Osman and a frontier principality (c. 1299-1362)

Part oneAnatolia after the Mongols

The Ottomans were not the first Turkish dynasty in Anatolia. The Seljuks came before them, and after their victory over the Byzantines at Manzikert in 1071 Turkish settlers spread across Asia Minor. In 1243 the Mongols destroyed the army of the Seljuk sultanate of Rum at Kose Dag. Anatolia was left without a strong ruler, and it broke into many small principalities, called beyliks, each led by a bey. The Mongol conquest of Central Asia had also pushed large numbers of Turkmen herders west, and many of them settled on the Anatolian frontier.

At the start of the fourteenth century one of the smallest of these beyliks lay in Bithynia, in the north-west, facing the Byzantine cities of Nicaea and Prusa. Its leader was Osman, and the dynasty took its name from him: Osmanli in Turkish, Ottoman in English. Many accounts date the founding to 1299, though nothing firm confirms that year.

Later Ottoman tradition said the family came from the Kayi tribe of the Oghuz Turks and moved west in the time of Osman's grandfather. That fits the timing, but the details are hard to confirm. What can be confirmed is the name of Osman's father, Ertugrul, which appears on coins minted under Osman.

Chroniclers of the fifteenth century told a story of Osman's youth. He spent a night in the house of a holy man, Shaykh Edebali, and dreamed that a moon rose from the shaykh's chest and sank into his own, and that a tree grew from his navel whose shade covered the world. Osman married Edebali's daughter. The story was most likely written later to give the dynasty a founding legend, but the marriage shows how close the early Ottomans were to the Sufis of the frontier.

Part twoFort by fort

The first clear battle came in 1301 or 1302 at Baphaeus, where Osman beat a Byzantine force sent to protect the cities of Bithynia. The victory gave him a free hand in the countryside, but the big cities held out. Osman had no siege engines, and he knew that storming great walls would fail. So he picked off the many small forts across the region instead. That was achievable, and it would leave the cities cut off when the time came.

For about twenty years he raided and besieged, and his success drew more fighters to him. Not all of them were Turks or Muslims. The frontier was a place where people moved easily and changed sides. A Byzantine named Kose Mihal joined Osman, became one of his leading men and in time became a Muslim. In 1317 Osman began a blockade of Bursa. The city held out for almost nine years before hunger forced it to surrender in 1326. Osman died at about that time, around 1324 to 1326, and the city passed to his son Orhan, who made it his capital. Osman's tomb still stands there.

Part threeOrhan crosses the strait

Orhan's rise was unusual for the age. His brother Alaeddin did not fight him for the throne. He accepted Orhan as ruler, and the two shared the work: Orhan led the army and Alaeddin ran the government. In the 1330s Orhan took Iznik, the old Nicaea, and Izmit. In 1331 the first Ottoman madrasa was opened at Iznik, the beginning of a school system that would spread across the empire.

The Byzantines were weakened by civil wars. In 1346 Orhan married the daughter of John Kantakouzenos, a Byzantine regent fighting for the throne, and sent soldiers to help him. In 1354, as a reward and partly through an earthquake that emptied its walls, the Ottomans gained Gallipoli, on the European side of the Dardanelles. It was a bridgehead into Europe. Within twenty years the Ottomans held most of Thrace. Orhan died in 1362.

Historians have long asked why this beylik, of all of them, grew into an empire. It had luck: it faced a divided Byzantium, not a strong Muslim neighbour, and Bithynia was rich and crowded. It also had skill. The Ottomans passed their lands to a single heir instead of dividing them among sons, as most Turkish dynasties did, and they kept power in the ruler's hands instead of letting frontier commanders set up their own states. They learned quickly how to govern people of many languages and faiths.

Osman had no siege engines, so he took the small forts one by one and left the cities alone.

WatchThe lecture for this chapter

Lecture Hikma HistoryOsman Ghazi: The Man Who Founded The Ottoman Empire (opens on YouTube)

The mapWhere it happened

• Sogut
• Bursa
• Iznik
• Izmit
• Constantinople
• Gallipoli
• Edirne

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

SourcesSources for this chapter