XVI

TIMUR’S INVASION OF ASIA MINOR[Largest view.]

TIMUR’S INVASION OF ASIA MINOR

[Largest view.]

one hundred and sixty years before.[615]He then went boldly forth to meet the Tartars, but, when he realized that his twenty thousand horsemen could not hold their own against Timur, he withdrew to the north-west, abandoning the city to its fate.[616]

It took Timur eighteen days of incessant attack to weaken the defences of Sivas. The walls were sapped, and piles driven under them, which were smeared with pitch and set on fire. Only after several of the towers had fallen did the garrison agree to surrender upon Timur’s promise that their lives should be spared and the whole city preserved. As far as the Moslems were concerned, this promise was partially fulfilled. They were allowed to pay for their freedom. The city, however, was pillaged and burned, and its Christian inhabitants were sold into slavery. Three or four thousand Armenian horsemen, who had been bravest and most stubborn in the defence, were buried alive in the moats.[617]

The destruction of Sivas was in August, 1400.[618]The conduct of Timur after this victory lends colour to the supposition that it was not at all in his mind to subdue Asia Minor and overthrow the Ottoman Empire. He had come not to conquer, but merely to give Bayezid a salutary lesson. Instead of continuing his westward march, Timur withdrew to the Euphrates, and spent the next eighteen months in thefamous campaigns that ended in the destruction of Damascus and Bagdad.

In the winter of 1401-2, fresh from his triumphs in Syria and Mesopotamia, Timur paused for several months on the confines of Asia Minor. He had not yet made up his mind to attack Bayezid.

Through a Dominican friar, who had been trying to convert him, he wrote to Charles VI of France, whom he believed to be the most powerful king of the Occident, making to him a proposal for sharing the world, such as no European sovereign had put before him again until Alexander met Napoleon on the raft at Tilsit.[619]There was also an exchange of gifts and embassies with Genoa. The Genoese ambassador pointed out to Timur the necessity of destroying Bayezid. When the Tartar embassy went to Pera, the standard of Timur was flown in its honour from the Galata tower.[620]Even the distant king of Castile had two ambassadors in the camp of Timur, who were privileged to witness the battle of Angora from the Tartar side.[621]

The fall of Sivas was the first set-back of Bayezid’s career. It came to him as a heavy blow, if we are to believe the Ottoman chroniclers. But it did not result in spurring him on to immediate military and diplomatic effort, as such a calamity would certainly have done in the early days of his reign. He had become a voluptuary, debauched mentally and physically. His pride and self-confidence had increased in inverse ratio to his ability to make good his arrogant assumptions.

Negotiations were reopened between the two great sovereigns of Islam. The letters became more menacing on the part of Timur and more insulting on the part of Bayezid.[622]Timur’s earlier admiration for Bayezid as champion of the Prophet against the infidels, and his earlier reluctance to make war against a nation of his own faith, had disappeared in the course of his last conquests. The fire at Damascus was one indication of Timur’s religious indifference: his willingness to treat with Christian Europe was another. At last determined to humble Bayezid, Timur brought his huge army into camp near Sivas. He did not, however, definitely decide upon the invasion of Ottoman territory until he heard that Bayezid was starting for Tokat.

To strike at Bayezid directly was impracticable, owing to the hardships that his large army would encounter in traversing the thickly wooded and mountainous country between him and the region in which his spies reported the Ottoman army to be. He followed the valley of the Halys to Caesarea. By keeping to the water-courses his army was enabled to live off the land. It was just harvest time, and the soldiers gathered in all the grain in the valley of the Halys and its tributaries. It took six days to get to Caesarea, and four days more to reach Kirsheïr. In the meantime, the advance guard of the Osmanlis had fallen back from Tokat and Amassia to Angora. By a reconnaissance from Kirsheïr, Timur learned that the bulk of the Ottoman forces were at Angora. Three days more brought him to the Ottoman outposts.[623]

There was no further parley. Timur saw in Bayezid an enemy that must be crushed. He had every confidence in his star. Bayezid had hardly recovered from the awakening which came when he realized that Timur was actually marching against him. His resourcefulness, his coolness, his marvellous judgement had left him. His soldiers were exhausted by forced marches in the hot midsummer sun, for it was the last week of July.[624]He could have withdrawn for several days to the mountains to recuperate, and let Timur do the seeking. Then Timur would have expended his strength in an attack upon Angora under the broiling sun. Timur could not have left Angora uncaptured behind him, or have moved westward in pursuit of the Osmanlis without waiting to replenish his food supply. But Bayezid, eager and lacking in self-control, as men sometimes are from the presentiment of disaster rather than the confidence of success, decided upon an immediate battle. This was just what Timur wanted.

Bayezid’s second mistake was in putting his Tartar allies in the first line. He did this in accordance with the established Ottoman tactics, that the enemy be allowed to expend his strength upon the untrained rabble, and to reach the second line exhausted. But he had not taken into consideration the fact that these Tartars were kin to his enemy,and could easiest desert when placed in front.[625]A third mistake was in taking the offensive rather than waiting for Timur to attack;[626]for Bayezid had the advantage in being able to choose his position. From Nicopolis to Plevna, Tchataldja and Gallipoli, the Osmanlis have always shown their fighting qualities best in a defensive action.

There was nothing the matter with Bayezid’s army. Like the empire he had been building, it was composed of all the Moslem and Christian elements of Asia Minor and the Balkan peninsula. With the exception of the Tartars, they were loyal to Bayezid, and had become accustomed to fighting together with a discipline and bravery fully equal to, if not superior to, that of Timur’s veteran warriors from central Asia. The right wing was under Stephen Lazarevitch, brother-in-law and faithful friend of Bayezid. In addition to Serbian horsemen, Stephen’s command contained the other European contingents, Moslem as well as Christian.[627]In the left wing were the troops of Anatolia, led by Soleiman Tchelebi, Bayezid’s eldest son. The emir himself was in the centre, surrounded by his janissaries and his three sons, Mustafa, Isa, and Musa. To Mohammed, whose reliability and judgement Bayezid esteemed second only to Soleiman’s among his sons, was entrusted the rear guard.[628]

Elephants were used on both sides. Timur’s first line threw balls of Greek fire into the midst of the archers who were covering the Ottoman advance. The desertion of theTartar auxiliaries, who formed a quarter or more of Bayezid’s total strength, decided the battle before the fighting really started.[629]When Bayezid saw that he could not prevent the Tartars from going over to Timur, he ordered the left wing to advance to the attack.

Fifteen thousand men fell in a vain effort to pierce the Tartar lines. The slaughter was so great that Soleiman was unable to rally his forces.[630]When they broke and fled, the offensive movement of the Osmanlis was at an end. Bayezid, now on the defensive, was driven back step by step. His retreat was cut off. With his bodyguard and the refugees from other battalions, he made a gallant fight upon a small hill, holding off the enemy for hours.[631]Long after nightfall, when the main forces of Timur’s army, who had been pursuing the Osmanlis, returned to the scene of victory, they learned that the Ottoman sovereign was still fighting on the hill. There was no more hope for Bayezid. The last of the defenders were overwhelmed. ‘The Thunderbolt continued to wield a heavy battle-ax. As a starving wolf scatters a flock of sheep, he scattered the enemy. Each blow of his redoubtable ax struck in such a way that there was no need of a second blow.’[632]At last, as he tried towithdraw over the hill, he was overpowered,[633]his hands were bound behind his back, and he was sent to Timur’s tent.

With Bayezid, his son Musa and several of his highest officials, one of whom was Timurtash, were taken prisoners. Mustafa disappeared. Soleiman, Mohammed, and Isa succeeded in escaping.[634]

The battle of Angora is memorable in Ottoman annals as the only crushing defeat experienced by the Osmanlis in the first three centuries of their history, and as the one instance where a sovereign of the house of Osman has been captured. But it cannot be placed among the memorable conflicts that have changed the course of history; for it did not affect the fortunes of the nation that won or of the nation that lost. It was not like Kossova and Nicopolis.

Bayezid was brought before his conqueror at midnight, when Timur was seeking relaxation from the strain of the combat in his favourite game of chess with his son, Shah-Rokh. Bayezid had lost nothing of his haughty spirit, and did not try to win the good graces of Timur. He was never more the sovereign than in this moment of humiliation. So impressed was Timur with the manner and bearing of his prisoner, that he accorded him every honour due to his rank.

But this spirit of generosity quickly passed. Whether it was because Bayezid tried to escape or that Timur feared an attempt at rescue as he marched farther into Ottoman territory, Timur’s attitude soon changed. To break Bayezid’s spirit he began to mock him and treat him withcontempt. He ordered him to be put in chains at night, and to be carried on the march in a litter with bars, which was nothing less than a cage.[635]At Brusa, Bayezid’s haremwas taken from him. It has been recorded that Timur went so far as to use his unfortunate rival as a footstool for mounting his horse and at the table, and that Bayezid was compelled to witness the degradation of his wife, the Serbian princess Despina, who in a state of nudity served the Tartar conqueror with wine at his feasts.[636]

This disgraceful treatment, coupled with the fact that his sons made no attempt to bring another army to fight for their father’s freedom or even to ransom him, at last broke the spirit of Bayezid. For nine months he had been held up to ridicule in the Tartar army. He had seen his harem violated. He had seen Timur pass with ease from one portion of the Ottoman possessions in Asia to another. Smyrna, which he had never been able to attack, fell before the Tartars. The Turkish emirs whom he had dispossessed were settled again in their states. When Bayezid learned that he was to be taken to Konia, and then to Samarkand, his mind gave way. He died of apoplexy at Ak Sheïr.[637]Timur allowed Musa to take his father’s body to Brusa for burial.[638]He had by this time lost interest in the Osmanlis and Asia Minor, and was dreaming of new fields of conquest.

Bayezid died a victim not ‘to his destiny’, as the Ottoman historians put it, but to his vices, and to his abandonment of the policy of his predecessors, that assimilation should keep pace with territorial aggrandizement. There never need have been an Angora. Timur had no inclination to invade the Ottoman dominions. Bayezid goaded him into it. Even if the test of an Angora had been necessary, Bayezid would have sustained it and weathered the Tartar storm, had he been the same man he was at Nicopolis. In facing a Tartar invasion, the advantage was all on Bayezid’s side. He failed because his mental and physical faculties, which rivalled, if they did not surpass, those of any man of his age, had become impaired by a life of debauchery.

After the victory at Angora, the Tartar hordes swept across Asia Minor. Timur sent his grandson, Mohammed-Sultan, in pursuit of Soleiman, who succeeded in escaping from Brusa just as the Tartar horsemen arrived at the gates of the city. The Tartars stabled their horses in the mosques, while the city was ransacked for its treasures and its young girls. Fire followed pillage.[639]The sons of Alaeddin of Karamania were set free, and Bayezid’s wives and daughters, with one exception, were sent to Timur, who had established his residence at Kutayia.

In the search for Soleiman, of whose movements he was in ignorance, Mohammed-Sultan sent soldiers north to Gemlik and Nicaea, and west to Mikhalitch and Karasi. These cities were pillaged, and their inhabitants reduced to slavery.When Mohammed-Sultan learned that Soleiman had escaped to Europe, he sent an embassy to him demanding unconditional surrender. There was no reply. The question of invading Europe was referred to Timur. In the meantime, the advance guard of the Tartars devastated the country which was the cradle of the Ottoman race, while their commander celebrated at Yeni Sheïr his marriage to the eldest daughter of Bayezid. Thus were united the families of Timur and his vanquished foe.[640]

Mohammed-Sultan went into winter quarters at Magnesia.[641]Timur left Kutayia in charge of Shah-Rokh, and moved on to Ephesus. He recalled the columns which had been devastating western Asia Minor, and concentrated his forces against Smyrna. What Bayezid had been unable to accomplish in seven years, Timur did in two weeks.[642]The assault of Smyrna was carried on with unceasing energy, and every possible measure was taken to bring it to a speedy conclusion. The walls were undermined, and bridges built out over the water in order that an attack might be made from the side of the sea. When the fortress which crowns the hill behind the city was entered from the land side, the chevaliers of Rhodes fought their way down to their galleys. With lance and sword and oar they beat off the despairing inhabitants who would have swamped their boats. All except a thousand succeeded in escaping. These were decapitated, and of their heads Timur built a pyramid to commemorate his victory.[643]

Timur returned to Ephesus. As he approached the city, children came out to meet him, singing songs to appeasehis wrath. ‘What is this noise?’ he asked. When his attendants told him, he ordered his horsemen to ride over the children. They were trampled to death.[644]

Smyrna fell in December, 1402. Timur spent the rest of the winter in Ephesus. He destroyed the work of Bayezid in Asia Minor by restoring to the deposed emirs or their heirs the emirates of Karamania, Tekke, Menteshe, Sarukhan, Aïdin, Kastemuni, and Erzindjian. When he saw that the sons of Bayezid were ready to quarrel about the succession of their father, he began to treat with Isa, Musa and Mohammed, encouraging in each the hope of recognition as sole heir. To Soleiman he sent a diploma, investing him with the Ottoman possessions in Europe as Tartar vassal.[645]

Timur enjoyed the position he had won of arbiter of the destinies of the Ottoman Empire. The princes of Europe were now seeking his favour more insistently than before Angora. Henry IV of England wrote to him most cordially, and expressed the hope that he would be converted and become the champion of Christianity.[646]

Manuel Palaeologos, who had learned from the Venetian Senate the news of Bayezid’s defeat at Angora, hurried home from Europe.[647]He banished John to Lemnos, expelled the Ottoman colonists from Constantinople, and closed their tribunal.[648]To Timur he sent an embassy offering to acknowledge his suzerainty, and expressing his willingness to pay to him the tribute that had been given to Bayezid.But when Timur responded with an order to prepare a fleet to help the Tartar hordes to pass into Europe, Manuel was seized with panic. Smyrna had just fallen, and he felt that a similar fate was now reserved for Constantinople. An ambassador was sent to Rome and Venice to implore the immediate aid of the Vatican and the Senate.[649]

Timur, however, had become tired of Asia Minor and the western campaign. He had no constructive policy. He never attempted to organize his conquests into a world empire. Like the earlier conquerors of his race, Timur was a raider. Satiety came with destruction and victory, that is, satiety for the particular conquest in which he was engaged. So he turned his back on Constantinople and the glittering possibilities of a European invasion. He wanted to return to Samarkand to enjoy the fruits of his victories. Perhaps his character was only the reflection of that of his followers.

The march had hardly started when Bayezid died at Ak Sheïr, in March, 1403. From this moment Timur forgot all about the Osmanlis. After a brief sojourn at Konia, he left Asia Minor. Within two years he died of fever while on his way to conquer China.[650]

After Angora the Ottoman army could have been annihilated; for Timur sent his victorious Tartars hot upon the heels of the refugees. Not only did they follow Soleiman to the Sea of Marmora, and the divisions which had retreated to the Bosphorus, but they pursued closely the main body ofthe army, which, to the number of possibly forty thousand, had fled along the customary line of march to the Dardanelles.[651]There Greeks and Latins vied in helping the refugees to cross.[652]A Venetian eye-witness of the crossing of the Bosphorus wrote that the Venetians in good faith offered to join with the Genoese in refusing to transport the Osmanlis who were crowded upon the Asiatic shore. But the Genoese started secretly to ferry them over to Europe, with the aid of the Greeks. Then the Venetians, fearing to lose favour with the Osmanlis, started in to help.[653]This testimony is corroborated by Clavijo, who visited Constantinople in the following year. He adds that Timur was disgusted with the way the Greeks and Latins failed to co-operate with him in destroying the Ottoman army.[654]

The astonishing fact is then clearly demonstrated that Greeks, Venetians, and Genoese made no effort to take advantage of their great opportunity. Nor did they, during the ten years of civil war that followed the death of Bayezid, make any move, in concert or separately, to drive the Osmanlis out of Europe. When it was not yet certain what Timur would do in regard to Asia Minor, or even whether he would invade Europe,[655]the Venetians and Genoese established with Soleiman at Adrianople the same friendly relations that they had been so careful to maintainwith his father, and fought each other in the Bosphorus. Pope Boniface was straining every nerve to help Ladislas of Sicily to win the crown of Hungary against Sigismund,[656]who, alone of the princes of Europe, had his hands been free, might have contested the Balkan peninsula with the warring factions of the Osmanlis.

The decade of civil war among the sons of Bayezid passed without interference from the outside world, and without a single uprising on the part of the subjugated Balkan Christians. The house of Osman, although divided against itself, did stand. In 1413, Mohammed I, triumphing over his brothers, became sole sovereign of the Osmanlis. The crisis was over, and the career of conquest, interrupted for the moment by Timur, was resumed.

Nicopolis had proved that the Osmanlis could hold against Europe what they had won. Angora had proved that they were too firmly rooted in the Balkan peninsula and in north-western Asia Minor, as an indigenous race and as a nation, to be destroyed by the misfortunes of their dynasty. Since the test of possession is ability to hold, in foul weather as well as in fair, who can deny that the Osmanlis under Bayezid had inherited the Byzantine Empire?

Whathas been said in this book on the origin of Ottoman power and the foundation of the empire is so different from statements which have found acceptance up to this time, that I am under the obligation to justify my position by a more technical discussion, and by a fuller citation of authorities, than has been given in Chapter I. I shall deal with these misconceptions singly.

Chalcocondylas is responsible for the first and widest diffusion of this error in western Europe. He claims that Osman is the great-grandson of Duzalp, ‘chief of the Oghuzes’; grandson of Oguzalp, who, aspiring to succeed his father, reached ‘in a brief time the highest fame in Asia’; and son of Ertogrul, who, in 1298,[657]with his fleet, devastated the Peloponnesus, Euboea, and Attika.[658]Closely allied to the account of Chalcocondylas is that of Hussein Hezarfenn.[659]According to Ali Muhieddin,[660]Seadeddin,[661]and Hadji Khalfa,[662]the grandfather of Osman was Soleiman Shah, prince or bey of Mahan in the Khorassan, who was compelled to leave his country at the approach of Djenghiz Khan, and lived seven years in Armenia. As he was returning home, he was drowned in the Euphrates. Two of his sons, Ertogrul and Dundar, turned back into Asia Minor, and were, through the kindness of the Seljuk Sultan, Alaeddin I, given a residence near Angora, and, later, on the confines of Bithynia. Neshri places the time of residence in Armenia as 170 years, and declares that Soleiman Shah was leader of 50,000 families.[663]Practically all of the European historians who have written later than the publication in Europe of Chalcocondylas, Ali and Seadeddin have followed closely these authorities.[664]

The western writers, whose works appeared before the translation and publication of the eastern historians, or who followed earlier western authorities, are either vague or uncertain concerning the parentage of Osman,[665]or give an entirely different story of the rise of his family. He is supposed to be the son of a Tartar shepherd, called Zich,[666]who rises to fame at the court of Alaeddin I by defeating in single combat a Greek cavalier that had killed many of the favourites of the Seljuk Sultan.[667]According to others, who give nearly the same story, the name of Osman’s father is ‘the madman Delis, a shepherd’.[668]For his success in killing the Greek, the Sultan rewards him with the castle ofOttomanzich, which is often confused with Sugut, and is claimed to be the origin of Osman’s name.[669]By another story, which is asserted to be the invention of Mohammed II, who thus wanted to legitimatize in the eyes of the world his claim to the throne of the Caesars, Osman is the descendant of a certain Isaac Comnenus, a member of the imperial Byzantine family, who fled to the court of the Seljuks of Konia, and became a Moslem.[670]

In this, as in the discussion of other misconceptions which follow, we are not at all justified in throwing out categorically the testimony of the early western writers every time that they conflict with the eastern authorities, or in ignoring them entirely, as Hammer, Zinkeisen, and Jorga have done. We must remember that Chalcocondylas and all the Ottoman historians arevery late, that they cite no sources upon which to base their assertions or inferences, and that they write with the intention to please, and under the necessity of pleasing, the Ottoman court, at a time when its rulers had become so powerful that they could not brook the recording of an humble origin for their royal house. The extravagant descriptions of Seadeddin, for example, when he speaks of Osman’s court, and his expressions such as ‘laying his petition humbly at the feet of his royal master’, &c., seem much out of place in a narrative about primitive and exceedingly plain and simple people. The western writers claim to have sources for information which are as early and as good as those of Ali and Seadeddin. Some of them certainly had.[671]We cannot claim for these writers that their stories be accepted as fact. But we can claim that they be accepted as an honest reflection of late fifteenth-and early sixteenth-century opinion concerning the founder of the Ottoman royal house—opinion derived from stories which were current in Constantinople at that time, and which, forlack of definite history, were circulated among the Osmanlis themselves up to a very much later period.[672]

The later western historians have taken, without critical examination, the Ottoman accounts of the origin of their royal family, as they have of the relationship with the Seljuks of Konia, practically at their face value. But it is not hard to prove a good case against the Ottoman historians.

The story of Soleiman Shah, prince of Mahan and leader of 50,000 families, living and ruling in the neighbourhood of Erzerum between 1224 and 1232, is very easy to disprove. The name of Mahan is often given to two cities, Dinewer and Nehawend.[673]It is rather the designation of a plain in which these two cities lay. In 1229, Sultan Djelaleddin, after his defeat by the Mongols at Mughan, passed the winter in the plain of Mahan. A certain Izzeddin was lord of the fortress there. He had been rebellioussome years before, but was ‘now serving Djelaleddin devoutly’.[674]In the history of Djelaleddin, I find absolutely no mention of a Soleiman Shah in connexion with Mahan or any other place in that region. With 50,000 families, Soleiman Shah would have been a factor in Armenia between 1224 and 1232. For that is precisely the time when Djelaleddin, Sultan of Kharesm, his logical suzerain or his enemy, was struggling with the Seljuks of Konia in that very region! In 1229, Djelaleddin was at Erzindjian, and ravaged the whole country.[675]At the same time, a cousin of Alaeddin I, a very powerful ruler, Rokneddin, was lord of Erzerum, and was strong enough to be at enmity at the same time with Djelaleddin’s invading army and with Alaeddin of Konia.[676]Other Arabic historians, and the Seljuk historian of this period, confirm the history of Mohammed-en-Nesawi in its leading points, but they, no more than the historian of Djelaleddin, make any mention whatever of a Soleiman Shah, or of an Ertogrul.[677]Nor is Soleiman Shah and his family mentionedin any of the Arabic genealogies prior to the seventeenth century, although these exist in great numbers.[678]There is only one Ottoman genealogy prior to the tables of Hadji Khalfa.[679]

The best authority on the western Turks, the late Léon Cahun, conservator of the Mazarine Library in Paris, declares that the Turkish tribes of the time of the purported Soleiman Shah and Ertogrul had no family ties. They knew no rank other than that of a man higher up in the army. In inheritance, the younger son got the land, and the older sons the movable possessions of the father. There were no family names; there are none to this day. The Turks who came into Asia Minor were without name or family. They wandered far and sold their services to get established family ties.[680]

There is one more testimony concerning the humble origin of the Ottoman royal house. The different historians of the relations between Timur and Bayezid I all speak of the taunt flung by Timur at Bayezid concerning the Ottoman ruler’s lack of royal ancestors.[681]Bayezid never made any response to this taunt, and confined his boasting, which was by no means of a modest sort, to his own and his father’s achievements, and to his power as a European ruler.

We cannot establish the ancestry of Osman. It is altogether probable that he had none of note, but was what Americans would call ‘a self-made man’.

When I call this statement, in its entirety, a misconception, I realize that I am attacking the idea of the founding of the Ottoman Empire which has been voiced by the most eminent historians and has an accepted and unquestioned place in textbooks and encyclopaedias, and in general histories.

In a French translation of Chalcocondylas, published in 1662, under the woodcut of Osman, we find these four lines:

‘De simple Capitaine en des Pays déserts,Près du grand Saladin la Fortune m’attire;Et là de ses débris je fonde cet Empire,Qui menace aujourd’huy d’engloutir l’Univers.’

I quote this verse because it seems to me to express concisely the commonly accepted idea of the foundation of the Ottoman Empire, as I find it written everywhere. Hammer, whose eighteen volumes contain a wealth of material upon the Ottoman Empire not elsewhere to be found, and who shows remarkable erudition as well as care and critical powers, perpetuates the tales about Ertogrul and Osman and the court of Konia. He makes the categorical statement, ‘The empire of the Seljuks broke up, and on its ruins arose that of Osman’.[682]Creasy has popularized the opinion of Hammer in the English-speaking world.[683]Lane-Poole, who has written the only general history of the Ottoman Empire in English in our generation, has tacitly accepted the common tradition.[684]Zinkeisen and Jorga, the only later historians whose names can be coupled for scholarly work with that of Hammer, are most unsatisfactory in their failure to take up critically the Ottoman traditions of the early days of theEmpire.[685]Leunclavius, the sole writer in Western Europe before Hammer, whose work might be called ‘scientific’, discusses exhaustively and compares critically all authorities existing at his time (1590) on most minute points of early Ottoman history, but is almost silent on the grave inconsistencies and contradictions arising from the question of the relation between the Osmanlis and the Seljuks of Konia.[686]There is the same silence in Cantemir and his translators.[687]The latest Ottoman historian says: ‘Osman’s military and political career naturally divides itself into two parts, that in which he was vassal of Alaeddin, and that in which he became sultan.’[688]An Oriental whose work has enjoyed great vogue in France declares: ‘Osman pursued through every obstacle the realization of his plan, which consisted in founding upon the ruins of the Seljuk Empire a great, free, and independent state.’[689]

I find one German scholar who, briefly touching upon the foundation of Osman’s power, rejects or ignores the connexion with the Seljuks of Konia; but he goes further afield, and makes the astonishing statement that Osman conquered Bagdad, allowed the Khalifs only spiritual power, called himself Sultan, and became master of the Moslem world, thereby connecting the Mongol conquest of Mesopotamia with the Mameluke conquest of Egypt, and attributing it all to Osman![690]

If we had good ground for rejecting the princely origin of Osman, our justification for impugning and discarding the connexion of Osman with the Seljuks of Konia is stronger still.

Kaï Kobad Alaeddin, the only Sultan to whom the name ofAlaeddin is given by common consent,[691]died in 1236.[692]He was succeeded by Kaï Khosrew II, Giazzeddin, or Ghizatheddin, who was Sultan at the time of the great Mongol invasion of Asia Minor. In the spring of 1243, Erzerum was sacked without having received any help from Konia. Some months only after this event did Kaï Khosrew move. He was defeated at Mughan, near Erzindjian, in a decisive battle,[693]and fled to Angora, abandoning his baggage. Erzindjian fell next. Then Kaï Khosrew withdrew to Sivas, and from that city sent an embassy to the Mongols, making his submission and promising an annual tribute of four hundred thousand pieces of silver. The Mongol armies penetrated as far as Smyrna. Everywhere submission was complete, although no effort was made to provide a new government for the conquered regions in the western part of the peninsula. The Emperor of Trebizond became a vassal of the Mongols.[694]

The battle of Mughan cost the Seljuk Empire its independence.[695]After 1246, when Kaï Khosrew died, the situation of the Seljuks of Konia is depicted by Shehabeddin in these words: ‘The princes of the family of Seljuk kept only the title of sovereign, without having any authority or any power. There was left to them only that which concerned their own person and their houses, the insignia of royalty, and sufficient money for expenses of an indispensable necessity. The power belonged to Tartar governors, who managed everything without opposition. It was in the name of the princes of the family of Djenghiz Khan thatthe public prayer was made, and that gold and silver money was struck.[696]When the dynasty of the Seljucides had arrived at the last degree of weakness ... races of Turks seized a large part of these countries.... The Turks recognized the pre-eminence of the prince of Kermian.’[697]There is not a word of any possible Ottoman supremacy even in his own day, fifty years later. Every source on the latter half of the thirteenth century which I have consulted corroborates the testimony of Shehabeddin.[698]I have space to give only a few of the facts which I have gathered concerning the fortunes of the Sultans of Konia during the period 1246-1300, when Ertogrul and Osman are pictured by the Ottoman historians, and by the European historians who have followed them, as basking in the sunshine of Seljuk imperial favour.

After the death of Kaï Khosrew, the empire was divided between his three sons, who, however, seemed to rule in common as vassals of the Mongols, for their names were asserted to appear together on coins in 1249.[699]During the decade after the conquest, the Mongols overran western Asia Minor. We read that Sultan Rokneddin went with the Mongol general, Baïchu, into winter quartersin Bithynia,[700]and that Baïchu received orders from Khulagu Khan in 1257 to pillage the entire Seljuk dominions. In 1264, Abulfeda gives Rum, with its capital as Konia, among the provinces ruled by Khulagu.[701]Bibars, Sultan of Egypt, succeeded in occupying Konia for a brief time in 1276.[702]In 1278, Abaka Khan opened negotiations with Haython, king of Little Armenia, with the view of making him Sultan of Rum. In 1282,Bibars, writing to Ahmed Khan, says: ‘At this moment Konghurataï’ (a Mongol general) ‘is in the land of Rum,which is subject to you and pays you taxes.’[703]In 1283, Ghizatheddin, who was ruling with the merest semblance of royalty in Konia, was deposed by Ahmed Khan, exiled to Erzindjian, and replaced by Masud. There was anarchy everywhere in Asia Minor at this time.[704]The distinguished French Orientalist, M. Huart, who studied in Konia itself the inscriptions of the Seljuk Sultans, could find nothing after this period to indicate that the two final sultans who followed Ghizatheddin were more than playthings of the Mongols.[705]

The testimony of Marco Polo is most precious to us here. When he passed through this country in 1271 he says that Konia, Sivas, Caesarea and many other cities of ‘Turquemanie’ were subject to the Tartars, who imposed their rule there.[706]It was his impression that the Turcomans were subject to local rulers, and responded to no central authority.

The last days of the Seljuks are most obscure. Masud ruled until 1296, when he was deposed by Ahmed Khan. For two years there was no ruler. Whether Firamurs ever ruled is a matter of doubt.[707]The last Sultan is generally given as Kaï Kobad, who remained Sultan for four or ten years.[708]However, there was no Sultan actually ruling as sovereign in Konia either in 1290 or in 1300. Neither Masud nor Kaï Kobad could havegiven Osman feudal rights or a charter of independence. There was no dissolution of the Seljuk Empire in 1300. In all except mere name, it had become extinct before Osman was born.

The Mongol conquerors never extended their political system to western Asia Minor. But, from 1246 to 1278, the Anatolians, Moslem and Christian alike, were in constant terror of the Mongol hordes. After 1276, the Mongols were too occupied with the Mamelukes of Egypt, and with the dissensions arising in the eastern part of their great empire, to pay much attention to the remote Turkish tribes of Rum. During the last quarter of the thirteenth century, there was no change in thestatus quoof the Seljuks at Konia that affected in any way the fortunes of these tribes. We can explain their rise into independent principalities, not by the disappearance of the Seljuk Sultans, but by the diversion of Mongol energy to other quarters.

Among early western writers there was great divergency of opinion about the number of the ‘Seljuk heirs’. I have found them represented as one,[709]three,[710]four,[711]five,[712]and seven.[713]Pachymeres, if we can trust the text of the Bonn edition,[714]is the earliest writer to mention the traditional number of ten.[715]When the Seljuk Empire fell before the Mongols, it had no heirs in Asia Minor. During the latter half of the thirteenth century and the first quarter of the fourteenth century (1250-1325) an innumerable number of village chieftains endeavoured to form states. There were many more than ten. The states which existed at the beginning of the reign of Orkhan I have put into another appendix.[716]

There is no record of Osman having attacked his Turkish neighbours. The testimony of the best Ottoman authorities is categorical on this point. Orkhan extended his father’sdominions very little to the south: not at all towards the east. Murad’s activities in Asia Minor were the least successful part of his career, and were by no means permanent. Sherefeddin Ali, whom we may regard as the best contemporary source for the end of the fourteenth century, states explicitly: ‘Bayezid reduced under his dominion a large portion of the country of Rum, that is to say, the provinces of Aïdin, of Menteshe, of Kermian and of Karamania, a thing which his ancestors had never been able to bring to an end.’[717]

In view of the facts of the case, it is strange that the idea of Osman as the powerful heir of the Seljuks, who mastered the other aspirants to that honour, has had such a long lease of life through centuries. Many of the early writers made Osman master of all Asia Minor.[718]It is commonly recorded that he captured Sivas.[719]One writer placed in that city his capital.[720]Another credited him with the capture of Konia.[721]Misinformation of this sort was given to Charles VI of France by returning pilgrims,[722]and, a century and a quarter later, to Frances I.[723]The early idea of the Osmanlis as an Asiatic people, of large numbers,[724]who conquered Asia Minor and then overthrew the Byzantine Empire,[725]has persisted to this day. One of the sanest Ottoman writers of modern times, who has brought wide knowledge and judgement to bear upon the history of the Ottoman army, is led astray by this misconception. He says, ‘It was the Arabic and Persian states that the Ottoman Empire had to fightbeforeany other’. So it is natural that he should be puzzled by finding in the military museum at Constantinople early Ottoman weapons on Byzantine and European models. He explains this by saying that these weapons were not used by the Osmanlis, but must have been captured, for the Osmanlis, naturally, would use Persian and Arabic models![726]

But Colonel Djevad is not more in error than the two greatest French authorities on Ottoman architecture. Saladin, in his summary of Ottoman history, instructs his readers as follows: ‘Alaeddin III, conquered by the Mongols, abandoned the sovereignty to Osman.... When the Osmanlis penetrated into Anatolia ... in proportion to the extension westward of the Ottoman Empire, we shall see the influence of Byzantine architecture increase.... Little by little, as the Turks approached Constantinople, this impregnation of the influence of Byzantium had an increasingly greater importance in the development of Ottoman art.’[727]This misconception of the origin of the Osmanlis leads him to state: ‘It is then indispensable to study the Seljuk monuments of Konia, which havenecessarilyserved as models to the first Ottoman monuments.’[728]From his premisses, Saladin has argued rightly. But his historical facts are wrong. Even if they were not, his conclusion could still be proved wrong. The refutation of his statement exists in the two earliest Ottoman buildings, the school and the kitchen for the poor at Nicaea, the date of whose construction Seadeddin places in 1331.[729]Both of these are typically Byzantine. In Brusa there is no Ottoman building of the Seljuk type which can be proved to have been constructed prior to Mohammed I (1413-21).[730]Parvillée, to whom the whole world owes a debt of gratitude for his able reconstruction of theprecious historic monuments of Brusa, starts his scholarly work on Ottoman architecture in the fifteenth century with these words: ‘Towards the end of the thirteenth century the Seljuk Empire disappeared. On its ruins arose that of Osman.’ He not only follows Hammer: he uses his very words![731]From the historical point of view, I maintain that the Byzantine influence was an indissoluble factor in the evolution of Ottoman architecture from the very beginning. In this I am supported, from the expert architect’s point of view, by the two German authorities on this subject.[732]The Seljuk, Arab, and Persian influences entered in at a considerably later period.

There exists in tradition and in law an intimate connexion between the House of Osman and the Grand Tchelebi of Konia. This has been pointed to as a confirmation of the hypothesis that the Ottoman sovereigns derived their authority originally from the Seljuks of Rum. I do not deny the force of tradition. In the absence of early records, the beginning of this connexion must remain a moot question. But the evidence from outside sources makes reasonable my doubt as to the existence of this connexion before the reign of Mohammed I or Murad I.

There are two other arguments which might be adduced in this appendix, the questions of Osman’s title as an independent ruler, and of the chieftainship as an elective office among the Turkish tribes. But both of these have already been discussed in the text and the foot-notes of the chapter on Orkhan.

Inorder to support the contention of this book, that the Ottoman Empire was founded (in the durable sense of that word) upon the ruins of the Byzantine Empireas it existed at the time of Osman(1300), and gained its power and prestige in the Balkan peninsula rather than in Asia Minor, there must be set forth, as far as it is possible to do so within the limits of an appendix, anexposéof the extent and power of the other emirates of Asia Minor during the fourteenth century. Such a review is useful, not only to prove the argument, but also to enable the reader to follow intelligently the development of Ottoman power; for there are difficulties attendant upon the writing and the reading of a history where the geographical names are unfamiliar. The writer is faced with the dilemma of making his work meaningless or uninteresting: meaningless if he fails to enlighten his readers as to the places and peoples whom he mentions; uninteresting if he interrupts his narrative with technical, encyclopaedic explanations.

A special map accompanies this appendix. The list of emirates contains after each name a number in brackets, which refers to the map. As in almost all cases the geographical limits are vague, the general position only of each emirate can be given. To put in definite boundary lines would be mere conjecture. Then, too, at different times during the fourteenth century, independent emirates overlapped each other. Sometimes they were confined to single cities or villages.

In preparing this appendix, I am indebted to several modern scholars whose work is most suggestive.[733]But I believe that this

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