Osman I

Born 1259

Died 1326

Turkish warlord, founder of Ottoman Empire

T oday Istanbul is a magnificent city that serves as a crossroads between worlds: Europe, of which it is geographically a part, and the Asian mainland of Turkey just a few miles distant, to which it is culturally tied by nearly six centuries of history. Once, however, Istanbul was Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, and its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 was regarded as a crisis for the Christian nations of Europe.

The fall of Constantinople was one of the events that heralded the end of the Middle Ages, but it had been foreseen nearly two centuries before—according to legend, at least—in a dream by Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire. It is no wonder that such a leader, who founded one of the world's longest-lasting empires, would inspire many legends; however, the reality of Osman's life was remarkable enough.

Roots of the Turks

Until the eleventh century, Asia Minor, or Anatolia, site of modern-day Turkey, was primarily inhabited by peoples

Balkan Heroes

The Balkan Peninsula, the southeastern corner of the European continent, is at the crossroads of many worlds: Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox, Christian and Muslim, European and Asian, Western and Eastern. Not surprisingly, then, it has been the site of numerous conflicts.

In the twentieth century, World War I began in what is now Bosnia, and World War II saw heavy fighting throughout the area. The postwar years were a time of intense hatred and suppressed conflict in the Communist nations of the Balkans, and the years since the fall of Communism have produced ethnic wars involving Serbia and its neighbors. The Middle Ages were no different, with wars involving the Ottoman Turks and other forces. Along with its wars, however, the era also produced a number of heroes.

One of the earliest was Boris I (ruled 852–89), the Bulgarian ruler who converted his nation to Christianity. Though there were Catholic missionaries in the area, Boris accepted the Greek Orthodox faith, and modeled many aspects of his realm on the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman, Empire. He even adopted the ancient Roman title of "caesar," or czar (ZAR). Boris in fact became so interested in Christianity that he abdicated, or resigned from the throne, and spent most of his last eight years in a monastery. Bulgaria flourished under his successors, briefly becoming a power that overshadowed both the Byzantines and the Russians in the 900s.

Far to the other side of the Balkan Peninsula was Croatia, whose first king was Tomislav in the tenth century. Long before, under the rule of Charlemagne (see entry), Croatia had accepted Roman Catholicism rather than Greek Orthodoxy. Tomislav, however, faced an enemy that accepted no form of Christianity: the Magyars, destined to found the nation of Hungary. In fighting back the pagan invaders, Tomislav added considerable territory, and united Croatia for the first time.

To the south of Croatia was Bosnia, where even today, people use the expression "to talk of Ban Kulin," meaning "to speak of better times." This is a reference to Kulin (ruled c. 1180–c. 1204), a ban, or local ruler. Despite the fact that Hungary then controlled the area, Ban Kulin helped the tiny nation achieve a measure of independence. A Catholic, he revolted against Rome by becoming a Bogromil, a member of a Bulgarian sect that asserted God had two sons, Christ and Satan. In 1203, the pope forced Ban Kulin to renounce the Bogromil faith.

Ultimately most Bosnians would become Muslims, since their country, along with much of the Balkan Peninsula, would be annexed to the Ottoman Empire. Before it fell to the Ottomans, however, neighboring Serbia experienced a flowering under a series of kings named Stephen. The greatest of these was Stephen Dusan (dü-SHAHN; 1308–1355), who seized the throne from his father in 1331. He went on to conquer a number of lands from the Byzantines, and in 1346 had himself crowned emperor of the Serbs, Greeks, Bulgars, and Albanians. Four years later, he conquered Bosnia, and was marching on Constantinople in 1355 when he died.

Serbia's dreams would be dashed in a battle at Kosovo—ironically, the site of a modern-day conflict involving Serbia and Albania—in 1389. At Kosovo Field, known as "the field of the black birds," the Ottomans dealt the Serbs under Prince Lazar (1329–1389) a humiliating defeat, and soon afterward added Serbia and Bulgaria to their empires.

Fifty years later, Kosovo was the site of another battle between Ottoman forces and an Eastern European hero, Hungary's János Hunyadi (YAH-nos HOON-yahd-ee; c. 1407–1456). Trained as a knight, Hunyadi scored early victories against the Turks in the 1430s, and even drove the Ottomans out of Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, and Bulgaria. This put the Hungarians in a position to influence the region, but with Hunyadi's defeat by the Turks at Kosovo, those hopes came to an end.

Hunyadi was almost the exact contemporary of Albania's Skanderbeg (1405–1468). The name, given to him by the Turks, is a version of Alexander, and calls to mind Alexander the Great; his real name was George Kastrioti (kahs-tree-OHT-ee). Brought up as a Muslim among the Turks, in his late thirties he became a Christian, abandoning the Turks and supporting the cause of his own people. His defeat of Ottoman forces under the sultan Murad II in 1450 made Skanderbeg a hero throughout Europe; but soon after his death in 1468, Albania became a part of the Ottoman Empire.

with close cultural ties to the Greeks. As for the Turks, who eventually gave the land its name, they came from a broad stretch of Central Asia outside the Chinese borders, from whence they began moving westward in the 500s.

Turks settled in various places, but perhaps no group was as notable as the Seljuks, a dynasty founded by Toghril Beg (see box in Shotoku Taishi entry). They defeated the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, putting that empire's fortunes in a downward spiral from which it would not recover. They also laid claim to Anatolia, which would remain in Turkish hands from then on.

A world of fading empires

Osman (AWS-mahn), who came from the Ghazi (GAHZ-ee) tribe of Turks, was born in 1259. Legend has it that his grandfather led the Ghazis out of northeastern Iran. After the grandfather's death along the way westward, Osman's father Ertogrul (urt-oh-GRÜL) replaced him.

By then the Mongols were on the move, and Ertogrul supported the Seljuks against these invaders. This might have seemed like an obvious choice since the Ghazis and Seljuks were related, but the Seljuks were nonetheless grateful and rewarded Ertogrul for his support by granting him lands in northeastern Anatolia.

Though the Mongols' realms were still growing at that time, the Ghazis were surrounded by fading empires. At one time, the Muslim world had been ruled by the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, but its power had been broken by the Seljuks in 1258. Now the power of the Seljuks, too, was in decline. To the west was the Byzantine Empire, whose people adhered to the Greek Orthodox form of Christianity. The Ghazis, on the other hand, were Muslims, and like the Abbasids and the Seljuks before them, they viewed any conflict with the Byzantines as a "holy war" on behalf of their religion. Thus Osman would feel justified in later building his empire at the expense of the Byzantines.

Osman's dream

One of the most powerful legends of Osman's early life concerned a dream in which he saw himself taking the Byzantine capital at Constantinople. That literal dream, and the figurative dream of empire that it spawned, was closely tied with a love affair.

As a youth, Osman reportedly fell in love with Malkhatun (mahl-hkhah-TOON), whose name means "treasure of a woman." He asked her to marry him, but her father, a respected Muslim holy man, refused—no doubt because Osman was a rough chieftain and warlord. Years passed, during which time Osman asked again and again for the hand of Malkhatun, only to be refused each time. Finally he had come to accept the fact that they would never marry; then one night, he had a dream.

In his dream, he was sleeping alongside a friend when a full moon arose from his friend's chest, then floated over to Osman and sank into his own chest. The moon symbolized Malkhatun, and its joining of his chest was their marital union. Then out of Osman's chest grew a great tree, which rose to shadow the entire world. A wind began to blow all the trees' leaves toward Constantinople, which came to resemble a ring. Osman was just about to put the ring on his finger when he awoke.

It is not hard to believe that Osman had this dream of empire; much more difficult to believe is the story that upon hearing of the dream, Malkhatun's father changed his mind and allowed the marriage. Probably the whole tale was created long after Osman's time; whatever the case, he did go on to marry Malkhatun and to found a great empire.

The conquest of Bursa

Out of respect for his Seljuk hosts, Osman's father had not tried to expand his territories. But times were changing: the Mongols had destroyed the Seljuks' power, and when Osman became chieftain in 1288, he set about acquiring new lands. From 1299, when he refused to pay tribute or tax money to the Mongol ruler, he symbolically created his own state, which would form the nucleus of the realm named after him: the Ottoman Empire.

During the period from 1300 to 1308, Osman fought a number of engagements, successively taking pieces of Anatolia from the Byzantines. Finally he reached the city of Bursa, only seventy miles from Constantinople across the Sea of Marmara. Osman would never live to see the conquest of Constantinople, however: his last eighteen years would be caught up in a struggle to take Bursa.

The conquest of the city looked easier than it was. From 1308 Osman's troops controlled almost all areas around it, but it took them another thirteen years to seal off Bursa's port at Mudanya (moo-DAHN-yah). The Byzantines proved stubborn adversaries, and even after the taking of Mudanya, the Turks had to maintain a five-year-long siege against Bursa before the city finally yielded in 1326.

Six centuries of empire

As a major commercial center, Bursa was a huge gain to the Ottoman Turks. Osman himself, however, did not live to enjoy the triumph: when he learned about the city's capture from his son Orkhan (ruled 1326–62), he was on his deathbed. Giving Orkhan some final advice about treating all his subjects equally and fairly, Osman died at the age of sixty-seven.

The empire grew quickly under Osman's successors, and it rapidly acquired much of the Balkan Peninsula on Europe's southeastern tip. Given the weakness of the Byzantines, then, it is surprising that more than 125 years passed between the death of Osman and the taking of Constantinople. However, the Byzantines were fierce in holding on to what remained of their empire, and the invasion of Anatolia by Tamerlane (see entry) in about 1400 slowed the Ottoman advance.

By the mid-1400s, however, the Ottomans had won the prize dreamt of long before by Osman. The empire kept growing until 1683, by which time it dominated a huge portion of southeastern Europe, all of the Middle East and North Africa, and much of what is now southern Russia. Thereafter it went into a long decline, just like the Byzantine Empire had long before. It came to an official end only in 1922.

For More Information

Books

Andryszewski, Tricia. Kosovo: The Splintering of Yugoslavia. Brookfield, CT: Millbrook Press, 2000.

Creasy, Edward S. History of the Ottoman Turks: From the Beginnings of Their Empire to the Present Time. London: Bentley, 1878.

Dijkstra, Henk, editor. History of the Ancient & Medieval World, Volume 11: Empires of the Ancient World. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1996.

Kostich, Dragos D. The Land and People of the Balkans: Albania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1973.

Sheehan, Sean. Turkey. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1994.

Web Sites

"End of Europe's Middle Ages—Ottoman Turks." [Online] Available http://www.ucalgary.ca/HIST/tutor/endmiddle/ottoman.html (last accessed July 26, 2000).

"History 323: The Middle East in the Making: The History of the Ottoman Empire." [Online] Available http://www.humanities.ualberta.ca/ottoman/module2/lecture1.htm (last accessed July 26, 2000).

"Kosovo Field: As Bitter As Yesterday." [Online] Available http://www.megastories.com/kosovo/map/kosovof.htm (last accessed July 26,2000).

The Ottoman Khilafa. [Online] Available http://www.naqshbandi.org/ottomans/ (last accessed July 26, 2000).