, prince of Karamania, Roger and his Catalans showed
what they could do, if they would. The Turks were compelled to raise the
siege. Roger pursued them to the source of the Sangarius.[55] But, on
the way, the Catalans deprived their Greek allies of any portion of the
rich spoils, and massacred the Slavic mercenaries who dared to argue
with them.[56] Gregoras says, probably with reason, that Roger could
have reconquered the whole of Asia Minor for the Byzantines.[57] But
that country seemed to attract him as little as it had attracted the
Mongols. He was no Crusader, glad and eager to undergo the terrible
hardships which military operations among mountains and on arid plateaus
demanded. There was no motive to make the effort worth while. So he left
the Turks to themselves and went to Gallipoli, where he let it be known
that the Catalans were preparing an expedition to repeat the Fourth
Crusade.
In fear for his life as well as for his throne, Andronicus sent an envoy
to offer Roger the ‘government of the Orient’, general command of all
the troops in Asia, and twenty thousand pieces of gold. For full measure
he added enough wheat to nourish the Catalans for a year. The
‘government of the Orient’ was as empty and meaningless a gift as the
supposed ‘grants’ of the Seljuk Sultan Alaeddin to the Turkish nomad
chieftains. The only troops who could go into Asia and accomplish
anything were already under Roger’s command. But the gold, which might
have worked a charm, was left behind, as the envoy was afraid to bring
it. Roger scorned the emperor’s offer. Ten days later he repented, and
accepted from Emperor Andronicus thirty thousand pieces of gold, one
hundred thousand measures of wheat, and the title of Caesar. In return
for these princely gifts he had only to promise to lead three thousand
men against the Turks.
But a host of Spaniards, long before the discovery of America, were
already in search of ‘El Dorado’. They poured into Gallipoli on every
merchant ship from the West, and made the Byzantines begin to fear Roger
more than they feared the Turks. The remedy was getting to be worse than
the evil! Before leaving for his campaign, Roger rashly went to
Adrianople to pay his respects to the young Emperor Michael IX, who was
holding his court there. On the threshold of Michael’s bedchamber, like
the Duke of Guise at Blois, he was stabbed to death. A massacre of his
attendants followed.
A train of evils fell upon Macedonia and Thrace as a result of the
assassination of Roger de Flor. Michael soon had reason to regret this
ill-advised deed. Not only did the Catalans, in their first access of
fury, avenge the death of their great leader and their comrades by
unspeakable cruelties and by the destruction of every village which they
came upon, not only did they defeat the young emperor in open battle and
almost capture him as he fled from the field, but they invited over from
Asia Minor into Macedonia all the Turks who could be induced to come.
At Gallipoli the Catalans tried to form a state. It failed owing to
dissensions among their leaders. Their raids into Thrace had so ruined
that country that they themselves began to starve. So they started upon
an odyssey into Macedonia, where the common soldiers, wearied of the
civil strife engendered by their leaders, who were continually ordering
them to cut each other’s throats, decided to make an end of these costly
personal jealousies. They killed the nobles who led them, and marched
south into Thessaly. Gauthier de la Brienne committed the imprudence of
seeking their aid in Athens. In 1310 they killed Brienne, set up in
Athens a military democracy, and started to revive the Peloponnesian
Wars.[58]
The further fortunes of the Grand Catalan Company do not come within the
limits of our work. Roger and the Catalans, for that matter, were never
in direct contact with the Osmanlis. But it was necessary to give a
brief statement of their services to the Byzantine Empire in order that
we might have a proper appreciation of their services to the Ottoman
Empire. When they withdrew into Thessaly they had left the Turks behind
them in Thrace and Macedonia. To the unhappy emperor who had received
them nine years before as saviours of the Empire, this was their legacy.
Owing to the adroit leadership of their chief, Halil, and to the
impotence of Michael, whose Slavic mercenaries had deserted him and
withdrawn into Bulgaria, these Turks were soon able to throw Macedonia
and Thrace into so great anarchy that communication by land between
Salonika and the capital was no longer safe.[59] And yet Halil had only
eighteen hundred men under his command! In 1311, shortly after the
Catalans had left, Halil concluded with Andronicus and Michael an
agreement by which he and his companions in arms were to have a
safe-conduct and free passage across the Hellespont. But the Greeks, in
violation of one of the most important points of this arrangement,
attempted to take from the Turks their booty. Halil, instead of quitting
European soil, sent for reinforcements. The imperial army suffered a
decisive defeat, and Michael fled, having abandoned his personal
baggage. In insolent triumph, Halil adorned himself with the imperial
insignia.[60] All the region around the Hellespont and the Gulf of Saros
remained for three years without cultivation. So desperate did the
situation become that Michael was compelled to seek aid of the Genoese
and the Serbians. In 1314 the Turks of Halil were entrapped near
Gallipoli and massacred. But at what a price! The Serbians, whose
co-operation had won the day for the Greeks, saw eastern Macedonia and
the open sea. They liked it. New troubles began to brew for the
Byzantines.
There were other long-standing troubles threatening from abroad. In the
East, the Mongols had overrun southern Russia, and were as great a
nightmare to Andronicus as the Goths had formerly been to Valens. The
rulers of Constantinople did not hesitate to purchase security on the
Black Sea by truces, which were sealed with the sacrifice of purple-born
princesses to pagan harems, and by humble protestations of friendship to
khans who treated the imperial ambassadors as the envoys of a
vassal.[61]
In the West, another sword of Damocles was hanging over the emperors of
Byzantium. We must remember that the Greeks had been in possession of
their capital again only since 1260, and that the heirs of the Frankish
emperors still cherished the dream of a Latin re-establishment at
Constantinople. In 1305, on the very day Clement V mounted the papal
throne, Philippe le Bel of France discussed with Charles de Valois the
question of retaking Constantinople.[62] The following year Clement V
exhorted the Venetians to co-operate in the conquest of the Byzantine
Empire.[63] Because they had grievances against Andronicus which had
already almost brought them to an open rupture,[64] the Venetians
readily lent ear to the Pope’s project. A treaty of alliance was
concluded between Venice and Charles de Valois, who had the powerful
backing of the King of France.[65] In 1307 Clement V wrote to Charles II
of Naples urging him to reconquer Constantinople.[66] But the Pope’s
interest was soon diverted by the project of a crusade to support
Armenia and Cyprus against the Egyptians.[67] Philippe le Bel turned his
attention to the spoliation of the Knights Templars and to the important
ecclesiastical questions arising out of the movement to rehabilitate the
memory of the unfortunate Boniface VIII.
Until the death of Philippe le Bel, in 1314, however, Andronicus and
Michael always felt that there might at any moment be a repetition of
the Fourth Crusade. In seeking the reasons for the almost unhampered
progress of Osman against Nicomedia, Nicaea, and Brusa, it must not be
forgotten that the Byzantine emperors did not have even the moral
support of Christendom in their losing fight.
VII
During this first decade of the fourteenth century, the Byzantines had
lost control of practically all the Aegaean Sea, and had to struggle
for a passage through the Sea of Marmora. After the recent Balkan War,
the Sublime Porte presented a memorandum to the Powers, in which it was
stated that the possession of Rhodes, Lesbos, and Chios was absolutely
essential to a maintenance of Ottoman power in Asia Minor. History, from
the time of the ancient Persian wars to the present day, confirms this
point of view. So, before taking up the progress of Osman’s conquests,
it is important to note that during the years of Osman’s conflict with
the Byzantines Chios and Rhodes passed out of their hands.
In 1303 Roger de Flor had prepared the way for the Turks in Chios by
sacking the island. What he did not destroy or carry off fell to the
Turks when they raided the island the following year. ‘Andronicus saw
that he was no longer able to defend Chios against the Turks because of
the cowardice of his governors. The Turks already considered themselves
masters of Asia Minor and the majority of the islands.’[68] So he made
Benedetto of Phocaea lord of Chios, and the island was lost to the
Byzantines. The Giustiniani family kept Chios until the Ottoman
conquest.
The emir of Menteshe invaded Rhodes about 1300.[69] But he did not
succeed in entirely conquering it. For ten years Greek and Turk
struggled for the mastery of this gateway to the Aegaean Sea. Then
suddenly an outside foe arrived and made the double conquest of
Christian and Moslem alike. The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, driven
from the Holy Land by the Egyptian conquest, had tired of their refuge
in Cyprus.[70] After vainly endeavouring to negotiate with
Constantinople for the transfer of the proprietary rights of the island
to their order, they attacked and conquered Rhodes with the
encouragement of Philippe le Bel and the Pope. This great event, equally
disastrous to Turk and Greek, happened on August 15, 1310. For more than
two centuries they were able to maintain at Rhodes a citadel and outpost
of Christianity in a part of the world which was rapidly becoming _in
partibus infidelium_.[71]
The emir of Menteshe made a strenuous effort to recapture Rhodes. The
Hospitallers, attacked before they had time to repair and strengthen the
fortifications of the island, were saved only by the timely arrival and
heroism of Amadeus of Savoy. This is said to be the origin of the arms
of Savoy, which are perpetuated on the flag of modern Italy, and of the
motto of the sovereigns of Piedmont--F E R T, _Fortitudo Eius Rhodum
Tenuit_.[72] The historians of Rhodes, as well as the chroniclers of the
House of Savoy, declare that Osman was the leader of the Turks who
attacked Rhodes in 1310 or 1311,[73] and that he was instigated by the
Genoese.[74]
VIII
But while Osman was, in the minds of these and other later historians,
supposed to be attacking Rhodes and making himself master of Asia
Minor, he stayed within the narrow limits of his little principality,
from which he never issued forth, as far as we know, during his
circumscribed career. For he had, within a day’s journey of his
residence, the imperial cities of Brusa and Nicaea, whose walls were far
too strong for the infant Osmanlis. A little more to the north-west, in
a position of unrivalled strategic importance, defending the logical[75]
waterway to Constantinople from the valley of the Sangarius, lay
Nicomedia.
After the battle of Kuyun Hissar (Baphaeon) we hear nothing of Osman
until 1308. This year is memorable for several events of great
importance. The first of these is the capture of Ak Hissar, the fortress
guarding the place where the Sangarius finishes its descent and enters
the plain behind Nicomedia. This was the last barrier opposing the
progress of the Osmanlis through the narrow peninsula which stretches
out between the Gulf of Nicomedia and the Black Sea to form the extreme
north-western corner of Asia. Owing to the terrible misfortunes which
had fallen upon the Byzantines through the Catalans, no effort seems to
have been made to use Nicomedia as a base of operations for defending
this peninsula. So before the year was out the Osmanlis appeared for the
first time on the Bosphorus. In the years following the fall of Ak
Hissar the Osmanlis slowly but thoroughly extended their authority until
they were in possession of the harbours and fortresses of the Black Sea
littoral between the mouth of the Sangarius and the Bosphorus.
In the same year Kalolimni, an island of the Marmora, which lies near
the mouth of the Gulf of Mudania, was occupied by Kara Ali.[76] By this
the water-route from Brusa to Constantinople, and one of the two routes
from Nicaea to Constantinople, were obstructed.[77] Kalolimni has the
honour of being the first Ottoman island and the only one captured
during the chieftainship of Osman. The investment of Brusa from the land
side now began. So alarmed was the commandant that he sent Osman a
‘gift’ of money to purchase peace,[78] thus inaugurating the humiliating
precedent which the mightiest emperors and kings of Christendom came in
time to follow.
It was in 1308, also, that Osman captured Tricocca,[79] which cut off
the communication by land between Nicaea and Nicomedia. While he was
engaged in dealing with Nicaea and Brusa, a danger threatened Osman from
the east. A horde of Tartars was hovering along the confines of his
state.[80] Some of them sacked Karadja Hissar at the time of the fair,
and were prevented from marching on Eski Sheïr only by the timely
arrival of Orkhan, who defeated them through the superiority of his
cavalry. Instead of massacring his prisoners, Orkhan, as was the
invariable custom of his father with the Greeks, offered the raiders
Islam and Ottoman nationality.[81] It was in this way that the Osmanlis
increased in numbers.
After 1308 the energies of the Osmanlis seem to have been directed
against Nicaea and Brusa. The fall of Brusa is the only other event
recorded during the lifetime of Osman. Just when and how Brusa fell
cannot be stated with precision. We shall find the same difficulty later
in connexion with the fall of Nicaea and Nicomedia. The Turkish
traditions, as Seadeddin gathered them, state that Osman besieged Brusa
with a great army in 1317. He erected a fortress near Kaplidja, and put
his nephew, Ak Timur, in charge of it. A second fortress, either erected
by Osman or captured by him, was put in care of Balaban, ‘his most
faithful follower.’ Kaplidja, now known as Tchekirdje, celebrated for
its hot baths,[82] is on a ridge not more than a mile from the citadel
of Brusa. It commands the approach from the port of Brusa, not far from
where the road must cross the river. Traditional remains of the second
fortress are still to be seen on a foothill of Mount Olympus, about two
miles south-east of the citadel.
Of the actual fall of Brusa there is no definite statement in Seadeddin
except that the city surrendered to Orkhan, who brought the news to his
dying father. As Osman died in 1326, there is a gap of nine years to be
accounted for between the investment of the city and its capture. To one
who has studied the contour of this country and the nearness of the two
fortresses to the citadel of Brusa it is clear either that Brusa was
surrounded or fell very soon after the Osmanlis settled garrisons at the
gates of the city, or that some _modus vivendi_ was arranged between the
Osmanlis and the local garrison during those years. A decade has been
the conventional period for legendary sieges since Homer sang of Troy.
From the Byzantine contemporary writers one gains the impression, which
is probably a correct one, that Brusa was simply abandoned to the
Osmanlis. There was no assault, and no bitter struggle outside the
walls of the city.[83] The Greek commander, discouraged by the apparent
inability or unwillingness[84] of the emperors to come to his relief,
surrendered the city. Deeply disgusted, as he had every reason to be,
Evrenos became a Moslem, and cast his fortunes with the Osmanlis. Many
of the leading Greeks followed his example. For, while the people of
Brusa through long years were straining every nerve to preserve their
city and to maintain the honour of Byzantium in Asia, the elder
Andronicus and his grandson, Andronicus III, were engaged in trying to
destroy each other. It was a sordid civil strife with no redeeming
feature. Neither emperor had the slightest conception of patriotism or
of personal honour or of the sacredness of family ties. From this time
onward the Palaeologi put themselves on record as one of the most
iniquitous families that have ever disgraced the kingly office. When
Constantine, one hundred and twenty-seven years later, fell with the
walls of his city, his death was a striking illustration of the wrath of
God upon the fourth generation of those who had hated and despised Him.
In the same year that Brusa fell, and with the same fate imminent for
Nicaea and Nicomedia, young Andronicus celebrated with great pomp his
wedding. The Hippodrome, in sight of Mount Olympus, was the scene of a
gay tournament in which young Andronicus distinguished himself by
breaking more lances than any of his courtiers. From his imperial
throne, the elder Andronicus looked on, and turned over in his head
various schemes for making his grandson’s bride a widow. After the
wedding festivities, while Andronicus was taking his bride to Demotika,
he was set upon by a band of roving Turks, at whose hands he and
Cantacuzenos both received wounds. When he reached Demotika, he learned
that his grandfather was preparing another war against him.[85] Is it
any wonder that the Greeks of Asia Minor were not averse to becoming
Moslems and helping in the founding of a new nation to inherit
Constantinople? There is one more charge which must be recorded against
the elder Andronicus. When a crusade for the stemming of the Moslem
invasion was planned by Marino Sanudo, Andronicus not only refused to
co-operate, but he would not even consent to interrupt his friendly
relations with the Sultan of Egypt.[86]
IX
Osman spent his life in endeavouring to capture the three Byzantine
cities which were all within a day’s journey of his birthplace. When we
consider how near he was at the very beginning of the struggle, and how
weak and demoralized the Byzantines had become, we realize that we have
to do with no impetuous invasion of an Asiatic race, sweeping before it
and destroying an effete civilization. It is the birth of a new race
that we are recording--a race formed by the fusion of elements already
existing at the place of birth. The political unity of the Byzantine
Empire had been destroyed by enemies from without and from within. The
social unity, which had been secured by the one bond of a common
religion that imposed upon the people its standards and dominated every
phase of their life, was disappearing. For when the Eastern Church lost
its spiritual life, it lost its hold on the Levantine Christians, who
were centuries ahead of the West in intellectual development. The time
for its reformation had come and passed without a Savonarola, a Luther,
or a Calvin. Nor was there any Loyola to fight for the ancient faith.
The Church was unable to absorb the pagan invaders, as primitive Latin
Christianity had done, by an irresistible moral superiority.[87] The
appeal of Islam was greater than that of Christianity. Pagan and
Christian alike, then, in their conversion to a new, fresh faith, joined
in the formation of a new race. This is the story of Osman and of the
people who took his name.[88]
The legends which inevitably surround the founders of nations have
buried the personality of Osman, and make an estimate of his character
difficult. We must reject entirely the appreciations of the Ottoman
historians. None has yet arisen of his own people who has attempted to
separate the small measure of truth from the mass of fiction that
obscures the real man in the founder of the Ottoman Empire. He is
represented by the same writers as a powerful prince and as a simple
peasant; as the master of Asia Minor and as the village chieftain
fighting for very existence with his neighbours a few miles away; as
reading the Koran and as illiterate; as the cruel and imperious murderer
of his uncle Dundar for opposing a plan of campaign in his council of
war and as the merciful, clement conqueror; as the Moslem fanatic who
ordered the mutilation of dying infidels on the battlefield and as the
wise ruler who dispensed justice to Moslem and Christian with no
distinction of creed; as depositing his treasures of gold and silver in
the castle of a neighbour and as leaving at his death only a robe, a
salt-cellar, a spoon, and a few sheep.
In the absence of contemporary evidence and of unconflicting tradition,
we must form our judgement of Osman wholly upon what he accomplished. He
certainly was not the son of a prince. He did not become in his day more
than the ruler of a very small domain. He did not compass within his
lifetime the task at his very threshold--the subjection of the three
imperial cities. It was certainly not by astounding successes on the
battlefield that he made people flock to him and form around him the
nucleus of a state. And this state, although it did not come enough in
contact with the outside world to have money of its own,[89] grew
steadily year after year. The way his state was formed was the assurance
of its permanence and of its great future. It is also an indication of
the real greatness of the man who formed it.
Osman was founder of one of the greatest empires the world has ever
known, of a people unique in history through the blending of wild
Asiatic blood with the oldest as well as the newest European stock, of a
royal family which claims the distinction of six hundred years of
uninterrupted male succession. When we place these results over against
the limited field in which he worked, and acknowledge our lack of any
outstanding deeds in Osman’s life by which these results can be
explained, we find ourselves in the presence of a combination of a
character and a cause which reminds us of William of Orange and England.
Osman was a man of compelling personality, whom men loved to serve, even
when their own ability matched or was superior to his. The families of
the Michaelogli and Marcozogli were founded by Christian companions of
Osman, who became Moslem only after long association with him. Michael,
Marco, and other leaders, including Osman’s own son, made for themselves
more distinguished military careers than Osman. But they always worked
for their leader. Their harmony and loyalty is in striking contrast to
that of the Byzantine and Catalan captains. Osman was great enough to
use masterful men. He never needed to assert his superiority, as
mediocre men always love to do, by getting rid of possible rivals and
surrounding himself with lesser stars. He was able to hold himself, as
well as others, in check. He was patient and he was thorough. We know
the founder by his foundation.
Then there was the cause. The giants of the forward march of Islam were
dead. The tide had seemed to turn. Pagans ruled in Asia. Africa was
asleep. In 1309 the Faithful in Spain were receiving their first serious
reverse. Osman brought to his new religion the simple faith and the
fresh enthusiasm of the neophyte. He was a reincarnation of his great
namesake and the other early Khalifs. The prayer which Seadeddin puts in
Osman’s mouth illustrates his character:
O Lord, make upright my thoughts and just my designs.
Exalt the faith and the Religion, and destroy those who rise up
against it.
Scatter the hosts of the enemy, and bring to confusion evil men.
Make my sword the lantern of Thy holy faith, and the guiding torch
of my warriors.
Give unto me a glorious name, and victory against mine
adversaries.
Watch me with Thine eyes, and show me the way of Thy holy will.
Make me a true observer of the laws of Mohammed, and sustain me in
the shock of battle.
Osman was a fanatic, if by fanatic is meant one who is stirred with
religious zeal and makes his religion the first and prime object in his
life. But he was not intolerant, nor were his immediate successors. Had
he started to persecute Christians, the Greek Church would have taken a
new lease of life, and Osman could not have gained the converts who made
possible the Ottoman race.
Attila, Djenghiz Khan, Timur, the greatest conquerors of the stock from
which Osman came, utilized a race already made. They were leaders of a
united people. In spite of their dazzling exploits, they were mere
raiders, and their empires were the territories of an unassimilated path
of conquest. Osman’s work was more enduring than theirs, more
far-reaching in its results. For he was building in silence while they
were destroying with a blast of trumpets. We may place him with them,
perhaps above them, for which of them gave his name to a people?