This article contains Ottoman Turkish text, written from right to left with some Arabic letters and additional symbols joined. Without proper rendering support, you may see unjoined letters or other symbols.
According to Muslim scholar Ibn Battuta, Orhan was "the greatest of the Turcoman kings and the richest in wealth, lands, and military forces".[4]
Passage of power
Osman Gazi died in either 1323 or 1324,[5] and Orhan succeeded him. According to Ottoman tradition, when Orhan succeeded his father, he proposed to his brother, Alaeddin, that they should share the emerging empire. The latter refused on the grounds that their father had designated Orhan as sole successor, and that the empire should not be divided. He only accepted as his share the revenues of a single village near Bursa.
Government
According to some authorities, it was in Alaeddin's time, and by his advice, that the Ottomans ceased acting like vassals to the Seljuk ruler: they no longer stamped money with his image or used his name in public prayers. These changes are attributed by others to Osman himself, but the vast majority of the oriental writers concur in attributing to Alaeddin the introduction of laws respecting the costume of the various subjects of the empire, and the creation and funding of a standing army of regular troops. It was by his advice and that of a contemporary Turkish statesman that the celebrated corps of Janissaries was formed, an institution which European writers erroneously [citation needed] fix at a later date, and ascribe to Murad I.[6]
Alaeddin, by his military legislation, may be truly said to have organized victory for the Ottoman dynasty. He organised for the Ottoman Beylik a standing army of regularly paid and disciplined infantry and horses, a full century before Charles VII of France established his fifteen permanent companies of men-at-arms, which are generally regarded as the first modern standing army.[7]
Orhan's predecessors, Ertuğrul and Osman I, had made war at the head of the armed vassals and volunteers. This army rode on horseback to their prince's banner when summoned for each expedition, and were disbanded as soon as the campaign was over. Alaeddin determined to ensure any future success by forming a corps of paid infantry, which was to be kept in constant readiness for service. These troops were called Yaya, or piyade.[8] They were divided into tens, hundreds, and thousands with their commanders. Their pay was high,[6] and their pride soon caused their sovereign some anxiety. Orhan wished to provide a check to them, and he took counsel for this purpose with his brother Alaeddin and Kara Khalil Çandarlı (of House of Candar), who was connected with the royal house by marriage. Çandarlı laid before his master and the vizier a project. Out of this arose the renowned corps of Janissaries, which was considered the scourge of the Balkans and Central Europe for a long time, until it was abolished by Sultan Mahmud II in 1826.[9]
Çandarlı proposed to Orhan to create the Janissary corps, an army entirely composed of the children of conquered places. Çandarlı argued that:
The conquered are the responsibility of the conqueror, who is the lawful ruler of them, of their lands, of their goods, of their wives, and of their children. We have a right to do, same as what we do with our own; and the treatment which I propose is not only lawful, but benevolent. By enforcing the enrolling them in the ranks of the army, we consult both their temporal and eternal interests, as they will be educated and given better life conditions.[citation needed]
He also claimed that incorporating children of the conquered would induce other people to enlist: their friends and relations, who would come as volunteers to join the Ottoman ranks. Acting on this advice, Orhan selected a thousand of the finest boys from conquered Christian families. The recruits were trained according to their individual abilities, and employed in posts ranging from professional soldier to Grand Vizier. This practice continued for centuries, until the reign of Sultan Mehmed IV.[citation needed]
Orhan invaded Byzantine territories in northwest Anatolia. First, in 1321, Orhan captured Mudanya, the port linking the city of Bursa to the Sea of Marmara coast. He then sent a column under Konur Alp towards the west Black Sea coast; another column under Aqueda to capture Kocaeli, and finally a column to capture the southeast coast of the Sea of Marmara. Then, he captured Bursa by persuading its Byzantine commander to defect. As Evrenos Bey, he became a commander of light cavalry, and he and his sons and grandsons led Ottoman troops in the Balkans. Once Bursa was captured, Orhan sent cavalry towards the Bosphorus, capturing Byzantine towns on the Marmara coast. There were even sightings of Ottoman light cavalry along the Bosphorus coast, and Ottoman forces laid siege to Nicaea (second only to Constantinople in the Byzantine Empire).
In 1329, Byzantine Emperor Andronikos III led a mercenary army to relieve Nicaea and regain Kocaeli. In the ensuing battle of Pelekanon (now Darica, near Scutari, now Üsküdar), on 10 or 15 June, Orhan's disciplined troops routed the Byzantines. Thereafter Andronikos abandoned the idea of getting Kocaeli back and never again conducted a field battle against Ottoman forces.
Nicaea surrendered to Orhan after a three-year siege that concluded in 1331. Orhan captured Nicomedia in 1337. Orhan gave the command of Nicomedia to his eldest son, Suleyman Pasha, who had directed the operations of the siege.
In 1333, Orhan captured Scutari; most of northwest Anatolia was in Ottoman hands. The Byzantines still controlled the coastal strip from Şile on the Black Sea to Scutari and the city of Amastris (now Amasra) in Paphlagonia, but these were so scattered and isolated as to be no threat to the Ottomans.
In 1345, there was a change of strategy. Instead of aiming to gain land from non-Muslims, Orhan took over a Turkish principality, Karesi (present Balıkesir and surroundings). According to Islamic philosophy of war, the areas under Islamic rule were to be abodes of peace and the other areas abodes of war. Conducting a war in abodes of war was considered a good deed. Karesi principality was a state governed by a Turkish emir and its main inhabitants were Turkish so it was an abode of peace. The Ottomans had to have special justification for conquering fellow Muslim Turkish principalities.
In the case of Karesi, the ruler had died and had left two sons whose claims to the post of emir were equally valid. So there was a fight between the armed supporters of the two claimant princes. Orhan's pretext for invasion was that he was acting as a bringer of peace. In the end of the invasion by Ottoman troops the two brothers were pushed to the castle of their capital city of Pergamum (now Bergama). One was killed and the other was captured. The territories around Pergamum and Palaeocastro (Balıkesir) were annexed to Orhan's domains. This conquest was particularly important since it brought Orhan's territories to Çanakkale, the Anatolian side of the Dardanelles Straits.
With the conquest of Karesi, nearly the whole of northwestern Anatolia was included in the Ottoman Beylik, and the four cities of Bursa, Nicomedia, Nicaea, and Pergamum had become strongholds of its power. At this stage of his conquests, Orhan's Ottoman Principality had four provinces:[10]
Original land grant area of Söğüt and Eskişehir;
Hüdavendigar (Domain of the Sultan) area of Bursa and İznik;
Koca Eli peninsular area around İzmit;
former principality of Karesi around Balıkesir and Bergama.
Consolidation period
Silver coin of the Orhan Bey period at the Iznik Turkish-Islamic Art Museum
A twenty-year period of peace followed the acquisition of Karesi. During this time, the Ottoman sovereign was actively occupied in perfecting the civil and military institutions which his brother had introduced, in securing internal order, in founding and endowing mosques and schools, and in the construction of vast public edifices, many of which still stand. Orhan did not continue with any other conquests in Anatolia except taking over Ankara from the commercial-religious fraternity guild of Ahis.
The general diffusion of Turkish populations over Anatolia, before Osman's time, was in main part a push from the Mongol conquest of Central Asia, Iran and then East Anatolia. Turkish peoples had founded a number of principalities after the demise of the Anatolian Sultanate of Rum, after its defeat by the Ilkhanate Mongols. Although they were all of Turkish stock, they were all rivals for dominant status in Anatolia.
After the Byzantine defeat of the Battle of Pelekanon, Orhan developed friendly relations with Andronicus III Palaeologus, and maintained them with some of his successors. Therefore, the Ottoman power experienced a twenty-year period of general repose.
However, as the Byzantine civil war of 1341–1347 dissipated the last resources of the Byzantine Empire, the auxiliary armies of the Emirs of Turkish principalities were frequently called over and employed in Europe. In 1346, Emperor John VI Cantacuzene recognised Orhan as the most powerful sovereign of the Turks. He aspired to attach the Ottoman forces permanently to his interests, and hoped to achieve this by giving his second daughter, Theodora, in marriage to their ruler, despite differences of creed and the disparity of age. However, in Byzantine and in Western European history, dynastic marriages were quite usual and there are many examples which were much more strange.[11]
The splendour of the wedding between Orhan and Theodora at Selymbria (Silivri) is elaborately described by Byzantine writers. In the following year, Orhan and Theodora visited his imperial father-in-law at Üsküdar, (then Chrysopolis) the suburb of Constantinople on the Asiatic side of the Bosporus where there was a display of festive splendor. However, this close relationship soured when Byzantines suffered from marauding migrant Turcoman bands that had crossed the Marmara Sea and Dardanelles and pillaged several towns in Thrace. After a series of such raids, the Byzantines had to use superior forces to deal with them.
Ibn Battuta gave the following account of Orhan during his reign:
The greatest of the kings of the Turcomans and the richest in wealth, lands and military forces. Of fortresses he possesses nearly a hundred, and for most of his time he is continually engaged in making a round of them, staying in each fortress for some days to put it in good order and examine its condition. It is said that he has never stayed for a whole month in any one town. He also fights with the infidels continually and keeps them under siege.[12]
—Ibn Battuta
Decline of Byzantine Empire
During Orhan's reign as the Ottoman emir, the Byzantine Empire declined– partly due to the ambitions of Italian maritime states and to the aggression of the Turcomans and other city Turks, but also due to civil wars within the empire.
During these years the Byzantine Empire became so weak that commercial supremacy in the surrounding seas around it became a bone of contention for the Italian maritime commercial city states. The Republic of Genoa possessed Galata, a separate Genoese city across the Golden Horn from Constantinople itself. The Genoese had fought the Byzantines earlier in 1348 when the Byzantines had decreased their customs tariffs in order to attract trade to the Byzantine side of the Golden Horn. In 1352 the rivalry for trade led to a war between Genoa and Venice. The Genoese, in resisting a Venetian fleet attacking their ships in the Golden Horn, bombarded the sea walls of Constantinople and pushed the Byzantines to ally with the Venetians. The Venetians assembled a large naval force, including hired fleets from Peter IV of Aragon and from the Byzantine Empire of John VI Cantacuzene. The sea battle between the Venetian fleet under the command of Niccolo Pisani and the Genoese fleet under Paganino Doria led to defeat of Venetians and their Byzantine allies.[13] Orhan opposed the Venetians, whose fleets and piratical raids were disrupting his seaward provinces, and who had met his diplomatic overtures with contempt. The Venetians were allies of John VI, so Orhan sent an auxiliary force across the straits to Galata, which there co-operated with the Genoese.
In the midst of the distress and confusion that the Byzantine Empire now suffered, Orhan's eldest son, Suleyman Pasha, captured the Castle of Tzympe (Cinbi) in a bold move which gave the Turks a permanent foothold on the European side of the Dardanelles Straits. He also started to settle migrant Turcomans and town-dwelling Turks in the strategic city and castle of Gelibolu (Gallipoli), which had been devastated by a severe earthquake and was therefore evacuated by its inhabitants. Suleyman refused various financial inducements offered by John VI to empty the castle and the city. The emperor pleaded with his son-in-law Orhan to meet personally and discuss the matter, but the request was either rejected or could not be carried out due to Orhan's age and ill-health.[14]
This military situation remained unresolved, in part because of the eruption of hostilities between John VI and his co-emperor and son-in-law John V Palaeologus. John V was dismissed from his imperial post and exiled to Tenedos; Cantacuzene's son Matthew was crowned as the co-emperor. But very soon John V returned from exile with Venetian help and conducted a coup, taking over the government of Constantinople. Although the two men came to an agreement to share power, John VI resigned from his imperial post and became a monk. Each of these two contestants for power was continually soliciting Orhan's aid against the other, and Orhan supported whichever side would benefit the Ottomans.[15]
Last years
The türbe of Orhan Gazi in BursaThe exterior view of his türbe in Bursa.
Orhan was the longest living and one of the longest reigning of the future Ottoman Sultans. In his last years he had left most of the powers of state in the hands of his second son Murad and lived a secluded life in Bursa.
In 1356 Orhan and Theodora's son, Halil, was abducted somewhere on the Bay of Izmit. A Genoese commercial boat captain, which was conducting acts of piracy alongside commercial activity, was able to capture the young prince and take him over to Phocaea on the Aegean Sea, which was under Genoese rule. Orhan was very much upset by this kidnapping and conducted talks with his brother-in-law and now sole Byzantine Emperor John V Palaeologos. As to the agreement, John V with a Byzantine naval fleet went to Phocaea, paid the ransom demanded of 100,000 hyperpyra, and brought Khalil back to Ottoman territory.
In 1357 Orhan's eldest and most experienced son and likely heir, Suleyman Pasha, died after injuries sustained from a fall from a horse near Bolayir on the coast of the sea of Marmara. The horse that Suleyman fell from was buried alongside him and their tombs can still be seen today. Orhan was said to have been greatly affected by the death of his son.
Orhan died soon after, likely from natural causes. It seems rather likely that the death of his son was taxing on his health, however. Orhan died in 1362, in Bursa, at the age of eighty, after a reign of thirty-six years. He is buried in the türbe (tomb) with his wife and children, called Gümüşlü Kumbet in Bursa.
Nilüfer Hatun. Christian slave of Greek descent, mother of Orhan's successor Murad I.
Asporça Hatun. Noblewoman of Byzantine-Greek origins, Orhan's first legal wife and mother of two sons and two daughters. Osman I granted her ownership of several villages.
Melek Hatun. She was the daughter of Melik Bey, son of Osman I, and thus the niece of Orhan. She was mother of Sultan Hatun[19].
Efendize Hatun. Also called Efendi Hatun, was the daughter of Mahmud Alp or the daughter of Akbaşlı Günduz Bey, Osman I's brother, and so Orhan's cousin. She was probably the real mother of Süleyman Pasha, although tradition has it that his mother was Nilüfer.[18][19][20][21]
Bayalun Hatun. Born as Byzantine princess of the Paleologo family, her real name was Holofira or Olivera. She was also called, among the different variants, Baylun, Bilun, Suilun, Biliven and Niliven. She welcomed Ibn Battuta in Bursa in 1331.[20][21][22][17]
Theodora Uroš. Stefan IV Dušan's daughter. She married Orhan when she was twelve while Orhan was seventy.
Süleyman Pasha (1316-1357) - with Nilüfer Hatun or more probaly with Efendize Hatun.[20][23][21] Orhan's eldest son, he was at the head of the expansion campaigns in Thrace. He died of wounds sustained after a fall from his horse.
Ibrahim Bey (1316-1362) - with Asporça Hatun. Governor of Eskişehir, was executed by the order of his half-brother Murad I.
Şerefullah Bey (died after 1324) - with Asporça Hatun.
Kasım Bey (?-1346) - maybe with Nilüfer Hatun.[24]
Murad I (1326-1389) - with Nilüfer Hatun. Sultan of the Ottoman Empire after his father.
Halil Bey (1347-1362) - with Theodora Kantakouzene. As a child, he was kidnapped by Genoese pirates and ransomed with the help of John V Palaeologus, her mother's brother-in-law. Subsequently, Halil married John's daughter, Irene, by he had two sons. At his father's death, he was executed by his half-brother, the new Sultan Murad I.
Hatice Hatun. She married her cousin Süleyman Bey, son of Saru Batu Savci Bey and nephew of Osman I. They had two sons, Hamza Bey (who had a son, Mehmed Bey) and Mustafa Bey (who had a son, Osman Bey), and two daughters, Ilaldi Hatun and Fatma Hatun.
Selçuk Hatun - with Asporça Hatun. She married Süleyman Bey, son of Mehmed of Aydin.
Fatma Hatun - with Asporça Hatun.
Sultan Hatun (1324-1347) - with Melek Hatun.
Related Research Articles
Bayezid II was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1481 to 1512. During his reign, Bayezid consolidated the Ottoman Empire, thwarted a pro-Safavid rebellion and finally abdicated his throne to his son, Selim I. Bayezid evacuated Sephardi Jews from Spain following the fall of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada and the proclamation of the Alhambra Decree and resettled them throughout Ottoman lands, especially in Salonica.
Murad I was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1362 to 1389. He was the son of Orhan Gazi and Nilüfer Hatun. Murad I came into the throne after his elder brother Süleyman Pasha's death.
Mehmed I, also known as Mehmed Çelebi or Kirişçi, was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1413 to 1421. The fourth son of Sultan Bayezid I and Devlet Hatun, he fought with his brothers over control of the Ottoman realm in the Ottoman Interregnum (1402–1413). Starting from the province of Rûm he managed to bring first Anatolia and then the European territories (Rumelia) under his control, reuniting the Ottoman state by 1413, and ruling it until his death in 1421. Called "The Restorer," he reestablished central authority in Anatolia, and he expanded the Ottoman presence in Europe by the conquest of Wallachia in 1415. Venice destroyed his fleet off Gallipoli in 1416 as the Ottomans lost a naval war.
Murad II was twice the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1421 to 1444 and from 1446 to 1451.
Osman I or Osman Ghazi was the founder of the Ottoman Empire. While initially a small Turkoman principality during Osman's lifetime, his beylik transformed into a world empire in the centuries after his death. It existed until shortly after the end of World War I.
Süleyman Pasha was the eldest son of Orhan, the second ruler of the newly established Ottoman Empire. His mother was either the concubine Nilüfer Hatun or, more probably, the consort Efendize Hatun. He played a major role in early Ottoman expansion into Thrace in the 1350s. He died in a hunting accident in 1357.
Kameriye Malhun Hatun was the second legal wife of Osman I, the leader of the Ottoman Turks and the founder of the dynasty that established and ruled the Ottoman Empire. She was the mother of Sultan Orhan.
Alaeddin Erden Ali Pasha, was the son of Osman I, first Ottoman ruler, and the half-brother of Orhan I, who succeeded their father in the leadership of the Ottoman Empire. His mother was Rabia Bala Hatun, daughter of Sheikh Edebali. It is not certain whether Alaeddin or Orhan was the elder son. Some historians claim that Alaeddin was Osman's second son, but others argue that there is a good chance that he was the oldest. Nevertheless, Orhan ruled the country and became the first Ottoman ruler to take the title of Sultan. According to tradition and Ottoman historiography as presented by historian Idris Bitlisi, Alaeddin was more passive than his warrior brother, and thus stayed at home instead of fighting to expand the newly forming Ottoman Empire. He received training in the management of the state affairs. There is a good chance that Orhan was selected to inherit leadership of the Empire because of his skills as a warrior.
Nilüfer Hatun, was a concubine of Orhan, the second Ottoman sultan, and the mother of Murad I, Orhan's successor. She was the first slave origin woman to became the mother of an Ottoman Sultan.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Ottoman Empire:
Süleyman Çelebi was an Ottoman prince and a co-ruler of the Ottoman Empire for several years during the Ottoman Interregnum. There is a tradition of western origin, according to which Suleiman the Magnificent was "Suleiman II", but that tradition has been based on an erroneous assumption that Süleyman Çelebi was to be recognised as a legitimate sultan.
Şehzade Ahmed was a Şehzade (prince) of the Ottoman Empire, the eldest survived son of Sultan Bayezid II. He fought against his younger brother, Selim, in the Ottoman Civil War of 1509–1513 to succeed their father, and was a central figure in the Şahkulu rebellion. Ahmed ultimately lost the war against his brother, and was executed by Selim's order after the latter usurped the throne.
Hacı İlbey was an Ottoman commander during the early years of the empire.
Ottoman wars in Asia refers to the wars involving the Ottoman Empire in Asia. Ottoman Empire was founded at the beginning of the 14th century. Its original settlement was in the northwest Anatolia where it was a small beylik (principality). Its main rival was Byzantine Empire. In 1350s Ottomans were able to cross the Dardanelles strait and eventually they conquered most of the Balkans. Although they mainly concentrated their expansions in Europe, they also expanded their territories in Asia, mainly in Fertile Crescent and Arabian Peninsula.
Asporça Hatun was the first legal wife of Sultan Orhan of the Ottoman Empire.
Mubāriz al-Dīn Isfendiyār Bey, was a member of the Candar dynasty that reigned as bey from 1385 until his death in 1440. Although the name of the dynasty is Candar, following his reign, as a testament to its longevity certain historians of the Ottoman Empire also began to refer to the beylik by the name İsfendiyar.
Kuruluş: Osman is a historical fiction Turkish television series produced by Bozdağ Film. The first episode of the series, directed by Metin Günay and written by Mehmet Bozdağ, was aired on November 20, 2019, on the ATV network. The show is a continuation of the TRT 1 series Diriliş: Ertuğrul, which aired between 2014 and 2019.
Selçuk Hatun was an Ottoman princess, the daughter of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed I and one of his concubine, Kumru Hatun. She was the half-sister of Sultan Murad II.
Osman Bey is the main protagonist in the Turkish TV series, Kuruluş: Osman, portrayed by Burak Özçivit. He also appears as a supporting character in its predecessor, Diriliş: Ertuğrul, where he is played by Emre Üçtepe. The character is based on Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire.
References
Incorporates text from "History of Ottoman Turks" (1878)
↑ Peirce, Leslie Penn (1993). The imperial harem: women and sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. Studies in Middle Eastern history. New York Oxford: Oxford university press. pp.34–35. ISBN978-0-19-508677-5.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
