The rise of the Ottomans

Hulegu Khan, the son of Tolui and grandson of Genghis Khan, died in 1265. His successors were the Indians of Persia, who embraced both Islam and civilisation with equal enthusiasm. As the historian Rashid ad-Din puts it, 'the Mongols, who until then had only destroyed, now began to build'. But the price of this civilisation was the abandonment of the harsh Mongol heritage leading to consequences warned about by Genghis Khan, and in 1291 a succession dispute among the llkhans of Persia plunged their outlying territories into a state of anarchy. Frontier wars with Mamluk Egypt began while rebellions broke out in Asia Minor, where the slow collapse of tbe Seljuk kingdom, weakened by Mongol inroads, encouraged certain petty rulers to stake their claims to independence. Among these opportunists in north-west Anatolia were the former refugees called the Ottomans, who had originally controlled only a few square miles of pasture and farmland as vassals of the Seljuks.

The political situation in Anatolia was changing rapidly in another way, because as the Seljuk kingdom had begun to break up a different manifestation of militant Islam had risen to power. This was the aggressive fanaticism of independent bands known as shazis, groups of 'holy warriors' who fought to spread the faith and supported themselves through plunder. Without tribal or territorial basis, the shazis attached themselves to any outstanding leader who promised victory. Such leaders then tended to establish themselves by degree as the lords of the territories they had conquered. The early Ottomans were typical glhuts.
The wider world into which the Ottoman Empire was to be born was also undergoing immense change. The northern shores of the Mediterranean between the Bosphorus and Granada were almost entirely in Christian hands, while its southern coast fell under the Islamic sphere of influence. The eastern flank was dominated by the Mamluk sultans of Egypt. The south and west coasts of Asia Minor formed different Muslim lands apart from the tiny enclaves such as Rhodes that were the heirs of the cnisading kingdoms. To the north was the ancient but still powerful Byzantine Empire and its as yet insignificant Muslim neighbours the Ottomans. The territory of the Ottomans was originally the smallest of tbe Turkish emirates in western Anatolia. It was also the nearest of all the ghazi lands to mighty Constantinople, capital of the great Byzantine Empire. This proximity to Byzantine lands meant that when they began to expand the Ottomans faced greater resistance compared to other ghazi movements. But relations with the Byzantine Empire also gave their leader Osman the time to build up the social and political structures that would sustain the new acquisitions that his sword had won.

His location too, near ancient and well-established trade routes that no rebellion could erase, put the Ottomans in touch with great traditions of civilisation and good government that would help them flourish in the centuries to come.

The first Ottoman advance

The first expansion by the Ottoman emirate was made at the expense of its Turkish neighbours in Anatolia. An important development took place in 1291. When a succession dispute for the Mongol Ilkhanate broke out in Persia the Anatolian Turcomans rebelled and the emir Yavlak Arslan was killed. His son Ali took revenge, but then renounced his allegiance to the Seljuks and their Mongol overlords. Ali went on to attack Byzantine territory, but after some fighting established peaceful relations with the Christian state. His neighbour to the south, the Ottoman ghazi called Osman, was not so peacefully inclined and when Ali made peace with the Byzantines Osman took over the leadership of the raids. Other gitazis were attracted by his success, and by 1301 Osman was knocking on the gates of Nicaea (Iznik). The Ottoman conquests were about to begin. By this time Osman already controlled a territory stretching from Dorylaeum (Eskisehir) to Brusa (Bursa). Before long the Byzantine Emperor dispatched an army against Osman, but Osman ambushed and destroyed it at Baphaeum (Koyunhisar), forcing the localpopulation to flee to Nicomedia (lzmit) while other Ottoman forces approached Bnisa. He finally succeeded in capturing Melangeia (Yenishehir), an act that cut communications between Brusa and Nicaea.
The victories around Nicaea made Osman famous, and thousands of immigrant Turkish households flocked to his standard. As a result the Byzantine Emperor Andronicus became so concerned by the Ottoman threat that he sought alliances. A deal was struck with the Persian llkhan Oljeitu, to whom the emperor offered his sister in marriage. As a result of this arrangement a force of Mongols invaded the Ottoman district of Eskisehir, where they were soundly beaten by Osman's son Orkhan. The Ottomans were triumphant. The old Seljuk kingdom had ceased to exist in 1302 and the likhanate was in disarray, so there was little to stop any further Ottoman moves against the Byzantine Empire. Wars and raiding continued, and shortly after Ostnan's death in 1326 Orkhan captured Brusa (Bursa), which became the first Ottoman capital. It is from this event that historians commonly date the founding of the Ottoman Empire and the beginning of a long process of military conquest.

By 1330 Emperor Andronicus III was compelled to acknowledge the initial Ottoman conquests. But the advance did not stop there, and the emperor lost Nicaea (Iznik) to them in 1331. Then Nicomedia (lzmit) fell in 1337, and by annexing the beylik of Karasi in 1345 the Ottomans found themselves facing Europe for the first time. Orkhan appointed his son Suleiman bey of Karasi, from where he intended to extend his conquests into the Balkans. The whole south coast of the Sea of Marmara and the Asiatic shore of the Dardanelles were now in Ottoman hands.

The next moves by the Ottomans were belped immeasurably by the weakness of the Byzantine Empire. In 1342 civil war broke out between the supporters of the boy emperor John V Palaeologus (1341-71) and his rival the Regent John (later John VI) Cantacuzenus. In the early years of the struggle John Cantacuzenus made use of the soldiers of the shazi leader Umur Bey. But when Umur Bey's base at Izmir was raided in 1344 he was no longer able to send troops to John Cantacuzenus. Umur Bey recommended as an alternative his ally Orkhan, and when the rebel emperor accepted the idea the Ottomans were placed centre stage in the affairs of the Byzantines.

A toehold in Europe

Orkhan seized the opportunity to form a strong alliance with John Cantacuzenus, and even went to the extent of marrying his daughter in 1346. Six thousand Ottoman troops were provided for the rebel cause, and shortly afterwards the Regent Cantacuzenus became Emperor John VI. He held the throne for eight years, supported by his loyal Ottoman allies, who spent most of their time holding off attacks from Serbia. When his ally Umur Bey died in 1348 Orkhan became the unquestioned leader of the Muslim forces at this vital edge of tbe Byzantine Empire. By the following year 20,000 Ottomans were actively engaged in Byzantine warfare, all the while making themselves utterly familiar with the highways and byways to which they would one day return on their own behalf.

In 1352 a new contest began for the Byzantine imperial throne wben John V Palaeologus attempted to win back what he had lost. Orkhan was again called in to help John Cantacuzenus. In command of the army was his son Suleiman, wbose operations took him as far as Adrianople (Edirne) in Thrace. On his way there he captured Tzympe (Chimenlik) on the isthmus of Gallipoli (Gelibolu), where he established a Turkish military post. This greatly alarmed his ally John VI Cantacuzenus, because the occupation of Tzympe looked a far more permanent affair than the customary mercenaries' camp. Negotiations began for Tzympe's return to the Byzantines after payment of a large sum of money, but nature intervened just as an agreement seemed to have been reached. In 1354 a large earthquake knocked down the walls of several nearby towns. The Ottoman troops rushed to seize the places as their terrified inhabitants fled to safety. What nature had given them they were determined to secure.

Gallipoli (Gelibolu) thus became the Ottomans' toehold in Europe, and soon tbeir occupation spread to the surrounding lands. Mosques, schools and Muslim lawcourts began to appear. Orkhan also sought allies who could strengthen his position, of whom the most significant were the Genoese. Back in Constantinople John VI Cantacuzenus was blamed for allowing the situation to develop in the Ottomans' favour and was forced to renounce his throne.

Suleiman, who had taken the Turks into Europe, died in 1357 following a fall from his horse, while his father Orkhan died in 1359. He had survived all but one of his sons, who became Sultan Murad I and reigned until his death at the battle of Kosovo in 1389. Murad 1 stepped successfully into his brother's conquering shoes and after consolidating his position in Asia Minor won an important victory when he captured Adrianople in 1361. This city, renamed Edirne, was later to become the new Ottoman capital. The newly captured lands were settled with immigrants from Anatolia.

Murad also demonstrated how easily Constantinople could be outflanked by marching eastwards to the Black Sea. The current Byzantine Emperor, John V Palaeologus, could only look on helplessly from the walls of Constantinople as his capital was surrounded. In desperation he signed a treaty with Murad I. It guaranteed his safety but made the emperor into practically an Ottoman vassal. But in contrast to his humiliation the nearby Balkan states were preparing for war against the Ottomans. So from Edirne the Turksmoved upstream in 1363 to capture Philippopolis (Plovdiv) with its valuable rice fields. It was an important, yet isolated, frontier base, but it brought the growing power of the Ottomans close to the sphere of influence of Serbia.

The Serbian challenge

While the Ottomans had been expanding out of Anatolia a different force had been growing in the north to challenge the Byzantine Empire. In 1331 Stephen Dushan ascended the throne of Serbia and spent the next 20 years building up a Serbian Empire. Just like the Ottomans Dushan had taken full advantage of the Byzantine succession dispute to conquer much of Albania as well as parts of Thrace and Macedonia. In 1346 he had himself crowned 'Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks', and invited the Venetians to join him in the conquest of Constantinople. Rumours that he was interested in reuniting the Catholic and Orthodox confessions ensured Papal support for the scheme, but in 1355, just as he was about to set off on a grand crusade, Stephen Dushan died.

Dushan's Serbian Empire rapidly started to crumble after his death, but when the Ottomans occupied Philippopolis in 1363 there was sufficient glory left in the Serbian name to persuade its defeated commander to seek help from that direction. A united force of Serbs, Bosnians and Wallachians joined a Hungarian army under the Hungarian king, Louis the Great, and marched against the Turks at Edirne. But their rapid advance made the crusaders lazy. Less than two days from Edirne they made camp on the banks of the river Maritza and celebrated their progress with feasting. The local Ottoman commander led his predominately light cavalry arm in an ambush by night. The Christians fled across the Maritza, which was in spate, and thousands drowned.

In 136S the Sultan transferred his capital from Bursa to Edirne, a move of tremendous significance. To locate one's capital on the edge of one's territory next to hostile neighbours was an act of enormous self-confidence, and it proclaimed the sultan's future intentions with profound clarity. Edirne was also a natural centre of horse-breeding andsoon became the seat of the imperial stables and stud-farms for the cavalry. Long after the capture of Constantinople it remained a favourite imperial residence.

From Edirne Murad I could look out over his territory as far as the coast of the Black Sea, a stretch of land that encircled the rapidly decreasing area dependent upon Constantinople. The toehold in Europe established at Gelibolu had now been replaced by a mighty presence and a dramatic statement of intent. The Ottoman advance could now continue from a firm base. Tbe greatest phase of the conquests was about to start.