At a glance
Era 8- Dates
- Died c. 1324 CE
- Who
- Frontier leader in north-west Anatolia who gave the Ottoman dynasty its name
- Era
- The Ottomans
ProfileOsman I
Osman was the son of Ertugrul, the leader of a small Turkish band on the Byzantine frontier in Bithynia, in north-west Anatolia. Around 1299 he began to build a small principality of his own.
He had no siege engines, so instead of attacking the great Byzantine cities he took the small forts around them one by one. In 1301 or 1302 he defeated a Byzantine force at Baphaeus. His success drew warriors to him, Muslims and some Christians alike. He married the daughter of a respected Sufi, Shaykh Edebali, and later chroniclers told of a dream in which a great tree grew from him and shaded the world.
In 1317 he began the long blockade of Bursa, which fell to his son Orhan in 1326. Osman died around that time and was buried there. The dynasty took his name, Osmanli in Turkish, Ottoman in English.
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