THE TURKS: THEIR ENTRY INTO ASIA MINOR: NOT AT FIRST
EXCLUSIVELY MAHOMETAN: THEIR CHARACTERISTICS: OTHMAN FOUNDS A
DYNASTY: PROGRESS OF MOSLEMS IN EUROPE AND ASIA MINOR: CAPTURE
OF BROUSA IN 1326.
[Sidenote: Genghis Khan moves westward.]
The great central plains of Asia, stretching almost without an
interruption from the Caspian Sea to China, have during all historical
time produced hardy races of nomad warriors. On the three occasions
in their history when they have found skilful leaders, their progress
as conquerors has been epoch-marking. Twice their progress has been
westward. Mounted warriors and hordes of foot soldiers made their way
towards the Euxine, some going to the north and others to the south of
that sea. The first of these waves of population thus moving westward
was that led by Genghis Khan, a Mongol belonging to the smallest of
the four great divisions of the Tartar[34] race. His followers were,
however, mainly Turks, the most widely spread of these divisions.[35]
He had established his rule before 1227, the year in which he died,
from the Sea of Japan to the Dnieper. He and his immediate successors
ravaged a greater extent of territory than any other conqueror. Like
Alexander the Great, he and they advanced with regularly organised
armies, with apparently no other object than conquest and plunder.
Their victories facilitated the migration of his own subjects into
the newly conquered territories and hastened the departure of large
bodies of men, who fled before the terrible massacres which marked the
progress of their ever victorious armies.
A branch of the same great horde, under the leadership of Subutai,
destroyed Moscow and Kiev in a campaign conducted with striking
ability and ending in 1239, and settled in Russia. Poland, aided by
French Knights Templars and the Grand Master of the Teutonic order,
had put forward all her strength to resist the same division of the
all-devouring army, while another wing attacked the Hungarians with
half a million of men.
Their entry into Europe was in such numbers and the excesses of cruelty
committed by them were so alarming that their advance everywhere
created terror. The Tartars--coming from Tartarus, as some of the
Crusaders believed--were so little known, says Pachymer, that many
declared they had the heads of dogs and fed upon human flesh.[36] Seen
nearer, they were less formidable as individuals, though infernal,
terrible, and invincible as an army.
In 1258, the year before the recapture of Constantinople and the
destruction of the Latin empire by the Greeks, Houlagou, the grandson
of Genghis Khan, captured Bagdad, and deposed the last of the Bagdad
caliphs. He extended his conquests over Mesopotamia and Syria to the
Mediterranean. Damascus and Aleppo were sacked. Houlagou sought to ally
himself with the Crusaders in order to overthrow the Saracens and the
sultan of Egypt.
[Sidenote: The Seljukian Turks.]
When Houlagou turned his attention to Asia Minor, he found among the
Christian populations a division of the Turkish race known as Seljuks,
whose sultan resided at Konia, and called himself sultan of Roum.[37]
He attacked and inflicted injuries upon them from which they never
recovered. It is difficult to state precisely what were the boundaries
of the Seljuks and of other Moslem or partly Moslem peoples in Asia
Minor and Syria, during the thirteenth century, and this difficulty
arises from the fact that their boundaries were continually changing.
The Saracens held certain places in Syria, but there was a Christian
prince in Antioch; there were cities occupied by the western Knights
Templars, a Christian prince in Caramania and a king of Lesser
Armenia. There were Turcomans at Marash and in the hill country behind
Trebizond, and Kurds invaded Cilicia in 1278. A large tract of country
around Konia was ruled over by the Seljuks. No natural boundary marked
the extent of territory occupied by any of these peoples or in Asia
Minor by the Roman emperor.
It is certain, however, that the entry of the armies of the followers
of Genghis Khan, continually renewed by the arrival of new hordes from
Central Asia, changed the distribution of the peoples and spread terror
everywhere at their approach. Even at Nicaea, within sixty miles of
Constantinople, the rumour in 1267 of the arrival of a Tartar army
caused a terrible panic.[38] Two years later the Tartars attacked the
Saracens in Syria, whither they had been invited for such purpose by
the Christians, defeated them, and carried off a rich booty. For a
while they were a terror alike to Moslems and Christians. As from the
followers of Genghis Khan there ultimately came the race of Ottoman
Turks who conquered New Rome and its empire, it is desirable to
consider them somewhat carefully.
[Sidenote: Characteristics of Asiatic invaders.]
It is important to note that the first hordes who came in with the
great conqueror and those who followed for at least a century were
not Mahometan fanatics. Some of their leading generals were indeed
Christians. Genghis himself had married a Christian wife. Mango Khan
(1251–1259), one of his successors, is described by Maundeville, who
visited Palestine in 1322, as ‘a good Christian man, who was baptized
and gave letters of perpetual peace to all Christian men,’ and sent
to win the Holy Land to put it into the hands of the Christians and
destroy the law of Mahomet.[39] His great successor, Houlagou, was
the husband of the granddaughter of the famous Prester (or Presbyter)
John, the king of a Christian state in Central Asia, visited by Marco
Polo.[40] The army led by Houlagou contained Mahometans, but it
contained also Christians, Buddhists, and professors of other creeds.
Central Asiatics had up to the time which concerns us not developed any
violent religious animosity. Christians, Moslems, and Buddhists dwelt
together in harmony.
[Sidenote: Not fanatical.]
It is probably correct to say that the races of the great plains of
Asia have never been religiously disposed. Mr. Schuyler, who was a keen
observer, remarked, less than a generation ago, that the people which
had been recently conquered by Russia in Central Asia were classified
as to their religion with extreme difficulty. A few declared themselves
Christians. The remainder were indiscriminately inscribed as Moslems,
but very few among them really knew anything about the religion of
Islam and did not even consider themselves as Moslems.[41] The fierce
fanaticism which the early followers of Mahomet displayed and which
led them within a century after his death to make the most wonderful
and enduring series of conquests which have ever been accomplished by
a people whose sole bond of union was religion was not shown by the
followers of Genghis. They preferred to fight the Saracens and to aid
the Christians rather than to do the reverse. We shall see that when,
a century and a half later, another great invasion from Central Asia
took place, its leader Timour the Lame’s greatest activity was directed
against the Mahometans, and that he demanded from them the restoration
to the Christian emperor of the cities which they had captured.
It is true that in the interval between the two invasions under Genghis
Khan and Timour, the Turkish invaders, who had remained in Asia Minor,
caught much of the fanatical spirit. But there are many indications
which show that this spirit was of slow growth.[42] As their struggles
with neighbouring and Christian peoples compacted them into a warlike
nation, they all came to accept the religion of Mahomet, and as they
became better acquainted with the tenets of the most war-inspiring
religion in the world, they held to them tenaciously, and developed the
hostility towards Christians which the spiritual pride of believers who
consider themselves the elect of heaven, and their religion outside
the range of discussion, always engenders. But during the development
of their power in Asia Minor, many years passed before they isolated
themselves, and were isolated from the Christians, on account of their
religion. Their princes sought marriage with the princesses of the
imperial and other noble Christian families. We obtain light only
incidentally upon the relations between the professors of the two
creeds at the period shortly after the recapture of Constantinople
by the Greeks. But such as we do obtain confirms the statement that
the Asiatic settlers took their religion very easily. In 1267 certain
charges were brought, as we have seen,[43] by the Emperor Michael
against the patriarch, which give us a glimpse of interest. The
relation is made by Pachymer, who was himself one of the clerks of
the court. The patriarch was accused, not only of having conversed
familiarly with a Turkish sultan, of having allowed him and his
companions to use the bath attached to the church, around which were
the Christian symbols, but of having ordered a monk to administer the
Sacrament to the children of the sultan without having been assured
that they were baptized. He was charged, further, with having said
the Litanies with the sultan and his followers. The patriarch replied
to the two first with contempt; if the Turks had used the church
bath, no harm had been done. As to giving Communion, he declared that
he had been duly certified that the children had been baptized.[44]
Witnesses asserted that it was true that the accused had said the
Litanies with the sultan, and that he had allowed him to sit by his
side during celebration, but added that they did not know whether the
sultan was a Christian or not! Other persons were found who declared
that he was not a Christian. The sultan, hearing of the proceedings,
sent to ask, either in jest or seriously, that the emperor would give
him the sacred relics which he wore round his neck, and offered to eat
ham as a proof that he was not a Moslem. Pachymer adds that in thus
professing his readiness to worship the relics and to eat the forbidden
flesh, the sultan caused the proceedings against the patriarch to fail.
As it appeared that there were eminent ecclesiastics in the court
who really believed that the sultan of the Turks was a Christian,
those who desired the condemnation of the patriarch tried to turn the
question by suggesting that, whether he was Christian or not, it was
certain that members of his suite, who had been present when Communion
was administered, were unbelievers.[45] That the sultan should have
been present at a Christian service at all, that his children should
have been allowed by him or his Moslem followers to communicate, and
that his children were baptized, or believed to be baptized, show
that, whether they were Christians or not, the fanatical spirit which
animated the Moslems of an earlier period, or the Turks a century
later, was not present among these representatives of the Asiatics
who had entered the country as followers of Genghis or his immediate
successors.
[Sidenote: Permanent characteristics of Turkish race.]
The characteristics of the Turk have remained singularly like those
possessed by his ancestors. The Turkish soldiers who had come in with
Genghis, and the hordes of those who followed during a century, had
been for the most part wandering shepherds, and the nomadic instinct
still continued, and still continues, in the race, notwithstanding that
there has been a considerable admixture of other races. The tent of
their leader was larger than that of his followers, and its entrance
came, in the course of time, to be known as The Lofty Gate, or The
Sublime Porte. The shepherd warriors, who were destined to destroy the
empire of the New Rome, had few of the desires, habits, or aspirations
of civilisation. Commerce, except in its simplest form of barter, was
and has always been almost unknown to them. Among the Turks of a later
period the disinclination to change the traditional habits of the race
is to some extent due to the indifference or contempt felt for trading
communities by a race of conquerors; though, perhaps, incapacity to
hold their own as traders against the peoples they subdued has had a
larger share in producing their aversion to commerce. The furniture
of their huts is even yet only such as would have been found in their
felt tents. They have no desire to possess the ordinary utensils which
Europeans of every race consider either as the necessaries of life
or as adding largely to its comfort. They have never taken kindly
to agriculture. Surrounded by fertile land, the Turk will till only
enough to supply him with the barest necessaries of life, and the
traveller in the interior of Asia Minor is to-day, as he has been
for centuries, astonished to see that Turkish peasants who, as the
owners of large tracts of fertile land, capable of producing almost
any fruits or vegetables, and of supporting even a large number of
cattle, may be accounted wealthy, are yet content to live upon fare
and amid surroundings at which the ordinary European peasant, and even
the Turks’ own neighbours of different races, would express their
dissatisfaction.[46]
We get few glimpses of the domestic life and manners of the Turks
during the first two centuries of their emigration into Asia Minor.
But such as we gain show them, in peace and war, to possess the same
characteristics as distinguish their descendants at the present day.
When not under the influence of their religion they are peaceful,
kindly disposed, and truthful. In the hospitality of the tent or hut
they are irreproachable. They possess little, but that little is at
the disposal of the traveller. Judged by Western ideas, they are lazy,
and lacking in intelligence. In the ordinary business of life they are
singularly destitute of energy. They have learned, like their fathers,
to be content with the poverty amid which they were born. They have not
sufficient capacity to desire knowledge nor aspiration to make them
discontented. If, as I believe the evidence to indicate, the ancestors
of the present Moslems in Asia Minor were during the thirteenth and
half of the fourteenth century but little under the influence of
religious fanaticism, their easy-going, _dolce far niente_ character
may well be taken as sufficient explanation of the passing over into
Turkish territories of many Christians who desired to escape from the
heavy taxation under the rule of the Christian emperors.
[Sidenote: Constant stream of immigrants from Central Asia.]
[Sidenote: All conquests followed by settlement.]
In describing the movement of the Asiatic races into Asia Minor and
Europe, but especially of the advance of the Turkish hordes who came
after the death of Genghis, two facts ought never to be lost sight
of. The first and most important is that from a period even preceding
the recapture of the city in 1259 down to one within the memory of
living men there was a constant stream of immigrants from Central Asia
westward. The numbers of the immigrant settlers were thus steadily
being increased. Probably at no time has the Turkish race been as
prolific as the Christian races of Asia Minor, and the latter would
long ago have outnumbered the conquering race had the stream of
immigration been dammed. The second fact to be noted is that a constant
settlement of the conquered lands was being made, a settlement
which, although possibly as nomadic and uncertain as that of the
Kurds and Yuruks of to-day, was yet a real occupation of the country
at the expense of Christian populations, who were either massacred
or dispersed. It is in the nomadic character of the newcomers, in
the wasteful character of their occupation of the country, in the
substitution of sheep and cattle industry for agriculture, in their
want of intelligence, and in their expulsion and persecution of the
Christian population, that the explanation is to be found of the
destruction and, in some cases, complete abandonment of cities still
populous and flourishing when they were captured: cities like Ephesus,
Nicaea, and a hundred others, whose ruins meet the traveller everywhere
throughout Asia Minor. The Turk has at all times been a nomad and a
destroyer. He has never been a capable trader or even agriculturist.
When the armies led by Genghis Khan and his successors retired, armies
which were well disciplined and well led, many of his soldiers or their
followers remained and took service with the Seljukian Turks. Others
formed separate communities. One of the chiefs who thus settled in Asia
Minor was Ertogrul or Orthogrul, the father of Osman or Othman, the
founder of the Ottoman dynasty.
During Ertogrul’s life, the Seljuks had been greatly harassed by the
newer invaders. Pachymer states that on the arrival of the Tartars the
sultan of Konia (the ancient Iconium) was surrounded by enemies, and
that he had sought the protection of the emperor. He had invited also
the aid of the sultan of Egypt, known to the Crusaders as the sultan
of Babylon, against the Tartars, by whom he was hard pressed. Three
or four years after this sultan’s death in 1277, Ertogrul died. His
son Osman or Othman by his courage and ability gave his followers the
leading place among the Turks in Asia Minor and firmly established the
dynasty named after him. He began his career by coming to an agreement
with some of the other Moslem chiefs to divide the territory occupied
by the Seljuks and themselves in Asia Minor into eight portions.
Thereupon the combined forces of the old and new Turks commenced a
series of attacks upon neighbouring territory. During the next twenty
years, their success was almost unchecked. In 1282, they laid siege to
Tralles (the present Aidin), and, though opposed by the son of Michael
the Eighth, were able to capture and destroy the city.[47] A short time
afterwards they obtained a fleet and took into their service a large
number of sailors who had been discharged by the emperor from motives
of economy. Twelve years later, Othman and Ali, chief of another
Turkish band, pushed their raids northward and even crossed the river
Sangarius and spread desolation throughout the Asiatic provinces of the
Empire, before they could be driven back. Two years later, they laid
waste the country between the Black Sea and Rhodes.
[Sidenote: Othman, first Ottoman Sultan, 1299–1327.]
In 1299, Othman took the title of Sultan. In 1302, he and other Turkish
leaders inflicted a serious defeat upon the imperial troops and a band
of Alans on the river Sangarius near Sabanja. The defeat was shortly
afterwards turned into a rout and the subjects of the empire with the
Alans were driven to seek shelter in Ismidt, the ancient Nicomedia.
The confines of the empire were narrowed, and Othman established
himself near Brousa and the neighbouring city of Nicaea, and came to an
arrangement for division of the newly acquired territory with the other
Turkish chiefs.
Alarmed for a while at the news that the emperor was to receive help
from the West, the Turks soon renewed their attacks upon imperial
territory, and the Greek population almost everywhere fled before them.
They attacked the wealthy cities on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor and
occupied several of the islands of the Archipelago. Pachymer states[48]
that they had inundated the country north of Pergamus so completely
that no Roman dared entertain the hope of keeping his property, and all
fled before the flood of invaders: some to the city of Pergamus, others
to Adramyttium or Lampsacus, while others again crossed the Dardanelles
into Europe.
The reign of Othman is contemporaneous with one of the great periods
of immigration from Central Asia. The numbers of the Turks were yearly
augmented by such hordes that the Greek writers continually use
metaphors derived from the torrent, from floods and inundations, to
describe their overwhelming force.
[Sidenote: Entry of Turks into Europe, 1306–7.]
It was partly in order to resist this flood of invasion that the
Catalan Grand Company had been invited to aid the emperor, but after
having won several victories over the Turks, the lawlessness of the
Spaniards forced the emperor to recognise that his Western auxiliaries
were of no value for checking the progress of the enemy. The Christians
of Asia Minor flocked to the capital to avoid the Company almost as
much as to escape from the soldiers of Othman. Worse than all, to these
Christians of Spain must be ascribed the introduction of the Turks into
Europe. At the invitation of the Company, a band of them, as we have
seen, crossed the Dardanelles to aid in attacking the empire which
Roger and his Catalans had come to defend. About the same time, another
band of Turks landed in Greece for the purpose of pillage. These
invasions are epoch-marking, since from this time (1306–7), Europe was
never entirely free from the presence of Turks.
[Sidenote: Their progress in Asia Minor.]
Their great progress was, however, more marked in Asia Minor. In 1308,
one of the divisions of Turks not under Othman captured Ephesus, which
surrendered to avoid massacre. The city still retained something of
its ancient glory. Its famous church of St. John, from the ruins of
which the traveller may still gain an idea of its former magnificence,
was plundered, and its immense wealth in precious vessels and deposits
became the prey of the victors. Many of the inhabitants were cruelly
massacred, notwithstanding their submission, and the remainder were
driven away as fugitives to find the means of living where they could
or to starve. Other places under the rule of Constantinople were
attacked, and though many victories were gained--for the imperial
troops fought well--the Turks were constantly gaining cities and
territory from the Christians. It was in vain that the emperor entered
into league with bands of Tartars or with other Turks to attack the
armies of Othman, for the forces of this skilful leader were too
numerous to be subdued. Brousa had to purchase peace from him. Othman
failed, however, to capture Rhodes, which was bravely defended by the
military knights from the West, and a monk named Hilarion at the head
of the imperial troops gained some successes. The imperial troops
succeeded also in 1310 in defeating a certain Mahomet whose dominions
were in Caramania. But even with the aid of a band of Tartars who
had allied themselves with the emperor, who was in command of twenty
thousand of the imperial troops, little could be done to check Othman’s
steady progress.
Meantime in Europe, on the north shore of the Marmora, the band of
Turks who had been associated with the Grand Company, but who did not
acknowledge the rule of Othman, besieged Ganos and laid waste the
surrounding country. The troubles which arose a few years later between
the Emperor Andronicus the Second and young Andronicus, enabled the
Turks steadily to encroach on the empire in Asia Minor, and their
introduction as partisans in the civil war which went on in 1322
familiarised them and probably Othman himself with inroads into the
country between Constantinople and Gallipoli.[49]
So far we have been concerned almost exclusively with those portions
of the Asiatic army and the hordes which followed it which came
westward to the south of the Black Sea. But it must be noted that
the body of invaders of the same race who had come westward to the
north of that sea, and who had attacked Russia, Poland, and Hungary,
had constantly received additions to their numbers. This northern
division was possibly more numerous than the Turks in Asia Minor. As
early as 1265, a certain Timour, the ruler of Tartars who were in
occupation of territory on the Volga, had sent twenty thousand men to
aid the Bulgarians against the Empire. Bulgarians and Tartars together
had occupied all the passes into Thrace, and the emperor had saved
himself with difficulty. In 1284, ten thousand Tartars came southward
into Thrace from the great host which were in Hungary. In 1300, the
Turks who had entered the Crimea were driven out by another horde of
Tartars who had occupied South Russia. The number and strength of these
invaders continued constantly to increase. Their power indeed remained
firmly established in South Russia until long after the conquest of
Constantinople. They had no special sympathy with the Ottoman Turks,
and were ready, as were the Alans, to fight either for the emperor or
against him. Cantacuzenus mentions that in 1324 one hundred and twenty
thousand of them entered Thrace and were beaten in detail by his friend
the young Andronicus.
[Sidenote: Capture of Brousa, 1326.]
Weakened by having to meet this huge northern army, for huge it
must have been, although the number of the invaders is probably
exaggerated,[50] the young emperor was forbidden or was unable to go to
the relief of Brousa when, two years afterwards, Othman laid siege to
that city. Its surrender in 1326 is a convenient mark of the progress
made by the Ottoman Turks.
Their great leader, Othman, died in the following year.