The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire; a history of the Osmanlis up to the death of Bayezid

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Title: The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire; a history of the Osmanlis up to the death of
Bayezid I (1300-1403)
Author: Herbert Adams Gibbons
Release Date: March 25, 2018 [EBook #56836]
Language: English
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Contents.
Index
List of Maps
Chronological Tables
Bibliography
(etext transcriber's note)
THE FOUNDATION OF THE
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
[Image unavailable.]
CONQUESTS OF MURAD & BAYEZID
IN THE BALKAN PENINSULA & OF BAYEZID IN ASIA MINOR
THE FOUNDATION
OF
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
A HISTORY OF THE OSMANLIS UP TO THE DEATH OF BAYEZID I
(1300-1403)
BY
HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS, PH.D.
SOMETIME FELLOW OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1916
PREFACE
FOUR years of residence in the Ottoman Empire, chiefly in Constantinople,
during the most disastrous period of its decline, have led me to investigate its
origin. This book is written because I feel that the result of my research brings a
new point of view to the student of the twentieth-century problems of the Near
East, as well as to those who are interested in fourteenth-century Europe. If we
study the past, it is to understand the present and to prepare for the future.
I plead guilty to many footnotes. Much of my text is controversial in
character, and the subject-matter is so little known that the general reader would
hardly be able to form judgements without a constant—but I trust not wearisome
—reference to authorities.
The risk that I run of incurring criticism from Oriental philologists on the
ground of nomenclature is very great. I ask their indulgence. Will they not take
into consideration the fact that there is no accepted standard among Englishspeaking
scholars for the transliteration of Turkish and Slavic names? Wherever
possible, I have adopted the spelling in general usage in the Near East, and in
English standard lexicons and encyclopaedias. When a general usage cannot be
determined, I have frequently been at a loss.
There was the effort to be as consistent in spelling as sources and authorities
would permit. But where consistency was lacking in originals, a consistent
transliteration sometimes presented difficulties with which I was incompetent to
cope. Even a philologist, with a system, would be puzzled when he found his
sources conflicting with each other in spelling, and—as is often the case—with
themselves. And if a philologist thinks that he can establish his system by
transliterating the spoken word, let him travel from Constantinople to Cairo
overland, and he will have a bewildering collection of variants before he reaches
his journey’s end. I was not long in Turkey before I learned that Osman and
Othman were both correct. It depended merely upon whether you were in
Constantinople or Konia! After you had decided to accept the pronunciation of
the capital, you were told that Konia is the Tours of Turkey.
My acknowledgements to kind friends are many. I am grateful for the year-in
and year-out patience and willingness of the officials of the Bibliothèque
Nationale during long periods of constant demand upon their time and attention.
Professors John De Witt, D.D., LL.D., of Princeton Theological Seminary,
Duncan B. Macdonald, Ph.D., of Hartford Theological Seminary, and Edward P.
Cheyney, Ph.D., LL.D., of the University of Pennsylvania, have read portions of
the manuscript, and have made important and helpful suggestions. The whole
manuscript has been read by Professors Talcott Williams, LL.D., of Columbia
University, and R. M. McElroy, Ph.D., of Princeton University, who have not
hesitated to give many hours to discussion and criticism of the theory that the
book presents.
Above all, I am indebted for practical aid and encouragement in research and
in writing, from the inception of the idea of the book until the manuscript went
to press, to my wife, with her Bryn Mawr insistence upon accuracy of detail and
care for form of narrative, and to Alexander Souter, D.Litt., Regius Professor of
Humanity in Aberdeen University, my two comrades in research through a
succession of happy years in the rue de Richelieu, rue Servandoni, and rue du
Montparnasse of the queen city of the world.
H. A. G.
PARIS,
September 1, 1915.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
OSMAN: A NEW RACE APPEARS IN HISTORY 11
CHAPTER II
ORKHAN: A NEW NATION IS FORMED AND COMES INTO CONTACT WITH THE
WESTERN WORLD
54
CHAPTER III
MURAD: THE OSMANLIS LAY THE FOUNDATIONS OF AN EMPIRE IN EUROPE 110
CHAPTER IV
BAYEZID: THE OSMANLIS INHERIT THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE 180
APPENDIX A
TRADITIONAL MISCONCEPTIONS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE OSMANLIS AND THEIR
EMPIRE
263
APPENDIX B
THE EMIRATES OF ASIA MINOR DURING THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 277
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES 303
BIBLIOGRAPHY 319
INDEX: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, V, W,
Y. 369
MAPS
PAGE
1. CONQUESTS OF MURAD AND BAYEZID IN THE BALKAN PENINSULA AND
OF BAYEZID IN ASIA MINOR Frontispiece
2. THE EMIRATE OF OSMAN 31
3. THE EMIRATES OF OSMAN AND ORKHAN 67
4. THE EMIRATE OF MURAD 113
5. TIMUR’S INVASION OF ASIA MINOR 247
6. THE EMIRATES OF ASIA MINOR IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 278
CHAPTER I
OSMAN
A NEW RACE APPEARS IN HISTORY
I
THE traveller who desires to penetrate Asia Minor by railway may start either
from Smyrna or from Constantinople. The Constantinople terminus of the
Anatolian Railway is at Haïdar Pasha, on the Asiatic shore, where the Bosphorus
opens into the Sea of Marmora. Three hours along the Gulf of Ismidt, past the
Princes’ Islands, brings one to Ismidt, the ancient Nicomedia, eastern capital of
the Roman Empire under Diocletian. It is at the very end of the gulf. From
Ismidt, the railway crosses a fertile plain, coasts the western shore of Lake
Sabandja, and enters the valley of the Sangarius as far as Lefké. Here it turns
southward, and mounts rapidly the course of the Kara Su, a tributary of the
Sangarius, through the picturesque town of Biledjik, to a plateau, at the northwestern
end of which is Eski Sheïr, seven hours distant from Ismidt. Eski Sheïr
is the ancient Dorylaeum. It was here that Godfrey de Bouillon in 1097 won
from the Turks the victory that opened for his Crusaders the way through Asia
Minor.
From Eski Sheïr there are two railway lines. One, running eastward, has its
terminus at Angora, the ancient Ancyra, after thirteen hours of rather slow
running. The other, the main line, runs south to Afion Kara Hissar, where the
line from Smyrna joins it, and then south-west to Konia, the ancient Iconium,
which is the western terminus of the new Bagdad Railway. The time from Eski
Sheïr to Konia is fifteen hours.
From Lefké or from Mekedjé, near the junction of the Kara Su and the
Sangarius, one can drive in four hours west to Isnik (ancient Nicaea), or in
twelve hours to Brusa, which lies at the foot of Keshish Dagh (Mount Olympus).
Between Lefké and Eski Sheïr, where the railway begins to mount above the
river-bed of the Kara Su, is Biledjik. Between Eski Sheïr and Biledjik is Sugut.
West from Eski Sheïr, six hours on horse across one low mountain range, lies
Inoenu. South from Eski Sheïr, a day by carriage, is Kutayia. There is a short
branch line of the Anatolian Railway to Kutayia from Alayund, two and a half
hours beyond Eski Sheïr on the way to Konia.
If one will read the above paragraphs with a map before him, he will readily
see that this country, the extreme north-western corner of Asia Minor,
corresponds roughly to the borderland between the Roman provinces of Phrygia
Epictetus and Bithynia, and is near to Constantinople. Eski Sheïr, Sugut, and
Biledjik are close to Brusa, Nicaea, and Nicomedia. Owing to the convenient
waterways furnished by the Gulfs of Mudania and Ismidt, Brusa, Nicaea, and
Nicomedia have always been within a day’s sail of Constantinople, even in the
periods of primitive navigation. From the hills behind Eski Sheïr, Mount
Olympus is the commanding landmark of the western horizon. From
Constantinople, Mount Olympus is easily distinguishable even in dull weather.
It was this country, adjacent to Constantinople, and separated from the rest of
Asia Minor by rugged mountain ranges and the dreary, treeless plateau stretching
eastward towards the Salt Desert, which gave birth to the people who, a century
after their appearance, were to inherit the Byzantine Empire and to place their
sovereigns upon the throne of the Caesars.
II
At the end of the thirteenth century, Asia Minor, so long the battleground
between the Khalifs and the Byzantines, almost entirely abandoned by the latter
for a brief time to the Seljuk emperors of Rum, who had their seat at Konia, then
again disturbed by the invasion of the Crusaders from the west and the Mongols
from the east, was left to itself. The Byzantines, despite (or perhaps because of!)
their re-establishment at Constantinople, were too weak to make any serious
attempt to recover what they had lost to the Seljuk Turks. The Mongols of the
horde of Djenghiz Khan had destroyed the independence of the Sultanate of
Konia, and had established their authority in that city. But they made no real
effort to bring under their dominion the districts north-west and west of Konia to
which they had logically fallen heir.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, we find two Christian kingdoms,
Trebizond and Little Armenia, or Cilicia, at the north-eastern and south-eastern
extremities of the peninsula. In the north-western corner, the Byzantines retained
Philadelphia, Brusa, Nicaea, Nicomedia, and the districts in which these cities
were located—a narrow strip along the Hellespont, the Sea of Marmora, and the
Bosphorus. Asia Minor, without even a semblance of centralized authority, was
to him who could gain and who could hold.
Had there been in Asia Minor in the latter half of the thirteenth century a
predominant element, with an historical past and with a strong leader, we might
have seen a revival of the sultanate of Konia. Or we might have seen a revival of
Hellenism, a grafting, perhaps, on fresh stock, which would have put new
foundations under the Byzantine Empire by a reconquest of the Asiatic themes.
But the Mongols and the Crusaders had done their work too well. The Latins at
Constantinople, and the Mongols in Persia and Mesopotamia, had removed any
possibility of a revival of either Arab Moslem or Greek Christian traditions.
Sixty years of Latin rule at Constantinople, and in the lower portion of the
Balkan peninsula, had demonstrated the futility of any further effort on the part
of western Europe to inherit the Eastern Roman Empire. The Mongols, the
strongest cohesive military power at that time in the world, had not been won to
Christianity, and thus inspired with a desire to re-establish for themselves the
succession of the Caesars in the Levant.[1] The Italians, imbued with the city
ideal which had been so fatal to the ancient Greeks, and divided into factions in
their cities, were beginning a bitter struggle for commercial supremacy in the
East that was to lose its vital importance from the discoveries of Vasco da Gama,
Columbus, and Magellan, and to render them impotent before the Osmanlis after
centuries of misdirected energy and useless sacrifice. The last great crusade had
passed by Asia Minor to spend itself in a losing fight against the one remaining
Moslem power.
As in other critical periods of history, then, an entirely new people, with an
entirely new line of sovereigns, must work out its destiny in this abandoned
country, or—to state what actually did happen—must come, with a strength and
prestige gained in Europe, to subdue it and to possess it.
From the eighth to the thirteenth centuries a number of new ethnic elements
had entered Asia Minor. Except along the range of the Taurus and in the valleys
of rivers which emptied into the Aegaean Sea, the Greek element, or more
specifically, the Hellenic organization of imperial institutions, had gone back to
the coast cities from which it had originally come. The progress of Moslem
conquest, after driving before it into Asia Minor the more zealous and militant
Armenian and Syrian Christians, had brought a considerable immigration, partly
Syrian, partly Arab, and varying in faith. The earlier Turks, who came largely by
way of Persia, with a period of settlement in that country, belonged to the great
Seljuk movement. They were nominally Moslems, and very quickly became an
indigenous element, because they had settled themselves permanently in every
place that had been opened up to Turkish immigration by the Seljuk armies. So
firmly rooted did they become that, when the fortunes of war allotted again
temporarily some of the places which they inhabited to the Crusaders and to the
Nicaean Byzantines, they did not dream of moving out. This was the best
country they had ever seen and they had no intention of leaving it. When the
Osmanlis captured Brusa and Nicaea, they found many Moslems who had been
there for three generations. Simple-minded, tolerant of others, totally
unconscious of the privileges as well as of the obligations of an organized
society, the Turks of the earlier immigration neither opposed nor aided in the
political changes which have so frequently been the lot of Asia Minor since their
coming. This holds true of the Anatolian Turks of the present day, and will be so
as long as they remain illiterate and uninstructed.
In the first quarter of the thirteenth century there was another great migration
towards Asia Minor, towards rather than into the peninsula, because it partly
scattered itself in the mountains of Armenia and partly turned southward, going
over the Taurus and Amanus ranges into Cilicia and Syria. Some got as far as
Egypt. The earlier Seljuk invasion had been that of settlers following a
victorious army. This invasion was that of refugees fleeing before a terrible foe.
For Djenghiz Khan and his Mongol horde had come out of central Asia, and all
who could, even the bravest, fled before him. The lesson had been quickly
learned that to resist him meant certain death. Because it was a migration of
families, with all their worldly possessions, and because they had to hurry and
did not know where they were going, the great bulk of them did not advance far.
[2]
Most of the bands, after settling for some years in the mountains of Armenia
and in the upper valley of the Euphrates, were tempted by the death of Djenghiz
Khan to return home. The steep mountains and narrow valleys of Rum had
dissuaded them from trying for better luck farther west. It was too much up hill
and down dale for their cattle.[3] The resolute and adventurous pushed on into
Asia Minor, although in doing so they must have lost or have left behind most of
their women and children and flocks. For they were small warrior bands, bent
upon enlisting in the army of Alaeddin Kaï Kobad, the last illustrious sultan of
the Konia Seljuk line—illustrious because he had not yet met the Mongols and
was looked upon by the fugitives as a possible saviour and avenger. Even if they
had not the intention of putting themselves under the protection of Alaeddin
when they set their faces westward, they must needs have come into contact with
him. For of the two roads into Asia Minor from Armenia, the upper one lay
through Sivas and Angora, and the lower through Caesarea, Akseraï, and Konia.
Whichever route they took would lead them through the Seljuk dominions.
It is doubtful if Alaeddin viewed the appearance of these fighting bands with
any other emotion than that of alarm. In spite of their undoubted skill as fighters,
the Seljuk Sultan did not dare to enroll many of them in his army. If he were
defeated in battle, or if he should die, he knew well that such vigorous
mercenaries might upset his line. He could rely upon their fidelity neither against
the Kharesmians with whom he was at that time fighting (many of them were
from that Sultan’s country), nor against the Mongols with whom he must soon
measure his strength. So he followed the policy dictated by prudence. Resisting
the temptation of using them in his own army, he granted to their leaders as fiefs
districts on the frontiers of his rapidly diminishing empire which were hardly his
own to give, where they would have to work out their own salvation by
mastering local anarchy in their respective ‘grants’, or, like the Israelites of
Canaan, fight for what had been allotted to them, against the Byzantine
Emperors of Nicaea.
Under these circumstances, the tribe of destiny would be that which occupied
the grant nearest Constantinople and the remnant of the Byzantine Empire. The
Turkish tribe which settled on the borders of Bithynia, either by the direction and
with the permission of Alaeddin Kaï Kobad,[4] or independently of the Seljuks of
Konia,[5] was that whose first historic chief was Osman, the father of the
Osmanlis.
With the other Turkish tribes, which succeeded in establishing independent
emirates, the Osmanlis did not come into contact until the reign of Orkhan. So it
is unnecessary to trace their fortunes here.[6]
III
There are no Ottoman sources to which the historian may go for the origin of
the Ottoman people and royal house, or for their history during the fourteenth
century. They have no written records of the period before the capture of
Constantinople.[7] Their earliest historians date from the end of the fifteenth
century, and the two writers to whom they give greatest weight wrote at the end
of the sixteenth and the early part of the seventeenth century.[8] From the point of
view, then, of recording historical facts, one hesitates in our day to follow the
example of von Hammer, by setting forth at length, after a scientific collation,
the legends which the simple-minded Osmanlis have always accepted without
question. The Byzantines give us nothing worthy of credence about the origin of
the Osmanlis, for the reason that they had no means of getting authoritative
information. As for the early European writers, their testimony is valuable only
as a reflection of the idea which Christendom had of the Osmanlis when they
were becoming a menace to European civilization.[9]
On the other hand, these legends are not to be ignored, as they have been by
the latest authoritative writer on Ottoman history.[10] Where authenticated facts
are lacking, traditions must be examined and carefully weighed. This is essential
when we are considering the origins of a people. For no race has ever recorded
its birth. The beginnings of a people are so insignificant that they remain
unnoticed in general history until the attention of others is attracted to them by
their own achievements.
Who were the people that took upon themselves the name of Osman, their
chief, and whom we must, from the moment of their very first encounters with
the Byzantines, clearly distinguish from the other groups of Anatolian Turks that
had gathered around other leaders? Did they, at the beginning of Osman’s career,
have any distinct national consciousness? Did they have any past? Did they start
the foundation of a state with a definite goal before them? Was there any other
cause for their amazing growth and success than the mere fact that they had the
most fortunate geographical position, on the confines of a decaying empire?
With the purpose, then, of suggesting an answer to some of these questions,
and paving the way for an answer to the others later on, what the Osmanlis
accept concerning their origin and their history before 1300 must be set forth and
examined.[11]
In the year of the Hegira 616,[12] ‘because there was no more rest to be found
in all Persia’ for the Turks who had been forced out of the Khorassan[13] by the
approach of Djenghiz Khan, ‘all the wandering Turks, fifty thousand families,
followed their leader, Soleiman Shah,[14] and set out for Rum. Then was
Alaeddin I, son of Kaï Kosrew, the builder of Konia, entered upon the rule of
Rum. These fifty thousand nomad families journeyed several years in the
neighbourhood of Erzerum and Erzindjian, changing from winter to summer
quarters and plundering the unbelievers who lived there. But ... finally ...
Soleiman Shah marched again towards his homeland, with the intention of
passing through the district of Aleppo. As they came to the neighbourhood of
Djaber, they wanted to venture across the Euphrates. Soleiman Shah drove his
horse into the river to seek a ford. The bank was rocky, so the horse slipped and
fell into the river with Soleiman Shah. His end was regarded as a warning
(decision) of destiny: it appeared to be the command of God.... A part of these
Turks remained to dwell there.... There was a division among the followers of
Soleiman Shah. Some of them, who now carry the name of Turcomans of Syria,
went into the wilderness. Others went towards Rum, and became ancestors of the
nomad tribes who still wander in Rum.
‘Soleiman Shah at his death left four sons: Sonkur tigin, Gundogdu, Ertogrul,
the champion of the faith,[15] and Dundar. Some of the Turks followed these four
brothers, turned themselves again in the direction of Rum, and came to the ...
source of the Euphrates. While Ertogrul and Dundar remained there with about
four hundred nomad families, the two other brothers turned back again to their
home.’ Ertogrul marched farther into Rum, and settled near Angora at the foot of
Karadjadagh. From there he wandered to Sultan Oejoenu.[16]
Neshri now tells a story which is repeated by later Ottoman historians as a
fact. Neshri says that he heard this story from a ‘trustworthy’ man, who had
heard it from the stirrup-holder of Orkhan, who, in turn, had heard it from his
father and his grandfather. This is worthy of mention, for it is one of the very
few instances where an Oriental historian has taken the trouble to connect his
facts with what might be termed an original source:
‘As Ertogrul, with about four hundred men, was marching into Rum, Sultan
Alaeddin[17] was engaged in a fight with some of his enemies. As they came
near, they found that the Tartars were on the point of beating Sultan Alaeddin.
Now Ertogrul had several hundred excellent companions with him. He spoke to
them: “Friends, we come straight upon a battle. We carry swords at our side. To
flee like women and resume our journey is not manly. We must help one of the
two. Shall we aid those who are winning or those who are losing?” Then they
said unto him, “It will be difficult to aid the losers. Our people are weak in
number, and the victors are strong!” Ertogrul replied, “This is not the speech of
bold men. The manly part is to aid the vanquished. The prophet says that he shall
come to the helpless in time of need. Were man to make a thousand pilgrimages,
he finds not the reward that comes to him when at the right moment he turns
aside affliction from the helpless!” Thereupon Ertogrul and his followers
immediately grasped their swords, and fell upon the Tartars ... and drove them in
flight. When the Sultan saw this he came to meet Ertogrul, who dismounted, and
kissed the Sultan’s hand. Whereupon Alaeddin gave him a splendid robe of
honour and many gifts for his companions. Then gave he to the people of
Ertogrul a country by name Sugut for winter and the mountain range of
Dumanij[18] for summer residence. From this decides one rightly that the
champion of the faith, Osman, was born at Sugut. Then was Karadja Hissar, like
Biledjik, not yet captured, but was subject to Sultan Alaeddin. These were three
districts.’
Some time later, Ertogrul, acting as commander of the advance-guard of
Alaeddin’s army, defeated a force of Greeks and their Tartar mercenaries, in a
three days’ battle, and pursued them as far as the Hellespont. Ertogrul’s force
consisted of four hundred and forty-four horsemen, which he commanded in
person. After this battle Alaeddin bestowed upon Ertogrul as fief the district of
Eski Sheïr, comprising Sugut on the north, and Karadja Hissar on the south, of
Eski Sheïr. Karadja Hissar was reported captured after an elaborate siege and
assault by Ertogrul when he first came into the country. But it is again mentioned
as one of the first conquests of Osman from the Christians after his father’s
death.[19] None of the Ottoman historians records any progress of conquest
during the long years of Ertogrul’s peaceable existence. When he died, in 1288,
Osman was thirty years old. He gave to his son less than the Ottoman historians
claim was his actual grant from Alaeddin I. If their own records of Osman’s
conquests after 1289 are correct, we must believe that his tribe possessed only
Sugut and a portion of the mountain range lying directly west. When Ertogrul
died, they had no other village—not even a small mountain castle.
IV
After Ertogrul’s death there was an amazing change. Osman and his villagers
began to attack their neighbours, extend their boundaries, and form a state. We
cannot go on to a consideration of these events without mentioning some
traditions of this period which furnish us with a clue to the explanation of this
sudden change of a very small pastoral tribe, leading a harmless sleepy existence
in the valley of the Kara Su, into a warlike, aggressive, fighting people.
Osman once passed the night in the home of a pious Moslem. Before he went
to sleep his host entered the room, and placed on a shelf a book, of which Osman
asked the title. ‘It is the Koran,’ he responded. ‘What is its object?’ again asked
Osman. ‘The Koran’, his host explained, ‘is the word of God, given to the world
through his prophet Mohammed.’ Osman took the book and began to read. He
remained standing, and read all night. Towards morning he fell asleep exhausted.
An angel appeared to him, and said, ‘Since thou hast read my eternal word with
so great respect, thy children and the children of thy children shall be honoured
from generation to generation.’[20]
In Itburnu, a village not far from Eski Sheïr, and also not far from Sugut,
lived a Moslem cadi, who dispensed justice and legal advice to those of his faith
in that neighbourhood. He had a daughter, Malkhatun, whose hand was
demanded in marriage by Osman. But the sheik Edebali, for a period of two
years, persisted in refusing his consent to this union.[21] Finally, Osman, when
sleeping one night in the home of Edebali, had a dream.
He saw himself lying beside the sheik. A moon arose out of the breast of
Edebali, and, when it had become full, descended and hid itself in his breast.
Then from his own loins there began to arise a tree which, as it grew, became
greener and more beautiful, and covered with the shadow of its branches the
whole world. Beneath the tree he saw four mountain ranges, the Caucasus, the
Atlas, the Taurus, and the Balkans. From the roots of the tree issued forth the
Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile, and the Danube, covered with vessels like the
sea. The fields were full of harvests, and the mountains were crowned with thick
forests. In the valleys everywhere were cities, whose golden domes were
invariably surmounted by a crescent, and from whose countless minarets
sounded forth the call to prayer, that mingled itself with the chattering of birds
upon the branches of the tree. The leaves of the tree began to lengthen out into
swordblades. Then came a wind that pointed the leaves towards the city of
Constantinople, which, ‘situated at the junction of two seas and of two
continents, seemed like a diamond mounted between two sapphires and two
emeralds, and appeared thus to form the precious stone of the ring of a vast
dominion which embraced the entire world.’ As Osman was putting on the ring
he awoke.[22]
When this dream was told to Edebali, he interpreted it as a sign from God
that he should give his daughter to Osman in order that these wonderful things
might be brought about for the glory of the true faith. So the marriage was
arranged.[23]
That Osman and his people were good Moslems themselves, and of Moslem
ancestry, is not questioned by the Ottoman and Byzantine writers, and seems to
have been accepted as a matter of fact by the European historians who have
written upon the history of the Ottoman Empire.[24] But it seems very clear that
Osman and his tribe, when they settled at Sugut, must have been pagans. There
is no direct mention, in any historical record, of the conversion to Islam of the
tribes from the Khorassan and other transoxanian regions which, in the
beginning of the thirteenth century, appeared on the confines of Asia Minor. The
earlier Turkish invaders entered the country only after they had already for
generations been in contact with Arabic Islam. Although they displayed no great
knowledge of or zeal for their religion and were free from the fanaticism of the
Saracens, the Seljuks were certainly Moslems.
But the Turks of the later immigration, from whom Osman sprang, had never
come to any great extent under the influence of Islam, even though they had
settled for some generations on the frontiers of Persia. If we accept the testimony
of the Osmanlis themselves concerning their descent from Soleiman Shah, who
had left Mahan with fifty thousand families, we have a clear indication of their
being non-Moslems from Neshri’s account of the dispersion of this horde after
the death of Soleiman Shah. He says that some were ancestors of the Syrian
Turcomans and others of all the wandering tribes in Rum—the habitual nomads
of his own day. The testimony of travellers from the twelfth century onwards is
overwhelming in support of the pagan character of these tribes.[25]
The various Turkish tribes which entered Asia Minor at the same time as that
of Osman, and had penetrated into the western part of the peninsula, soon found
themselves in a Moslem atmosphere. They were few in number. Nothing was
more natural for them than to adopt the faith of their Seljuk kinsmen. This they
did, for exactly the same reason that the Bulgarians, although they had originally
a tendency towards Islam, adopted Christianity.[26] It was so natural that it
passed without comment. These Turks were primarily warriors, indifferent to
deep religious feeling and conviction. So they could take on a new faith—if we
can say that they ever had a faith before—without any trouble or without any
noise being made over it. Between 800 and 1000 the Seljuks changed their
religion three times.[27] At the sack of Mosul, in 1286, the Turks and Turcomans
made no distinction between Moslem and Christian, massacring the men and
carrying off the women of both sects alike.[28]
The tractability of the Turks, as of the Tartars and Mongols, in the matter of
religion was noted by every traveller, and was so well known in western Europe
that strenuous efforts were made by the popes at various times from Djenghiz
Khan to Gazan Khan to bring these Asiatic hordes into the Christian fold. A
united Christendom, even a united Rome, might have seen its missionary work
crowned with success.
Of the village and castle chieftains with whom Osman at the beginning of his
career lived on friendly terms, almost every one was a Christian. His lot was cast
with them. He was cut off from the decaying Seljuk dominion of Konia. He had
practically no intercourse with the other Turkish emirs of Asia Minor.[29] His
only serious foes were the Mongols, pagans like himself, who had, at the very
year of his birth, given what seemed a death-blow to Islam in destroying the
Khalifate at Bagdad in 1258, and who were, when Osman began his active
career, plotting with the Franks of the Holy Land to aid them against the
Egyptian sultanate—the last strong bulwark of Islam.
We see, then, the tremendous importance of these dreams of Osman, of his
meeting with Edebali, and of his marriage with Malkhatun. We cannot regard
these events in any other light than as recording, in a truly Oriental way, his
conversion to Islam. The interpretation of the dream of the Holy Book strikes
one immediately. Except in Seadeddin, the religious significance of the moon
and tree dream is overshadowed by the romance of Osman and Malkhatun. Let
us give to sheik Edebali his proper place in history as the great missionary of
Islam, who found for his faith in its hour of dire need a race of swordbearers
worthy of the task of reconstituting the Khalifate and of spreading once more the
name of Mohammed in three continents.
It was the conversion of Osman and his tribe which gave birth to the Osmanli
people, because it welded into one race the various elements living in the northwestern
corner of Asia Minor. The new faith gave them a raison d’être. This
conversion, and not the disappearance of the Seljuks of Konia,[30] is the
explanation of the activity of Osman after 1290, as in sharp contrast with the
preceding fifty years[31] of easy, slothful existence at Sugut.
Ertogrul and Osman, village chieftain at Sugut, had lived the life of a simple,
pastoral folk, with no ambition beyond the horizon of their little village. No
record exists of any battle fought, of any conquest made. Turks had already
made their appearance in raids against the coast cities of Asia Minor, upon the
islands of the Aegaean Sea, and even in the Balkan peninsula. But they were not
the Turks of Osman. Until the students of the later Byzantine Empire, and of the
Italian commercial cities in their relations with the Levant, make a clear
distinction between Turk and Osmanli, there will always be confusion upon this
point. Ertogrul had about four hundred fighting men.[32] There is no reason to
believe that Osman had more. His relations with his neighbours were those of
perfect amity.[33] There is no question of believer and unbeliever.
Suddenly we find Osman attacking his neighbours and capturing their castles.
During the decade from 1290 to 1300 he extends his boundaries until he comes
into contact with the Byzantines. His four hundred warriors grow to four
thousand. We begin to hear of a people called, not Turks, but Osmanlis, after a
leader whose own name first appears at the same time as that of his people.[34]
They are foes of Greeks and Tartars alike. They are definitely allied to Islam.
They possess a missionary spirit and a desire to proselytize such as one always
finds in new converts. Their unity among themselves, and their distinctively
different character from that of the other Turks of Asia Minor, becomes, during
the first sixty years of the fourteenth century, so marked that Europe is forced to
recognize them as a nation. Being more in the presence of Europe than the other
groups of Asia Minor, the Europeans begin to call them simply Turks, and to
take them as representing all the Turks of Anatolia.
But they had never called themselves Turks until they got the habit of doing
so through the influence of European education upon their higher classes, and
because of the awakening since 1789 of the sentiment of nationality among the
subject Christian races. Mouradjea d’Ohsson, who understood the Osmanlis
better than any other European writer of his day, wrote in 1785: ‘The Osmanlis
employ the term “Turk” in referring to a coarse and brutal man. According to the
Osmanlis, the word Turk belongs only to the peoples of the Turkestan and to
those vagabond hordes who lead a stagnant life in the deserts of the Khorassan.
All the peoples submitted to the Empire are designated under the name
“Osmanlis”, and they do not understand why they are called Turks by
Europeans. As they attach to this word the idea of the most marked insult, no
foreigner in the Empire ever allows himself to use it in speaking to them.’[35]
V
Nor were the Osmanlis, until the reign of Bayezid, one hundred years later,
the strongest military and political factor in Asia Minor. The Turkish emirates of
Sarukhan, of Kermian, and especially of Karaman, could match the Osmanlis in
extent of territory and ability to defend it.[36] We shall see later how the
Osmanlis conquered their Anatolian neighbours by a prestige won in Europe and
by soldiers gathered in Europe. One of the principal tasks of this book is to
correct the fundamental misconception of the foundation of the Ottoman Empire,
which has persisted to this day.[37] It seems to be a pretty generally accepted idea
that the Osmanlis were a Turkish Moslem race, who invaded Asia Minor, and,
having established themselves there, pushed on into Europe and overthrew the
Byzantine Empire. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Osmanlis were
masters of the whole Balkan peninsula before they had subjugated Asia Minor as
far as Konia!
Osman and his people have no history until they come in contact with the
Byzantines. The Ottoman chroniclers, and the Byzantine and European
historians who have followed them, give at some length the early conquests of
Osman. But the accounts are fantastical, obscure, and frequently contradictory. It
is the story of a village chieftain, who succeeded in imposing his authority upon
his neighbours over an increasingly wider area, until a small state was formed.
But it is not the same story as that of the other emirs who built up independent
states in the old Seljuk provinces. For Osman founded his principality in
territory contiguous to Constantinople, and by attacking
[Image unavailable.]
EMIRATE OF OSMAN
and conquering the last fragments of the Byzantine possessions along and in the
hinterland of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmora. Osman’s opponents were
all Christians. Had he attacked his Turkish neighbours first, had he gone south
and east instead of north and west, in building up his state, there would never
have been a new race born to change the history of the world.
It is impossible to state with any degree of certitude the conquests of Osman
before 1300. The record of village warfare, with its names of localities which
even the most celebrated Ottoman geographer could not, three centuries later,
identify,[38] is of no importance whatever. The extent of Osman’s principality,
when he and his people first appear in history, was very insignificant. In 1300 he
had succeeded in submitting to his authority a part of ancient Phrygia Epictetus
and Bithynia, whose four corners were: south-east, Eski Sheïr; south-west, the
eastern end of Mount Olympus; north-east, the junction of the Kara Su and the
Sangarius; north-west, Yeni Sheïr. In 1299 Osman took up his residence in Yeni
Sheïr. This was the outpost of his principality, in a position of extreme
importance, about half-way between Brusa and Nicaea.[39] In sixty years the
tribe of Osman had advanced sixty miles from Eski Sheïr, the old city, to Yeni
Sheïr, the new city.[40] They held undisputed sway only in the valley of the Kara
Su,[41] and their important villages and castles, Biledjik,[42] Itburnu, Inoenu,
Sugut, AÏnegoel,[43] Karadja Hissar,[44] Yundhissar, and Yar Hissar,[45] were all
within a day’s journey of each other.
In 1301, twelve years after Osman began to form his state, he fought his first
battle, and came into direct contact with the Byzantine Empire. At Baphaeon,[46]
near Nicomedia, the heterarch Muzalon, with 2,000 men, attempted to check a
raid the Osmanlis were making into the fertile valley whose products contributed
so greatly to the well-being of Nicomedia. It was midsummer, just before the
gathering of the harvests.[47] In a pitched battle, the unarmoured horsemen of
Osman charged so speedily and so impetuously that they broke through the
heavy line of their opponents, and the Greek commander’s retreat was covered
only by the opportune arrival of Slavic mercenaries.[48] The Osmanlis were too
few in number to follow up this victory. It is hardly probable that they made any
attack on Nicomedia.[49] But they laid waste all the districts into which they
dared to venture.
VI
At this same time the emirs whose possessions bordered on the Aegaean Sea
began to press hard upon the Greek coast cities and those few cities of the
interior, such as Magnesia, Philadelphia, and Sardes, which still acknowledged
the authority of Byzantium. In the spring of 1302, Michael IX Palaeologos came
to Asia Minor to take command of the Slavic mercenaries. At first the Turks
were in consternation, if we can believe Pachymeres, but when they saw the
unwillingness of Michael to fight, they grew bold, and compelled the Emperor to
take refuge in Magnesia. Michael’s unwillingness was not due to lack of
courage, but because he could not rely upon his Slavs. As true mercenaries, they
were fighting for pay, and there was no gold to give them. Michael’s father, the
old Emperor Andronicus II, had not sent him any money. In Constantinople the
Venetians were threatening to depose Andronicus; the almost annual
ecclesiastical quarrels, which form so large and wearisome and disastrous a
place in the last century and a half of Byzantine history, were embarrassing him;
and the treasury was empty. Even if there had been money to send, it would have
been a perilous undertaking, for the Turkish pirates were swarming in the Sea of
Marmora, and had even seized the Princes’ Islands, which are within sight of the
Imperial City.
When they saw that neither pay nor booty was forthcoming, and that they
were engaged in a hopeless struggle, the mercenaries forced Michael to allow
them to return to Europe. This was the last genuine personal effort on the part of
a successor of the Caesars to save the Asiatic themes. It ended in ignominious
failure. Not one battle had been fought. The withdrawal of the Slavs was
followed by an exodus of Greeks to the Aegaean coast, and from there to
Europe. Pachymeres claims that this exodus was general. But we cannot accept
the testimony of Pachymeres as altogether trustworthy on this point. Many
Greeks, for reasons which are set forth later, remained in the coast districts of
Asia Minor, and they did not leave, to any noticeable extent, the territory in
which Osman was operating. The Turks, however, made a raid into all the
islands along the Aegaean littoral, and crossed over into Thrace, where for two
years the fields could not be cultivated.[50]
At this critical moment, had there been any united action on the part of the
Turkish emirs, Constantinople would probably have fallen an easy prey to their
armies and to their fleets. But each emir was acting for himself, and was as much
an enemy of his Turkish rivals as he was of the Byzantine emperors. There is no
instance in which any two of them joined forces, and acted together. Throughout
the fourteenth century the armies defending the Byzantine Empire contained
almost as many Turks as those attacking it.
To the east and to the west Andronicus II, utterly unable to defend himself,
looked for aid. From this time on to the fall of Constantinople the history of the
Byzantine Empire becomes what the history of the Ottoman Empire has been
during the last hundred years. It is the story of an uninterrupted succession of
bitter internal quarrels, of attacks by former vassals upon the immediate frontiers
of its shrunken territory, of subtle undermining by hostile colonies of foreigners
whose one thought was commercial gain, and of intermittent, and in almost all
cases selfishly inspired, efforts of western Europe to put off the fatal day.
In the east, Andronicus expected much of Ghazan Khan. Were not the Turks
of Asia Minor vassals of the Mongol overlord? Andronicus sent envoys to
Ghazan to offer him the hand of a young princess who passed at Constantinople
as his natural daughter. Ghazan received them cordially, accepted the proffered
marriage alliance, and promised to exercise a pressure upon the Turks of western
Asia Minor.[51] This promise, however, was not followed by any serious action.
The Mongols were never more than mere raiders in Asia Minor.[52] Before this
marriage could be consummated, Ghazan Khan died. The young princess was
offered to and accepted by his successor. It was a useless sacrifice. For in this
first decade of the fourteenth century the long struggle between Christian and
Moslem to win the Mongols ended, temporarily at least, in the conversion of the
Khans to Islam.[53]
From the west, Andronicus received aid of the most disastrous sort. When
Ferdinand of Aragon made peace with Charles d’Anjou, King of Sicily, in 1302,
he got rid of his troublesome mercenaries by sending them to serve the
Byzantine Empire. Roger de Flor, typical soldier of fortune, who could not be
matched in his generation for daring, insolence, rapacity, cruelty, and Achillean
belief in his own invulnerability, arrived at Constantinople with eight thousand
Catalans and Almogavares, the former heavy-armed plainsmen and mariners, the
latter light-armed mountaineers of northern Spain. They were true prototypes of
the soldiers of Alva and Cortes. Roger was made Grand Duke, and married to
Princess Marie, niece of Andronicus.
Almost immediately after their arrival, the Catalans became engaged in such
bloody conflicts with the Genoese of Galata, and robbed and murdered the
Greeks with such alacrity, that Andronicus hastened to turn them loose in Asia.
Roger established himself in the peninsula of Cyzicus. Here his Catalans fell
immediately to plundering the inhabitants of the country, who soon found that
they had passed from Scylla to Charybdis, and carried heartrending tales of lust
and greed and massacre to Constantinople.[54] The one Greek general who was
doing anything noteworthy against the Turks was relieved of his spoils of war by
Roger.
In 1305, by a swift march to the relief of Philadelphia, which was being
besieged by Alisur, prince of Karamania, Roger and his Catalans showed what
they could do, if they would. The Turks were compelled to raise the siege. Roger
pursued them to the source of the Sangarius.[55] But, on the way, the Catalans
deprived their Greek allies of any portion of the rich spoils, and massacred the
Slavic mercenaries who dared to argue with them.[56] Gregoras says, probably
with reason, that Roger could have reconquered the whole of Asia Minor for the
Byzantines.[57] But that country seemed to attract him as little as it had attracted
the Mongols. He was no Crusader, glad and eager to undergo the terrible
hardships which military operations among mountains and on arid plateaus
demanded. There was no motive to make the effort worth while. So he left the
Turks to themselves and went to Gallipoli, where he let it be known that the
Catalans were preparing an expedition to repeat the Fourth Crusade.
In fear for his life as well as for his throne, Andronicus sent an envoy to offer
Roger the ‘government of the Orient’, general command of all the troops in
Asia, and twenty thousand pieces of gold. For full measure he added enough
wheat to nourish the Catalans for a year. The ‘government of the Orient’ was as
empty and meaningless a gift as the supposed ‘grants’ of the Seljuk Sultan
Alaeddin to the Turkish nomad chieftains. The only troops who could go into
Asia and accomplish anything were already under Roger’s command. But the
gold, which might have worked a charm, was left behind, as the envoy was
afraid to bring it. Roger scorned the emperor’s offer. Ten days later he repented,
and accepted from Emperor Andronicus thirty thousand pieces of gold, one
hundred thousand measures of wheat, and the title of Caesar. In return for these
princely gifts he had only to promise to lead three thousand men against the
Turks.
But a host of Spaniards, long before the discovery of America, were already
in search of ‘El Dorado’. They poured into Gallipoli on every merchant ship
from the West, and made the Byzantines begin to fear Roger more than they
feared the Turks. The remedy was getting to be worse than the evil! Before
leaving for his campaign, Roger rashly went to Adrianople to pay his respects to
the young Emperor Michael IX, who was holding his court there. On the
threshold of Michael’s bedchamber, like the Duke of Guise at Blois, he was
stabbed to death. A massacre of his attendants followed.
A train of evils fell upon Macedonia and Thrace as a result of the
assassination of Roger de Flor. Michael soon had reason to regret this ill-advised
deed. Not only did the Catalans, in their first access of fury, avenge the death of
their great leader and their comrades by unspeakable cruelties and by the
destruction of every village which they came upon, not only did they defeat the
young emperor in open battle and almost capture him as he fled from the field,
but they invited over from Asia Minor into Macedonia all the Turks who could
be induced to come.
At Gallipoli the Catalans tried to form a state. It failed owing to dissensions
among their leaders. Their raids into Thrace had so ruined that country that they
themselves began to starve. So they started upon an odyssey into Macedonia,
where the common soldiers, wearied of the civil strife engendered by their
leaders, who were continually ordering them to cut each other’s throats, decided
to make an end of these costly personal jealousies. They killed the nobles who
led them, and marched south into Thessaly. Gauthier de la Brienne committed
the imprudence of seeking their aid in Athens. In 1310 they killed Brienne, set
up in Athens a military democracy, and started to revive the Peloponnesian
Wars.[58]
The further fortunes of the Grand Catalan Company do not come within the
limits of our work. Roger and the Catalans, for that matter, were never in direct
contact with the Osmanlis. But it was necessary to give a brief statement of their
services to the Byzantine Empire in order that we might have a proper
appreciation of their services to the Ottoman Empire. When they withdrew into
Thessaly they had left the Turks behind them in Thrace and Macedonia. To the
unhappy emperor who had received them nine years before as saviours of the
Empire, this was their legacy.
Owing to the adroit leadership of their chief, Halil, and to the impotence of
Michael, whose Slavic mercenaries had deserted him and withdrawn into
Bulgaria, these Turks were soon able to throw Macedonia and Thrace into so
great anarchy that communication by land between Salonika and the capital was
no longer safe.[59] And yet Halil had only eighteen hundred men under his
command! In 1311, shortly after the Catalans had left, Halil concluded with
Andronicus and Michael an agreement by which he and his companions in arms
were to have a safe-conduct and free passage across the Hellespont. But the
Greeks, in violation of one of the most important points of this arrangement,
attempted to take from the Turks their booty. Halil, instead of quitting European
soil, sent for reinforcements. The imperial army suffered a decisive defeat, and
Michael fled, having abandoned his personal baggage. In insolent triumph, Halil
adorned himself with the imperial insignia.[60] All the region around the
Hellespont and the Gulf of Saros remained for three years without cultivation.
So desperate did the situation become that Michael was compelled to seek aid of
the Genoese and the Serbians. In 1314 the Turks of Halil were entrapped near
Gallipoli and massacred. But at what a price! The Serbians, whose co-operation
had won the day for the Greeks, saw eastern Macedonia and the open sea. They
liked it. New troubles began to brew for the Byzantines.
There were other long-standing troubles threatening from abroad. In the East,
the Mongols had overrun southern Russia, and were as great a nightmare to
Andronicus as the Goths had formerly been to Valens. The rulers of
Constantinople did not hesitate to purchase security on the Black Sea by truces,
which were sealed with the sacrifice of purple-born princesses to pagan harems,
and by humble protestations of friendship to khans who treated the imperial
ambassadors as the envoys of a vassal.[61]
In the West, another sword of Damocles was hanging over the emperors of
Byzantium. We must remember that the Greeks had been in possession of their
capital again only since 1260, and that the heirs of the Frankish emperors still
cherished the dream of a Latin re-establishment at Constantinople. In 1305, on
the very day Clement V mounted the papal throne, Philippe le Bel of France
discussed with Charles de Valois the question of retaking Constantinople.[62] The
following year Clement V exhorted the Venetians to co-operate in the conquest
of the Byzantine Empire.[63] Because they had grievances against Andronicus
which had already almost brought them to an open rupture,[64] the Venetians
readily lent ear to the Pope’s project. A treaty of alliance was concluded between
Venice and Charles de Valois, who had the powerful backing of the King of
France.[65] In 1307 Clement V wrote to Charles II of Naples urging him to
reconquer Constantinople.[66] But the Pope’s interest was soon diverted by the
project of a crusade to support Armenia and Cyprus against the Egyptians.[67]
Philippe le Bel turned his attention to the spoliation of the Knights Templars and
to the important ecclesiastical questions arising out of the movement to
rehabilitate the memory of the unfortunate Boniface VIII.
Until the death of Philippe le Bel, in 1314, however, Andronicus and Michael
always felt that there might at any moment be a repetition of the Fourth Crusade.
In seeking the reasons for the almost unhampered progress of Osman against
Nicomedia, Nicaea, and Brusa, it must not be forgotten that the Byzantine
emperors did not have even the moral support of Christendom in their losing
fight.
VII
During this first decade of the fourteenth century, the Byzantines had lost
control of practically all the Aegaean Sea, and had to struggle for a passage
through the Sea of Marmora. After the recent Balkan War, the Sublime Porte
presented a memorandum to the Powers, in which it was stated that the
possession of Rhodes, Lesbos, and Chios was absolutely essential to a
maintenance of Ottoman power in Asia Minor. History, from the time of the
ancient Persian wars to the present day, confirms this point of view. So, before
taking up the progress of Osman’s conquests, it is important to note that during
the years of Osman’s conflict with the Byzantines Chios and Rhodes passed out
of their hands.
In 1303 Roger de Flor had prepared the way for the Turks in Chios by
sacking the island. What he did not destroy or carry off fell to the Turks when
they raided the island the following year. ‘Andronicus saw that he was no longer
able to defend Chios against the Turks because of the cowardice of his
governors. The Turks already considered themselves masters of Asia Minor and
the majority of the islands.’[68] So he made Benedetto of Phocaea lord of Chios,
and the island was lost to the Byzantines. The Giustiniani family kept Chios until
the Ottoman conquest.
The emir of Menteshe invaded Rhodes about 1300.[69] But he did not succeed
in entirely conquering it. For ten years Greek and Turk struggled for the mastery
of this gateway to the Aegaean Sea. Then suddenly an outside foe arrived and
made the double conquest of Christian and Moslem alike. The Knights of St.
John of Jerusalem, driven from the Holy Land by the Egyptian conquest, had
tired of their refuge in Cyprus.[70] After vainly endeavouring to negotiate with
Constantinople for the transfer of the proprietary rights of the island to their
order, they attacked and conquered Rhodes with the encouragement of Philippe
le Bel and the Pope. This great event, equally disastrous to Turk and Greek,
happened on August 15, 1310. For more than two centuries they were able to
maintain at Rhodes a citadel and outpost of Christianity in a part of the world
which was rapidly becoming in partibus infidelium.[71]
The emir of Menteshe made a strenuous effort to recapture Rhodes. The
Hospitallers, attacked before they had time to repair and strengthen the
fortifications of the island, were saved only by the timely arrival and heroism of
Amadeus of Savoy. This is said to be the origin of the arms of Savoy, which are
perpetuated on the flag of modern Italy, and of the motto of the sovereigns of
Piedmont—F E R T, Fortitudo Eius Rhodum Tenuit.[72] The historians of
Rhodes, as well as the chroniclers of the House of Savoy, declare that Osman
was the leader of the Turks who attacked Rhodes in 1310 or 1311,[73] and that he
was instigated by the Genoese.[74]
VIII
But while Osman was, in the minds of these and other later historians,
supposed to be attacking Rhodes and making himself master of Asia Minor, he
stayed within the narrow limits of his little principality, from which he never
issued forth, as far as we know, during his circumscribed career. For he had,
within a day’s journey of his residence, the imperial cities of Brusa and Nicaea,
whose walls were far too strong for the infant Osmanlis. A little more to the
north-west, in a position of unrivalled strategic importance, defending the
logical[75] waterway to Constantinople from the valley of the Sangarius, lay
Nicomedia.
After the battle of Kuyun Hissar (Baphaeon) we hear nothing of Osman until
1308. This year is memorable for several events of great importance. The first of
these is the capture of Ak Hissar, the fortress guarding the place where the
Sangarius finishes its descent and enters the plain behind Nicomedia. This was
the last barrier opposing the progress of the Osmanlis through the narrow
peninsula which stretches out between the Gulf of Nicomedia and the Black Sea
to form the extreme north-western corner of Asia. Owing to the terrible
misfortunes which had fallen upon the Byzantines through the Catalans, no
effort seems to have been made to use Nicomedia as a base of operations for
defending this peninsula. So before the year was out the Osmanlis appeared for
the first time on the Bosphorus. In the years following the fall of Ak Hissar the
Osmanlis slowly but thoroughly extended their authority until they were in
possession of the harbours and fortresses of the Black Sea littoral between the
mouth of the Sangarius and the Bosphorus.
In the same year Kalolimni, an island of the Marmora, which lies near the
mouth of the Gulf of Mudania, was occupied by Kara Ali.[76] By this the waterroute
from Brusa to Constantinople, and one of the two routes from Nicaea to
Constantinople, were obstructed.[77] Kalolimni has the honour of being the first
Ottoman island and the only one captured during the chieftainship of Osman.
The investment of Brusa from the land side now began. So alarmed was the
commandant that he sent Osman a ‘gift’ of money to purchase peace,[78] thus
inaugurating the humiliating precedent which the mightiest emperors and kings
of Christendom came in time to follow.
It was in 1308, also, that Osman captured Tricocca,[79] which cut off the
communication by land between Nicaea and Nicomedia. While he was engaged
in dealing with Nicaea and Brusa, a danger threatened Osman from the east. A
horde of Tartars was hovering along the confines of his state.[80] Some of them
sacked Karadja Hissar at the time of the fair, and were prevented from marching
on Eski Sheïr only by the timely arrival of Orkhan, who defeated them through
the superiority of his cavalry. Instead of massacring his prisoners, Orkhan, as
was the invariable custom of his father with the Greeks, offered the raiders Islam
and Ottoman nationality.[81] It was in this way that the Osmanlis increased in
numbers.
After 1308 the energies of the Osmanlis seem to have been directed against
Nicaea and Brusa. The fall of Brusa is the only other event recorded during the
lifetime of Osman. Just when and how Brusa fell cannot be stated with precision.
We shall find the same difficulty later in connexion with the fall of Nicaea and
Nicomedia. The Turkish traditions, as Seadeddin gathered them, state that
Osman besieged Brusa with a great army in 1317. He erected a fortress near
Kaplidja, and put his nephew, Ak Timur, in charge of it. A second fortress, either
erected by Osman or captured by him, was put in care of Balaban, ‘his most
faithful follower.’ Kaplidja, now known as Tchekirdje, celebrated for its hot
baths,[82] is on a ridge not more than a mile from the citadel of Brusa. It
commands the approach from the port of Brusa, not far from where the road
must cross the river. Traditional remains of the second fortress are still to be seen
on a foothill of Mount Olympus, about two miles south-east of the citadel.
Of the actual fall of Brusa there is no definite statement in Seadeddin except
that the city surrendered to Orkhan, who brought the news to his dying father. As
Osman died in 1326, there is a gap of nine years to be accounted for between the
investment of the city and its capture. To one who has studied the contour of this
country and the nearness of the two fortresses to the citadel of Brusa it is clear
either that Brusa was surrounded or fell very soon after the Osmanlis settled
garrisons at the gates of the city, or that some modus vivendi was arranged
between the Osmanlis and the local garrison during those years. A decade has
been the conventional period for legendary sieges since Homer sang of Troy.
From the Byzantine contemporary writers one gains the impression, which is
probably a correct one, that Brusa was simply abandoned to the Osmanlis. There
was no assault, and no bitter struggle outside the walls of the city.[83] The Greek
commander, discouraged by the apparent inability or unwillingness[84] of the
emperors to come to his relief, surrendered the city. Deeply disgusted, as he had
every reason to be, Evrenos became a Moslem, and cast his fortunes with the
Osmanlis. Many of the leading Greeks followed his example. For, while the
people of Brusa through long years were straining every nerve to preserve their
city and to maintain the honour of Byzantium in Asia, the elder Andronicus and
his grandson, Andronicus III, were engaged in trying to destroy each other. It
was a sordid civil strife with no redeeming feature. Neither emperor had the
slightest conception of patriotism or of personal honour or of the sacredness of
family ties. From this time onward the Palaeologi put themselves on record as
one of the most iniquitous families that have ever disgraced the kingly office.
When Constantine, one hundred and twenty-seven years later, fell with the walls
of his city, his death was a striking illustration of the wrath of God upon the
fourth generation of those who had hated and despised Him.
In the same year that Brusa fell, and with the same fate imminent for Nicaea
and Nicomedia, young Andronicus celebrated with great pomp his wedding. The
Hippodrome, in sight of Mount Olympus, was the scene of a gay tournament in
which young Andronicus distinguished himself by breaking more lances than
any of his courtiers. From his imperial throne, the elder Andronicus looked on,
and turned over in his head various schemes for making his grandson’s bride a
widow. After the wedding festivities, while Andronicus was taking his bride to
Demotika, he was set upon by a band of roving Turks, at whose hands he and
Cantacuzenos both received wounds. When he reached Demotika, he learned
that his grandfather was preparing another war against him.[85] Is it any wonder
that the Greeks of Asia Minor were not averse to becoming Moslems and
helping in the founding of a new nation to inherit Constantinople? There is one
more charge which must be recorded against the elder Andronicus. When a
crusade for the stemming of the Moslem invasion was planned by Marino
Sanudo, Andronicus not only refused to co-operate, but he would not even
consent to interrupt his friendly relations with the Sultan of Egypt.[86]
IX
Osman spent his life in endeavouring to capture the three Byzantine cities
which were all within a day’s journey of his birthplace. When we consider how
near he was at the very beginning of the struggle, and how weak and
demoralized the Byzantines had become, we realize that we have to do with no
impetuous invasion of an Asiatic race, sweeping before it and destroying an
effete civilization. It is the birth of a new race that we are recording—a race
formed by the fusion of elements already existing at the place of birth. The
political unity of the Byzantine Empire had been destroyed by enemies from
without and from within. The social unity, which had been secured by the one
bond of a common religion that imposed upon the people its standards and
dominated every phase of their life, was disappearing. For when the Eastern
Church lost its spiritual life, it lost its hold on the Levantine Christians, who
were centuries ahead of the West in intellectual development. The time for its
reformation had come and passed without a Savonarola, a Luther, or a Calvin.
Nor was there any Loyola to fight for the ancient faith. The Church was unable
to absorb the pagan invaders, as primitive Latin Christianity had done, by an
irresistible moral superiority.[87] The appeal of Islam was greater than that of
Christianity. Pagan and Christian alike, then, in their conversion to a new, fresh
faith, joined in the formation of a new race. This is the story of Osman and of the
people who took his name.[88]
The legends which inevitably surround the founders of nations have buried
the personality of Osman, and make an estimate of his character difficult. We
must reject entirely the appreciations of the Ottoman historians. None has yet
arisen of his own people who has attempted to separate the small measure of
truth from the mass of fiction that obscures the real man in the founder of the
Ottoman Empire. He is represented by the same writers as a powerful prince and
as a simple peasant; as the master of Asia Minor and as the village chieftain
fighting for very existence with his neighbours a few miles away; as reading the
Koran and as illiterate; as the cruel and imperious murderer of his uncle Dundar
for opposing a plan of campaign in his council of war and as the merciful,
clement conqueror; as the Moslem fanatic who ordered the mutilation of dying
infidels on the battlefield and as the wise ruler who dispensed justice to Moslem
and Christian with no distinction of creed; as depositing his treasures of gold and
silver in the castle of a neighbour and as leaving at his death only a robe, a saltcellar,
a spoon, and a few sheep.
In the absence of contemporary evidence and of unconflicting tradition, we
must form our judgement of Osman wholly upon what he accomplished. He
certainly was not the son of a prince. He did not become in his day more than the
ruler of a very small domain. He did not compass within his lifetime the task at
his very threshold—the subjection of the three imperial cities. It was certainly
not by astounding successes on the battlefield that he made people flock to him
and form around him the nucleus of a state. And this state, although it did not
come enough in contact with the outside world to have money of its own,[89]
grew steadily year after year. The way his state was formed was the assurance of
its permanence and of its great future. It is also an indication of the real greatness
of the man who formed it.
Osman was founder of one of the greatest empires the world has ever known,
of a people unique in history through the blending of wild Asiatic blood with the
oldest as well as the newest European stock, of a royal family which claims the
distinction of six hundred years of uninterrupted male succession. When we
place these results over against the limited field in which he worked, and
acknowledge our lack of any outstanding deeds in Osman’s life by which these
results can be explained, we find ourselves in the presence of a combination of a
character and a cause which reminds us of William of Orange and England.
Osman was a man of compelling personality, whom men loved to serve, even
when their own ability matched or was superior to his. The families of the
Michaelogli and Marcozogli were founded by Christian companions of Osman,
who became Moslem only after long association with him. Michael, Marco, and
other leaders, including Osman’s own son, made for themselves more
distinguished military careers than Osman. But they always worked for their
leader. Their harmony and loyalty is in striking contrast to that of the Byzantine
and Catalan captains. Osman was great enough to use masterful men. He never
needed to assert his superiority, as mediocre men always love to do, by getting
rid of possible rivals and surrounding himself with lesser stars. He was able to
hold himself, as well as others, in check. He was patient and he was thorough.
We know the founder by his foundation.
Then there was the cause. The giants of the forward march of Islam were
dead. The tide had seemed to turn. Pagans ruled in Asia. Africa was asleep. In
1309 the Faithful in Spain were receiving their first serious reverse. Osman
brought to his new religion the simple faith and the fresh enthusiasm of the
neophyte. He was a reincarnation of his great namesake and the other early
Khalifs. The prayer which Seadeddin puts in Osman’s mouth illustrates his
character:
O Lord, make upright my thoughts and just my designs.
Exalt the faith and the Religion, and destroy those who rise up against it.
Scatter the hosts of the enemy, and bring to confusion evil men.
Make my sword the lantern of Thy holy faith, and the guiding torch of my
warriors.
Give unto me a glorious name, and victory against mine adversaries.
Watch me with Thine eyes, and show me the way of Thy holy will.
Make me a true observer of the laws of Mohammed, and sustain me in the
shock of battle.
Osman was a fanatic, if by fanatic is meant one who is stirred with religious
zeal and makes his religion the first and prime object in his life. But he was not
intolerant, nor were his immediate successors. Had he started to persecute
Christians, the Greek Church would have taken a new lease of life, and Osman
could not have gained the converts who made possible the Ottoman race.
Attila, Djenghiz Khan, Timur, the greatest conquerors of the stock from
which Osman came, utilized a race already made. They were leaders of a united
people. In spite of their dazzling exploits, they were mere raiders, and their
empires were the territories of an unassimilated path of conquest. Osman’s work
was more enduring than theirs, more far-reaching in its results. For he was
building in silence while they were destroying with a blast of trumpets. We may
place him with them, perhaps above them, for which of them gave his name to a
people?
CHAPTER II
ORKHAN
A NEW NATION IS FORMED AND COMES INTO CONTACT WITH THE WESTERN WORLD
I
THE greatest inheritance that a father can leave to his son is uncompleted
work, especially if the work present difficulties of a formidable character, which
must be met and overcome immediately. No man is born great. No man has
greatness thrust upon him. History recognizes only the category of achievement.
Facing an unfinished task is the best spur.
Osman died at the moment of the surrender of Brusa. He left to Orkhan the
inheritance of Nicaea and Nicomedia unconquered; a state without laws,
coinage, and definite boundaries; a people just beginning to awaken to a national
consciousness; and hostile neighbours far more powerful than himself.[90]
Orkhan found himself without seaport, ships, or sailors. His fighting men were
regarded among his Turkish rivals as poor material for an army.[91] Even the
chieftainship of the Osmanlis had not come to him by mere right of birth.[92] He
had been chosen because of his ability to lead and to attract men. Now that Brusa
had fallen into the hands of the Osmanlis, more was demanded in their emir than
personal charm and daring in battle. He must establish his right to the
chieftainship by making a viable state. This could be done only by the addition
of Nicaea and Nicomedia to his dominions, and by the transformation of his
followers into a nation.
Nowhere are the Ottoman historians more unsatisfactory than in their
accounts of the reign of Orkhan. They fail to describe—much less to explain—
the evolution of their race during these thirty-five years from a heterogeneous
band of adventurers into a nation. Several of the Ottoman historians write so
admirably of later periods that we must attribute this failure as much to their lack
of sources of information as to their inability to measure up to the demands of
the modern mind which never asks how without adding why. The re-writing of
history in the twentieth century is not actuated by belief in superior ability. Our
new and wider point of view is gained from the advantage we have had in
securing and comparing sources which were inaccessible to those who have
gone before us. If, in this chapter, Byzantine sources are largely used, it is
because we are writing the history of a people who built their nation directly
upon the ruins of the Byzantine Empire, and because the Byzantine sources are
contemporary; while the earliest Ottoman historians wrote more than a century
later than this period.[93]
The reign of Orkhan is divided into two parts by the events of the year 1344.
From 1326 to 1344 he was occupied in subduing the territory of which he had
been tentative master at the death of Osman, in forming his nation, and in
organizing his army. From 1344 until his death in 1360, his energies were bent
chiefly upon getting a foothold in Macedonia and Thrace.
II
The first task which imposed itself upon Orkhan was the subjection of Nicaea
and Nicomedia. Just as the walls of Brusa had defied him to the end, those of
Nicomedia and Nicaea were equally impregnable to the kind of army he could
assemble. Whether it was that neither Byzantine nor Turk nor Slav nor Bulgarian
were of the stock who would spend themselves scaling walls and battering down
gates, or that the weapons of those days were more favourable for the purpose of
defence than of assault, cannot be determined. But the curious fact remains that
during this century there are few instances of cities taken by storm. Captures
were effected for the most part by capitulation or by treachery.
Complete investment and consequent threatened starvation did not occur in
the case of Brusa. Nor did Nicaea and Nicomedia surrender from starvation. This
is the place, rather than at the end of the last chapter, to give two of the long list
of reasons for surrender which Neshri puts into the mouth of the commandant
and the leading citizens of Brusa.[94] For they state equally plainly and
convincingly the case of Nicaea and Nicomedia.
The economic reason was that the inhabitants saw the Osmanlis settling
themselves in all the country round about the three cities, and undisturbed in
their permanent occupation of these regions by any aggressive movement from
Constantinople. Nicomedia, although advantageously located for commerce, was
not a port of call on the great trade route. It depended for its well-being upon an
unrestricted communication with the interior. Brusa and Nicaea were
manufacturing cities, whose prosperity was due to the use of raw materials
produced in the vicinity, and to the ability to market the manufactured products.
While food was still procurable, trade and business languished. When the Greeks
saw that the Osmanlis had come in their midst to remain, and were not mere
raiders like the Seljuk Turks, they realized that the alternative to submission was
ruin.
The moral reason I have already touched upon in relation to Brusa. If there
had been any hope of relief from the intolerable economic conditions under
which they were living, the Nicaeans and Nicomedians might have resisted
indefinitely, and maintained a gallant struggle for love of God and country. Their
successful resistance, continued through many weary years, is a remarkable
testimony to their religious zeal and to their patriotism. It was not until they felt
themselves deserted by their brothers of blood and religion that they finally
yielded. The Osmanlis did not prevail over them in battle. Their walls were not
stormed. Their gates held fast. They were not starved out. They were abandoned
by the Byzantines. So they became Osmanlis.
III
To understand the how and why of the fall of these cities and of the mingling
of victor and vanquished in one race, we must review the history of the
Byzantines during the years immediately following the death of Osman.
The loss of Brusa did not cause any cessation in the suicidal strife between
Andronicus and his grandson. After the brilliant marriage festivities of which we
have already spoken, young Andronicus took his bride to Demotika, where, in
the summer of 1327, he planned to surprise and oust his grandfather.[95] He was
not content to wait for the old man’s death. Nor was he deterred from reopening
the civil war by the thought of the imminent danger of the Byzantine cities in
Bithynia. Old Andronicus, informed of his grandson’s intention, forbade his
entrance to the capital, and negotiated with the Serbians to attack him from the
rear.[96] This was a deliberate invitation to the Serbians, who were rapidly
becoming dangerous enemies of the Empire, to enter Byzantine territory.
The appeal of young Andronicus to be allowed to come to Constantinople to
justify himself was answered by an imperial rescript ordering the Patriarch to
‘strike out the rebel’s name from public prayers’. The Patriarch refused.[97] More
than that, His Holiness threatened to unfrock any priest who would obey the
imperial command. Old Andronicus had the Patriarch deposed by a packed
synod of his creatures, and thrown into prison.[98]
War broke out. After an unsuccessful attempt to surprise Constantinople,[99]
young Andronicus besieged the army of his grandfather and the Serbians in
Serres. They did not care to risk a battle, so he marched on Salonika, which he
captured through the connivance of its inhabitants.[100] Macedonia and Thrace,
with the exception of two or three fortresses, fell into his hands without a
struggle.[101]
Stephen, Kral of Serbia, now turned a deaf ear to the old emperor’s reiterated
appeals for further aid. In his desperation, old Andronicus called in the
Bulgarians, to whom he would have betrayed Constantinople, had not young
Andronicus appeared in time to anticipate this culminating infamy of the older
Palaeologos. A Venetian fleet, which was besieging the city, retired, because its
commander did not want to appear to take sides either for or against the younger
emperor. Friends inside left a gate open. Young Andronicus entered and
appeared suddenly at the palace. The Patriarch was re-established. Old
Andronicus was deposed and imprisoned.[102]
The old man, after having become, as Gregoras charitably puts it, ‘blind
through tears’,[103] retired to a monastery, and died there in great poverty.[104]
Like many others of the Palaeologi, Andronicus II had no redeeming trait of
character, no single good deed to his credit. Stranger to every natural affection,
he died as he had lived, hating his own flesh and blood, striving to ruin his
country, mocking God by the very monk’s garb that he wore.
The first care of young Andronicus, after ridding himself of his grandfather
and rival, was to march on Adrianople, where, according to Cantacuzenos, he
forced Michael Asan of Bulgaria to make peace by the display of his ‘fine
army’.[105] Either the Bulgarians were very weak at this time, or the ‘fine army’
of Andronicus III melted away quickly. For in the spring of the following year,
1329, Andronicus had to ‘gather hastily’[106] an army, when for the first time he
felt it his duty to go to the aid of beleaguered Nicaea. He crossed the Bosphorus,
and joined the battle with the Osmanlis at Pelecanon, now Maltepé, on the north
shore of the gulf of Nicomedia, a few miles from Chalcedon, the modern Haïdar
Pasha.
The battle of Pelecanon is passed over in silence by the Ottoman historians as
too insignificant to mention. But it is of the utmost importance in showing why
the Nicaeans surrendered their city to Orkhan. Cantacuzenos, who took part in
this battle, gives a long story in which the result of the battle he is compelled to
record belies all that goes before it. The Byzantines, according to Cantacuzenos,
were eminently successful in repelling the attacks of the Osmanlis. On all sides
the Greeks won, and killed hundreds of their opponents, while their own losses
were slight. After inflicting this defeat upon Orkhan, Andronicus proposed, at
nightfall, that the army withdraw to Constantinople! Some of his ardent warriors
continued, however, to engage the enemy. Andronicus, surprised with only a few
followers around him, was wounded, and escaped capture only by a hasty
retreat. He was carried in a litter to Scutari, where he did not wait for news of his
army. A caïque conveyed him safely home. Thus the successors of the Caesars
abandoned Asia for ever.
Old Andronicus, in his hour of humiliation, did not hesitate to strike one
more blow against his country. Spies of his in the army spread the rumour that
the young emperor was dead. The imperial troops fled. They abandoned all their
baggage, and were massacred by the Osmanlis, who hunted them down in the
hills from which the fugitives could see the dome of St. Sophia.[107]
When we contrast the long story of the civil war between Andronicus and his
grandfather, the armies gathered, the money expended, the energy displayed with
this one pitiful attempt to aid the three great cities of Bithynia, there is no need
for further speculation as to why these cities fell into the hands of the Osmanlis.
No wearers of the imperial purple had ever made a more dismal showing: old
Andronicus plotting to demoralize the army of his country by false rumours, and
young Andronicus making such rumours possible by being the first to flee from
the field after receiving a slight wound. It is no wonder that Cantacuzenos
records that after this battle Nicaea fell into the hands of the Osmanlis.[108] It is
altogether natural, too, that the inhabitants of Nicaea should refuse, as those of
Brusa had done, to profit by the terms of the capitulation, and leave for
Constantinople.[109] Their trades, silk-weaving and pottery, were dependent upon
local materials, which they could not get elsewhere. There had been nothing to
inspire in them that devotion to a faith which made the Huguenots long
afterwards leave all without hesitation after the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes.
Hadji Khalfa says that in the seventeenth century the walls of Nicaea were
entirely ruined.[110] The condition of these walls to-day (for they have not been
repaired in modern times) contradicts this statement. It has been the claim of the
Osmanlis that Nicaea was reduced by fighting. If this were true the walls must
have suffered. It is also the common belief[111] that Nicaea, at the time of the
Ottoman conquest, and for some time after, was a prosperous city.[112] But Ibn
Batutah, who visited Nicaea within five or six years after its change of
ownership, wrote that its walls were intact, that the sole entrance to the city was
by a road built up like a bridge and so narrow that horsemen could not pass on it,
and that the walls were surrounded by a wide deep moat filled with water. One
had to reach the gate by a pont-levis, which was in working order and used at the
time of his visit. The city itself was in ruins and occupied only by a small
number of men in the service of Orkhan. He was told that Orkhan had besieged
the city ten years, and Osman before him twenty years. As the famous traveller
was an honoured guest in the palace of Orkhan, where Orkhan’s wife was living
at the time, and where the emir himself came for a few days during the forty
days which Ibn Batutah spent in Nicaea, his testimony is certainly worthy of
credence.[113]
That Nicaea, while preserving its admirable fortifications, should have
decreased so rapidly in importance and population during the seventy years
between the return of the Byzantine emperors to Constantinople and the
Ottoman occupation, is explainable only by three suppositions: that a majority of
the inhabitants had died off, that they had emigrated, or that they had gradually
joined their fortunes with the people of Osman. We find in Byzantine annals no
record of a disastrous plague or of a large emigration of potters and porcelain
workers and weavers to the capital or elsewhere from Nicaea. There was little
fighting. The Osmanlis had not yet learned to massacre. What are we to believe,
then, concerning the large population of this so recently flourishing city?
It is hardly a conjecture to affirm that the Nicaeans must have cast their
fortunes with that steadily growing band whose firm conviction, forced upon
them against their will and in violence to centuries-old traditions and sentiments,
was that the old structure of society could not be repaired, and that there must be
an entirely new building upon the old foundation. This conviction did not come
suddenly or to all at once. It was a gradual dawning and awakening which
caused the ranks of the Osmanlis to become greater every year. Before the end of
Orkhan’s reign the nucleus of Asiatic adventurers which had gathered around
Osman in the little village of Sugut had grown to half a million. It could not have
been by natural increase. It could not have been by the flocking in of nomads
from the East. Orkhan was cut off from contact with the Asiatic hinterland. His
rivals of Karaman, Satalia, Aïdin, and Sarukhan would have attracted
adventurers from the outside before himself. Orkhan formed his nation out of the
elements on the ground. These were mostly Greek. Nicaea is but an illustration
of the way in which the new race was born and the new nation formed.
This conviction that no good could come from Constantinople went farther
than a transference of allegiance from the Palaeologi to the family of Osman.
Mohammed was substituted for Christ. What a momentous significance there is
in the records of the Greek Orthodox Church that in 1339 and again in 1340 the
Patriarch sent an impassioned appeal to the Nicaeans that they should not abjure
the Christian faith![114] At that very moment when the ecclesiastics of
Constantinople were espousing the rival claims of unworthy aspirants to the
imperial purple and were anathematizing each other in supporting trivial
theological arguments, Christians were adopting the new Credo: ‘I believe in one
God, and Mohammed is his prophet!’ in the city of the Nicene Creed.
We may place the surrender of Nicomedia in 1337 or 1338.[115] This was the
last Byzantine possession in the Ottoman corner of Asia Minor. The fall of Aïdos
and Semendria on the hills behind Scutari had opened the way to the Bosphorus.
Yalova, renowned for its baths, and Hereké, where Constantine the Great died,
gave the Osmanlis undisputed control of the entrance to the Gulf of Nicomedia
and secure possession of the city where Diocletian had made a new capital for
the Roman Empire.
IV
Orkhan had now accomplished the first part of the great task left unfinished
by Osman. But, before he could proceed to the establishment of laws for his new
state, it was necessary for him to consolidate and strengthen his position in
relation to his formidable neighbours. Dangers threatened from the east and from
the south. In 1327 Timurtash, a son of Choban, who was Mongol governor of
Rum, pushed his raids as far as the Mediterranean, which the Mongol arms had
not hitherto reached. He fought in turn Greeks and Turks.[116] Fortunately for
Orkhan, the emir of Kermian, whose capital was Kutayia, had appeared so
unpromising to the eyes of Timurtash that the Mongols had not come northward.
But they were an ever imminent source of danger to the emirs of Asia Minor,
and to Orkhan among them, until 1335, when the death of Bahadur Khan, just
the year before the birth of Timur, caused the disintegration of the Mongol
power in western Asia.[117]
The Mongol menace had contributed to the undisturbed operations of Orkhan
against the Byzantines. Immediately upon its removal he was threatened by the
other Turkish emirs. It was a critical moment for Orkhan, whose territories had
not yet reached the proportions of a large state, like those of Omar of Aïdin and
Mohammed of Sarukhan. Singly they might have crushed Orkhan. United they
certainly would have done so. But here again the Byzantines contributed to their
own downfall.
In 1329, at Phocaea, Andronicus had conducted his first negotiations with the
emirs of Aïdin and Sarukhan.[118] This unsuccessful attempt to embroil the
Anatolian emirs with each other was a pitiful confession of weakness on the part
of Andronicus. It did no harm to Orkhan. But it called the attention of these
emirs to the impotence of Andronicus, and led to a series of petty raids in
Macedonia and Thrace. Emboldened by the ease of initial successes, Mohammed
of Sarukhan in 1333 led in person an expedition of seventy-five ships against the
Macedonian coast. Andronicus was too weak to oppose his landing.[119] In the
same year Turkish pirates seized for a short time Rodosto, on the Sea of
Marmora, only a few hours’ sail from Constantinople.[120] The following year
the emperor was compelled to put an army in the field to save Salonika from the
Turks.[121]
These attentions from his proposed allies did not prevent Andronicus from
seeking aid in the same quarters in 1336 when he was besieging the Genoese of
Phocaea. Mohammed sent twenty-four ships, numerous troops, and all the
provisions necessary to sustain the imperial army. The net gain to Andronicus
from this expedition was the empty acknowledgement from Cattaneo of
Phocaea, who was not afraid of Andronicus but did not want to be bothered by
him and his Turkish allies, that he would hold as a ‘fief of the empire’ what
Andronicus, even with the help of the Turks, could not take from him![122]
This momentary diversion of the attention and energies of his neighbours was
most propitious for Orkhan. Andronicus had rendered him good service. It gave
to Orkhan an opportunity of enlarging and rounding out his dominions without
incurring opposition that would not only have prevented him from carrying out
his schemes but might also have destroyed him. Orkhan had been waiting for
this moment. In 1333, the Turcoman emir of Mysia had died. His younger son
had taken refuge with Orkhan, and promised in return for aid in dispossessing
his brother to surrender to the Osmanlis Balikesri and three other border cities.
Orkhan could not act immediately. He contented himself with advising the elder
brother to divide his dominions with Tursun. Tursun went to negotiate in person,
and was killed by his brother. This was shortly before the expedition to Phocaea.
Orkhan was now ready. He put in the field an expedition, ostensibly to punish
the assassination of his protégé Tursun, and was so successful that he forced the
emir of Karasi to give up Pergamos and go into exile in Brusa.[123] In another
expedition, which probably occurred in
[Image unavailable.]
THE EMIRATES OF OSMAN AND ORKHAN
1337 at the earliest,[124] Orkhan added Mikhalitsch, Ulubad, and Kermasti to
his dominions. He was now virtually master of Mysia.
This was the extent of Orkhan’s conquests in Asia Minor. It is necessary to
emphasize this point, owing to the erroneous idea which has so long been
accepted and which has found its way into many modern writers.[125] No
corroboration can be found for the statement of Cantacuzenos that Soleiman
captured Angora from the Tartars in 1354.[126] Aside from this, neither
Byzantines nor Osmanlis report any further conquests of Orkhan in Asia Minor.
From the fact that there is a complete silence as to their fate, it is reasonable to
suppose that the Osmanlis during the last decade of Orkhan’s reign destroyed the
independence of several little states of which Ibn Batutah and Shehabeddin
report the existence between 1334 and 1349.[127] But these were all in a general
sense either included in Mysia (Karasi) or in the territory which Orkhan is
popularly supposed to have inherited from Osman.[128]
After the Mysian expedition and the fall of Nicomedia, Orkhan may be
regarded as the acknowledged sovereign of a definite state. We have good
contemporary testimony to his character, his power and his reputation at this
period just before he became an active factor in deciding the destinies of the
Byzantine Empire.
Ibn Batutah calls him the ‘lord of Brusa, son of Osman the Little, powerful
and rich among the Turcoman kings, in treasures, cities and soldiers’. He never
ceased making the tour of the hundred castles he possessed. In each of these he
would pass several days to repair them and inspect their situation. It was
common report that he never spent a whole month in a city, not even in Brusa.
He was all the time fighting and besieging the infidels. It was his indomitable
energy which seems to have impressed the traveller from Morocco. The absolute
lack of slothful, indifferent acquiescence in the will of God of these latter-day
Turkish converts was naturally a source of continual surprise to this doctor of
Islam, fresh from his observation of races who had been for hundreds of years in
the faith of Mohammed.[129]
Shehabeddin is less complimentary. He says: ‘Orkhan has under his
domination fifty cities and a still larger number of castles. His army consists of
40,000 horsemen, and an almost innumerable host of foot-soldiers. But these
troops are not warlike, and their number is more formidable in appearance than
in reality. This prince shows himself very pacific in regard to his neighbours, and
always ready to help his allies. However, he is engaged in continual wars and is
always at odds with many enemies. If he gains little from these struggles, it is
because his soldiers do not serve him well, his subjects are not well disposed
towards him, and several of his neighbours live in open hostility to him. I am
told that the Osmanlis are treacherous men, whose hearts know only hatred and
whose heads are filled with base thoughts.’[130] In another place Shehabeddin
records that Orkhan has in the field 25,000 horsemen who are fighting daily the
prince of Constantinople. ‘The Greek emperor is eager to buy the goodwill of
Orkhan by paying him a monthly tribute.’ Orkhan sends expeditions into Europe,
‘where waves of blood flow’.[131]
V
The first Ottoman legislation, and the organization of the army, is attributed
by tradition to Orkhan’s brother, Alaeddin, rather than to the emir himself. The
story goes that Alaeddin was a man of peace, and did not engage in war.[132] He
refused to accept the generous offer of Orkhan to share the states of Osman,
when their father died. Not only would he not accept a division of the
chieftainship, but he also refused to share the personal possessions of Osman.
Then Orkhan said, ‘Since you will not rule, be my vizier, and bear the burdens of
the organization of the state.’ Thus was created the office of Grand Vizier, which
has played so important a part in Ottoman history.[133]
In the various lists, which were compiled at a much later date, Alaeddin is
given as the first Grand Vizier. That this office, in its accepted form, was created
during the reign of Orkhan is altogether improbable. The story of the affectionate
relationship between Orkhan and Alaeddin, and the sharing of duties by them, is,
like the story of Ertogrul’s receiving the promise after reading the Koran, a
reminiscence of patriarchal days. The dream with its promise harks back to
Jacob and the ladder.[134] The relation between Orkhan and Alaeddin reminds
one too strongly of Moses and Aaron to be accepted without reserve. One has
only to turn to the twentieth Sura of the Koran to find the connexion and the
suggestion: ‘And Moses answered, Lord, give me a vizier of my family, Aaron,
my brother. Gird up my loins by him, and make him my colleague in the
business: that we may praise thee greatly, and remember thee often; for thou
regardest us.’[135]
What a contrast between this idyllic story of Orkhan and Alaeddin, and the
killing of Yakub by Bayezid on the battlefield of Kossova fifty years later!
Alaeddin was also the first Osmanli to receive the title of pasha. He is always
spoken of as Alaeddin pasha. This same title was conferred on Soleiman, the
eldest son of Orkhan. The oldest son of Murad proving a traitor, and there being
no other son mature enough, Murad transferred the title to Kara Khalil. This
word, which came from the Persian, was thus early deflected by the Ottoman
sovereigns from its original significance, the title of the eldest son of the ruler.
[136] It soon came to be bestowed upon high military and civil dignitaries.
Similarly, the rank of vizier passed immediately out of the imperial family.
That Alaeddin could have accomplished the work attributed to him by the
Ottoman historians, the making of laws and the organization of the army, is
impossible for three reasons. The time for this great work was too short and not a
propitious period: Alaeddin died seven years after his father, in 1333,[137] before
Orkhan was firmly established in his sovereignty; the statement is incompatible
with what we know of the character of Orkhan; finally, the organization of the
state and of the army must have been the result of a slow development through
many years, and its perfection belongs to the middle or latter part of Orkhan’s
career, years after Alaeddin pasha’s death.
The whole scheme of an Islamic state is theocratic. Its laws, its customs are
founded directly upon the Koran and the interpretation of the Koran by the early
‘fathers’ of Mohammedanism. There is no civil law as distinct from
ecclesiastical law.[138] The judges and the lawyers belong to the clergy. Orkhan’s
problem was exceedingly difficult. Whether they were Turkish converts or
Greek renegades, the Osmanlis were all on common ground in their entire
ignorance of the art of building a Moslem state. It is idle to speculate upon the
early legislation of the Osmanlis, for there are no records. But it is probable that
the Osmanlis did not at this early time make any attempt to establish a body of
laws in conformity with the Koran. Where the Sheri’at (the sacred law) was
understood, and where it was applicable to local conditions, it was naturally
used. But, side by side with the sacred Moslem law, existed the old Byzantine
code. This was used by the Osmanlis until they were firmly seated in
Constantinople. Only then did they acquire a complete system of Moslem canon
law. It is within the scope of a work covering a later period than that included in
this volume to point out the strong Byzantine and moderate Turkish influences in
the Kanunnamé of Mohammed the Conqueror.
VI
For dealing with Ottoman subjects and with those who might be conquered in
war, certain principles were, however, adopted by the Osmanlis in the time of
Orkhan. The foremost of these was complete religious toleration. This made
possible, to a large measure it explains, the development of the Osmanlis into a
powerful empire.
The propagation of Islam by the sword under the early Khalifs, the sudden
and unparalleled spread of the new religion from the Arabian desert to Syria,
Egypt, North Africa, and Spain, until the hordes of the invaders were stopped by
Charles Martel at Tours, the terrible ravages of the Moslem corsairs in the
Mediterranean—here were the sources of the deep impression of fanaticism and
cruelty that the rise of Islam and the followers of Mohammed had made upon an
equally fanatical and cruel Europe. That the recrudescence of the Islamic
movement under the Osmanlis was represented in the same colours by the early
European writers is explicable when we consider their lack of unbiased
information and their confusion of the Osmanlis with the Asiatic conquerors,
such as Attila and the Huns, Djenghiz Khan and the Mongols, Timur and the
Tartars. We must take into account, too, the fact that these historians wrote at a
time when the Osmanlis were beginning to be perverted by fanatical Arab
influences, and were a real menace to the peace of Europe. From the fifteenth to
the seventeenth century, ‘the Turk’ was a monster of iniquity and cruelty, from
whom even the distant English in the security of their island home prayed to be
delivered.[139] The recent history of the Ottoman Empire has unfortunately
contributed much to keep alive this impression.
In spite of the accumulated evidence which on the surface points to a contrary
conclusion, the Osmanli is not and never has been a religious fanatic like the
Arab Moslem.[140] He is not by nature zealous or enthusiastic, nor is he by nature
cruel. Docile, tractable, gentle, in a word, lovable—this is the verdict of the
traveller who has had an opportunity of knowing that portion of the Moslem
population of the Ottoman Empire which is popularly called Turkish. Other
influences of their religion than hatred for the Christian have prevented the
Osmanlis from winning and keeping a place among the civilized peoples of the
world. Whatever one may claim in abstract theory for the Koran and the whole
body of Moslem teaching, its practical concrete results have been ignorance,
stagnation, immorality, subserviency of womanhood, indifference, paralysis of
the will, absence of incentive to altruism. These are the causes of the
irremediable decay of every Mohammedan empire, of every Mohammedan
people.
The government and the ruling classes of the Ottoman Empire are negatively
rather than positively evil. There is nothing inherently bad about the Osmanli.
He is inert, and has thus failed to reach the standards set by the progress of
civilization. He lacks ideals, and has thus shocked the enlightened conscience of
the modern world. By the law of the survival of the fittest, he has been cast
aside.
But when we compare the early Osmanlis with the Byzantines and with the
other elements in the Balkan peninsula, it is the Osmanlis who must be
pronounced the fittest. They were fresh, enthusiastic, uncontaminated, energetic.
They had ideals: they had a goal. As it is with the individual, so it is with the
nation. Ideals are lost when the goal is reached. Decay sets in when the struggle
for existence ceases.
Pressed on the one side by his Turkish neighbours and on the other by the
danger of including in his dominions a large and unassimilated mass of
Christians, Orkhan was wise enough to desist from any attempt at forcible
conversion. But some modus vivendi had to be arranged. A mere raider would
have massacred and destroyed, and the empire he built would not have outlived
the century of its birth. Orkhan was neither raider nor invader. He lived in the
country of his father and of his grandfather. Many of his lieutenants—certainly
his ablest ones[141]—were descendants of the oldest stock in Asia Minor. His
nation, if it was to be a nation, depended upon at least a partial assimilation of
the Byzantines. As his dominions increased, it became clear that there had to be
some distinction between Moslem and Christian other than a profession of faith.
He must devise some reward, which would be so attractive that the Christians,
especially the higher classes among them, would change their faith in order to
secure its benefits. This was the problem.
Orkhan solved this problem by establishing a system of rewards for military
service, and then by restricting military service to Moslems. He divided the land
he had conquered among his faithful warriors, and let it be known that in future
conquests a large portion of the territory won, outside of the cities, would be
bestowed upon soldiers who took part in his campaigns. These lands were to be
held as military fiefs. The only obligation was that of military service, which
could be performed either by actually putting into the field a number of men in
proportion to the land held or by paying a sum sufficient to replace the quota by
hired troops. So far this was but an adaptation of the European feudal system.
But it was superior to the European system in that the holdings were small and
that there was through two centuries an ever-present opportunity of winning new
holdings.
Except in Albania and Bosnia, where the old nobility were to preserve their
lands by conversion to Islam, there were no local traditions to prevent such a
scheme by necessitating the dispossession of former great landowners. The
Seljuks, the Crusaders, and the Mongols in Asia Minor, the Catalans, the
Bulgarians, the Serbians and the civil wars between the emperors in Macedonia
and Thrace, the hangers-on of the Fourth Crusade in Thessaly, Greece, and the
Aegaean Islands, had made so clean a sweep of the old aristocracy, attached to
the soil, that Orkhan’s idea was feasible. Through these small holdings and
through the rapid increase of conquered territory, the Ottoman sultans were able,
almost from the beginning, to exercise an absolute sovereignty over their
expanding dominions, and to prevent the rise of a class of nobles. The Ottoman
Empire has never known an hereditary nobility. In the later conquests, the
Sublime Porte sometimes granted life rights of governorship, with a tacit
understanding that the succession should go to the son, to local chieftains or to
large landowners. But these concessions were in regions never fully conquered,
and remote from Constantinople. Those to whom these privileges were given
had no part in the central government and no rank outside of their immediate
locality.
In place of military service, every adult Christian paid a special head-tax, to
be used for the support of the army. The Christian was exempt from military
service; the Mussulman was exempt from taxes.[142] This head-tax was heavy,
and so gauged as to keep the Christian, unless he lived in a city, in economic
dependence upon the Moslem landowner. As a general rule, during the first
century and a half of Ottoman conquest, those who held to the old faith went to
the cities and large towns. The Moslem thus became, without any attempt at
forcible conversion or need to massacre, the undisputed possessor of the country
districts.
Aside from the onerous head-tax, there were grave inequalities for the
Christian in matters of law and in intermarriage. After the fall of Constantinople,
Mohammed the Conqueror gave the Christians a large measure of selfgovernment
by putting them in millets (nations) under the headship of the
ecclesiastical authorities. But the inequality in the matter of intermarriage has
never been done away with. A Moslem may marry a Christian woman, but a
Christian is forbidden to marry a Mohammedan woman. In the earliest days,
when there was neither racial nor religious antipathy and Christian and Moslem
lived in close social intercourse, this law was a powerful proselytizing agency. It
furnished a temptation to a change of faith which, whenever it arose, was far
stronger than the temptation of lands, of power, of economic independence, or of
civil equality.
The moment one professed Islam he became an Osmanli. Religion has
always been the test of nationality in the Ottoman Empire.[143] The Osmanlis
increased from the thousands to the millions, in Macedonia, in Thrace, and in
Asia Minor. Ancestry was quickly forgotten in the midst of ever-changing
conditions and the founding of a new social order. It is still a characteristic of the
Osmanli that he has no surname. The most widely-read English writer of the
seventeenth century on the ‘Turks’ emphasized the mixture of blood in the
Osmanli, when he wrote: ‘At present the blood of the Turks is so mixed with that
of all sorts of Languages and Nations, that none of them can derive his Lineage
from the ancient blood of the Saracens.’[144]
A majority of the Byzantines whom Orkhan, Murad, and Bayezid conquered
must have become Osmanlis. Once the change of religion was made, the
development of the new race was not difficult. There was much in common
between the Turk of Asia Minor and the Byzantine. An Armenian contemporary
wrote of them as if they were alike.[145] The Greeks did not take to heart the new
régime,[146] for the fiscal evils of the Byzantine system reconciled them in
advance to a change. Nothing could be worse than that which they had suffered.
[147]
Of course, the love of woman, the desire for adventure, hope of economic
independence through rewards of land and removal of onerous taxes, disgust
with the Byzantine administration and with the lack of support from their rulers
and ecclesiastical authorities—these influences did not cause the conversion of
all the Christians. In the cities, where the inequality and the inconvenience of
remaining true to the old faith was minimized, and where Christianity has
always been able to make itself felt and heard,[148] there was no great temptation
to a change of religion. After the Osmanlis became stronger, and entered into the
aggressive period of conquest, they resorted to other means to swell their
numbers. The institution of the Janissaries, and the permission to enslave those
whom they conquered, gave the Osmanlis more potent and immediately pressing
arguments.
From the completion of the conquest of Bithynia by Orkhan, the Osmanlis
can be called a distinct race with a national consciousness and a desire for
expansion. They can be distinguished from the Turks of the emirates of Asia
Minor and from the Byzantines. The Turk did not absorb the Greek, nor did the
Greek absorb the Turk. Both had taken a new religion, and if the Turkish
language was adopted, it was rather the customs and laws of the Byzantines
which prevailed until the influence of the Arabs, enhanced as it was with the
prestige of centuries of Islam, gained the ascendancy over Turkish and Byzantine
tradition alike. But this did not occur until the Osmanlis invaded Syria, Egypt,
and Mesopotamia at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
It must be remembered that the Greeks were not the only element added to
the Turkish stock. The adoption of the Turkish language by the Osmanlis was
due not only to the fact that from the beginning it was the military and
governmental language, but to its being the simplest and most vigorous medium
of communication for the different peoples who became Osmanlis.
Calling the Osmanlis Turks, and regarding them as invaders upon the soil of
Europe, is an historical error which has persisted so long that the Osmanlis
themselves have fallen into it! They have always distinguished themselves from
the Turks. This is proved by their own use of that word to describe a people as
different from themselves as were the Greeks. Evliya effendi spoke of the ‘harsh
language of the Turks’, and said of Turbeli Koïlik, which was conquered by
Osman in 1312, ‘Though its inhabitants are Turks, it is a sweet town.’[149] Hadji
Khalfa regarded the Turks as synonymous with the Tartars, and an altogether
foreign race.[150]
Whether their tolerance was actuated by policy, by genuine kindly feeling, or
by indifference,[151] the fact cannot be gainsaid that the Osmanlis were the first
nation in modern history to lay down the principle of religious freedom as the
corner-stone in the building up of their nation. During the centuries that bear the
stain of unremitting persecution of the Jew and the responsibility for official
support of the Inquisition, Christian and Moslem lived together in harmony
under the rule of the Osmanlis. This was generally, though not universally, the
case throughout the fourteenth century in the Turkish emirates of Asia Minor.
[152]
VII
The army of Osman consisted entirely of volunteer horsemen, who were
called akindjis. They wore no specified uniform. But they were superb riders and
moved together ‘like a wall’—an expression that has come down to the present
day in Ottoman military drills.[153] When Osman planned a campaign, he sent
criers into the villages to proclaim that ‘whoever wanted to fight’ should be at a
certain place on a certain day.
Orkhan was the organizer of the Ottoman army. He and his successor Murad
laid the foundations of a military power which was without rival for two
centuries. Although there is no ground for the claim of many historians that the
Osmanlis were a hundred years ahead of Europe in organizing a standing army,
[154] they were certainly pioneers in the complete organization of an army on a
permanent war footing. Orkhan understood well the principle qui se laisse payer
se laisse commander thirty years before Charles V of France.
His irregular infantry (azabs) were placed in the front when battle was
engaged.[155] It made little difference how many of these were killed, or whether
they made a good show. They served to draw the first fire of the enemy. When
the enemy’s energy was exhausted or when he was led to pursue the fleeing
azabs, thinking the victory his, he came upon the second line, which consisted of
paid, disciplined troops. These were accustomed to fighting together, were
acquainted with their leaders’ commands and strategy, and had a tremendous
advantage over the usual mercenaries of the period in that they served a cause to
which their lives were devoted and a sovereign whose interests were identical
with their own. Whether this were due to training begun in the days of
adolescence, or to the knowledge that bravery would be rewarded not by booty
alone (always an uncertain quantity which the ordinary mercenary invariably
begins to think of securing before his fighting work is really accomplished), but
by promotion in the service and substantial gifts of land, the result was the same.
The corps of salaried soldiers were called Kapu-Kali Odjaks, and their
service was centred in the person of their sovereign. They were supposed to be
continually ‘at the door of the Sultan’s tent’. The Sultan paid them regularly and
personally. They served him regularly and personally. When they went into the
field with a commander other than the Sultan, the commander was regarded,
during the term of his commission, as in the place of the Sultan.[156] There came
to be seven of these odjaks: the janissaries, the adjami-oghlular (novices), the
topjis (field-artillerymen), the djebedjis (smiths), the toparabadjis (artillery and
munition drivers), the khumbaradjis (siege-artillerymen), and the sakkas (watercarriers).[
157] It is impossible to state just when these distinctive corps arose, but
they are the logical development of Orkhan’s Eulufeli, the year-in and year-out
soldiery who followed arms as a definite profession and enjoyed a regular salary
fixed by law.
The akindjis, cavalry scouts and yet more than that, served as an advanceguard,
and opened up the country to be conquered. The greatest dangers and the
richest rewards fell to them. They were recruited from among the holders of
military fiefs (timarets). Guides (tchaousches) and regular paid corps of cavalry
(spahis) completed the organization.
It may be that Orkhan had learned a valuable lesson from his observation of
the Catalans and of the early Turkish invaders in Europe. For he arranged his
organization in such a way that the army would depend directly upon him, and
not upon subordinates who might be led to put their personal interests above
those of their chief. With the exception of the akindjis, whose loyalty was
secured by their fiefs, there were no irregular bands raised and led by
adventurers. Unity was the first striking characteristic of the Ottoman army.
The second characteristic was readiness. We have already seen how
Andronicus III ‘gathered in haste’ the army which he tried to oppose to the
Osmanlis. Lack of time for preparation is the excuse for many a Byzantine
disaster. An early and competent traveller wrote that the Osmanlis knew
beforehand just when the Christian armies were coming and where they could be
met to the best advantage. For they were always on a war footing, and their
tchaousches and spies knew how and where to lead. ‘They can start suddenly,
and a hundred Christian soldiers would make more noise than ten thousand
Osmanlis. When the drum is sounded they put themselves immediately in march,
never breaking step, never stopping till the word is given. Lightly armed, in one
night they travel as far as their Christian adversaries in three days.’[158]
VIII
The fall of Brusa, Nicaea, and Nicomedia did not cause alarm in Europe. The
rise of the Osmanlis had scarcely been noticed, even by the Byzantines! The
Turkish pirates in the Aegaean, who had no connexion whatever with the
Osmanlis,[159] were becoming, however, a menace to the commerce of the
Venetians and Genoese and to the sovereignty of the remaining Latin princes of
Achaia and of the islands. In one of Marino Sanudo’s letters we find the
following significant passage: ‘Marco Gradenigo, writing to me from Negropont
(Euboea) on September eighteenth, 1328, declares that unless some remedy be
found against the Turks, who have marvellously increased in numbers,
Negropont and all the islands of the Archipelago will be infallibly lost.’[160]
In 1327 Andronicus II wrote to Pope John XXII, calling his attention to the
Turks as a danger to Christendom, and appealing for aid.[161] Nothing was done
at this time. The Byzantines were schismatics, and France at least was more
intent upon a recovery of the Holy Land than upon checking the advance of the
Moslem corsairs.[162]
Andronicus III, in 1333, followed the example of his grandfather by making
another overture to John XXII. He did not scruple to dangle before the Pope the
bait of a reunion of the Churches.[163] The same year Venice urged Cyprus and
Rhodes to join in a coalition against the Turks.[164] The only practical outcome
of the efforts of the popes, the Venetian senate, and the Byzantine emperors to
raise a crusade during the reign of Orkhan was the capture of Smyrna, in
October 1344. Omar bey, emir of Aïdin, had been caught napping.[165] Smyrna
remained in possession of the Knights of Rhodes until it was taken by Timur in
1403.[166]
The futile agitation in Europe against the reawakening of Islam did not in any
way hurt Orkhan. On the contrary it helped him greatly. Just as the petty conflict
of Andronicus III with Phocaea in 1336 had diverted Orkhan’s powerful
southern neighbours, this interference of the Pope, and the activity of Rhodes
and Venice, contributed to the prosperity and growth of the Osmanlis by striking
a blow at his most dangerous rivals, the Emirs of Sarukhan, Aïdin, and Hamid.
After 1340 Orkhan was ready to extend his dominion into Europe. He did not
have long to wait.
IX
Orkhan had one rival whose goal was similar to his own. Stephen Dushan,
kral of Serbia, was openly aspiring to the imperial throne. Byzantium had no
more formidable enemy than this warrior king, who in twenty-five years led
thirteen campaigns against the Greeks.[167] The memory of his ephemeral empire
has been cherished by the Serbians to this day. In their folk-lore Stephen Dushan
and his deeds are immortalized. The halo of romance still surrounds the man and
his conquests. It is in vain that historical science has demonstrated the purely
temporary character of Stephen’s conquests. It is in vain that he has been
divested of the glamour of the chronicles and songs, and pictured in conformity
with fact. To the Serbian peasant he is Saint Stephen, the glorious Czar, who
brought the Serbian Empire to its zenith. All the cities in which this adventurer
and raider set foot are claimed in the twentieth century as a legitimate part of
‘Greater Serbia’. Men have engaged in a bloody war and have died for this
fiction.[168]
Stephen Dushan demands our attention because he is the one man who could
have anticipated the Osmanlis in winning the inheritance of the Caesars. A
statement of his career is necessary before we take up the narration of the events
which led to the invasion of the Balkan peninsula by the Osmanlis.
Stephen came into prominence in 1330 during the war which his father,
Urosh, made upon Bulgaria. Czar Michael had repudiated the Serbian princess
Anna in order to marry a sister of Andronicus III. The Bulgarians were badly
beaten. Stephen received for his brilliant part in the campaign the province of
Zenta. Although he was only twenty-three, his ambition to rule was already
awakened. Dissatisfied, he demanded a half of his father’s possessions. Urosh
refused. Stephen marched against him, dethroned him, and imprisoned him.
According to some authorities, he had Urosh killed.[169] Whether he actually
ordered the assassination or not, he profited by the crime.
During the first decade of his reign, Stephen gathered a majority of the
Serbian-speaking peoples under his rule, pushed down to the Dalmatian coast,
and asserted Serbian supremacy over a large portion of the territory which his
race had hitherto contested with the Bulgarians. His appearance on the Adriatic
led to a nominal alliance with Venice.[170] In 1340 he began the invasion of
lower Macedonia. When the valley of the Vardar was conquered, he attacked
Serres. This city fell into his possession. He now considered himself ready for
the advance on Constantinople. Drunk with success, he crowned himself at
Serres[171] ‘King by the grace of God of Serbia, of Albania, and of the maritime
region, prince of the Bulgarian empire, and master of almost all the Roman
empire’.[172] A few months later he changed the title to ‘emperor and autocrat of
Serbia and Romania’.[173]
The relations between Stephen and Venice during the period between 1345
and 1350 show how easily an alliance between the Serbians and the Venetians
might have been concluded. It was a critical time for Orkhan. Had Stephen
Dushan, with the help of the Venetians, attacked Constantinople before 1350, the
Osmanlis would have lost their goal. After his coronation, the ‘Roman emperor’
sent an embassy to Venice to secure the Senate’s aid for the definite purpose of
acquiring Constantinople.[174] In 1347 the Senate, in response to a second
overture, congratulated Stephen on having been crowned ‘emperor of
Constantinople’, but regretted the impossibility of aiding him. There was a truce
between Venice and the Byzantine Empire, and they were at that moment
engaged in a war with Zara.[175] However, like typical merchants, they consented
to sell arms to Stephen.[176]
In January 1348 the Senate congratulated Stephen upon his exploits,[177] and
later in the same year granted him three, then four, galleys.[178] This seems to be
the extent of the help rendered by Venice to Stephen Dushan. The success of
Stephen in subjugating Thessaly, and his progress farther south until, in 1349,
the Serbian flags waved on the mainland opposite the Venetian castle of Ptelion
in Euboea, alarmed the Venetians. The Senate complained of the piracy of the
Serbians in the Aegaean, and tried to re-establish peace between Serbians and
Greeks.[179] Stephen became more insistent and the Senate more reluctant. On
April 13, 1350, the Senate considered several demands made upon them by an
envoy of ‘Stephen Dushan, emperor of Serbia and Romania, despot of Arta and
count of Wallachia’. Among them were Venetian citizenship for himself, his wife
and his son, a conference with the Doge at Ragusa, and substantial aid for the
attack upon Constantinople, ‘when he shall have conquered the ten parts of
Romania outside of Constantinople.’[180] The chart of citizenship was accorded.
But he was informed that the Doge never left Venice during his tenure of office,
and that there was a treaty of friendship with the Byzantines which prevented
Venice from joining in an attempt to capture the imperial city.[181]
Convinced that he could expect no substantial assistance from Venice,
Stephen planned to work the old trick of the Byzantine emperors. The Serbians
were already excommunicated by the Greek Orthodox Church. Stephen
negotiated with the Pope for the return of the Serbians into the Roman fold.[182]
When war arose between Venice and Genoa, Stephen sent envoys to Orkhan
to propose a union of the Serbian and Ottoman armies for a campaign against
Constantinople. The marriage of his daughter to Orkhan’s son was to seal the
alliance. Orkhan accepted this proposal. An embassy was immediately sent to
Stephen to arrange the details of the alliance. But Cantacuzenos determined to
prevent this change of Orkhan’s allegiance by a most drastic measure. He did not
fear the anger of Orkhan as greatly as he feared a union between Orkhan and
Dushan. The Ottoman envoys were ambushed. Some were killed. Those who
escaped, together with the presents destined for Stephen, were taken to
Demotika.[183]
Neither Stephen nor Orkhan tried to reopen the negotiations. They realized
that their ambitions were too nearly identical to permit a harmonious agreement
as to a division of the spoils. Macedonia was as hard to divide in the fourteenth
century as it is in the twentieth. After 1351 Stephen watched to see what effect
the war between Venice and Genoa was going to have upon his fortunes. He also
intrigued, as Orkhan was doing, in the civil war of the Byzantines. These were
his Capuan days. They were fatal to the fame of Stephen—outside of the Serbian
folk-lore! The first expedition of Orkhan’s son Soleiman, in 1353, so alarmed
Stephen that he tried to become reconciled to the Orthodox Church. He sent an
embassy to Constantinople, but the patriarch refused his blessing until Stephen
had renounced the title of emperor and his conquests east of the Vardar.[184]
Stephen could not do this. Nor could he wait longer. If he did not strike quickly,
the Osmanlis would be in his path. He took what was now a gambler’s chance.
With eighty thousand men he started for Constantinople. Death claimed him on
the second day of the march.[185] The Serbian Empire did not outlive its founder.
X
The public life of John Cantacuzenos was contemporary almost to the year
with that of Stephen Dushan. He was associated with Andronicus III in the
capacity of grand chancellor and confidential adviser throughout the decade
which saw the loss of Nicaea and Nicomedia. Shortly after he had succeeded in
deposing his grandfather, Andronicus III was taken with a violent fever. His
crime-stained mind could not rid itself of the idea that he was going to die, even
after he had become convalescent. He solicited Cantacuzenos to assume the
imperial purple. He wanted to abdicate and take monk’s orders. A drink from a
miraculous spring gave him a new grip on life.[186] For eleven years he lived on,
in every crisis irresolute, in every disaster unkingly, bending always before the
stronger will of Cantacuzenos. In 1341, at the early age of forty-five, his
worthless life ended. His legacy to the Empress Anna and his child heir was the
guardianship of his ‘friend and counsellor, John Cantacuzenos’. The grand
chancellor accepted the regency with alacrity.[187]
Three months after the death of Andronicus III, Cantacuzenos crowned
himself emperor at Demotika. He put the imperial crown also upon the head of
his wife Irene, a Bulgarian princess. Neither in Constantinople nor in Adrianople
were the pretensions of Cantacuzenos admitted. The widow of Andronicus,
Anna of Savoy, refused to acknowledge the usurper. In Adrianople the
inhabitants called in both Bulgarians and Turks to defend them against
Cantacuzenos.[188] The Bulgarian Czar took sides secretly against his son-in-law.
The year 1342 saw the Byzantines engaged in another terrible civil war. The
self-appointed emperor did not hesitate to go to Pristina and offer to Stephen
Dushan Macedonia as far as Serres in exchange for Serbian aid against the
Palaeologi.[189]
When the Serbian assistance proved unsatisfactory, Cantacuzenos called in
the Turks of Aïdin. Omar, with 83 ships and 29,000 soldiers, came to his aid,
but, because of the severe cold, returned to Asia before anything could be
accomplished.[190] He came back in the spring of 1343 with 290 vessels and
helped Cantacuzenos to enter Salonika. In the fall of this year Cantacuzenos led
his Turkish mercenaries into Thrace. Anna appealed in vain to Venice to exercise
a pressure upon the Turks and Serbians, so that they would no longer support her
rival.[191] In desperation she gave Alexander of Bulgaria nine strongholds in the
Rhodope Mountains in exchange for a few thousand soldiers. She resorted also
to bribing the Turks in Cantacuzenos’s service, and made overtures to Orkhan.
The crusade of 1344 against the Turks of Aïdin, which resulted in the capture
of Smyrna, prevented Cantacuzenos from continuing to receive substantial aid
from Omar, who died four years later in an attempt to win back Smyrna.[192]
Stephen Dushan, as we have already seen, was laying claim to the Byzantine
throne himself. Cantacuzenos could turn only to the Osmanlis.
It was in January 1345 that Cantacuzenos made his infamous proposal to
Orkhan. In exchange for six thousand soldiers he was to give his daughter
Theodora to the Ottoman emir.[193] Orkhan now turned a deaf ear to the appeals
of Anna. This was a better offer. The Osmanlis crossed into Europe. With their
help Cantacuzenos got possession of all the coast cities of the Black Sea except
Sozopolis, besieged Constantinople, ravaged the neighbourhood of the capital,
and won Adrianople.[194]
It was only by threatening to change to the side of the Palaeologi that Orkhan
secured the fulfilment of the bargain. In May 1346 Theodora became his bride.
[195] A few days later, while Cantacuzenos was besieging the capital with the
soldiers for whom he had paid so dearly, the beleaguered city was awakened by
an ominous event. The eastern portion of the Church of St. Sophia had fallen.
[196]
Throughout the year 1346 Constantinople was invested by Cantacuzenos and
his mercenaries. The aristocratic party was almost openly championing the cause
of the usurper, while Anna relied upon the democratic party and the Genoese. As
for the clergy, they and the bulk of the population were more interested in the
ecclesiastical trial of Barlaam for the Bogomile heresy[197] than in the civil war.
In February 1347, while the Synod was in the act of condemning Barlaam, and
Anna was confined to her bed with a serious illness, partisans of Cantacuzenos
left the Golden Gate open. The ‘faithful friend and counsellor’ of Andronicus III
entered without opposition. The garrison had been bribed, and prevented the
Genoese from coming to the rescue of the empress. She yielded only when the
palace of the Blachernae was attacked.
Anna agreed to recognize Cantacuzenos and Irene as co-rulers, and to a union
of the families by the betrothal of Helen, daughter of Cantacuzenos, to the young
John Palaeologos. John, who was fifteen, protested against marrying the
thirteen-year-old Helen. His mother overruled his objections. In May the
marriage took place in the church of the Blachernae, as St. Sophia was still in
ruins. This ceremony was followed by the coronation of the two emperors, John
Cantacuzenos and John Palaeologos, and the three empresses, Anna, Irene, and
Helen.[198] Five rulers for the remnant of the Byzantine Empire! At that very
moment in France, the Marquis de Montferrat, heir to the Latin emperors of
Constantinople, was planning with the Pope to drive out both Cantacuzenos and
Palaeologos.[199]
Orkhan was well satisfied with this entering wedge. He was now son-in-law
of one emperor and brother-in-law of the other. His wife Theodora was
granddaughter of the Bulgarian Czar. He had open to him also a marriage
alliance with Stephen Dushan. The gods were first making mad.
Cantacuzenos was compelled immediately to seek aid again of Orkhan.
While he had been expending his energies against Constantinople, Stephen
Dushan had made great strides in Macedonia. At Scutari, where Orkhan had
come to congratulate his father-in-law upon the happy issue of the struggle for
the imperial purple, Cantacuzenos asked for six thousand Osmanlis to dislodge
the Serbians from the coast cities of Macedonia. Orkhan sent the soldiers
willingly. He must, however, have given them secret instructions, for after
having taken immense booty they returned to Nicomedia without having
captured for Cantacuzenos a single one of the cities held by Stephen.[200]
XI
It is impossible to believe that Cantacuzenos from this time onwards did not
realize the danger to which he had exposed the state and the noose into which he
had put his neck. The papal archives and the writings of Cantacuzenos himself
reveal the fact that as early as 1347 Cantacuzenos had appealed to the Pope to
unite the western princes in a crusade against the Osmanlis,[201] that these
negotiations were renewed in 1349[202] and 1350,[203] and that in 1353 a last
definite appeal was made to Clement by Cantacuzenos for relief against those
whom he had invited into Europe to fight his battles.[204]
The five years between 1348 and 1353 gave rise to three events which were
fatal to the Byzantine Empire. They made possible the permanent foothold of the
Osmanlis in Europe. A man’s own efforts and a man’s ability are not the sole
factors in his success. Work and genius avail nothing where opportunity is
lacking. Circumstances over which he has no control contribute largely to the
making of a man. Orkhan, at this culminating stage of his career, when he was
ready to lead his people into the promised land, was aided by the ‘black death’,
the war between Venice and Genoa, and the conflict between John Cantacuzenos
and John Palaeologos.
The ‘black death’ was first heard of in the Euxine ports. It reached
Constantinople in 1347, and spread to Europe the following year. In Italy it was
universal, and lasted three years. From 15 to 20 per cent. of the total population
died.[205] In the maritime cities that had been in close contact with the East, the
duration of the epidemic was longer and the mortality higher. The moral and
economic effect was great throughout Europe. Men looked with horror upon this
inexplicable malady, which struck down every fifth person. It gave no warning.
There were few recoveries. For years after the last case was recorded there was
nervous fear of its return. Communications with the Levant had been partially
cut off.[206] Full intercourse was not resumed until after Orkhan and the
Osmanlis were rooted in Macedonia and Thrace. Orkhan had no crusade to fear
as long as there lingered in the minds of the European peoples the memory of
this scourge. The bravest and most adventurous were unwilling to fight the angel
of death.
Plagues continued to visit the coast cities of the Balkan peninsula and Asia
Minor from time to time during the rest of the fourteenth and the first thirty
years of the fifteenth century. Between 1348 and 1431, nine great plagues are
recorded.[207] These dates coincide with the most aggressive period of Ottoman
conquest. As the city population was very largely Greek and Christian, we
cannot over-estimate the importance of these epidemics. They were a valuable
auxiliary in enabling the Osmanlis to advance and assimilate without formidable
opposition.
The ‘black death’ had hardly run its course in Italy when the commercial
rivalries of Genoa and Venice culminated in a bitter war, that lasted for two
years, with varying fortunes, until the battle of Lojera in 1353 broke the seapower
of Genoa. After five centuries of independence the Genoese were
compelled to put themselves under the protection of Milan. The hatred
engendered by this struggle is revealed in the archives of the two republics. They
left unturned no stone to destroy each other. The history of Venice and Genoa
during the fourteenth century reads like that of Sparta and Athens. The scene of
the conflict is the same: the motive, the spirit, and the result are identical. Venice
gained no material advantage from the war. She had long been alive to the
menace of the Osmanlis.[208] She had been warned by Petrarch of the certain
danger which a war with Genoa would entail, whether its outcome were
favourable or unfavourable.[209]
The Ottoman and Byzantine historians are silent concerning the relations of
the Osmanlis with the Genoese during this war. That the Genoese asked for and
received aid from Orkhan is certain. There had been a convention beforehand
between the Osmanlis and the Genoese of Pera.[210] Both against the Greeks and
against the Venetians the assistance of Orkhan must have been substantial.[211] It
was remembered with gratitude forty years later.[212]
The triumphal entry into Constantinople and the sanction of the Church upon
his imperial office did not end the troubles of Cantacuzenos. The first to turn
against him was his own son Matthew, who also wanted to be emperor.
Cantacuzenos appeased him for a time by giving him a portion of Thrace. Then
the Genoese of Pera, dissatisfied with the lowering of the customs tariff to other
nations, burned the Greek galleys and arsenals, and attacked Constantinople.
Cantacuzenos had to leave a sick-bed at Demotika to hurry to save the city. The
Greek fleet was destroyed by the Genoese. The army of Cantacuzenos failed in
an attack upon Galata. Peace was concluded only when the unhappy emperor
agreed to sell more land on the Golden Horn to the Genoese, and restore them in
the customs tariffs to their former place as ‘most favoured nation’.[213]
In 1349 Cantacuzenos called again upon Orkhan to send soldiers to him in
Europe. Twenty thousand Ottoman cavaliers, under the command of Matthew,
marched against Salonika, which was on the point of giving itself to Stephen
Dushan. Cantacuzenos, with the young emperor John, went by sea. Orkhan, as
on the last occasion, secretly worked against his father-in-law. After
Cantacuzenos had already sailed, he recalled the horsemen who were with
Matthew. It was fortunate for Cantacuzenos that he met at Amphipolis a Turkish
fleet which was about to land a force of raiders to ravage the country, and
persuaded the commander to join with him in a demonstration against Salonika.
Otherwise the expedition would have been a fiasco. As it was, Salonika
surrendered. The army of Cantacuzenos ascended the Vardar as far as Uskub,
which was reoccupied.[214]
It would be too wearisome to go into all the details of the civil war between
Cantacuzenos and John Palaeologos. Involved in it are the intrigues of Stephen
Dushan of Serbia and Alexander of Bulgaria, and the attitude of Venice and
Genoa. At first it seemed as if Cantacuzenos would be crushed. The partisans of
Palaeologos besieged Matthew in the citadel of Adrianople. The Genoese of
Galata, in spite of the strong Venetian fleet whose co-operation, however, with
the Greeks was lukewarm,[215] compelled Cantacuzenos to cede Silivria and
Heraclea, besides increasing their Galata lands.[216] In the fall of 1352 the
Venetians and Bulgarians declared openly for Palaeologos.[217]
In desperation Cantacuzenos fell back for the last time upon the Osmanlis. He
robbed the churches of the capital to pay Orkhan for twenty thousand soldiers,
and promised him a fortress in the Thracian Chersonese.[218] With this help he
recaptured Adrianople, and relieved Matthew, who was still holding the citadel.
The Serbians were beaten by Orkhan’s eldest son, Soleiman, near Demotika. All
of Thrace and most of Macedonia returned to the allegiance of Cantacuzenos.
[219]
In 1353 Cantacuzenos seemed to have recovered all the lost ground, and to be
at the height of his fortunes. John Palaeologos, abandoned by his partisans, was
in exile at Tenedos. An attempt to win back Constantinople by intrigue failed.
Cantacuzenos, now practically sole ruler, felt that it was time to establish a new
imperial line. He had Matthew proclaimed co-emperor.[220] In his prosperity he
forgot about Orkhan, who had put him where he was, he forgot that he had
invited the Osmanlis into Europe and had shown them the fertile valleys of
Macedonia and Thrace, that their fighting men had passed along the military
roads of the empire under the command of himself and his son, that he had
mustered Ottoman armies under the walls of Salonika, of Adrianople, of
Demotika, and even of Constantinople.
XII
The Ottoman historians place the first invasion of European territory by the
Osmanlis in the year of the Hegira 758 (1356), and state that Soleiman crossed
the Hellespont one moonlight night with three hundred warriors, and seized the
castle of Tzympe, between Gallipoli and the Aegaean Sea end of the strait.[221] It
is represented as a romantic adventure, prompted by a dream in which Soleiman
saw the moonbeams make a tempting path for him from Asia into Europe.[222]
The earlier western historians give a variety of dates. Some ascribe the first
crossing to Murad.[223] Several claim that the Osmanlis were transported by two
small Genoese merchant ships, and that there were sixty thousand of them! The
Genoese received a ducat per head. All the calamities of the ‘Turks’ were
brought upon Europe by the avarice of the Genoese.[224]
We can reject these stories without hesitation, just as we can reject the date
which the Ottoman historians give.[225] The Osmanlis had been fighting in
Europe since 1345. They had come over in large numbers on different occasions.
There is nothing mysterious or romantic about their first foothold in Europe. In
1352 Cantacuzenos had promised to Orkhan a fortress in the Thracian
Chersonese. Tzympe may have been given to Soleiman, or it was taken by him
when the promise of Cantacuzenos was not fulfilled. He did not have to cross
secretly from Asia. The Ottoman soldiers were already at home in Europe, and
Soleiman had been their leader in several expeditions.
Shortly after the occupation of Tzympe, one of those earthquakes which
occur so often in the Thracian Chersonese destroyed a portion of the walls of
Gallipoli. This was Soleiman’s opportunity. He occupied the city, repaired the
breaches, and called over from Bithynia the first colony of Osmanlis. Other
colonies followed rapidly, as the soldiers of Soleiman took Malgara, Bulaïr (the
key of the peninsula),[226] and the European littoral of the Sea of Marmora as far
as Rodosto. The advance-guard of the Osmanlis appeared within a few miles of
Constantinople; and ‘conducted themselves as masters’.[227] This colonization
was so quickly and easily effected that one is led to believe that these colonists
were for the most part renegade Greeks returning to their former homes.
Cantacuzenos now reaped the full harvest of his policy. The patriarch
Callixtus refused to consecrate Matthew. He reproached Cantacuzenos for
having delivered Christians into the hands of the infidels, and accused him of
having given to Orkhan the money sent by a Russian prince for the restoration of
St. Sophia.[228] Compelled to flee for his life to the Genoese in Galata, the
patriarch decided to declare for Palaeologos. When Cantacuzenos chose a new
patriarch, Philotheus, who consented as price of office to consecrate Matthew,
Callixtus excommunicated him. Philotheus returned the compliment. Then
Callixtus sailed for Tenedos to join John Palaeologos.[229]
Cantacuzenos, feeling the precariousness of his position at Constantinople
just at the moment when he thought he had triumphed over every obstacle to his
ambition, bitterly reproached Orkhan for not having kept faith with him. He
offered to buy back Tzympe for ten thousand ducats, and asked Orkhan to order
the Osmanlis to leave Gallipoli. Orkhan accepted the ransom for Tzympe,
knowing well that he could reoccupy this fortress when he wanted to.[230] As for
Gallipoli, he declared that he could not give back what God had given him. Was
it not the will of God rather than force of arms that had opened the gates of
Gallipoli to him? Cantacuzenos sought an interview with his son-in-law, for he
thought that gold might induce the Osmanlis to withdraw. A meeting was
arranged in the Gulf of Nicomedia. When the emperor arrived at the rendezvous,
a messenger from Orkhan reported that his master was ill and could not come.
[231] No way was left open for further negotiations. The rupture was complete.
After his return to Constantinople, Cantacuzenos sent envoys to the Serbians
and to the Bulgarians to urge a defensive alliance of the Balkan Christians. They
answered, ‘Defend yourself as best you can.’ A second embassy met with the
response from Czar Alexander: ‘Three years ago I remonstrated with you for
your unholy alliances with the Turks. Now that the storm has broken, let the
Byzantines weather it. If the Turks come against us, we shall know how to
defend ourselves.’[232]
The indignation of the Greeks against the man who had sacrificed them to his
inordinate ambition reached the breaking-point in November 1354. The
inhabitants of Constantinople declared for John Palaeologos. Cantacuzenos was
forced to barricade himself in his palace. Protected by Catalans and other
mercenaries, he tried to temporize. He offered to abdicate if Matthew were
allowed to retain the title of emperor with the governorship of Adrianople and
the Rhodope district. Encouraged by a lull in the storm of popular feeling, he had
the audacity to make an ‘appeal to patriotism’, as he himself put it. He urged the
people to support him in an expedition to retake the provinces conquered by the
Serbians and the Osmanlis. This exhibition of effrontery was greeted with cries
of scorn. Cantacuzenos was publicly accused of wishing to deliver
Constantinople to Orkhan. A second revolution forced his abdication. He became
a monk. Irene took the veil.[233]
John Palaeologos returned from exile, and restored Callixtus to the
patriarchal throne. It took several years of fighting and negotiating to compel
Matthew’s abdication. Not until 1358 did John V become undisputed ruler of the
remnant of the empire in Macedonia and Thrace.[234] But the mischief was done.
The Osmanlis had put their foot as settlers on European soil.
Cantacuzenos lived for thirty years in the monastery of Mistra, near old
Sparta. It was long enough for him to see the irreparable injury that his ambition
had caused to his country, and to realize how he had destroyed the people to rule
over whom he had sacrificed every higher and nobler instinct. Cantacuzenos has
had a fair trial before the bar of posterity. For many long years, far removed from
the turmoil of the world, were spent in the building up of his brief of
justification. He left a history of his life and times. So he pleads for himself. But
even if we did not have the testimony of Gregoras, and of the archives of the
Italian cities and of the Vatican, to supplement the story of Cantacuzenos, he
would stand condemned by his own record of facts.
Cantacuzenos had far more natural ability than Andronicus II and Andronicus
III. During the long and arduous struggle to satisfy his personal ambition, he
showed himself a keen, courageous, resourceful leader. At the beginning of his
career he was in a position of commanding influence. His country was facing a
crisis which would have called forth the best and noblest in one who loved his
race, his religion, and his fatherland. But John Cantacuzenos loved only himself.
The legacy of the widow and helpless child of the friend who had trusted and
honoured him gave to Cantacuzenos the opportunity for developing true
greatness in the fulfilment of that highest of missions—a sacred trust. But
Cantacuzenos saw only the opportunity for taking advantage of a dead man’s
faith.
To say that Cantacuzenos was the cause of the downfall of the Byzantine
Empire would be to ignore other forces working to the same end, and to put too
great an emphasis upon the power of an individual human will to shape the
destinies of the world. However, in the stage of world history, leaders of men are
the personification of causes. We group everything around them. The character
and acts of Cantacuzenos reveal the fatal weakness in the Balkan peninsula of
his day. The Ottoman conquest was possible because there was no consciousness
of religious or racial commonweal. How could this larger devotion, this larger
sense of duty and obligation, be expected in men who were not influenced, much
less constrained, by ties of blood and personal friendship?
XIII
Cantacuzenos ceased to be a factor in Byzantine affairs in 1355. But the
Greeks could not rid themselves as easily of Orkhan. The Osmanlis had come to
stay.
It is impossible to establish with any degree of certainty the conquests of
Soleiman pasha in the hinterland of the Gulf of Saros and of the Sea of
Marmora. But we know that he captured Demotika, and cut off Constantinople
from Adrianople by occupying Tchorlu.[235] If these important places were
retaken by the Byzantines after the premature death of Soleiman, it was only for
a brief time. At the beginning of the reign of Murad the Osmanlis were firmly
ensconced along the coasts of Thrace, and had made some permanent progress
into the interior.
There was a sudden and full awakening on the part of the Greeks to the
knowledge that the Ottoman invasion of 1354 was an irreparable disaster. A year
before Soleiman pasha settled his Moslem colonies in the Thracian Chersonese,
the inhabitants of Philadelphia had felt themselves so completely abandoned by
their emperors that they had appealed directly to the Pope for aid, promising to
return to the Roman communion.[236] At the approach of the Osmanlis in Thrace,
the country population had fled to Constantinople, abandoning everything.
Those who had money to emigrate elsewhere did so immediately. They had no
hope of a change in the fortunes of their country.[237]
The annalists of the Byzantine Empire record no heroic, bitter resistance to
the army of Soleiman pasha. There was no mayor of the palace, no Joan, to
revive the confidence of the people in their rulers, or to replace the family that
had proved its unfitness. The Greeks had feared Cantacuzenos, and had
attributed their hopeless condition to his alliance with the Osmanlis. But they
could not have greater confidence in John Palaeologos. For he made no effort,
not even in the smallest way, to demonstrate that he was different from his weak
and disloyal forbears.
The Byzantines feared also the intrigues of the Genoese, who were as
persistent in their efforts to undermine the integrity of the Byzantine Empire, as
are the foreigners to-day engaged in commerce in the Levant to weaken and
destroy the authority of the Ottoman Empire.[238] The banishment of
Cantacuzenos could not save them from the Osmanlis. Palaeologos could not
save them. They could not save themselves. The only way which occurred to
them of preventing the Ottoman conquest was to give themselves to some
Christian power. There were actually plans on foot to offer the remnant of the
empire to Venice, to Hungary, even to Serbia![239]
In France, during the fourteenth century, the Turks were not regarded as a
permanent factor in the Near East. Western Asia Minor was not called ‘Turquie’
or ‘Turquemanie’, but ‘the land which the Turks hold’.[240] There was no such
illusion among the Italians. They accustomed themselves very rapidly to the idea
that the Osmanlis, if not the Turkish tribes, were in Asia Minor and the Aegaean
to stay.
The immigration across the Hellespont in 1354 was not looked upon by those
who were acquainted with the weakness and impotence of the Byzantines as a
raid or as a temporary affair. For several years the Genoese had thought it to
their advantage to seek the friendship of Orkhan.[241] In 1355 two far-sighted
Venetians wrote the whole truth to the Senate. They did not mince matters.
Matteo Venier, baily at Constantinople, warned the Senate in the strongest terms
about the menace of Ottoman aggrandizement.[242] Marino Falieri went farther.
He pointed out that the Byzantine Empire must inevitably become the booty of
the Osmanlis, and urged his countrymen to get ahead of them.[243] Prophetic
words and daring suggestion. Had Venice at this time had a Dandolo of the
stamp of the intrepid blind Doge who diverted the Fourth Crusade to wreak his
vengeance upon his mutilators, Islam might have been kept out of Europe.
When John Palaeologos resumed the throne of his fathers, he found himself
as much at the mercy of Orkhan as Cantacuzenos had been. His dependence is
revealed in the story of Halil. Halil, son of Orkhan and Theodora, was captured
by pirates in 1357, and taken to Phocaea. Orkhan held his brother-in-law
responsible for this kidnapping, and called upon him to rescue his nephew. In
February 1358, while the Osmanlis under Soleiman pasha were advancing in
Thrace, we see John V, at the behest of Orkhan, spending what strength and
energy he had in the siege of Phocaea. Later, when he went back to
Constantinople, Orkhan peremptorily ordered him to return to direct in person
the siege. John started out, and met his fleet, which had become anxious about
his absence and had given up the siege. He could not persuade the galleys to turn
back with him. So he wrote to Orkhan begging to be excused from continuing an
undertaking beyond his power to carry through successfully.
Orkhan was inflexible. He had now become the overlord of the Byzantine
emperor. In March 1359 the successor of Constantine went as a vassal to meet
his Ottoman suzerain at Scutari. He appeased the wrath of Orkhan only by
agreeing to pay a half of Halil’s ransom, and by signing a treaty of peace that
was a virtual acceptance of the new status quo in Thrace. The peace was to be
sealed by the betrothal of his ten-year-old daughter to Halil. It was as errand boy
of Orkhan that John V made one more trip to Phocaea, paid one hundred
thousand pieces of gold for Halil, and brought him to Nicaea. There the betrothal
of the Christian princess to her Moslem cousin was celebrated by splendid fêtes.
[244]
John Cantacuzenos introduced the Osmanlis into Europe. John Palaeologos
accepted their presence in Thrace without a struggle. There is little choice
between these two Johns.
XIV
Orkhan died at the end of this memorable decade.[245] If to Osman is given
the honour of being father of a new people, the greater honour of founding the
nation must be ascribed to Orkhan.[246] Few men have accomplished a greater
work and seen more sweeping changes in two generations. According to popular
legend, Orkhan won his spurs as a warrior, and a bride to boot, at the capture of
Biledjik, when he was twelve years old. His life was spent in fighting and in
making permanent the results of his fighting. He was as simple in his tastes as
his father had been. At Nicaea he distributed soup and bread to the poor with his
own hands.[247]
There seems to be no basis for the characterization of Orkhan which the early
western historians handed down to posterity. He was neither vicious nor cruel
nor deceitful. His three striking characteristics were those which mark all men
who have accomplished a great work in history, oneness of purpose,
inexhaustible energy, and an unlimited capacity for detail. He began life as a
village lad of an obscure tribe. After a public career of sixty years he died, the
brother-in-law of the emperor of Byzantium, the friend and ally of Genoa, and
potentially master of Thrace. The purpose of his life is summed up in the
sentence we find upon his coins: ‘May God cause to endure the empire of
Orkhan, son of Osman.’
CHAPTER III
MURAD
THE OSMANLIS LAY THE FOUNDATIONS OF AN EMPIRE IN EUROPE
THE use of Ottoman mercenaries in the Byzantine civil wars was fatal to the
Empire. From the very fact that they were Osmanlis and mercenaries, the
auxiliaries of Cantacuzenos were dangerous allies for a man who claimed to be
fighting for his fatherland. The fertile valleys which Bulgarian and Serbian had
so long disputed with Greek fired the imagination of these ambitious
adventurers. The conquest of Macedonia and Thrace seemed to them as feasible
as it was worth while. For they had a revelation of the weakness of the Balkan
peoples that could have come to them in no other way. It was as if Cantacuzenos
had said to Orkhan and his followers: Here is our country. You see how rich it is.
You see how we hate each other, race striving with race, faction with faction. We
have no patriotism. We have no rulers or leaders actuated by other than purely
selfish motives. Our religion means no more to us than does our fatherland. Here
are our military roads. We give you the opportunity of becoming acquainted with
the easiest routes, of learning the best methods of provisioning. We initiate you
into the art of besieging our cities and our strongholds. Under our guidance, you
discover the vulnerable places in the walls of our fortresses.
Murad had not enjoyed training in leadership and responsibility to fit him for
his sudden accession to the chieftainship of the Osmanlis. He had been
overshadowed by the heir apparent, and never dreamed of ruling. Soleiman
pasha, brilliant captain and idol of the army, would not have brooked a rival in
popular favour. When Orkhan died, two months after the fatal fall of his eldest
son at Bulaïr, Murad was elevated to the emirship before he had had time to
adjust himself to his new fortunes. But he could not pause to get his bearings.
The army was on the march. The conquest of Thrace had already been started.
Osman and Orkhan were able to build up a race and a nation without notice
and, consequently, without hindrance. For their little corner of Asia Minor had
been abandoned by the Byzantines. Since the days when Nicaea became the
capital of the empire, after the Latin conquest of Constantinople, its commercial
relations with Europe were interrupted. None knew or cared about the rise of the
Osmanlis until they appeared in Thrace. Orkhan had assured himself of his
inheritance by patient waiting. Of Murad immediate action was demanded.
The actual European conquests of Orkhan, outside of the Thracian
Chersonese, had been negligible. But Europe was excited over the capture of
Gallipoli. Murad had little to fear from a union of the indigenous Balkan
elements. Greek and Serbian and Bulgarian hate each other far worse than they
hate the Osmanli. This fact of history, demonstrated so forcibly by the events of
the year 1913, was known and appreciated at its full value by the earliest of the
Ottoman conquerors. There was, however, just cause for apprehension of the
intervention of Hungary in conjunction with the Serbians, or of Venice in
conjunction with the Byzantines. Murad’s success depended upon his ability to
gain an immediate and vital foothold in the Balkan peninsula.
This foothold was obtained in the epoch-making campaign of 1360-1.
Astounding success attended the initial efforts of Murad. If he were not himself a
trained and seasoned warrior, he had a precious legacy of generals in whom he
could put implicit trust. Realizing his own inexperience, he created Kara Khalil
Tchenderli vizier, and allowed himself to be guided by the judgement of this
tried friend and servant of his grandfather and his father. To Lalashahin,
companion of Soleiman in the capture of Tzympe, was given the title of
beylerbey, and chief command of the army in Thrace. Adrianople was the goal.
To Evrenos bey Murad entrusted a second army, whose mission was to prevent
an attack from the Serbians in the west.[248]
Tchorlu was the first objective point, because its capture would protect the
rear of the army operating against Adrianople. This city, only forty-six miles
from Constantinople, offered a stubborn resistance, and had to be taken by
assault. The commandant was decapitated, the garrison massacred, and the walls
razed.[249] The Osmanlis saw to it that the fate of the defenders of Tchorlu was
heralded far and wide, so that it might serve as a lesson to other cities before
which their armies appeared. Evrenos bey, pushing forward on the left, occupied
Demotika,[250] and then Gumuldjina. This operation gave to the Osmanlis
control of the basin of the Maritza River, and removed the danger of a Serbian
attack. A column on the right moved up the coast of the Black Sea and captured
Kirk Kilisse, a position of extreme strategic importance in preventing a possible
Bulgarian attempt to relieve Adrianople by bringing an army through the
mountainous country between the river and the sea.[251]
After the capture of Tchorlu, Murad advanced to Lule Burgas on the north
bank of the Ergene, where he effected a junction with the armies of Evrenos and
Lalashahin. The decisive battle was fought between Bunar Hissar and Eski Baba,
to which point the defenders of Adrianople had
[Image unavailable.]
THE EMIRATE OF MURAD
advanced.[252] The Byzantines and Bulgarians were defeated. The Greek
commandant of Adrianople, with a portion of his army, managed to flee down
the Maritza to Enos.[253] it is one of the remarkable coincidences of history that
the Osmanlis should have won the first battle which opened up to them their
glorious future in Europe in exactly the same place that was to witness five
hundred and fifty years later their last desperate stand in the Balkan peninsula.
Deserted by their commandant, and overwhelmed by the disaster of Eski
Baba, the inhabitants of Adrianople opened their gates to the Osmanlis.[254]
Murad installed Lalashahin in Adrianople, and took up his own head-quarters in
Demotika,[255] where he built a palace and a mosque. Lalashahin, before settling
down in Adrianople, carried his victorious arms up the valley of the Maritza as
far as Philippopolis, which he fortified strongly. A stone bridge was built across
the river.[256] The occupation of Philippopolis not only gave to the Osmanlis an
advantageous base of operations against the Bulgarians, but also brought them
the most fruitful source of revenue they had yet enjoyed. It enabled them to levy
taxes upon the rice-growing industry. Bulgarians and Serbians were both
dependent upon the harvests of the rice fields around Philippopolis.
II
In fifteen months the Osmanlis had become masters of the principal strategic
points in Thrace. This great campaign, undertaken and carried through under the
spur of necessity, was an auspicious beginning for the reign of Murad and for the
supremacy of the Osmanlis in the Balkan peninsula. Europe was suffering from
another visitation of the Black Death.[257] The Balkan nations were completely
demoralized. So unpopular was John Palaeologos in his own capital that Murad
contemplated entering into a conspiracy with some Byzantine traitors to have
John assassinated and complete the conquest of the empire.[258] If he did enter
fully into this plot, it was as fortunate for him that the undertaking failed as it
was for the Bulgarians in 1912 that their columns did not pierce the lines of
Ottoman defence at Tchataldja. For the disaster that follows a too extended and
too rapid subjugation of unassimilated masses is as sudden as it is irreparable.
Durable empire-building is governed by a law of homogeneity.
The Osmanlis were still a race of limited numbers, and at the beginning of
their existence as a nation. The process of assimilating the racial elements in
conquered territories, begun by Osman when he first left the village of Sugut,
could not be arrested; for the existence of the Ottoman state depended upon its
continuance. The Greek of Bithynia had lived with Turk and Moslem for two
centuries, and had found him a good neighbour. There was neither racial
antipathy nor abhorrence of the religion of Mohammed to overcome. Nor had
there been the hatred and dread of the conquered on the one side and the
arrogance of the conqueror on the other. The Anatolian Greeks had been
accustomed for generations to the economic and political conditions that finally
caused the majority of them to cast their fortunes with the rising star of the
Osmanlis.
The problem of assimilating the Christians, who formed the total population
of the Balkan peninsula, was a new one. Here were huge and compact masses of
Christians, who had come suddenly under the yoke of the Osmanlis in the first
two years of Murad’s reign. They did not know their new masters. They did not
know Islam. Benevolent assimilation by voluntary conversion seemed no longer
possible. A radical change in the attitude of the Osmanlis towards the question of
religion was demanded. Wholesale massacre was impracticable, for the
Osmanlis had no reserve of colonists to call upon to replace the indigenous
elements. Their position was still too precarious to allow them to draw freely
from their adherents in the corner of Asia Minor under their dominion. To win
the Macedonians and Thracians by forcible conversion was not feasible. It
required the expenditure of all his military resources for Murad to hold what he
had conquered. He could not add police duty to his already superhuman burden.
Even had he thought of this method of conversion, he would have been deterred
by the nightmare of a crusade.
Murad and his counsellors solved the problem of assimilation by sanctioning
the reduction of captives to slavery, and by creating the corps of janissaries.
A law was promulgated which gave to the Osmanli soldier absolute right to
the possession of prisoners, unless they consented to profess and practise Islam.
Prisoners were regarded as booty. They could be kept for domestic or
agricultural labour, or sold in the open market, subject to the government’s
equity of one in five. The disgrace, even more than the hardships, of slavery was
so keenly felt by the Greeks[259] that many for whom there was no other way
preferred a change of religion to loss of freedom. The right to make slaves of
prisoners was efficacious in providing wives and concubines for the conquerors,
who were practically without women of their own. The widows of the fallen, and
the daughters of Greeks, Serbians, and Bulgarians, became the instruments of
increasing the Ottoman race. In the hundred years from Murad I to Mohammed
II, the Osmanlis became in blood the most cosmopolitan and vigorous race the
world had known since the days of the Greeks and Romans. Greek, Turkish,
Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Armenian, Wallachian, Hungarian, German,
Italian, Russian, Tartar, Mongol, Circassian, Georgian, Persian, Syrian, and
Arabian—this was the ancestry of the Osmanlis who, under Soleiman the
Magnificent, made the whole world tremble. In richness of blood the only
parallel to the Osmanlis in modern times is the present population of the United
States and Canada.
But this indirect method of conversion as an alternative to slavery did not
immediately increase the masculine element among the Osmanlis. In a city taken
by assault the more virile portion of the male population was killed off, and
those who remained were able to buy life and freedom. Male slaves were an
embarrassment to the ever-moving armies of Murad. Ransom money was
welcomed by the captors. In many cities the inhabitants surrendered without a
struggle, and were secured in their freedom by the terms of capitulation. In rural
districts the threat of slavery was little felt. The Osmanlis had neither time nor
strength to put out the drag-net. Everywhere in the Balkans refuge in the
mountains is easy. Then, too, the loss of cultivators would have made the highly
prized timarets worthless, and would have caused a famine in foodstuffs or a
diminution of taxes on harvests. Another means of bringing pressure to bear
upon the Christians had to be devised.
The famous corps of the janissaries was, according to the Ottoman historians,
a creation of Orkhan.[260] As a bodyguard of slaves, cut off from their families
and educated and trained to serve nearest the person of the sovereign, the
janissaries may have originated with Orkhan. If so, it was but the adoption of the
idea already put into practice by the sovereigns of Egypt in the organization of
the Mamelukes.[261] But as an agency of forcible conversion by the incorporation
of Christian youths in the Ottoman army, there is no evidence of its existence
before Murad. In fact, historians are agreed that the janissaries were recruited
only from the Christian population in Europe.[262] So Orkhan could hardly have
conceived this scheme. The problem of which it was a solution did not arise until
after Orkhan’s death.
That the corps of the janissaries was an agency for forcible conversion, and
was not created in order to increase the strength and efficiency of the Ottoman
army, is proved by the records we have of the number of janissaries in the early
days of Ottoman history. Murad and Bayezid are represented as having a
thousand or less janissaries. In the confusion of the ten years of civil strife
among the sons of Bayezid, the janissaries played no part. There were only
twelve hundred janissaries in the time of Mohammed the Conqueror,[263] and
twelve thousand when the Ottoman Empire was at its zenith under Soleiman the
Magnificent.[264] But Mahmud II counted one hundred and forty thousand in his
army.[265] These figures show that this most celebrated of Ottoman military
organizations did not become a powerful factor until the period of decadence.
The janissaries were not, as has been commonly represented, the principal
element of the Osmanlis’ fighting strength in the wars of conquest of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Their great rôle in Ottoman history was that of
maintainers and defenders of conquests already made. In organizing the
janissaries, Murad was certainly influenced by the desire of forming a bodyguard
on whose loyalty and devotion he could rely implicitly. But his principal purpose
was to emasculate the Christian elements in Macedonia and Thrace, which were
too fanatical or too ignorant to see of their own accord that self-interest should
lead them to renounce their nationality and their religion.
Murad’s law of drafting (devchurmé) provided that in each conquered district
in Europe the privilege of exemption from military service through the payment
of the capitation tax (kharadj) should be denied to Christian youths. The
Osmanlis reserved the right to select at discretion Christian boys, who were
taken from home and kindred and brought up in the Mohammedan religion.
They were trained for service as the Sultan’s bodyguard. They depended directly
upon the sovereign, who paid them according to a definite scale. Their insignia
were the pot and the spoon, and their officers received names which symbolized
the functions of the camp kitchen.[266]
One is compelled to dissent from the consensus of opinion of European
historians on the organization of the janissaries. Their scathing criticisms are
best summed up in the words of a French historian: ‘It is the most fearful tribute
of human flesh that has ever been levied by victors upon the vanquished.... It
justifies the execration of which the Osmanlis have been the object on the part of
Europeans during centuries. Let us add that, by this strange mode of recruiting,
the Osmanlis have found, at the same time, the means of taking away from the
Christian populations their most virile element, and of doubling their troops
without putting arms into the hands of the conquered.’[267]
The actual number of janissaries under arms refutes the latter part of this
criticism, when it is applied to any one of the Ottoman sovereigns of the period
of conquest. As for putting arms into the hands of the conquered, we shall see
that both Murad and Bayezid availed themselves of the services in war of their
Christian subjects, led by their own princes. The tearing away of boys from their
homes, and the loss of their Christian heritage, is a shock to humanitarian and
religious sensibilities. But we must judge the Osmanlis of Murad and Bayezid by
the Christians of their own century. When we compare the methods of conquest
of the Osmanlis with those of the Spaniards against the Moors, of the English
against the French and Scotch, of the Italians against each other, we must
concede that Murad devised a humane, clever, and highly successful scheme in
the institution of the janissaries.
The ignorant Balkan peasantry—especially the Slavic elements—prized their
sons far more highly than their daughters. Recruiting for the army was a greater
blow to them than recruiting for the harem. It was the strong, sturdy son who
was chosen. This touched the pocket-book as well as the heart-strings. The
Anatolian Greek, especially of the cities, had been deterred from becoming a
Moslem more by a lack of eagerness to assume military obligations than by a
zeal for his ancestral faith. The Macedonian Greek, the Bulgarian, and the
Serbian regarded the bearing of arms as a natural obligation. Fighting was a part
of living. Better the faith of Mohammed, then, than the loss of the son’s help
with the harvest. That there were wholesale conversions to Islam as a result of
the threat to apply the law of devchurmé is a logical inference from the fact that
Murad never mustered more than a thousand janissaries.
III
The Byzantine Empire did not recover, even temporarily, from the effect of
Murad’s first campaign in Europe. The fall of Demotika and Adrianople,
followed so closely by that of Philippopolis, removed within eighteen months
the last hope of retrieving the fortunes of the empire. There were still many
places remaining to the Byzantines in Thrace. But the surrender of the fortresses
in the valleys of the Ergene and the Maritza had destroyed the military prestige
of the Byzantines, and foreshadowed the speedy subjugation of the whole
country. The loss of the revenues of Thrace and of the great plain south of the
main Balkan range reduced the imperial treasury to dependence upon the port
duties and city taxes of Salonika and Constantinople. For ninety years the
shadow of the empire remained. But whatever power, whatever influence was
left to the successors of Constantine, it was rather in western Europe than in the
Balkan peninsula. The impress of one thousand and thirty years of continuous
existence from the renaming of old Byzantium to the fall of Adrianople was too
deep to vanish in a few years. The decay had been going on for centuries. The
final extinction would of necessity take several generations.
The complete abasement of the Byzantines is revealed in the treaty that John
V Palacologos was compelled to conclude with Murad shortly after the capture
of Philippopolis. In the fall of 1362 or the spring of 1363, John bound himself to
refrain from any attempt to win back what he had lost in Thrace, either by a
separate attack or by joining the Serbians or other enemies of the Osmanlis. In
addition he promised to aid Murad against his Anatolian enemies, the Turkish
emirs.[268]
After this treaty was signed, Murad withdrew to Brusa in order to provide for
the organization of the new possessions that had come to him by a successful
expedition against Angora. His letters, written at this time to announce to his
Anatolian neighbours and to the Moslem princes of Asia the victories in Thrace,
show clearly that he did not yet feel himself strong enough to assume the
position of overlord to the other great emirs of Asia Minor. While he was in
Brusa, in the spring of 1363, an event happened which led Murad to make the
momentous decision that shaped the destinies of the Ottoman Empire. The first
coalition against the Osmanlis was formed in Europe.
IV
After the fall of Philippopolis, the Greek commandant had succeeded in
escaping, and took refuge with Kral Urosh V of Serbia.[269] He pointed out to
Urosh most eloquently the paucity of numbers of the Osmanlis, their insecure
position, and the danger that would overwhelm the Serbians if they waited until
the Osmanlis were firmly grounded in Thrace. Urged by Pope Urban V, the
princes of Wallachia and Bosnia, together with King Louis of Hungary, joined
the Serbians in upper Macedonia. Under the guidance of the Greek refugee, they
started on a swift march to win back Adrianople. It was an expedition
undertaken as a crusade. The allies mustered at least twenty thousand.
Lalashahin had hardly more than twelve thousand men under his command,
and a portion of these were scattered in the captured cities. Murad, who had
started to return to Thrace as soon as he had heard the news, was detained by the
necessity of capturing a fortress on the Sea of Marmora, near Cyzicus, which
was in the hands of a turbulent band of second-generation Catalans, whom he
feared to leave behind him.[270] They were suspected of plotting with his
southern rivals to organize a movement against his Anatolian possessions.
If the Greeks had had the power or the will to co-operate with the crusaders,
the Ottoman domination in Thrace would have ended even more suddenly than it
had begun. But they made no move. In fact, one of the Byzantine historians
charges John Palaeologos with aiding the Osmanlis![271] Lalashahin was able to
draw from the garrisons of the recently occupied cities, and to send forward to
meet the crusaders some ten thousand men under Hadji Ilbeki. It was the
intention of Lalashahin to have this army act wholly on the defensive. If only
Hadji Ilbeki could prevent their passing the Maritza, they would be turned
southward towards Enos. By that time he felt sure that he could rely upon one of
three things happening: dissensions would arise among the crusaders, the Greeks
would be alarmed by the Serbian approach to Enos and the sea and attack the
crusaders, or Murad would have time to bring his army across the Dardanelles.
The one purpose of Lalashahin was to prevent the invasion of Thrace and the
investment of Adrianople.
But Hadji Ilbeki did better than keep the crusaders from crossing the river.
They had already crossed, and had celebrated the unopposed passage of the
Maritza by an evening of feasting. Hadji Ilbeki surprised them as they were
sleeping in a drunken stupor.[272] Without hesitation he fell upon them like a
Gideon. Seized with panic, the crusaders were driven back into the river. Those
who escaped massacre and drowning fled precipitately. There was no attempt to
rally. In the little town of Mariazell, on the northern frontier of Styria near the
foot of the Semmering Alps, there stands a votive church built by Louis out of
gratitude to the Virgin for having saved him from death in this battle.[273]
Lalashahin, instead of rewarding the daring of his lieutenant, which had
saved the Osmanlis from an irreparable disaster, was consumed with jealous
fury. His only thought when he received the news was that Hadji Ilbeki had
robbed him of the glory of so great a victory. He had his too successful
subordinate poisoned.[274]
The sudden and complete collapse of the first crusade organized against the
Osmanlis did not give to Murad any false sense of security. He saw in the
successful meeting of this danger, which had threatened to destroy him, not the
opportunity for exultation and for the relaxation of effort, but the spur for
straining still further every nerve to learn and profit by the lesson. The battle of
the Maritza was a warning to Murad. The danger would be renewed, and
renewed soon. It was now for him to make the choice between remaining an
Asiatic emir and becoming a European sovereign, between endeavouring to
impose first his authority on the other emirs of Asia Minor and the conquest of
the Balkan peninsula. Were the Osmanlis to be on the offensive in Europe or in
Asia?
Murad decided to build his empire in the Balkan peninsula. It was not that he
coveted less the mountains and valleys of Asia Minor. It was not that his
ambitions failed to extend to the Taurus. But he had the vision to realize that the
Ottoman race could not subjugate the Turkish elements in Asia Minor by a
gradual assimilation of those elements alone. The race had to grow, as it began,
by the incorporation of the various Christian elements, which alone possessed
the finesse, the knowledge of government, the organizing capacity necessary to
cope with the problems of facing Europe and inheriting the Byzantine Empire.
From Europe, Asia Minor and more could be conquered: from Asia, no portion
of Europe could be conquered.
The Osmanlis do not possess written records of the reign of Murad. There is
no source to which we can go to read what Murad thought or what others of his
day thought or said that he thought. But we know his mind from his actions.
There is no cause for doubt on this point. After the first campaign in Thrace,
Murad had returned to Brusa, and dated his letters from there. He began to plan
an aggressive campaign against his neighbours. But after the battle of the
Maritza, he abandoned Brusa for Demotika, and three years later, in 1366,
Adrianople became the first real capital of the Ottoman Empire.
In spite of all that has been written about the unique position of Brusa in
Ottoman history, it is no more to the Osmanlis than is Saint-Denis to the French
or Winchester to the English. The Osmanlis have never really been at home in
Constantinople. Historically and architecturally speaking, they have been under
the shadow of a greater past. Adrianople, although always a city of importance
since the days of Hadrian, reached its greatest splendour and glory under the
Ottoman sultans. Here were planned, and from here started, the expeditions
westward and eastward, which increased in strength, in efficiency, and in
inspiring terror as the circle gradually widened, until the star and crescent
appeared under the walls of Vienna and Cairo, on the shores of Italy and in the
heart of Persia. No student of Ottoman annals can fail to support the contention
of the Sublime Porte after the last Balkan war, that Adrianople is to the Osmanlis
their sacred city. From Lalashahin to Shukri pasha, the proudest and most
precious memories of the Osmanlis are in Adrianople, whose great mosque, still
awe-inspiring and altogether admirable in its decay, is typical both of what has
been and what is.
The decision of Murad was accepted by his successors. Even after the capture
of Constantinople, many an Ottoman sultan felt more at home in Adrianople
than in the imperial city. For more than a century the Osmanlis directed their
energies almost exclusively to European conquests. Whatever they accomplished
in Asia was the indirect result of their stupendous successes in Europe. From
first to last, the extension of Ottoman sovereignty over the Moslems of Asia was
by means of a soldiery gathered and war-hardened in Europe, themselves
Christian or of Christian ancestry, in whose veins ran the blood of Greek and
Roman, of Goth and Hun, of Albanian and Slav.
V
In 1365, Murad received from the outside world the first acknowledgement
of his commanding position as heir apparent of the Byzantine Empire. It was an
overture from the flourishing republic of Ragusa, on the Dalmatian coast, for a
treaty guaranteeing freedom of trade in the Ottoman dominions to the merchants
of Ragusa. In return for unrestricted commercial privileges, the republic offered
to pay a large sum annually, which the givers called a grant, but which was
invariably accepted by the recipients as tribute.[275] However it may have been at
the beginning, the grant soon became tribute, for after some years the existence
of Ragusa depended upon purchasing the benevolence of the Ottoman sultans.
As the helplessness of the Ragusans increased, the tribute became larger. If we
except the convention between the Genoese and Orkhan, of whose provisions
and character we know nothing, the Ragusan commercial treaty is the first of the
long series of treaties by which European cities and nations purchased the right
to trade in the Ottoman Empire and to sail the high seas. Since in most cases the
Osmanlis pledged themselves to nothing except to refrain from robbing
merchants or from preventing their trading, the gifts exacted were nothing less
than blackmail. After the sea-power of the Osmanlis had been broken, the
Barbary corsairs inherited the privileges of this system which had been started in
so small a way by the Ragusans.
Murad could not write. When the treaty with Ragusa was brought for his
signature, he put his hand in the ink and made the impression of his fingers upon
the paper. This is the origin of the tughra, which has ever since been the official
signature of the house of Osman.[276]
VI
When Murad was settling himself in Adrianople, and laying plans for the
conquest of Macedonia and Bulgaria, he was menaced by a new crusade. Despite
its futile ending, or better, for that very reason, the expedition of Amadeo of
Savoy in 1366 commands our attention. For it furnishes, as does the expedition
of Admiral Boucicaut from Genoa in 1399, a striking illustration of how easily
the growing Ottoman power might have been crushed by a resolute body of
crusaders with a single aim, and of how impossible it was to secure that oneness
of purpose, owing to the ingrained animosity of the East and West, of the Greek
and Catholic Churches.
In 1361, when Lorenzo Celsi was elevated to the dogeship of Venice, the
Senate had made overtures to John Palaeologos for an alliance against Murad.
[277] This plan was frustrated by the successes of the Osmanlis in Thrace. The
Venetians held back, and allowed John to suffer the humiliation of signing the
treaty that made him a vassal of Murad. In the crusade that ended in the disaster
of the Maritza, the Venetian participation was half-hearted, and it proved
valueless. The Venetians were not even on hand to prevent Murad from crossing
the Dardanelles. In fact, there is every reason to believe that they now began to
look upon the Osmanlis as a valuable tool in checkmating the ambition of Louis
of Hungary to inherit the shortlived empire of Stephen Dushan.[278]
When he saw that Murad had come into Thrace to stay, and that there was no
hope from the Venetians, John Palaeologos turned to the Hungarians. He made a
secret visit to Buda to enlist the aid of Louis, and made the usual promise that
the Byzantines would return to the Roman fold.[279] On his return he passed
through the principality of Sisman, who had just inherited the lower portion of
Bulgaria. Sisman, either at the suggestion of Andronicus Palaeologos, who
wanted to succeed his father, or in the hope of winning favour with Murad,
detained the emperor in the fortress of Nicopolis on the Danube.[280]
Amadeo VI of Savoy was one of the princes who had taken the cross from
Pope Urban V at Avignon on Holy Friday, 1363, for the crusade that never
materialized. The receipt of a letter from Louis of Hungary, informing him of the
imprisonment of his cousin (John’s mother was a princess of Savoy), and
pointing out the rapid spread of Ottoman power, caused Amadeo to yield to the
Pope’s continued and urgent solicitations.[281] With some fifteen hundred
soldiers, he embarked for the East on fifteen galleys. After a stop at Negropont
and Mitylene to get reinforcements, Amadeo entered the Hellespont, and
captured Gallipoli without difficulty. The Osmanlis fled by night, abandoning
the fortress.[282]
But the Savoyards made no attempt to follow up this victory, or even to keep
Gallipoli. Instead of attacking the infidels, they sailed into the Black Sea, and
started a vigorous campaign against the Bulgarians. Sozopolis and Burgas were
captured, and several other important fortresses to the north. The bravery of the
crusaders was rivalled only by their cruelty. Their bloodlust made such an
impression upon the Bulgarians that they wanted nothing to do with Franks
bearing the cross. When the Savoyards laid siege to Varna, Sisman gave up his
prisoner to save the city.
John Palaeologos was borne back triumphantly to Constantinople. But
friction soon arose. When Amadeo urged upon his kinsman the necessity of
paying the price of his rescue and of the continued support of the crusaders by
fulfilling his promise to return to the Roman Church, he met with stubborn
refusal on the part of emperor and patriarch alike. In wild rage, Amadeo
withdrew to Pera, and began to fight the Greeks by sea and land. The
Constantinopolitans were so frightened that ‘they did not dare to show their head
out of doors’. Pressed on all sides by Osmanli and Bulgarian, as well as by his
deliverers, the wretched John saw no other way out than to promise openly to
abjure his errors and swear allegiance to the Pope.
Having wrung this promise from those whom he had come to defend,
Amadeo sailed away to Rome, where he reported to the Pope in full consistory
‘how at his request the emperor of Constantinople and his people desired to
submit to the obedience and belief of the Holy Roman Church in hope that the
Church would aid them against the infidels who were too strongly oppressing
them’.
Urban and the cardinals listened without great interest to the Count of
Savoy’s recital of his success in preparing the ground for a reunion of the
churches. The story was getting to be an old one. John’s overture was received
with suspicion. Urban had got the same promise in the spring of 1366 in a letter
from Louis, which reported the interview John had sought at Buda.[283] To the
envoy of Louis, who had arrived in Avignon just as Urban was starting for
Rome, the Pope gave a letter commanding the King of Hungary to put off his
crusade until the union of the churches was actually accomplished.[284]
VII
What lay behind the eagerness of Urban, at the beginning of his reign, to
revive the crusades? Was he burning with holy zeal to recover the sepulchre of
Christ from the hands of the Moslems? Was his heart set on protecting Cyprus
and Rhodes? Had he determined to leave no stone unturned to protect the
Byzantines and other eastern Christians from the encroachment and persecution
of Murad? His letters indicate that his chief interest was the recovery of the lost
power and glory of the papacy. There is the same revelation in the letters of his
immediate successor, Gregory XI. These two popes had no catholic vision. They
tried to keep their position as arbiters between France and England and Spain at
Avignon, and at the same time to inherit the temporal power of the decaying
Holy Roman Empire by circumventing the Visconti of Milan. The great schism
in the Western Church, which so aided Murad and Bayezid in laying solidly the
foundations of an empire in Europe, was the outcome of the short-sighted and
purely selfish policy of these two popes. How far from the truth it is to represent
them as courageously, whole-heartedly, and persistently endeavouring to awaken
the interest and attention of Europe in the peril from the East!
The fall of Adrianople and of Philippopolis should have been a warning to
Urban. He read in it, however, not a glorious opportunity to demonstrate the
solidarity of Christendom by driving the Moslems out of Europe and rescuing
fellow Christians from apostasy, slavery, and death, but an occasion to force the
schismatic Greeks to return to the Roman communion. Of the popes of the
fourteenth century, Urban had the greatest chance to prove himself a worthy
champion of Christ and civilization. For it was during his reign that the Osmanlis
began their conquests and their proselytizing in Europe. At the beginning they
could easily have been checked. But it never occurred to Urban that there was a
common interest of Christendom higher than and outside of the Roman Church.
The fault lay not wholly with Urban and with Gregory. They reflected the
spirit of their age. But it does no credit to their personal character nor to the high
position which they held to say that they were the victims, rather than the
masters, of the prevailing bigotry and ignorance of their generation. In the
fourteenth century, the West had already begun to try to impose its commerce, its
customs, its laws, and its religion upon the East. There was not, nor has there
ever been since, a sympathetic ‘give and take’ between Occident and Orient. In a
mint, if the coin when stamped does not correspond exactly to the mould, it is
rejected. Similarly the West, when it tries to put every eastern people through its
mould and finds no exact correspondence, rejects. Hence, on the one side, the
scorn of the ‘I am better than thou’: on the other side, a hatred born not only of
fear and of conviction of inferiority, but of a sense of injustice which is none the
less vital from a knowledge that the wrong is not, and will not be, righted.
Amadeo of Savoy, uncivilized, fanatical through ignorance, the fertile
breeding-ground of fanaticism, true and unchanged descendant of the Fourth
Crusaders, was a prophetic figure at Constantinople in 1366. He represented the
only possible type of deliverer for Byzantium. But deliverance on his terms the
Greeks would not accept. Death or Islam were preferable. And who can blame
them? Two years before Amadeo’s expedition, the Greeks of Crete had risen in
rebellion against their Venetian overlords because an attempt had been made to
impose upon them the Latin faith and rites.[285] When they were hunted down
and massacred for refusing to worship after the western fashion, not only Pope
Urban, but also Petrarch, wrote to the Doge congratulating him upon his valiant
and successful efforts to save the Church of Christ in Crete![286]
In a letter to Pope Urban, Petrarch spoke with approval of the policy of using
the Ottoman menace to stamp out the Eastern heresy. ‘The Osmanlis are merely
enemies,’ he wrote, ‘but the schismatic Greeks are worse than enemies. The
Osmanlis hate us less, for they fear us less. The Greeks, however, both fear and
hate us with all their soul.’[287] These words of Petrarch epitomize the feeling
between the Eastern and Western Churches during his own day, and, if what one
can see with his own eyes in Jerusalem and elsewhere is a fair example, up to the
twentieth century.[288]
If the European nations regarded the adherents of the Orthodox Church (the
term Greek in its religious sense must be taken to include all the Balkan races) as
‘worse than enemies’, that is, than the Osmanlis, it is equally true that the
Osmanlis found from 1350 to 1500 that the hatred of the Balkan races for the
Latin Church was their most potent ally, not only in the actual conquest, but in
reconciling the conquered to their fate. One does not want to detract from the
genius of the early Ottoman sovereigns and from the reputation for superb
fighting ability so honestly won by the Ottoman armies. But it must not be
forgotten that each separate race in the Balkans preferred the rule of the
Osmanlis to that of their neighbours, and that the one point in which the Balkan
races were of the same mind was that Ottoman domination was preferable to that
of the Hungarians and the Italians. For every crusade was a scheme for religious
propaganda and territorial aggrandizement, in just the same spirit as in modern
times the nations of Europe have exploited the misery of Ottoman Christians for
the purpose of securing concessions.
In spite of the fact that John Palaeologos was informed by the Patriarch
Philotheus that a mixed council of clergy and government officials, presided
over by the empress, had been held in June 1376, and had decided against the
reunion of the churches,[289] John persisted in his negotiations with the Pope.
Urban did all that he could to facilitate the visit of the Byzantine emperor to
Rome.[290] But at the same time he was writing to the Venetians and to the
Dalmatian cities to protect the Catholics of Cattaro against the Serbian and
Albanian heretics,[291] and was encouraging Louis in his suicidal campaign
against the Bulgarians.
In 1369, John Palaeologos left the government of Constantinople to his elder
son Andronicus, and set out for Rome, where, on October eighteenth, he made
his profession of faith in the presence of four cardinals, and confirmed it by a
golden bull. The next morning, at St. Peter’s, he formally abjured the errors of
the Orthodox Church before the high altar, with his hands in those of the Pope.
[292] The Pope accepted him as a ‘son of the Church’, promised that he should be
relieved of the Turk, and gave him letters earnestly recommending his cause to
the princes of Christendom.[293]
Urban V was quick to use the prestige which he believed the adhesion of
John Palaeologos had given him. He announced broadcast the happy
consummation of his efforts, stating that the Byzantine emperor had done
homage to the Vicar of Christ in St. Peter’s.[294] But letters sent during the same
winter to the Greek clergy, urging them to accept the action of their emperor,[295]
and other letters from his secret correspondence of this year, indicate how little
faith he had in the Emperor’s sincerity or ability to fulfil his promises. Was the
abjuration in St. Peter’s a farce, in which Emperor and Pope allowed themselves
to trifle with holy things, each for the sake of his immediate advantage?
John had hoped that his adhesion to the Roman Church would bring to him
grants of money, ships, and men from the Latin princes, and that an army would
rally around him to fight the Osmanlis. But not only did he return from France
‘with empty hands’, but he was detained at Venice because of debts owing to
merchants. In vain he begged Andronicus to send the money for his release. The
son who had four years before been charged with being party to his father’s
imprisonment in Bulgaria was no more filial at this humiliating crisis. He
answered that there was no money in the treasury, and that he could get nothing
from the clergy. But his younger son, Manuel, brought from Salonika the
ransom.[296]
John Palaeologos returned to his capital poorer than when he left. He brought
no help from Europe, and he had bound himself publicly by oath to an obligation
which he had known he could not fulfil. He had broken faith with Murad, who
during these years had been growing more and more powerful. There was
nothing for him to do but to make himself tributary to Murad in order that he
might enjoy ‘up to the end of his life’ his last possessions in peace.[297] Three
years later, in 1373, when his ambassador John Lascaris failed in a second
attempt to get aid from the Western princes,[298] the Byzantine emperor
recognized Murad as his suzerain, promised to do military service in person in
Murad’s army, and gave to him his son Manuel as hostage.[299]
Urban died a few months after John’s visit to Rome. Gregory XI, who
succeeded him in December 1370, had little hope of carrying on further
negotiations with the Eastern Church; for the Greek ecclesiastics were stubborn
in their determination to maintain the absolute independence of the patriarchate.
The Genoese and Venetians were fighting bitterly in Cyprus. In 1371, Gregory
made a strong appeal to France, England, Venice, and Flanders to co-operate
with Genoa in saving the last Christians of the Holy Land.[300] There was no
response.
That Gregory realized clearly the peril to Christendom in the advance of
Murad’s armies is shown in two remarkable letters written to Louis of Hungary
in May and November 1372. His words were prophetic. He urged Louis to resist
the Osmanlis before they advanced farther into Europe. They had already
entered Serbia. He trembled to think what would happen if they pushed through
Albania and secured a port on the Adriatic. Unless Louis entered without delay
into an alliance with his Christian neighbours, how could he protect his own
kingdom and all Christendom from the Mohammedan peril.[301] Seconding this
warning to the King of Hungary, the Pope commanded the Hungarian and Slavic
archbishops to preach the crusade in Hungary, Poland, and the Dalmatian cities.
Everywhere special boxes were placed in the churches for collecting funds. A
tithe was levied on the monasteries and abbeys of Hungary and Dalmatia. Louis,
with five of his most powerful nobles, took the cross, and swore to the Pope that
he would put an army in the field within a year.[302] Louis asked Venice for
triremes, but when the Venetians found that he intended them to be a donation
for ‘the common cause’, they found that they could not build them.[303] Padua
declined an invitation to guarantee the cost of construction. The Hungarians did
not fulfil their promises. In fact, there is no evidence that they made any effort to
acquit themselves of their oath.
When John Palaeologos made a last desperate appeal to the Pope, before he
entered into his third and final compact with Murad, Gregory, in receiving the
imperial envoy, burst into tears, and promised that he would save
Constantinople, if only the Byzantine emperor would cause his people to
renounce their heresies and return to the Roman Church. In 1375, he wrote once
more to Louis to inform him that Constantinople was in danger of capture from
Murad.[304] Letters in the same year to Edward of England pictured the Ottoman
advance and the peril of Christendom, urged a general war against the Osmanlis,
and asked for a subsidy to provide galleys ‘to prevent the crossing into Europe of
more Turks, because Constantinople is in imminent danger’.[305] The letters of
Gregory XI to the Christian princes prove conclusively that the full import of
Murad’s early successes was understood by the Pope and was impressed upon
both secular and ecclesiastical authorities throughout Europe.
But both John and Gregory lost heart. Neither was able to fulfil the compact
made in Rome. Gregory could not unite Christendom to relieve the Byzantines.
John could not persuade the Byzantines to renounce, as he had done, the ‘Greek
heresies’. So, as we have seen, he became Murad’s vassal.[306] The Pope,
involved in the quarrel of Emperor Charles IV and the Duke of Bavaria with the
Marquis of Brandenburg, and anxious over the outcome, for the papacy, of the
continual unrest in the Italian cities, returned from Avignon to Rome in 1378. He
died a few months later.[307] The struggle arising from the election of Gregory’s
successor gave birth to the ‘Great Schism’. This left Murad a free hand in
subjugating the Balkan peninsula.
VIII
The sources of information for the movements from the outside for the relief
of the Balkan Christians, and for the religious and political quarrels of the
Byzantines, are so numerous and so detailed that one is embarrassed by too
much material. Many interesting facts cannot even be mentioned. But when we
come to the beginning of the Ottoman conquest in Europe under Murad and
Bayezid, we find ourselves in the midst of what an eminent Slavic historian has
called ‘the most obscure and difficult period of South-Slavic history’.[308] The
chroniclers, whether they be Slavic, Rumanian, or Ottoman, are so contradictory
and so lacking in explicit statement that we cannot speak with certainty of the
sequence of events. The Byzantine chroniclers, verbose to the point of weariness
in detailing petty and trifling quarrels and happenings, are almost silent
concerning the momentous events that marked the ruin of their empire. It is
difficult to unravel the twisted skeins, and find a thread to carry the story of the
conquest from 1366 to 1389. When it is impossible to choose between
contradictory records, the geography of the field of action, with which one can
gain a first-hand knowledge, must be the final factor in determining the sequence
of conquest between the adoption of Adrianople by Murad as his capital and the
downfall of the Serbians at Kossova.
The occupation of Adrianople and Philippopolis was as severe a blow to the
Bulgarians as to the Byzantines. In spite of the fact, however, that Greek and
Bulgarian had a common interest in driving the Osmanli from Thrace, or at the
very least in checking his advance, there was no move made at this time for an
alliance. On the contrary, even when the Osmanlis were engaged in the Thracian
campaign, war arose between John V and Alexander. The Byzantines captured
Anchiale, and tried desperately to take Mesembria by assault.[309] The Greek
patriarch wrote to Czar Alexander, reminding him of the sacredness of harmony
and the necessity of accord at that critical moment, but the letter was not backed
by the good faith and good will of the Byzantine emperor. Neither John nor
Alexander attempted to give assistance to the Serbian and Hungarian crusade
that ended so disastrously on the banks of the Maritza.
The conquest of Bulgaria up to the main Balkan range imposed itself upon
Murad as a corollary to the Ottoman dominion in Thrace, and the undisturbed
possession of Adrianople and Philippopolis. For the Bulgarians, through
centuries of varying fortunes, had grown accustomed to fighting for the right to
live in Thrace. Often had they been beaten back to the Balkans, and as often
pressed forward again to the Ergene. To win and lose Adrianople and other
Thracian cities was old history with them. They always came back. Between
1362 and 1365, Murad had experience with Bulgarian persistence and tenacity of
purpose. They were masters again of Kirk Kilisse, Midia, Bunar Hissar, and Viza
when Murad made his change of capital from Brusa to Adrianople. Yamboli had
been strongly fortified by Alexander. Bulgaria seemed as formidable and as
forbidding to Murad’s dream of empire as the emirates of Asia Minor.
Fortune again favoured the Osmanlis. Czar Alexander died in 1365,[310]
leaving three heirs. To John Sisman fell middle and southern Bulgaria from the
Danube to the Rhodope Mountains and the Bulgarian pretensions in Thrace. Old
Tirnovo was his capital. Stracimir inherited western Bulgaria, with Widin for
capital, and the Bulgarian pretensions to the valley of the Vardar and western
Macedonia. (The Bulgarian remnant of eastern Macedonia was in the hands of
an independent Bulgarian prince, Constantine, whose stronghold was Kustendil.)
Dobrotich became master of the Dobrudja and the upper Black Sea coast, where
Bulgarian, Cuman and Alan lived together with hardly any distinguishing
characteristics.
The division of Bulgaria, at the moment when union was essential, proved
fatal. The sons of Alexander never joined to face the common danger. So marked
was the division of Alexander’s kingdom that thirty years after the conquest the
conquered territories were known as ‘the three Bulgarias’.[311]
Stracimir, jealous because Sisman seemed to have received the lion’s share of
Alexander’s inheritance, did not hesitate to make overtures to Murad, offering to
co-operate with the Osmanlis against his brother and to share the portion of
Sisman with them.[312] Before any agreement could be made, however, Stracimir
found himself face to face with a terrible danger in the west, which soon caused
him to forget both Sisman and Murad. Louis of Hungary had interpreted his
crusader’s commission as an authorization to ‘make war against the heretics’. It
was a pretext to get possession of Widin, which was essential to his ambitious
project of adding Serbia to his kingdom. He attacked the Bulgarians on the
ground that they were enemies of the Church and must be forced to acknowledge
the supremacy of Rome. Widin was captured and Stracimir imprisoned.[313]
Stracimir’s dominions were flooded with Franciscan missionaries, who were
backed by a brutal soldiery in their proselytizing efforts.[314] Two hundred
thousand Bulgarians abjured the orthodox heresy, and were re-baptized in the
Latin rite. This forcible conversion, which was purely a political matter, was as
objectionable to the Bulgarians as to the Cretans. They hated ‘with a perfect
hatred’ the Franciscans whom Pope Urban had sent, and the cause for which they
stood.
At the first opportunity, the Bulgarians of the west called in Sisman and
Vadislav of Wallachia. The Hungarians were driven out of Widin and the
Franciscans in the city massacred.[315] Louis was powerful enough to wreak
terrible vengeance. In 1370, Widin fell once more into his hands. The Bulgarians
of the western Balkans were subjected to such a relentless persecution that they
welcomed the Moslem conquest to secure freedom of worship. Urban had
incited Louis to this war, and had congratulated him upon his laudable zeal in
converting the heretics.[316]
We have already spoken of the punishment that came to Sisman as a result of
the detention of John Palaeologos. The Italian crusaders on the Black Sea coast
were as powerful an aid to Murad’s empire-building as were the Hungarian
crusaders on the western frontier. The successors of Louis reaped the bitter fruits
of his insane policy. Louis and Amadeo of Savoy contributed in no little measure
to make possible the conquests of Murad. When Amadeo withdrew from
Bulgaria, he left the cities he had captured to the Greeks. Sisman was compelled
to expend his energy in recapturing them. But Murad had already anticipated
him in the important fortress of Sozopolis, which commanded the entrance to the
port of Burgas.[317]
Shortly after the Ottoman occupation of Sozopolis, the Bulgarians were
everywhere dispossessed in Thrace, and the capture of Yamboli[318] forced
Sisman to follow the example of John Palaeologos. He became a vassal of
Murad. His sister Mara entered Murad’s harem, but with the stipulation that she
be allowed to retain her Christian faith.
Murad gladly gave his new ally and brother-in-law a strong Ottoman army to
co-operate in the attack upon the Hungarians. The Osmanlis helped in driving
Louis out of Widin. Sisman, like Cantacuzenos, first guided the Osmanlis
through the heart of his country. It was under the leadership of Sisman that they
saw the Danube, their river of destiny. When Sisman, even with the help of the
Osmanlis and Wallachians, could not gain possession of Stracimir’s inheritance,
he returned to Tirnovo. There he learned that Lalashahin was planning an
expedition westward, which seemed to be intended against Sofia.
Sisman now realized that his position was critical and that the fate of
Bulgaria was at stake. In the early spring of 1371, he hurried into the Rilo
Mountains and sent out an appeal to the Serbian kral who was at that time ruling
in eastern Macedonia. Then he went to the relief of Ishtiman, which was already
menaced by the Osmanlis. Failing in this effort, Sisman fell back to Samakov,
where he was joined by the Serbians. Lalashahin led his army from Ishtiman into
the valley of the Isker. The two krals joined battle with him in the plain of
Samakov. The Ottoman victory was decisive.[319] The Serbians and Bulgarians
fled into the recesses of Musalla, the highest mountain in the Balkan peninsula,
and of Popova Shapka. Sisman disappeared after the battle.[320] The way to Sofia
was open. All Bulgaria lay at the feet of the conqueror. It is from the battle of
Samakov that we must date the destruction of an independent Bulgaria.
But Murad was not yet ready to follow up this decisive victory. The only
immediate result of the battle of Samakov was the submission of Constantine,
Bulgarian prince of Kustendil, in the upper valley of the Struma. After the fall of
Samakov, his position was untenable. Constantine hurried to Murad’s camp, and
did homage to the conqueror. Murad gave back to him as vassal his principality.
[321] With the wisdom that marked every successive step of his progress in
Europe, Murad refrained from advancing beyond Samakov. He ordered
Lalashahin to lead the army into Macedonia, and to join Evrenos in the advance
towards the Vardar.
IX
The dramatic death of Stephen Dushan, in 1355, just as he was starting upon
the expedition against Constantinople for which his whole life had been a
preparation, is recorded in the previous chapter. Stephen’s son was so unfit to
inherit the aspirations and carry on the work of his father that he was called in
derision by his people Nejaki, the weakling.[322] The nobles and generals of
Stephen Nejaki ignored him. Each man seized what territory he could hold and
defend against his neighbour. There was anarchy in Macedonia and Serbia. The
dissolution of Stephen Dushan’s conquests resulted in a bloody and destructive
civil war between cities and factions.[323] The dowager Czarina managed to
preserve a semblance of prestige, if not of authority, at Serres. But the ‘empire’
was no more. As local rulers, Serbians stayed in the principal cities of
Macedonia. There was undoubtedly a Serbian element in the village population.
Many villagers, however, who acknowledged the overlordship of Stephen’s
warriors and other Serbian nobles, did not know then, any more than they know
now, to what race they themselves belonged. This has always been the
Macedonian problem.
The defeat of the crusaders on the banks of the Maritza in 1363 had been a
defensive battle on the part of the Osmanlis. There was no attempt to invade
Macedonia. While Murad was occupied in the subjugation of Thrace and of
southern Bulgaria, several efforts were made by the Byzantines to come to an
understanding with the Serbians. In 1364, the patriarch Callixtus went to Serres
to see Stephen’s widow, who had retired to a convent. His purpose was to form
an alliance. Soon after reaching Serres, Callixtus succumbed to the hardships of
the journey.[324] His effort came to nothing. That Stephen’s son still held to the
pretensions of his father and had no intention of treating with the Byzantines, is
demonstrated by a bull, dated from Pristina in 1365, in which he calls himself
‘emperor of the Servians and of the Greeks’.[325]
Stephen Urosh, the ‘weakling’, died in 1367.[326] Uglesa, who usurped the
kralship of Serres and shared the ‘empire’ of Stephen Dushan with his brothers
and fellow adventurers, Vukasin and Goiko,[327] sent an embassy to the patriarch
Philotheos declaring that he would annul the bull of 1352, by which Dushan had
created an autocephalous Serbian Church,[328] and would cause all the Serbians
to return to the Orthodox allegiance.[329] After three years of negotiation,
precious time wasted with trifling formalities, the reconciliation and union of the
Serbian and Greek Churches was effected.[330] But, if we are to believe the
authorities of Orbini, Uglesa, while he was negotiating with the Greeks of
Constantinople, had levied tribute upon the Greeks of Salonika, and would have
made himself master of Salonika, had not his untimely death prevented the
consummation of the great Serbian dream.[331]
At the time of the reconciliation with the Orthodox Church, Uglesa had
completed a plan of united action with his two brothers to oppose the Ottoman
invasion of Macedonia.[332] Uglesa had been informed that a great army was
gathered in Adrianople, which awaited the return of Murad from Bulgaria to
commence its march. Four weeks after the negotiations with the Byzantines had
been successfully concluded, in the early summer of 1371, the Serbian army
reached the Maritza at Cernomen,[333] between Adrianople and Svilen.[334] This
battle has been confused with the earlier battle of 1363, and it is impossible to
separate the accounts of the two actions.[335] The Osmanlis were again
victorious. Uglesa and Goiko were drowned in the Maritza. Vukasin escaped
from the field of battle only to be killed by his servant for the gold chain he wore
around his neck.[336]
The battle of Cernomen lost Macedonia to the Serbians. The three princes
were killed. Most of the Serbian adventurers who had been the companions of
Stephen Dushan, and who had profited by his Macedonian conquests,
disappeared. The Osmanlis had no opposition in penetrating to the valley of the
Vardar.
The monk Isaias of Serres has left a graphic contemporary picture of the
Ottoman invasion of Macedonia. ‘Like the birds of Heaven, the Ishmaelites
spread themselves over the land, and never ceased murdering the inhabitants or
carrying them off into slavery. The country was empty of men, of cattle, and of
the fruits of the fields. There was no prince or leader: there was no redeemer or
saviour among the people. All faded away before the fear of the Ishmaelites, and
even the brave hearts of heroic men were transformed into weak hearts of
women. Rightly were the dead envied by the living.’[337]
The invasion of Macedonia in 1371-2 was as rapid and decisive a campaign
as the invasion of Thrace had been ten years before. Kavalla, Drama and Serres
were occupied by Khaïreddin and Evrenos.[338] Drama and Serres were
colonized, their churches converted into mosques, and they soon became the
residence of the owners of the timarets granted in eastern Macedonia. These two
cities have always been the strongholds of the Mohammedan element in
Macedonia, and the residence of the great Moslem landowners. The cities and
villages in the valleys of the Mesta and the Struma acknowledged Murad as
sovereign, and submitted without resistance to Ottoman laws and Ottoman
taxation.[339] Where-ever it was safe to do so, Murad seized the lands, and
appointed Ottoman governors. In districts where pacification would have proved
a difficult task, he allowed Serbian chiefs to rule as his vassals.
With the same impetuosity that had carried them to the foothills of the
Rhodope Mountains after the capture of Adrianople, the Osmanlis crossed the
Vardar in 1372, and pushed their arms into Old Serbia, Albania, Bosnia, and
even to the mountains of Dalmatia, from which they could see the Adriatic.[340]
Other adventurous bands, eager to attract the attention, the commendation, and
the rewards of Murad, followed the footsteps of the Catalans, traversed Thessaly,
and appeared in the plains of Attica.[341]
Murad destroyed the Macedonian empire of Stephen Dushan without great
effort. The Serbians remaining east of the Vardar, nobles and peasants, became
Ottoman subjects. In upper Serbia, they rallied round one of their number, Lazar
Gresljanovitch, whom they formally elected as successor of the Serbian kings.
But Lazar was so weak that he did not take the title of emperor (tzar) or of king
(kral), but called himself merely prince (knez).[342] To secure the existence of his
kingdom or principality, he sought peace with Murad, and, following the
example of the Byzantine and Bulgarian rulers, became vassal and tributary of
the Ottoman emir.[343]
X
Before the end of the year 1372, it was recognized that the Osmanlis had
come into the Balkans to stay. The conquest of Macedonia east of the Vardar,
following so closely upon the subjugation of southern Bulgaria and the
completion of the Thracian conquest, gave to Murad a preponderant position in
the Balkan peninsula. The Byzantine emperor and the Bulgarian and Serbian
princes were his tributaries. Wallachia, Bosnia, Albania, Epirus, Thessaly, Attica
and the Peloponnesus were now on the confines of the Ottoman Empire, and
menaced by Ottoman invasion.
In Europe, Murad was credited with having the intention of invading
Hungary. It was reported that he had made an alliance with the Tartars of Russia
to attack Hungary. The Tartars were to cross the Carpathians by way of
Moldavia into Transylvania, while Murad was to work his way up the valley of
the Danube.[344] Murad may have dreamed of such a project, just as he had
thought of making a supreme effort to enter Constantinople after his first
Thracian campaign. But, if he did, he was deterred by the same well-grounded
fear of moving too fast. Ten years before he had refrained from committing a
fatal error. He would continue to make haste slowly. The early Osmanlis were
not raiders. They were empire-builders. They succeeded because they never
forgot that their greatest problem was that of assimilation. When they extended
their conquests beyond the area of possible assimilation, the period of decay
automatically commenced.
The decade following the Macedonian campaign of 1371-2 was spent in
ottomanizing southern Bulgaria and eastern Macedonia, in completing the
assimilation of Thrace, in reorganizing the army, and in a rearrangement of the
system of distributing the timarets or military fiefs. Royal domains were created,
and lands were set aside for the support of the mosques and other religious
institutions in the form of inalienable endowments (vakufs).
The only move of Murad against the Hungarians was to send five thousand
archers, upon the request of the Senate, to help the Venetians in their war against
Louis.[345]
After the Macedonian campaign, Murad turned his attention once more to
Byzantium. John, when he returned from his unsuccessful trip to Rome, placated
Murad by sending his third son, Theodore, to serve in the Ottoman army. In
1373, John, passing over Andronicus, raised Manuel to the imperial purple as
co-emperor. The disloyalty of his eldest son in the question of the emperor’s
ransom from his Venetian creditors made it natural that John should have
selected Manuel to rule with him.
John was not wrong in his estimate of the character of Andronicus. The
disappointed prince entered into a conspiracy with Saoudji, son of Murad, who
had been entrusted with the command of the Thracian army while his father was
occupied in Anatolia. John and Manuel, according to some accounts, were also
in the field with Murad. So the moment was propitious. The two sons raised the
standard of revolt against their fathers.[346] Murad, who hated his own son and
feared him, crossed immediately into Thrace. The army which was supporting
the cause of the young princes abandoned them, and the rebels fled to shut
themselves up in Demotika.[347]
Faced with starvation, the inhabitants of Demotika opened the gates of their
city to Murad. He exacted a most atrocious vengeance. The garrison were bound
hand and foot and thrown into the river. The young Osmanlis and Greeks who
had been led astray by the princes, were put to death. Wherever possible Murad
compelled fathers to act as executioners of their sons. He set the example by
tearing out Saoudji’s eyes, and then cutting off his head.[348]
It has been generally written that Murad intended that the same punishment
should be meted out to Andronicus. For the sake of appearances, he did order
John Palaeologos to have his son’s eyes put out. But there was no order for
execution. John Palaeologos consented to the blinding of Andronicus and of his
grandson and namesake, who was only five years old.[349] The operation was not
successfully performed. Both Andronicus and his son, even if temporarily
blinded, recovered their eyesight. Some have explained this by stating that they
were healed by a Genoese physician.[350] There is recorded a beautiful story that
Andronicus owed the restoration of his sight to the empress, his mother, who
visited him daily in the tower of Anemas and was prodigal in her efforts to heal
him. He was in despair for some months, until one day he saw a lizard climbing
on a wall.[351]
If Murad had really desired the death or total blindness of Andronicus, he
could easily have secured this result. While punishing his own son, however, he
saw to it that Andronicus escaped the consequences of the same crime. Here we
have a revelation of the far-sightedness and cold-bloodedness of Murad. He
killed his own son, because he feared his rivalry. He spared the son of John
Palaeologos in order to perpetuate the rivalry between the emperor and his son.
To have killed or incapacitated Andronicus would have been from his view-point
an act of folly rather than of justice; for Andronicus, brilliant, adventurous,
magnetic, was at the same time a worthy exemplar of the name he bore, a name
that stood for the acme of unscrupulous conduct and contempt for ties of blood.
Murad had only to wait, and history would repeat itself. Internal dissensions in
the family of the Palaeologi had made the fortunes of Orkhan. Murad had no
intention of getting rid of Andronicus, in whom he saw the means of still further
enmeshing the Byzantine emperors.[352]
The Byzantine historians record for the year 1374 another event, which
illustrates the power of Murad over John Palaeologos. Manuel, who had resumed
the government of Salonika, tried to induce the inhabitants of Serres to recover
their liberty by massacring the Ottoman garrison and the Ottoman colonists.
Serres, in spite of its prominent place in recent Serbian history, was regarded by
the Byzantines (as it still is by the Greeks of to-day) as a city of their
compatriots. We have no means of establishing the grounds upon which Manuel
believed it possible to restore the Byzantine authority in the country between the
Struma and the Vardar. The sequel indicates that it was a wild and unfounded
hope of a desperate man, and shows how thoroughly in two years the Osmanlis
had become masters of the situation in Macedonia.
Murad, warned in time of the project, sent Khaïreddin pasha with a large
army to Serres. The Greeks implicated in the plot were promptly executed, and
Khaïreddin moved against Salonika. At the approach of the army, Manuel fled
by sea to Constantinople. John Palaeologos was so frightened that he did not
dare to receive in the imperial city the beloved son whom he had raised to the
dignity of co-emperorship. Manuel then went to Lesbos, whose Genoese lord
was his uncle by marriage. But the fear of Murad had reached the Aegaean Sea.
The fugitive was turned away. Staking all upon the issue, Manuel went to Brusa
and threw himself at Murad’s feet. The time was not yet ripe to destroy the
Palaeologi. Murad pardoned Manuel, and sent him back to Constantinople. It
was only after Manuel had presented a letter from Murad, confirming the fact
that forgiveness had been granted, that the emperor of Byzantium dared to
receive his son and heir within the walls of Constantinople.[353]
Pressed by the Venetians, John made in 1375 the mistake of giving them, in
exchange for three thousand ducats and the jewels which had been pledged for
his debts after the visit to Rome, the island of Tenedos.[354] The strategic
importance of Tenedos was so vital that the Genoese could not allow this island
to fall into the hands of their rivals. It is an axiom as old as history that who
holds Tenedos controls the entrance and exit to the Dardanelles. Until the Black
Sea dries up and the wheat-fields of Russia fail to yield, there will be a ‘question
of the Straits’.
The news of this grant to Venice meant but one thing to the Genoese. There
was feverish activity at Genoa. A fleet was manned, ostensibly for the purpose of
maintaining the Levant colonies against the Turks.[355] Pope Gregory XI allowed
the archbishop of Genoa to raise enormous sums by questionable means for
equipping and increasing the fleet.[356] Instead of using this fleet to free the
Aegaean and the Black Sea from the ever-increasing Turkish pirates, or to attack
the Osmanlis, the Genoese admiral sailed to Constantinople. Aided by the
Genoese of Galata and by Bayezid, Andronicus had escaped from the tower of
Anemas. When the fleet arrived from Genoa, he gave to its admiral a golden
bull, awarding Tenedos to Genoa.[357] To Murad he offered his sister in exchange
for help.[358] The old story was repeated. After a month’s siege, Andronicus, by
the aid of his Ottoman and Genoese supporters, entered Constantinople. His
father and his two brothers, Manuel and Theodore, were imprisoned in the
Tower of Anemas, where he and his son had been shut up for two years.[359] The
foresight of Murad in regard to Andronicus was justified.
While Andronicus was besieging Constantinople, John V managed to send
word to the inhabitants of Tenedos to resist the Genoese and give themselves to
the Venetians. If this were not possible, they were to abandon the island to the
Turks rather than allow the Genoese to occupy it.[360]
After a year’s imprisonment, the emperor, through the wife of his jailer,
succeeded in perfecting with Venetians residing in Constantinople a plan of
escape. But its execution was deferred when John discovered that his sons, who
were confined to separate rooms, could not be included in the rescue. Later, the
efforts of the Venetians were renewed upon the solemn promise that Tenedos
should revert to Venice. The plot was discovered. The Venetians, availing
themselves of the lucky chance that a Venetian fleet had just arrived in the
Golden Horn from the Black Sea, fled from Constantinople, abandoning John
Palaeologos to his fate.[361] Andronicus IV was solemnly crowned in St. Sophia
sole emperor of Byzantium.
After two more years of imprisonment,[362] John and his sons succeeded in
escaping in June 1379. They got across the Bosphorus, and took refuge with
Bayezid, who was again watching the course of events at Scutari. Murad, still
playing the game of pitting father against son, drove a hard bargain. Andronicus
must be pardoned once more, and given the government of several cities,
probably including Salonika.[363] John and Manuel, as a price for freedom and
restoration to the imperial throne, agreed to pay an annual tribute of thirty
thousand pieces of gold, furnish a contingent of twelve thousand soldiers to the
Ottoman army, and surrender to the Osmanlis Philadelphia, the last Byzantine
possession in Asia.[364] When the Philadelphians refused to assent to this
shameful transaction, John and Manuel joined the Ottoman army and fought
against their last Christian subjects in Asia to force upon them the Moslem yoke.
[365]
Thus did Murad hold to the lips of John Palaeologos the cup of humiliation,
nay, more, of degradation, until he drained the last bitter dregs. We do not need
to pass judgement upon John and Manuel. It is sufficient to say that they drank
and did not die!
The question of Tenedos brought Venice and Genoa into their most bitter
conflict of the century. The Visconti of Milan were allied to the Venetians, while
the Hungarians attacked them by land.[366] After initial successes, the great
Venetian admiral Pisani was beaten decisively in 1379. The Genoese captured
Chioggia, and held Venice at bay in her own lagoons. It was the timely arrival of
Charles Zeno and the fleet from the Levant that saved the Adriatic republic.[367]
In 1381, peace was made through the intermediary of Count Amadeo of Savoy,
on condition that the Senate surrendered Tenedos to Amadeo, who guaranteed to
demolish the fortress within two years. It was also a stipulation of the treaty of
Turin that Andronicus IV be recognized as heir to John V.[368] Did the influence
of Murad reach as far as the peace negotiations in the capital of far-off Savoy?
The Count of Savoy fulfilled his promise. In 1383, the fortifications of Tenedos
were rased, and the inhabitants of the island removed to Crete and Negropont.
[369]
The war over Tenedos had kept open the Straits, but it helped Murad in an
inestimable degree to tighten the grip of the Osmanlis upon Thrace and
Macedonia. The Italian republics thought no more of driving the Osmanlis out of
Europe. From now on until they themselves see their possessions wrested from
them and their commerce in the Levant ruined by the successors of Murad, the
Venetians and Genoese are suitors for favours at the door of the tent of the
Moslem conqueror.
XI
While the struggle between the Palaeologi and the Venetian war with Genoa
and Hungary were strengthening Murad’s position in Europe, he began to turn
his attention, for the first time since the expedition against Angora at the
beginning of his reign, to the expansion of Ottoman authority in Asia Minor. The
antipathy of the South Slavs for the Hungarians, the anarchy among the
Serbians, the lack of leadership among the Bulgarians, and the civil strife in the
Byzantine imperial family made the period from 1376 to 1381 peculiarly
appropriate for initiating a movement against the emirates on the confines of his
own state. Murad felt for the moment secure in Macedonia and Thrace. The
inhabitants of the conquered countries could do nothing. There were no
prospects of a crusade. Through the rapid increase of the Ottoman race during
the first fifteen years in Europe, and through the vassalage of the Christian
princes, which compelled them to furnish contingents for war, Murad now had
money and soldiers to confront his nearer Anatolian rivals.
In 1360, after the capture of Angora and the defeat of the Galatian village
chiefs,[370] Murad did not lose his head. He was wise enough to fear an attack on
Kermian. Now he had only to threaten, thanks to the prestige and actual power
he had gained in Europe. The emir of Kermian was too prudent to risk a war
with the son of the rival whom he had despised. In order to preserve his
independence and at the same time his pride, he agreed to give his daughter in
marriage to Bayezid. The territories which Murad coveted, and was ready to try
to take by force, went with her as her marriage portion. It was a munificent dot.
The western and northern part of Kermian became Ottoman. The most important
city in the new territory was Kutayia, the ancient Cotýaeum, a strategic point of
great value. Its remarkable citadel of countless towers is still standing.
The marriage of the emir of Kermian’s daughter to Bayezid was celebrated at
Brusa with much splendour. For the first time we hear of the Osmanlis interested
in matters of court and luxury. The simple warriors, who had known nothing but
the village council and the camp fire, were becoming accustomed to the more
formal and more complex life of the Greek cities. With every victory and every
extension of sovereignty, with every addition to the army and to the body of
civilian officials, the distance between the sovereign and his people was
widened. The ceremonial evolved by the Ottoman court was that of Byzantium;
the customs of the higher classes, who were just beginning to realize their selfmade
rank, were Byzantine, even to the veiling of women.[371] The Osmanlis
had not yet come into touch with the Arabs or Egyptians. If they received
anything from the Persians, it was by way of Constantinople.
The Ottoman occupation of Kutayia was a grave blow to the security of the
emirates of Tekke and Hamid. The emir of Hamid saw the hopelessness of a
struggle. He compounded with his pride by ‘selling’ to Murad, in 1377, the
territory between Tekke, Kermian, and Karamania. Several cities, including
Sparta and Kara-Agatch, became Ottoman, but most important of all, Ak Sheïr,
which brought the Osmanlis to the frontier of Karamania.
The purchase of this important territory extended the Ottoman state south to
the border of Tekke. In 1378, Murad made his only conquest by arms from a
rival emir in Asia. He invaded Tekke, and annexed the districts at the south and
south-west of the lake region. But he did not cross the mountains to the
Mediterranean, so the emir of Tekke still retained Adalia, and Alaya was
undisturbed.
For three years Murad devoted his energies to the pacification and
assimilation of these slices of Kermian, Hamid and Tekke. But none of the three
principalities had been extinguished. And Sarukhan, Aïdin and Menteshe were
untouched. There was still much to be accomplished in western Asia Minor. But
Murad preferred to return to Adrianople. He would increase his power and
prestige in Europe, recruit his armies in the Balkans, and then come once more
into Anatolia.
XII
To assure to the Osmanlis their preponderant position in the Balkan
peninsula, the possession of three cities was necessary. The capture of Sofia
meant the extension of Ottoman sovereignty over Bulgaria to the Danube. Nish
was the key to Serbia. Monastir was indispensable, if the Osmanlis intended to
be more than raiders west of the Vardar.
In 1380, Murad ordered the advance to the Vardar. Istip was captured, and
colonized in the same thorough way as had been done at Drama and Serres. A
large army under Timurtash crossed the Vardar, took Monastir by assault through
the marshes, and pushed north to Prilep.[372] Monastir and Prilep became frontier
fortresses of the empire. The conquest of Macedonia was now complete. These
cities were excellent bases of operation against the Albanians to the west and the
Epirotes to the south-west.
During the reign of Murad, the Osmanlis did not attempt a subjugation of
Albania and Epirus. They were, however, invited into these countries by native
princes.
Thomas, despot of Janina, used Ottoman mercenaries against the Souliotes in
1382.[373] Two years later, after the assassination of Thomas, the Albanians
besieged Janina with Ottoman aid.[374] The civil war that arose around the
widow of Thomas prepared the way for the Osmanlis to extend their rule to the
Gulf of Arta.
In 1385, Khaïreddin pasha, who had occupied Okrida, the ancient
ecclesiastical seat of the Bulgarians, a day’s journey west of Monastir, was
invited by Charles Thopia, lord of Durazzo, to aid him in his war against Balsa,
the most powerful Frankish prince of Albania. Khaïreddin was glad of the
opportunity afforded by this overture. He crossed the mountains to Elbasan, and
then turned southward to meet Balsa. The first battle of the Osmanlis in Albania
was fought in the salt-wastes of Savra, on the left bank of the river Devol. The
Osmanlis faced fighting men who were fully their equals in courage, in
resourcefulness, in strength, and in willingness to engage in a hand-to-hand
struggle to death. The issue was long in doubt, and the victory costly. Balsa and
his ally and guest, Ivanitch, son of krai Vukasin, were killed.[375] The Osmanlis
gained one important result from this battle. Albanian renegades joined their
army in great numbers.[376] From that day to this the Albanian element in the
Ottoman army, especially among its officers, has been a source of strength which
cannot be over-estimated.
It is doubtful if the Osmanlis withdrew from Albania, even temporarily, after
the battle of Savra; for in 1388 the princess of Valona (Avlona) was so hard
pressed by the Osmanlis that she put her domains under the protection of Venice.
[377]
In northern Albania, the invaders captured Croia and Scutari in 1386. Scutari
was given back by Murad in exchange for the addition of a member of the ruling
family of Zenta to his harem. From Croia, also, the Osmanlis withdrew. Murad
did not want to excite and alarm Venice at the moment when Philippe de
Mézières was preaching so vigorously and successfully a new crusade.[378]
The plain in which four tributaries join the Isker is the very heart of the
Balkan peninsula, almost equidistant from the Adriatic, the Aegaean, and the
Black Sea. Here the three great ranges of the West Balkan, the Central Balkan,
and the Rhodope Mountains converge, and three important rivers find their
source. The Struma flows south through Macedonia, the Isker north-east through
a canyon of the Balkans into the Danube, and the Nisava north-west into the
Morava. In the middle of the southern border of this plain, under the shadow of a
lofty mountain, lies Sofia.
The way to Sofia had been opened by the battle of Samakov. But its
occupation was not the next logical step to Murad until the valleys of the Vardar
and the Struma had been conquered. The occupation of Sofia was a temptation
splendidly resisted in 1371. In 1381 it was a necessity. For it opened the path to
trans-Balkan Bulgaria and to Serbia, and Murad was now ready to extend his
conquest to the Danube by way of the Isker and the Morava.
The Slavic chronicles are silent concerning the fall of Sofia. From the late
Ottoman accounts, it would seem that the city was intermittently besieged for
several years. Then a young Osmanli, who had entered the city as refugee, and
had become the confidant and falconer of its commandant, betrayed him. He
urged his master in a chase some distance in front of his followers, and fell upon
him in a mountain gorge. The commandant was bound to his horse, and taken a
prisoner to Ishtiman. Indje Balaban, son of the general of Osman who had
besieged Brusa for ten years, brought his army from Philippopolis, and paraded
the commandant, garrotted, under the walls of Sofia. The Bulgarians,
discouraged and despairing of aid, surrendered.[379] We can be certain neither of
the name of the Bulgarian commandant nor of the date of the surrender. But it
was probably in 1385.[380] Bulgaria up to the main Balkan range was now
Ottoman territory.
The fall of Nish, in the summer of 1386, marked the next extension of
Murad’s empire.[381] The Serbians did not yield without a struggle, as the
Bulgarians had done. Nish was taken by assault. Lazar secured peace only by
increasing the amount of his tribute and adding one thousand cavaliers to his
contingent in the Ottoman army.[382]
Nish was sixteen days by carriage from Constantinople. Murad was now
master of four-fifths of the great Roman highway from Belgrade to the
Bosphorus; for Tchorlu, Demotika, Adrianople, Philippopolis, Ishtiman, Sofia,
and Nish were in his hands. Nish was also the point where the road from
Belgrade to Salonika turned southward. Practically all but the last day’s journey
of the road across the Balkan peninsula from Constantinople to Durazzo on the
Adriatic was Ottoman territory. In Asia Minor, Murad held the ancient highway
from Constantinople to Trebizond as far as Angora, and the road which the
pilgrims and Crusaders, Jerusalem-bent, had travelled as far as Ak Sheïr. From
Angora to Nish took twenty-five days; from Constantinople to Durazzo
seventeen days.[383] Twenty-five years before, when Murad came to the
chieftainship of the Osmanlis, the Ottoman dominions could have been traversed
in any direction in three days.
XIII
The treaty concluded between the Byzantines and Genoese in 1386 affords a
striking illustration of Murad’s power after the Nish campaign. This treaty,
whose text has been preserved, was signed by John and Andronicus Palaeologos,
the podesta of Pera, and the Genoese ambassador. John Palaeologos bound
himself to live in peace with his son Andronicus, and to move his army against
all the enemies of Genoa ‘except Morat bey and his Turks’. The Genoese in turn
promised to defend Constantinople ‘against all enemies of whatever nationality
except the said Morat bey and his Turks, who acted according to the will of the
said Morat bey’! Throughout the treaty, Murad is carefully excepted on both
sides.[384]
Genoa made a formal treaty with Murad in 1385. Favours were granted to the
Osmanlis who did business in Pera, in return for liberty to Genoese merchants to
reside and conduct business in the states of Murad. The treaty recalls the
friendship of the Genoese for Orkhan, and speaks of Murad as ‘the magnificent
and powerful lord of lords, Moratibei, grand admiral[385] and lord of the admirals
of Turchie’.[386] But in the very next year Genoa secretly joined an offensive
league with Cyprus, Scio (Chios) and Mytilene ‘against that Turk, son of
unrighteousness and evil, and also of the Holy Cross Morat bey, and his sect,
who are attempting so grievously to attack the Christian race’.[387]
In the first year of Murad’s reign, the Venetian energy had become so sapped
by prosperity and luxury that the Senate passed a sumptuary law.[388] The recent
triumph over Genoa had given them a belief in their invincibility. Their selfsufficiency,
and the growing disinclination to lay aside the pen and ledger for the
sword and shield, were alarming symptoms of decay. The lesson of the Genoese
at Chioggia was needed to teach the Venetians that the struggle for existence
never ceases.
In spite of their vital interest in the development of the Levant, and the power
that their wealth gave them in a generation when fighting strength could be
purchased so easily, Venice made no effort to oppose the progress of Ottoman
conquest. On the contrary, in 1368, long before an invasion of Albania was
imminent, the Senate negotiated with the Osmanlis for the reddition of Scutari.
This project was again taken up in 1384, in a tentative way, during negotiations
to fix the customs-duties of Venetian merchant-vessels.[389] Following the
example of Ragusa and Genoa, Venice concluded, in 1388, a commercial treaty
with Murad.[390]
The traffic of the Italian republics with the Moslems had been denounced by
Gregory X in 1272, by Boniface VIII in 1299, by Urban V in 1366, and by
Gregory XI in 1372.[391] In vain the popes exhorted; in vain they threatened
interdict and excommunication; in vain they held up to execration the
abominable slave traffic. Trade interests alone decided the policies of the
maritime cities. Their citizens never hesitated to cut each other’s throats for the
opportunity of selling goods. To them the crusades were a purely commercial
proposition. More than once the archives of Venice reveal the approval of the
Senate upon the action of merchants who warned Moslem princes of the
crusaders’ intentions. Guillaume d’Adam declared with reason that the Saracens
maintained their supremacy in the Holy Land and Egypt through the support of
the traders, who furnished them with Christian slaves to keep up their armies.
[392] Genoa passed laws in 1315 and in 1340 against the slave traffic of the Black
Sea,[393] but these laws were never enforced.[394]
Venice and Genoa turned a deaf ear to papal remonstrances and to papal
appeals for aid in crusades against the Osmanlis. For the sake of preserving their
commerce, they flattered Murad, and aided him, indirectly at least, to subjugate
the Christians of the Levant. Their children of the third and fourth generation
paid to the descendants of Murad the penalty of their greed. They lost their
commerce in trying to save it.
XIV
It was not until 1387 that Murad believed himself strong enough to measure
arms with Karamania. His son-in-law, Alaeddin, whose name is reminiscent of
the earlier glory of Konia, was emir of the most powerful state in Anatolia. The
Ottoman historians have represented Alaeddin’s resistance of the encroachment
of the Osmanlis, and his defiance of Murad, as rebellion, and have been blindly
followed in this by most of the European historians. Such a conception of the
conflict between the Osmanlis and the Karamanlis is far from the truth. There is
no record of when and how Karamania had become subject to Murad. In fact, up
to 1387, Murad had not yet extended his sovereignty over all of Tekke and
Hamid, the states which bordered Karamania on the west.
Neither Alaeddin himself nor his predecessors had ever acknowledged the
suzerainty of the house of Osman. From the standpoint of the Karamanians, the
Ottoman emir was not even primus inter pares of the Turkish princes in
Anatolia. Osman had probably not been known by name to the founder of the
house of Karaman. Orkhan never came into direct contact with the Karamanlis.
Murad, at the beginning of his reign, had indirectly gained an advantage over the
emir of Karaman in the successful issue of his expedition against the Phrygian
chiefs and the capture of Angora. Fifteen years later his accessions of territory in
Kermian, Hamid, and Tekke brought him into rivalry with Alaeddin. But it was
the prestige and power gained by Murad in European conquests that made him a
rival to be reckoned with. The first acknowledgement of his growing strength
was the marriage alliance between the houses of these two emirs. Alaeddin,
however, did not by this marriage constitute himself a vassal of his father-in-law.
The letters of Murad to Alaeddin in the collection of Feridun are couched in
terms of equality.
Murad rallied his army at Kutayia for the first great Ottoman campaign in
Asia. He could not muster enough Osmanlis to undertake so formidable a feat as
the invasion of Karamania, and had to rely upon large contingents of Greeks and
Serbians, who were sent to him, in accordance with their conventions, by his
vassals, the emperor John and the kral Lazar.[395] The Balkan soldiers, under the
command of Bayezid, formed the left wing of the Ottoman army.
Battle was joined in the great plain before Konia, which has so often been the
scene of Ottoman triumphs and reverses. The Ottoman historians declare that
Alaeddin was defeated, largely through the bravery of Timurtash, and represent
the battle of Konia as a decisive victory, which ‘put down the rebellion’.
According to them, Alaeddin ‘sued for peace’. Murad ‘forgave’ him, because he
was moved by the tearful pleadings of his daughter, Alaeddin’s wife.[396]
But the net result of the costly expedition was the reconciliation of the two
emirs. The only result recorded by the Ottoman historians is that Alaeddin kissed
Murad’s hands! Murad withdrew to Kutayia without annexing any portion of the
Karamanian emirate, without booty, and without promise either of tribute or
military contingents for the European wars. Had Murad actually accomplished
more than merely holding his own in the battle of Konia, the campaign would
not have ended so profitlessly. Granting the Ottoman victory, Murad’s conduct
after the battle is inconsistent with his whole life and character. We are
compelled to discard the story of a decisive victory. It must be that Murad, who
had been able to reduce to vassalage the Byzantines, the Bulgarians, and the
Serbians, found himself unable, even with the help of his European allies, to
break the power of this rival Anatolian emir.
XV
During the Karamanian campaign, Murad adopted the policy of treating noncombatants
in a friendly fashion. Strict orders were given to refrain from
violence and looting. Murad hoped to win the Karamanlis by kindness, and to
pave the way for a later assimilation. It was the first campaign undertaken
against fellow Moslems. The Serbian contingent, who cared nothing for the
success of this policy, and who claimed that they had been promised booty in
return for their services, did not obey the order. A number of them were
summarily executed.[397]
When the survivors returned to their homes in the spring of 1388, they
complained bitterly of the way they had been treated, and declared that service in
the Ottoman army, for the Christian all risk and no gain, was nothing less than a
slavery leading to death. This discontent gave Lazar the opportunity for which
he had long been looking. He decided to profit by the resentment of the Serbians
against Murad,[398] and make a supreme effort to free Serbia from the menace of
the Ottoman yoke, which had grown very real since the capture of Nish.
The Slavs of upper Serbia and of Bosnia realized the imminence of an
Ottoman invasion, and they were now ready—or at least they appeared to be
ready—to rally around Lazar. Up to this time the Serbians had never recognized
Lazar as the leader of the race.
The pan-Serbian alliance was made possible by the adhesion of Tvrtko, kral
of Bosnia. He had come into prominence after the battle of Cernomen as a
supporter of Lazar against the sons of Vukasin and other Serbian chieftains who
were dissatisfied with the election of Lazar. But in return for his aid, he got
under his control a large part of upper Serbia, including Milesevo, which was the
burial-place of St. Sava, apostle to the Serbians. In 1376, he crowned himself
‘king of Bosnia and Serbia’ on the tomb of St. Sava, placing upon his head the
two crowns, and changing his name to Stephen. Neither Louis of Hungary nor
Lazar was consulted by Tvrtko, and he took no measures to secure their assent to
his pretensions. After his coronation, he conquered Cattaro, and fought
successfully with Balza of Albania.[399]
In 1383 Tvrtko had become so powerful on the Dalmatian coast that the
Senate recognized him as ‘king of Serbia, Bosnia and the Riviera’, and bestowed
upon him the privilege of Venetian citizenship.[400] It was evidently the intention
of Venice to favour Tvrtko as an opponent to Louis of Hungary, who had himself
taken in 1382 the title of ‘king of Serbia, Dalmatia and Bulgaria’.[401] Venice lost
her grip upon or interest in the east coast of the Adriatic for a few years
immediately following the treaty of Turin. We have already seen how in 1384
the Senate professed a willingness to treat with the Osmanlis on the basis of
giving up Scutari. In 1385 they became indifferent to currying further the favour
of Tvrtko, and sent an embassy to press him for the payment of money due to
Venice.[402] Tvrtko continued to consolidate his position on the Dalmatian coast,
until the capture of Nish influenced him to aid Lazar against the Osmanlis.
It was not a moment too soon. An Ottoman army had already crossed the
Vardar and was marching forward for the invasion of Bosnia. Thirty thousand
Serbians and Bosnians under the command of Tvrtko and Lazar met the invading
army at Plochnik, in the valley of the Toplika. Of twenty thousand Osmanlis
scarcely one-fifth escaped death or captivity.[403] The Bosnians successfully
opposed two other Ottoman armies at Rudnik and Biletchia.[404]
A delirium of joy spread through the Slavic population of the Balkans at the
news of the battle of Plochnik. The uninterrupted chain of thirty years of
Ottoman victories had been broken. The slavery and horror of military service
with the Osmanlis, price of their vassalage, so vividly depicted by the survivors
of the Karamanian campaign, had made the Slavs desperate. This victory,
following closely upon the moral revolt against the Osmanlis, gave them hope.
The South Slavs are like children in the extremes of their emotions. Tears to
laughter—laughter to tears: easily despairing, as easily hopeful, and from as
little cause. The slightest reverse brings distrust in their ability to cope with
forces that have once successfully opposed them. Slight success brings
overwhelming confidence, and leads to colossal mistakes of judgement. With
this trait of character is coupled an intuitive distrust of one’s neighbour, of the
disinterestedness of his motives, and an intuitive resentment of ‘the other fellow’
doing something better than you do it. This makes impossible solidarity and
esprit de corps. The South Slavic character explains the series of events which
brought the Serbians to their final and irretrievable disaster.
Around Lazar the Serbian nobles rallied as they had never rallied before. Kral
Tvrtko of Bosnia, George Kastriota of Albania, and the minor princes of Albania
and Serbia joined in an alliance against the Osmanlis. The two remaining
successors of Alexander of Bulgaria, Sisman and Ivanko, son of Dobrotich,
threw off their allegiance to Murad, and promised contingents for the common
struggle. The prince of Wallachia assured Lazar of the co-operation of the
Rumanians.
Venice, fearing lest Murad fall upon the Peloponnesus to seek vengeance for
the defeat of Plochnik, tried to form a league of all the Greek and Frankish lords
in the Morea and central Greece.[405] As far as one can judge from the records,
the effort of Venice was an intention rather than an action. It did not get beyond
the paper stage. The Senate gave to the Slavic alliance no encouragement more
substantial than words. On the other hand, some of the border nobles of the
Hungarian banats, of their own volition, informed Lazar of their intention to cooperate
in an offensive movement against the Osmanlis.
XVI
Murad did not set his army in motion against the Serbians immediately after
the disaster at Plochnik. There was none of that feverish haste which had
characterized his movements when he received the news of the Serbian and
Hungarian crusade in 1363. For while the victory had aroused in the Balkan
Christians a determination that they must drive the Osmanlis out of Europe, and
a feeling that they could accomplish this end, its immediate result had been
merely to repel the projected Ottoman invasion of Bosnia. Ali pasha disposed of
sufficient forces to hold the conquests that had already been made. Murad had
come to know the people with whom he was dealing. It was not so much to
recruit his own army as to give the allies time to fall out with each other that
Murad remained in Asia during the early months of 1388. To strike in the first
flush of enthusiasm and buoyant hope would have brought him face to face with
a united enemy. If he waited, he knew from past experience with the Balkan
princes that the poison of jealousy would permeate the ranks of his ostensibly
united enemies. The Osmanlis never made a mistake of judgement in dealing
with Balkan alliances until the autumn of 1912.
Far from planning an offensive movement against the Serbians, Murad
allowed Evrenos of Yanitza to lead a band of Ottoman mercenaries into the
Morea, at the invitation of Theodore Palaeologos, to support the authority of the
Byzantine Empire against the Frankish barons.[406] At the same time he ordered
Ali pasha to cross the Balkans into northern Bulgaria.
Ali pasha started from Adrianople in the spring of 1388 with thirty thousand
men to complete the conquest of Bulgaria. He crossed the Balkans by the pass
north of Aïtos, which has ever since been called by the Osmanlis Nadir Derbend
from the neighbouring town of Nadirkeuy.[407] Provadia was taken by surprise in
the night. Shuman and the villages around it were next conquered. After an
unsuccessful attack upon Varna, the Osmanlis retraced their steps through
Provadia and Shuman, following the line of the modern railway from Varna to
Sofia. Tirnovo, the ancient capital of Bulgaria, capitulated after a short struggle.
Sisman withdrew to the Danube through the valley of the Osma, and shut
himself up in the fortress of Nicopolis. Owing to the ease of provisioning from
the river side, it was impossible to starve him out. Ali pasha was compelled to
call upon Murad, who had just crossed over from Asia to Thrace. When Murad
arrived before Nicopolis, Sisman sued for peace. The conditions of Murad, that
he pay the tribute due from the previous year and allow an Ottoman garrison to
occupy the fortress of Drster as gage of future good conduct, were gladly
accepted.
No sooner had Murad started southward than Sisman decided upon a final
desperate resistance. He refused to give up Drster. But he had forgotten that Ali
pasha was master of Shuman and the route to Varna. The Osmanlis took Drster
by storm. Many villages along the Danube between Rustuk and Nicopolis fell
into the hands of the Osmanlis. Ali pasha besieged Sisman for a second time in
Nicopolis. The revelation of his own weakness and of the strength of the
Osmanlis was a crushing blow to Sisman. He surrendered without conditions,
and was taken, with his wife and children, to Murad’s camp. For reasons which
the chroniclers do not indicate, Sisman was able to secure forgiveness and
restoration to his former position as vassal prince of Bulgaria. But the Osmanlis
were now installed in north-central Bulgaria up to the Danube River. Shuman
and Nicopolis were Ottoman fortresses. Sisman had been rendered impotent to
give effective aid in the great alliance.[408]
XVII
Not all the Christians were loyal to the cause of Balkan freedom. In their
conquest of the Balkan peninsula, it is remarkable that the Osmanlis never
fought a battle without the help of allies of the faith and blood of those whom
they were putting under the Moslem yoke. At the beginning of this chapter, it has
been shown that there is no historical basis for the assertion that the Osmanlis
conquered the Balkan states by the use of the janissaries. But they did have
Christian aid of a far more powerful kind than the janissaries could have given
them. The old fiction of the janissaries won for the Balkan people the sympathies
of western Europe. The truth concerning the Christian aid which the Moslem
conquerors received alienates rather than wins our sympathies.
When, in the spring of 1389, Murad found himself ready to exact vengeance
for Plochnik, and started from Bulgaria on his punitive expedition, he was joined
by Constantine of Kustendil, by the Serbian Dragash, to whom he had given
Serres as fief, and even by the sons of Vukasin, the Serbian kral who had been
killed in 1371 at Cernomen.[409] Balsa, prince of Zenta (upper Albania),
postponed his march to join the allies, and entered secretly into correspondence
with Murad through a Serbian nobleman in the Ottoman camp. Lazar knew of
this treachery. He knew also that some of his own lieutenants had in all
probability arranged to sell him out to the Ottoman emir.[410]
Kossovapol, the plain of the blackbirds, is the name given to the valley of the
Sitnika River (an upper tributary of the Morava) west of Pristina and south of
Mitrovitza.[411] Here the decisive battle for Serbian independence was fought on
June 20, 1389.[412]
Serbian chronicles state that Murad had enjoined upon his soldiers that they
should neither destroy nor sack the rich castles, villages, and cities of this region
after the battle. Only four castles in all were destroyed.[413] This command
shows that Murad was confident of the outcome. He was fighting for the
possession of this country, for the wealth and the prestige that it would give him.
He had no intention of destroying what he knew would be his to enjoy, nor did
he desire to alienate the Serbian peasantry by unnecessary harshness. Here, as
elsewhere, new Osmanlis rather than Ottoman subjects were the desiderata: they
could be won only by kindness. Since the clemency of the Osmanlis in dealing
with the vanquished after the battle is frankly recorded by the Serbians
themselves, we cannot doubt that the wise and far-seeing provisions of the
conqueror were carried out.
Of Kossova much has been written. It was the culminating event in that
legendary period of Serbian history which had begun fifty years before with the
exploits of Stephen Dushan. Lazar, Serbian chieftain with no long line of royal
ancestors behind him, with no great weight of authority among his
contemporaries, who began his career by craven submission to Murad and, after
eighteen years in which no deed to his credit is recorded, survived a crushing
defeat to be executed on the field of battle—this is the Charlemagne of Serbian
poetry. On the anniversary of Kossova, the Serbians pray for his soul. As a saint,
he gets many more candles at his shrine than his namesake of Bethany who was
raised from the dead. Such is legend in history. But what amazes one is the
curious fact that the very folksongs that glorify Saint Lazar and lament Kossova
reveal a frank and true picture of the events, and prove how little warrant there is
for the legend!
The Serbians despaired of their cause before the battle. The enormous
number of the enemy dismayed them.[414] Rumours of treachery were current in
the allied camp. Their lack of courage, and the spirit of distrust of each other’s
good faith, is strikingly voiced in the oration of Lazar at a banquet the evening
before the battle. He pleaded for a courage and confidence which he himself did
not feel. He openly accused his son-in-law, Milosh Obravitch, of treason. Gloom
and hopelessness had settled over the Serbian camp, reflected from leaders to the
common soldiery. The battle was already lost. For victory is never won by those
who feel that they are going to lose.[415]
The battle was begun by the Osmanlis. Murad sent forward an advance guard
of two thousand archers.[416] The allies responded with a charge in which the left
wing of the Ottoman army was broken through by Lazar. For a while the issue
seemed in doubt. Bayezid held out against the impetuosity of the Serbians, but
the Osmanlis made no attempt to take the offensive. At this critical juncture,
when the battle was by no means decided, Vuk Brankovitch, another son-in-law
of Lazar, quietly withdrew from the field with twelve thousand men. This
desertion, which had probably been arranged for with Murad, so weakened the
Serbians that they broke and fled. Lazar and many of his leading noblemen, and
thousands of his soldiers, were taken prisoners. It was not a fight to the bitter
end.[417]
Murad won the battle of Kossova at the cost of his own life. From the story
which Clavijo de Gonzáles heard fifteen years later, one might infer that Murad
was killed in the course of the battle, and that the fighting was renewed around
his body.[418] It was then that Bayezid cut down Lazar with his own sword. Pray
declared that the two sovereigns were mortally wounded in a personal combat.
[419] The Ottoman historians believed that Murad met his death when walking
across the field after the battle. A wounded Serbian soldier, who was believed to
be dead, rose with a supreme effort to his knees and thrust his sword into Murad
as he passed.
According to the Serbian songs, whose testimony the Byzantine historians
corroborate, and whose story has been followed by some Osmanlis as well,
Murad was assassinated after the battle, or perhaps while the battle was in
progress, by Milosh Obravitch. Stung by the unjust accusation of treason in the
speech of Lazar on the eve of the battle,[420] Milosh determined to prove his
loyalty beyond any question. He got through the Ottoman ranks as a deserter, of
whom there must have been many on that fatal day. His claim of high rank,
which was attested by his princely bearing, secured for him an audience with
Murad. When he was face to face with the emir, he plunged his dagger into the
destroyer of his country’s liberties. It is a commentary on the Serbian character
that this questionable act has been held up to posterity as the most saintly and
heroic deed of national history.
In the seventeenth century it was believed, and this belief has been
reproduced as a fact by some modern writers on the Ottoman Empire, that the
custom of holding a foreign ambassador’s arms when he entered the presence of
the sultan, originated from a regulation to prevent the recurrence of such a crime.
[421] Like many other Ottoman customs, however, this consistorial ceremony is
found among the usages of the Byzantine court,[422] and has persisted in some
oriental courts to the present day. It has been explained on the ground that ‘a
stranger before the sovereign is so overwhelmed by the effulgence of his rays
that he cannot stand without support’.[423]
The statements of the numbers engaged in the battle of Kossova are so
conflicting that it is impossible to determine how many men took part in the
action, or which side was the stronger. The Serbian folksongs dwell upon the
tremendous number of the enemy, while the Ottoman historians report that the
Osmanlis mustered so few in comparison with the reported strength of the
Serbians that there was serious question before the battle of the advisability of
taking so great a risk as to engage a foe whose numerical advantage was so
marked. Including the prisoners, who were massacred when Murad’s death was
learned by the soldiers, the Serbians calculated their loss at seventy-seven
thousand killed, while only twelve thousand of the Osmanlis fell. One important
fact we do know. The loss of life during the battle and subsequent massacre on
the part of the Serbian nobility was so great that the nation, for the third time
within thirty years, found itself without leaders.
Tvrtko hurried away from Kossova so fast that he did not realize how
overwhelming had been the defeat. In fact, when he learned of the death of
Murad, he wrote to Florence announcing the glorious victory won under his
leadership, and the death of the arch enemy of Christendom.[424] The
Florentines, therefore, celebrated the news of Kossova with a Te Deum in the
cathedral. Either this perverted account also reached France, or too great
significance was placed upon the death of Murad, for Charles VI went to Notre
Dame to render thanks to God in all solemnity for what had happened at
Kossova![425] The Serbians themselves were not deceived. To them, Kossova
was the death-knell to independence. The Hungarians, also, awoke immediately
to a sense of the danger that threatened them.
XVIII
For thirty years Murad had guided the destinies of the Osmanlis with a
political sagacity surpassed by no statesman of his age. It is only because we
know so much more of Mohammed the Conqueror and of Soleiman the
Magnificent that Murad has never received his proper place as the most
remarkable and most successful statesman and warrior of the house of Osman.
When we measure the difficulties which confronted him, the problems which he
solved, and the results of his reign, against the deeds of his more dazzling
successors, we see how easily he stands with them, if not above them. The
transformation effected in his lifetime is one of the most wonderful records in all
history. His conquests were to endure for five centuries, until the Treaty of
Berlin, in 1878: some of them have survived the cataclysm of the recent Balkan
wars.
His energy and zeal for fighting, so like his father’s, and yet put to the test of
being extended over a field of action far wider than his father ever dreamed of,
did not flag. He never had a disagreement with any of his generals or
administrators. His system of conquest and of government, unsupported by
tradition or the background of a gradual growth, fitted every condition for which
it had been framed. His treatment of the Greeks showed superb skill in
estimating their character. Although an infidel and enemy of Christ in the eyes of
the Byzantine ecclesiastics, he handled them so much better than the popes that
he won their sympathies. No more striking proof of his complete success in a
problem of assimilation, at once racial as well as religious, can be found than the
letter of the Orthodox patriarch written to Pope Urban VI in 1385, in which it is
stated that Murad left to the Church entire liberty of action.[426] In the records of
the Greek patriarchate from 1360 to 1389,[427] one does not find a single instance
of complaint received of ill treatment of the priesthood by the Osmanlis.
Osman gathered around him a race, Orkhan created a state, but it was Murad
who founded the empire.
CHAPTER IV
BAYEZID
THE OSMANLIS INHERIT THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE
I
THE death of Murad was immediately avenged upon the battle-field by the
execution of the prisoners of noble birth. Practically all the Serbian aristocracy
that had remained loyal to Lazar and the national cause perished.
In the midst of this bloody work, Bayezid sent servants to seek out his brother
Yakub, who had distinguished himself during the battle, and was being
acclaimed by his soldiers. Yakub was taken to Bayezid’s tent, and strangled with
a bowstring.[428] The new emir justified this crime by a verse conveniently found
for him by his theologians in the Koran: ‘So often as they return to sedition, they
shall be subverted therein; and if they depart not from you, and offer you peace
and restrain their hands from warring against you, take them and kill them
wheresoever ye find them.’[429] They declared that the temptation to treason and
revolt was always present in the brothers of the ruler, and that murder was better
than sedition. These doctors of the law might better have pointed out to Bayezid
the admonition of the Prophet: ‘But his soul suffered him to slay his brother, and
he slew him: wherefore he became of the number of those who perish.’[430] For
the abominable practice of removing possible rival claimants by assassination,
thus begun on the field of Kossova, was elevated to the dignity of a law by
Mohammed II,[431] and has been until our own times a blot upon the house of
Osman.
Bayezid, however, was only following the example of Christian princes of his
own century. Pedro of Castille killed his brother Don Fadrique;[432] Andronicus
III Comnenos of Trebizond, killed his two brothers, Michael and George;[433]
and Andronicus III Palaeologos assassinated his brother when his father was
dying.[434]
An order was issued from the battle-field of Kossova to the Kadi of Brusa,
enjoining him to keep secret the death of Murad, and to appear to be occupied
only with public rejoicing for the victory ‘won from the Hungarians’. With this
order, Bayezid forwarded the bodies of his father and brother for secret burial at
Brusa.[435]
Agents of the Italian cities came to seek Bayezid after the battle to
congratulate him, and to ask for the confirmation of the commercial privileges
granted by Murad. Bayezid showed himself proud and distant. He declared that
after he had conquered Hungary he would ride so far that he would come to
Rome and there give his horse oats to eat upon the altar of St. Peter’s.[436] A
change of attitude towards Europe is strikingly revealed in this boast. Murad, in
spite of crusades projected against him, had been careful not to draw upon
himself the attention, much less the ill-will, of the western Christian princes. He
was aggressive, but never any more so than he needed to be for the moment at
hand: and he was never aggressively Mohammedan. Bayezid, from the very
beginning of his reign, took no pains to conceal his enmity to Christendom, and
his desire to pose as the champion of Islam. He sought alliances with the Sultan
of Egypt[437] and other Moslem rulers, and placed the utmost importance upon
the extension of Ottoman sovereignty in Asia Minor.
II
After the bloodthirst of Kossova had been satisfied and his father’s death
avenged, Bayezid was eager to enter into friendly relations with Stephen
Bulcovitz, son and heir of Lazar. He felt that the Serbians had learned their
lesson, and that they would be more helpful to him as allies than as crushed and
sullen foes. He needed their aid in the Anatolian campaign which he was
contemplating, and they were essential to the safety of his European possessions
as a buffer against the Hungarians, who he knew would take the opportunity of
his absence in Asia to move down the Danube. So he treated Stephen and the
surviving Serbians with great kindness. Stephen received all the privileges that
had belonged to his father.[438] The Serbians were assured of an equitable share
of the booty in the campaigns in which they would engage. On the other hand,
Stephen agreed to allow Bayezid an annual tribute, secured by the revenues of
the silver mines, to command a contingent in person in the Ottoman army, and to
give his sister to the Ottoman emir.[439] Kossova was forgiven on both sides.
Bayezid took Despina, daughter of Lazar, as wife by a formal marriage act,
which was read in the mosque of Aladja Hissar, near Krutchevatz, at the foot of
Mount Iastrebatz, twenty miles north-west of Nish.[440] This was the last
marriage ever contracted by a sovereign of the house of Osman.[441] It sealed an
alliance that proved very advantageous to Bayezid. Throughout his life he was
devoted to Despina, and his brother-in-law Stephen in turn was a devoted and
steadfast friend. The Serbians were faithful allies to the Osmanlis, and fought
with them at Nicopolis and Angora. On his side, Bayezid kept the allegiance of
the Serbians by giving them opportunities for winning booty in the raids against
the Albanians, Dalmatians, and Hungarians, and by favouring the Orthodox
Church. When we see how complacently and cheerfully the Serbians—except
the poets—took upon themselves the Ottoman yoke, we must believe that
Kossova was regarded as a terrible calamity only by the generations of after
centuries, who found the Ottoman rule harder than it had been for their
ancestors.
Bayezid placed a strong Ottoman colony in Uskub, and settled Moslems in
the country between Uskub and Nish.[442] There were probably many also who
saw that conversion was to their advantage. However that may be, Bayezid never
had any trouble from the Serbians during his reign.
Stephen Tvrtko, kral of Bosnia, did not consider Kossova a defeat. Seeing
that his great enemy Murad and his great rival Lazar had found death on the
battle-field, and that the Osmanlis did not follow up their victory, this view-point
was natural. After Kossova, Tvrtko increased in power and prestige. He called
himself king of Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, and Dalmatia. Like Stephen Dushan, he
was planning ‘for great things’ when he died in March, 1391, after a reign of
thirty-eight years.[443]
Shortly before his death, Tvrtko had successfully resisted an Ottoman
invasion with the help of a Hungarian army sent to him by Sigismund. His
successor, Stephen Dabitcha, however, departed from this wise policy. He
quarrelled with the Hungarians, and played into Bayezid’s hand by opposing
Sigismund in his final effort to stem the tide of Ottoman invasion. The Bosnians
paid to the full the penalty of their king’s folly. In 1398, Bosnia was invaded by a
great army of Osmanlis and Serbians, who ‘destroyed almost all the country and
led away the people into slavery’.[444] In spite of the sweeping assertion of the
chronicler, this must have been only a raid. For, from 1398 to 1415, the
Bosnians, still independent, were fighting with Ragusa and Hungary. In 1415,
they voluntarily allied themselves with the Osmanlis, and repeated the same old
story of the other Balkan races. Mohammed I was called in to help them against
the Hungarians.[445] The Osmanlis came, and they remained.
III
In the second year of his reign, after he had arranged a suitable status quo
with the Serbians of upper Macedonia, Bayezid began that policy of
aggrandizement in Asia Minor which led finally to his downfall. His first
encroachment was against Isa bey of Aïdin. Isa was too weak to oppose Bayezid
single-handed. Instead of seeking to ally the independent emirs against the
Osmanlis, Isa thought he could save himself with less risk by becoming a vassal
of Bayezid. He was compelled to give up Ayasoluk, and make Tyra his capital.
Bayezid almost immediately broke faith with Isa, and exiled him to Brusa or
Nicaea, where he died.[446] His two sons, Isa and Omar, managed to escape to
the court of Timur, who was rapidly becoming the most powerful Moslem ruler
in Asia.
The occupation of Ephesus aroused momentarily Bayezid’s ambition to take
possession of Smyrna. In 1391, he did in fact make some efforts to overpower
the garrison, which was greatly weakened by pestilence.[447] Later he occupied
the passes around Smyrna to prevent the entrance of provisions.[448] But Smyrna,
like Constantinople, could not be starved out so long as the Osmanlis were not
masters of the sea. Bayezid never pressed this mild form of siege to a definite
assault. His hands were too full elsewhere. An unsuccessful assault against
Smyrna would have destroyed his prestige in the new territory of Aïdin, which
was not any too securely his by the suppression of its ruling family. Perhaps,
also, he realized that Smyrna, more than any other place in the Levant except
Rhodes, had become the city of promise to the Roman Church. He did not want
to stir up an active resistance on the part of the chevaliers of Rhodes, for they
might easily be induced to lend aid to the emirs whom he was destroying.
Sarukhan and Menteshe, during the reign of Murad, had lost the most virile
element of their population in corsair expeditions. The Turks of whom one reads
as the roving and raiding adventurers in the Aegaean and Mediterranean during
the fourteenth century were largely from these emirates. Decades of outgo
without a corresponding income in fighting men so depleted the maritime
emirates that they were not in a position to withstand Bayezid as they had done
his father and grandfather. Their population was seafaring, and their princes
were traders rather than warriors. When the armies of Bayezid invaded Sarukhan
and Menteshe, the two emirs attempted no resistance. They took refuge with
Bayezid, emir of Kastemuni, and abandoned their emirates to the Osmanlis.[449]
The result of the acquisition of Sarukhan, Aïdin, and Menteshe was the
immediate appearance of the Osmanlis upon the Aegaean Sea. This is the
beginning of the Ottoman naval power, which did not, however, have any
development during the reign of Bayezid. The first Ottoman naval expedition
started out in the late autumn of 1390. Sixty vessels made a descent upon Chios,
and devastated the island. Negropont (Euboea) and the coast of Attica suffered
the ravages of the raiders.[450] Bayezid now forbade the exportation of grain
from Asia to Lemnos, Lesbos, Chios, and Rhodes. But he was hardly yet in a
position to enforce this embargo.
The Christians of the Aegaean islands and of the eastern Mediterranean soon
learned that a new design, which had before been lacking, animated the Turkish
expeditions. It was the desire not so much for booty as for the permanent
possession of land. Everywhere they went, the Osmanlis went as settlers. They
fought for homes and wives.
In the south, Bayezid took Adalia, the last city of the emir of Tekke. It was in
1391 that the Osmanlis won this seaport, their first on the Mediterranean. If we
except the southern ports of the Peloponnesus, a whole century passed before
they added another on the Mediterranean.
Following up the pretext furnished him by a complaint against Alaeddin from
his vassal, the emir of Hamid, Bayezid determined to measure his forces against
the Karamanlis. As had been the case in the previous similar expeditions under
his father, four years before, Bayezid called out the levies of his European
Christian vassals. Among those who responded to the call was Manuel
Palaeologos, who passed the winter of 1390-91 in the Ottoman camp at Angora.
There he wrote his famous dialogues on the Christian religion, purporting to be
discussions with a Moslem professor of theology.[451]
Bayezid invaded Karamania, and laid siege to Konia. Alaeddin, who had fled
to the Taurus Mountains to escape being shut up in the city, saw soon that Konia
could hold out against Bayezid for an indefinite period. The Ottoman emir was
far from his base of supplies, and nervous about what was happening in Europe.
So, when Alaeddin asked for terms of peace, Bayezid agreed to withdraw from
Konia, if Alaeddin would formally cede to him the north-western corner of his
dominions, including the cities of Aksheïr and Akseraï, which were already in
the hands of the Osmanlis.[452] Bayezid left Timurtash as governor of the new
acquisitions, and returned to Adrianople.
While Bayezid was occupied in Bulgaria, in 1392, in his first defensive
campaign against Sigismund, Alaeddin decided upon a supreme effort to wrest
from Bayezid the hegemony of Asia Minor. He reoccupied the ceded cities, and
attacked by surprise the Ottoman army in Kermian. Timurtash was taken
prisoner. One column of the Karamanlis set out for Angora, and the other for
Brusa.
Bayezid earned for himself the nickname yildirim (thunderbolt) by the
rapidity with which he transported his army into Anatolia.[453] Fresh from a
victory over the Hungarians, supported by the trained and hardened soldiery of
his Christian vassals, Greeks, Serbians, Bulgarians, and Wallachians, his sudden
appearance at Brusa caused Alaeddin to try once more to treat with the rival who
was rapidly becoming more powerful than himself. He released Timurtash, and
suggested a return to the status quo of the previous year.
Bayezid was not only convinced that a decisive struggle was now advisable:
he was also quick to see that for the first time the advantage was all on the side
of the Osmanlis. Instead of meeting the enemy in the heart of his own country,
after a long journey across wind-swept plateaux where food was scarce, it was
the enemy this time who had made the journey and was far from home.
Defeated, there would be no retreat possible for Alaeddin.
With characteristic celerity, Bayezid sent forward an army under Timurtash.
Battle was joined in the plain of Ak Tchaï (the white river). One cannot
determine the exact location, but it was probably in Kermian not far from
Kutayia, for that is where the two retreating columns of the Karamanlis would
naturally have formed a junction. Alaeddin and his sons Ali and Mahommed
were taken prisoners. When Alaeddin was brought before him, Timurtash could
not restrain his anger until Bayezid arrived. He remembered only that the one
defeat of his long and brilliant career had been administered by Alaeddin. Its
disgrace, and his feeling towards the emir of Karamania, was in no way palliated
by the fact that Alaeddin had voluntarily released him. Timurtash ordered the
prisoner to be hanged. When Bayezid arrived, his brother-in-law was dead. He
was overjoyed that his rival had been removed so conveniently, and without any
responsibility falling upon himself.
Karamania lay open before the invaders. The Osmanlis occupied Ak Seraï,
Konia, and Laranda. There was no organized resistance. But it is a curious
disregard of facts to record, as most historians have done,[454] that the result of
this campaign was the permanent incorporation of Karamania in the Ottoman
Empire.[455] The battle of Ak Tchaï had been decisive only to the extent that
thereafter the Osmanlis, and not the Karamanlis, were to be the dominant race in
Asia Minor. Konia and other eastern Karamanian cities were occupied by the
Osmanlis after the battle because their ruler had been killed and his sons taken
into captivity. Had Alaeddin escaped from the field, he might have organized a
successful resistance to the Ottoman invaders. Bayezid conquered Karamania by
the battle of Ak Tchaï no more than Napoleon conquered Prussia by Jena or von
Moltke France by Sedan. To enter and occupy for a while the capital of a country
does not mean that the country is ‘incorporated’ in the domains of the successful
invader. The immediate restoration of the Karamanian dynasty after the advent
of Timur proves how superficial had been the Ottoman occupation. While they
were no longer able to be a political factor in western Asia Minor, the
Karamanlis continued until after the fall of Constantinople—for seventy years
after the battle of Ak Tchaï—to defy successfully the efforts of the Osmanlis to
destroy their independence and amalgamate them.[456]
Burhaneddin, who had set up for himself a principality north-east of
Karamania along the Halys River, which included Caesarea and Sivas, was the
next rival on the east to be attacked. Burhaneddin is reported to have had twenty
to thirty thousand followers.[457] This seems to be an exaggeration, for we read
that he did not resist the Ottoman invasion. At the approach of Bayezid, he
retired into the mountains of Armenia near Kharput. Here he was either killed by
Kara Yuluk, founder of the famous White Sheep dynasty, or put to death by
order of Bayezid.[458] His emirate was shared by Bayezid and Kara Yuluk, the
Ottoman emir taking Tokat, Caesarea, and Sivas. There is no certainty as to the
date of this expedition. From the events which followed, it most probably took
place in 1395, the year before Nicopolis.[459]
Kastamuni, practically coterminous with the Roman province of Paphlagonia,
stood between the Ottoman possessions and the Black Sea. In the campaign of
1393, Samsun and the cities of the interior between Samsun and Angora, were
captured by the Osmanlis. When the Ottoman army advanced to attack
Kastamuni, Bayezid offered to allow the emir to become his vassal, if he would
surrender to him the emirs of Sarukhan and Menteshe. Whether the lesser
Bayezid was unwilling to violate the laws of hospitality, or put little faith in the
promises of the conqueror after the fate which had overtaken the emir of Aïdin,
it is impossible to say. He and his guests fled to the court of Timur. The
occupation of Sinope gave the Osmanlis an excellent port on the south coast of
the Black Sea.
Bayezid was now master of the greater part of Anatolia, but master only in
name. He had not assimilated these conquests. As later events proved, the
inhabitants of these territories were still loyal to their former rulers.
IV
After his return from the first Anatolian campaign, Bayezid ordered a general
advance along the northern and north-western frontiers. One band invaded
Bosnia, but did not make much headway. Three bands entered Hungary, and
initiated the system of rapid raiding that in time reached as far as Germany, and
made the ‘Turks’ the nightmare of Slavic, Teutonic, and Italian Europe. The first
battle on Hungarian soil was fought at Nagy-Olosz, in Syrmia, not far from
Karlovitz, where three centuries later the Osmanlis signed the death-warrant of
their Weltpolitik.
The Danube was crossed also near Silistria. Before the terrible akindjis could
penetrate far into his country, the hospodar Mircea surrendered, or was made
prisoner. After a short exile at Brusa, he regained his liberty by consenting to the
payment of a tribute of three thousand ducats, thirty horses, and twenty falcons.
[460] He agreed to help Bayezid against the Hungarians, who had long been
asserting a sovereignty over Wallachia, and in return Bayezid promised to settle
no Moslems and build no mosques north of the Danube. In the first Hungarian
invasion, Bayezid received more valuable aid from the Wallachians than from
his janissaries. There were no better fighters in the Balkan peninsula than these
descendants of the soldiers of Trajan. The interference of Sigismund prevented
an Ottoman invasion of Moldavia, whose hospodars remained altogether
independent of the Osmanlis until the reign of Mohammed the Conqueror.[461]
When Louis of Hungary died, he left two daughters. The younger, Hedwig,
was chosen as queen of Poland by the Polish nobles. Her marriage with Jagello
of Lithuania, who was converted to Christianity and baptized under the name of
Ladislas, definitely separated the crowns of Poland and Hungary, and had a farreaching
influence upon the subsequent fortunes of the Osmanlis. The crown of
Hungary fell to Mary, whose succession was questioned by Charles of Durazzo,
king of Naples, the nearest male heir. His invasion of Dalmatia, in 1385, brought
into Hungary Sigismund, second son of Charles IV of Luxemburg, the German
Emperor. For Sigismund was betrothed to Mary, but had been slow to take upon
himself the rôle of bridegroom, owing to his disappointment over Hedwig’s
election by the Poles. Now he entered into the struggle for the Hungarian crown.
In 1387, it was placed upon his head. The union between Poland and Hungary
was broken, but the fortunes of Hungary and Bohemia, to which throne
Sigismund succeeded by blood, were joined in a way that has never been broken
to the present time. The outside connexions of the new Hungarian king were a
most important factor in the growth of the Ottoman Empire. A strong and
vigorous king, whose sole interest lay in the crown of Hungary, might have
prevented the spread of the Osmanlis. In fact, after Bayezid’s death, he might
easily have destroyed the Ottoman power in Europe. But Sigismund, called in
1411 to the larger rôle of Holy Roman Emperor, became engrossed in the
Hussite controversy and the Church councils to end the great schism. While
retaining the crown of Hungary, he allowed the Osmanlis to make the
preparations which were to end in the Moslem subjugation of that kingdom.
In the early days, when Sigismund’s interests lay in his newly-acquired
Hungarian crown, he was alive to the menace of the Osmanlis. He sent a
message to Bayezid, demanding by what right he was interfering with Bulgaria,
which was a country under Hungarian protection. Bayezid made no response to
the address of the king’s ambassador. He merely pointed to the weapons hanging
in his tent, and gave a sign that the audience was over.
Sigismund understood, and accepted the challenge. In 1392, he invaded
Bulgaria, won an initial battle from the Osmanlis, who would have been
annihilated had it not been for their new allies, the Wallachians, and, after a long
siege, took Nicopolis on the Danube.[462] By this time Bayezid was able to send
a large army into Bulgaria. When Sigismund realized how numerous were the
forces coming against him, he saw that his victory bade fair to be nothing more
than the acquisition of a prison. Before the Osmanlis could surround him, he
wisely abandoned Nicopolis. The retreat became a rout.[463] It was on the return
from this expedition that Sigismund met Elisabeth Morsinay, in the county of
Hunyadi. From their union was born the great champion, who, while his imperial
father was engrossed in theological disputes and the complex interests of the
empire, battled bravely against Mohammed I and Murad II.
The expedition of 1392 demonstrated to Sigismund that Bayezid was a foe
worthy of a European ruler, that he must be checked if Hungary were to be
saved, and that the Hungarians could not again take the offensive against the
Osmanlis without aid from western Europe. For the pretensions of Louis to the
overlordship of the Balkan States, and the heartless propaganda of the Catholic
faith, thinly disguising Louis’s inordinate ambitions, had turned the Balkan
peoples against Hungary and ‘crusaders’ from the west. They chose rather to
stand on the side of their Moslem enslavers.
Sigismund’s invasion of Bulgaria determined Bayezid to put an end to the
arrangement concluded just before Kossova between Murad and Sisman.
Bulgaria, like Thrace and Macedonia, was to be an integral part of the empire,
and to become converted to Islam and ottomanized, in so far as that was
possible. For Sisman, who had re-established himself in his old capital, was too
uncertain an ally to be trusted in the event of another Hungarian invasion. In the
spring of 1393, an army under Soleiman Tchelebi, Bayezid’s oldest son, to
whom this was the first command, surrounded Tirnovo. The bulk of Soleiman’s
army was composed of Macedonian Christians and renegades of the first
generation. In midsummer,[464] after a three months’ siege, Tirnovo was taken by
storm from the side of the old castle, which is still, in part, standing.[465] The
inhabitants who escaped fire and sword were carried into captivity in Anatolia.
Among them was the patriarch Euthymius.[466]
This was the end of the independence of Bulgaria and of the national church.
The loss of the church was a more serious blow than the loss of independence.
For the Bulgarian nationality suffered an eclipse of centuries. Under the laws of
Mohammed the Conqueror for the ‘self-government’ of the Christian elements of
the empire, the Bulgarians were included in the Greek millet (nation). Enemy to
every influence, every movement that tended to lessen its temporal power, the
Greek patriarchate of Phanar never wearied in its endeavours, and never
withheld its approval of the foulest means, to stamp out the Bulgarian national
spirit. One cannot visit the old monastery of Rilo without realizing that the
Bulgarian sufferings have been more acute from Christian priests than from
Moslem governors. One cannot follow the trail of unending persecution in the
mute witness of unchurched communities from Monastir to the Black Sea
through Macedonia and Eastern Rumelia, and to the Danube, through Bulgarian
Serbia and trans-Rhodopian Moesia, without sympathizing with the Bulgarian
aspirations of 1913, and without comprehending the wild rage and hatred that
drove an ordinarily clear-headed and impassive people into the second Balkan
war.[467]
When Tirnovo fell, Sisman was not found in his palace. His fate was a
mystery even when Schiltberger went through Bulgaria with the crusaders three
years later. Schiltberger believed that he died in captivity.[468] His son,
Alexander, became a Moslem to save his life, and was given the governorship of
Samsun.[469] He was killed fighting under the Ottoman flag, in 1420, in the
rebellion of Dédé-Sultan. The royal family of Bulgaria had no other heirs.
Silistria, Nicopolis, Widin, and the other Danube fortresses were strongly
garrisoned and fortified.[470] By conversion and immigration the Moslem
population was cultivated, and grew rapidly on this northern frontier of the
empire.
V
The battle of Kossova did not immediately affect Constantinople. Bayezid
was intent upon arranging the new status quo in Serbia. After he had assured
himself that Sigismund was not ready to attack him, he passed over into Asia
Minor. There he devoted all his energies to the destruction of the Turkish
emirates.
The old family feud of the Palaeologi continued.[471] In April 1390, John, the
son of Andronicus, entered Constantinople, and set himself up as emperor in
opposition to his grandfather and uncle. But upon Manuel’s return from Asia in
September, he was compelled to flee.[472] The obligations of Manuel as Ottoman
vassal were stronger than the exigencies of his precarious position at
Constantinople. Although his father was in an enfeebled condition and the
danger of a return of his nephew was very real, Manuel left again in November
to follow Bayezid in the war against Karamania.
We have a striking record from Manuel’s own pen of his humiliation. Proper
food was too dear for the purse of the heir of Constantine the Great. He was on
the verge of starvation. In sharp contrast to his own wretchedness, he describes
the barbaric splendour of the court of Bayezid, and the feasting in which he was
too insignificant to have a share. The Osmanlis treated him with studied
insolence and contempt.[473]
While Bayezid was in Karamania, the old emperor repaired the walls of his
capital. Churches were torn down in order to rebuild the towers on either side of
the Golden Gate. They were given an ornate appearance to disguise the purpose
of their having been repaired. Bayezid, informed through his couriers, sent word
to John that the towers must be rased without delay, or Manuel would lose his
eyes. The old emperor made haste to obey. Before the demolition was finished,
he died in the arms of Eudoxia Comnena, whom he had taken for his mistress
after having asked her hand for his son. Gout and debauchery rather than grief
and humiliation ended his ignoble life; for he was only sixty-one, and, like his
father and grandfather, had never opposed the Osmanlis with enough energy to
undermine his constitution.[474]
When Manuel, in the spring of 1391, returned to Brusa, he learned of his
father’s death, and of the threat that had been made concerning himself.
Escaping in the night, he fled to Constantinople.
An ultimatum soon followed from Bayezid. Beyond the acknowledgement of
vassalage and the payment of an increased tribute, Bayezid demanded the
establishment of a kadi in Constantinople to judge the Moslem inhabitants. Upon
the heels of his messenger came the Ottoman army. The Greeks of southern
Thrace who had remained Christian were exterminated or carried off into slavery
in Asia. Like locusts, the Osmanlis swarmed in all directions, and no village
missed their notice up to the very walls of Constantinople.[475] The first Ottoman
siege of Constantinople began.
The close investment of the city ended after seven months. Bayezid, needing
his army in Bulgaria to oppose Sigismund, consented to lift the siege on still
harder conditions than had first been imposed. Manuel authorized the
establishment of a Mohammedan tribunal in the Sirkedji quarter, and to give
seven hundred houses within the city walls to Moslem settlers. Half of Galata,
from the Genoese Tower to the Sweet Waters, was ceded to Bayezid, who placed
there a garrison of six thousand. The tribute was once more increased, and the
Ottoman treasury was allowed a tithe on the vineyards and vegetable gardens
outside of the city.[476] From the minarets of two mosques, the call to prayer
echoed over the imperial city, which, from this time, began to be called by the
Osmanlis Istambul.[477] This was the city of promise.
From 1391 until the advent of Timur, Constantinople was blockaded on the
land side.[478] The Galata garrison and the posts at Kutchuk and Buyuk
Tchekmedje were always alert to bully and harass travellers and provision
sellers.
The Grand Vizier, Ali pasha, used the grandson and namesake of John V
Palaeologos to make trouble for Manuel. It was in his blood to become the
willing tool of the Osmanlis. In 1393, Ali pasha tried to get the inhabitants of the
city to depose Manuel in order that John, as heir of the older son of the late
emperor, might take the place which was rightfully his.[479] Two years later John
actually attacked the city with Ottoman troops, but was repulsed.[480]
The overtures of Manuel for aid and money from Christian princes were
received with little enthusiasm. On account of the schism in the Latin Church,
Manuel could look for no papal support. Venice refused his offer to sell Lemnos.
[481] The time had passed when the Senate set even the slightest monetary value
upon a Byzantine deed of sale to an Aegaean island.
In 1395, at Serres, Bayezid held his first court as heir of the Caesars. He
summoned before him Manuel and Theodore and John, the son of Andronicus.
Theodore, who had been ruling in the Morea (Peloponnesus), sole remaining
Byzantine theme, was charged with having encroached upon the rights of the
lord of Monembasia. The few remaining Serbian princes were also present.
Bayezid contemplated ridding himself altogether of the Byzantine imperial
family. In fact, he ordered the death of all the Palaeologi. Ali pasha succeeded in
putting off the execution long enough for Bayezid to change his mind. The
sentence was revoked, but warning was given by cutting off the hands and
putting out the eyes of several Byzantine dignitaries. The Palaeologi, and
Constantinople, had been saved only by the intervention of a creature of
Bayezid’s, who did not want to see the imperial family perish and the imperial
city fall because these ghosts of princes were a source of revenue to him!
The peril at Serres had been so real that the Byzantine and Serbian princes
plotted immediately to throw off the Ottoman yoke, and swore to each other that
they would never again answer a summons from Bayezid. The compact was
sealed by the marriage of Irene, daughter of Constantine Dragash, to Manuel.
[482] But Dragash died shortly after the marriage,[483] and Vuk Brankovitch died
three years later.[484] They were the last of the Serbians of Dushan’s following in
Macedonia. The disaster of Nicopolis soon crushed the hopes of the
conspirators.
VI
Urban VI, the first Roman pope of the Great Schism, did practically nothing
against the Osmanlis. He sent, in 1388, two armed galleys for the defence of
Constantinople, and issued letters broadcast promising indulgences to all who
would take part in a crusade.[485] But he did not work for a league of the states
which recognized him. His successor, Boniface IX, whose reign covered the
same period as that of Bayezid, was too occupied in combating the Angevin
party in Naples, and in trying to preserve intact the papal states and cities, to pay
much attention to the Ottoman menace.
In 1391, Boniface urged George Stracimir, who called himself king of Rascia
(Serbia), to conquer Durazzo from the ‘schismatics’, and commanded the
Catholic archbishop of Antivari to prevent the Christians of Macedonia and
Dalmatia from allying themselves with the Osmanlis.[486] Idle words these were,
revealing at once the short-sighted policy of Boniface and his bigotry. For the
Osmanlis, in the spring of 1393, were threatening Durazzo.[487] With warring
Christian sects, their success was certain.
In Greece the interference of the Latin popes was becoming more and more
bitterly resented. Ecclesiastics and laymen alike resented proselytizing and the
invariable introduction of a bargaining clause in every appeal for western aid. In
March 1393, Dorotheus, metropolitan of Athens and exarch of Greece, who had
been justly charged by the Duke of Athens with wanting to introduce into his
duchy the Osmanlis, was a fugitive at Constantinople. Tried on the charge
brought against him by the Duke, a synod of eight bishops acquitted him.[488]
This action was indicative of the feeling throughout the Eastern Church,—better
the Osmanlis than the Franks with their Catholic missionaries. Even the changed
attitude of Bayezid towards Christianity did little to modify this sentiment.
Although France was supporting the Avignon papacy, Boniface wrote in 1394
to Charles VI, asking him to help Sigismund or at least to allow his subjects to
fight under the Hungarian standards.[489] In the course of the same year he twice
ordered a crusade to be preached.[490] This was, however, rather an attempt to
take under his wing, and give sanction to, a secular movement to help Hungary
than an initiative which had originated the movement. For most of Sigismund’s
allies were adherents of the other papacy.
At Avignon, Benedict XIII, a Spaniard, mounted the throne in 1394. His
influence with the Duke of Burgundy, who dominated the insane French king,
was almost as negligible as that of his Roman rival.
Philippe de Mézières, who had taken up the work of Marino Sanudo, and
gave his life to the promotion of a crusade, left Cyprus in 1378, and settled in
Paris, where he preached and wrote impassioned appeals to Christendom to
rescue the Holy Sepulchre. His ‘Order of the Passion’, which was to furnish a
race of fighters against the Moslem holders of Jerusalem, had replaced the
celibate vow of the earlier orders by a vow of marital fidelity, so that ‘defenders
of the Holy Sepulchre’ might be propagated, and trained from infancy for their
mission. The whole idea of Philippe de Mézières was an anachronism. The age
of the crusades had passed. After 1390 the new order fell into oblivion.[491] Like
Marino Sanudo, Philippe de Mézières had actually contributed to the
aggrandizement of the Osmanlis; for he turned the minds of those who were
moved by his appeals from the real menace of Islam to a quixotic and wholly
useless dream. The crusades had only emphasized the axiom of history that
Syria, including Palestine, must be held either through Mesopotamia or through
Egypt.
Against the Osmanlis as against the Moslems of the Holy Land, the Church
was no longer able to move Europe. The Nicopolis crusade was undertaken and
carried through by secular agencies. It had neither religious motive nor religious
backing.
The interest of Hungary in checking the progress of Ottoman conquest was
hardly second to that of Venice and Genoa. To the two Italian republics, who had
not hesitated to stake their very existence a decade before upon the mastery of
the Aegaean Sea and the free passage of the Dardanelles, one would suppose that
the battle of Kossova would have been a salutary warning, and that they would
have seen the necessity of opposing the Osmanlis to the full extent of their
resources. The archives of these cities, however, during the entire reign of
Bayezid, reveal a record of double-dealing and insincere diplomacy which was
as futile and disastrous as it was shameful.
Immediately upon hearing the news of Kossova, the Venetian Senate sent to
Andrea Bembo, who had been negotiating with Murad, a letter instructing him as
to the course he should follow in view of the death of Murad. He was to seek out
the son who had survived, or, if both sons were alive, to be very cautious until
one son had killed or defeated the other. In the meantime, he was to make
overtures to both, telling each one, without letting the other know, that the
Senate ‘had heard of the death of his father, and on that account had great
sorrow. For we have always regarded him as a most particular friend, and we
loved him and his state. Likewise we have heard of his happy elevation to the
power and lordship of his country, concerning which we have been very happy,
because, in like manner as we have sincerely loved the father, we love and are
disposed to love the son and his dominion, and to regard him as a particular
friend.’ Then Bembo was to speak of the commercial privileges desired by the
Senate, and to disclaim the action of the Venetian admiral, Pietro Zeno, who had
attacked the galleys of Murad.[492]
Immediately upon hearing which son had become the successor of Murad,
the Senate sent Francesco Quirini to Bayezid with gifts to secure the renewal of
the commercial treaty concluded several years before with Murad. Bayezid
readily offered to protect Venetian commerce, but he gave no guarantee.[493]
The appearance of the Osmanlis on the Aegaean Sea, and their sacking of
Chios, Negropont,[494] and Attica, greatly alarmed the Senate. Fear was
expressed for the safety of the Venetian fortresses in Negropont and Crete.[495]
All garrisons were ordered, provisioned, and reinforced.[496] In 1393, forgetting
their sincere love for Bayezid, the Senate decided to treat with Sigismund for an
offensive alliance against the Osmanlis.[497] So it cannot be believed that the
Venetians did not see the growing danger.
In September of the next year they responded favourably, although vaguely,
to a letter in which Sigismund notified them that in the coming springtime he
would ‘go against the Turks to their loss and destruction’.[498] But when, in May
1396, a Hungarian embassy arrived in Venice to announce the readiness for a
forward movement, and to secure the promised aid, Venice pledged herself only
to the extent of four galleys, and that on condition that Rhodes, Chios, and
Mytilene would co-operate with the Venetians.[499] A high-sounding letter was
sent to Tommaso Monicego, ordering him to move against the Osmanlis ‘for the
preservation of the city of Constantinople and for the honour of the republic’.
[500] Too weak and too inexperienced to withstand the hardened mariners of Italy,
the Osmanlis disappeared from the sea for the moment. Their navy was only six
years old, and could not yet match itself against the ghiaours. Monicego fought
no battle, for there was no enemy to oppose him. But he made no effort to hinder
the passage of the Osmanlis from Asia to Europe and from Europe to Asia. The
sincerity of the naval co-operation in the Nicopolis crusade is open to the gravest
suspicion.[501]
While the Senate was putting off Sigismund with assurances and promises
that never materialized, they continued to treat with Bayezid and Manuel. In
September 1394, the Osmanlis appeared in the Adriatic at the mouth of the
Boyana, and seized Venetian subjects there. The danger to Durazzo was
imminent, for the Osmanlis were now masters of the valley of the Drin. When
the Senate deliberated on measures for securing the release of the prisoners and
for the defence of Durazzo, they decided to make representations rather than
threats to Bayezid.[502] He naturally paid no attention to the Venetians. They did
not intend to apply force, so he continued the subjugation of Albania and
Greece.
To Manuel the Senate wrote a letter in 1394, recommending him ‘to trust in
God, to trust in the measures which the Christian princes would know how to
take, to write to the pope and to these (the Christian princes), promoting a
general alliance’.[503] But one finds in the deliberations of the Senate no speech
or motion or letter from which one could infer that they themselves had any hope
whatever of the efficacy of the procedure suggested to Manuel. In fact, within
six months, in spite of the imminence of the Hungarian offensive campaign that
was to ‘drive the Turks out of Europe’, the Senate actually decided to send
ambassadors to Bayezid to urge upon him the advisability of an accord with the
Byzantine emperor.[504] It was only because the crusade of Sigismund was
already launched, and they realized the uselessness of it, that they gave up this
questionable démarche, and discussed measures for the safety of the Venetian
fleet, and for preventing Constantinople from falling into Bayezid’s hands
without coming into any open rupture with the Osmanlis.[505] Did Venice, while
ostensibly co-operating with the crusaders, fear that a victory at Nicopolis would
bring about the hegemony of Hungary in the Balkan peninsula, and secretly wish
for the success of the Osmanlis?
As for Genoa, no other policy was considered than that of outbidding Venice
for Bayezid’s favour. Fulsome congratulations upon his succession were sent to
Bayezid. In the autumn of 1390, a Genoese embassy appeared at Adrianople to
remind Bayezid of the traditional friendship of the Consulta for his father and
grandfather. Their assurances were backed up by valuable gifts.[506] While
cultivating the friendship of the Osmanlis, the Consulta levied a compulsory tax
upon all the communes where they could enforce their authority for the purpose
of increasing the Genoese fleets in the Aegaean Sea and at Constantinople.[507] A
watchful eye was kept on the Venetians and the Osmanlis. Neither Sigismund
nor Manuel received real aid from Genoa.
For the necessary outside support and assistance in the crusade which
appeared to him indispensable for the safety of Hungary, Sigismund had to look
elsewhere than to the divided papacy, and to the republics of Venice and Genoa.
Whether Sigismund’s fears of the ability of the Osmanlis to destroy Hungary
were well founded is open to question. But there is no doubt that his activity
prevented the capture of Constantinople in the early years of the reign of
Bayezid.
VII
As early as 1384, the French Court was aware of the remarkable progress of
the Ottoman conquest. The character and ambitions of Murad were presented to
the boy-king Charles VI in a striking way. He was told that Murad, in a dream,
had seen Apollon, one of his false gods, who offered him a crown of gold before
which were prostrated thirteen princes of the Occident.[508] This childhood
impression was revived in 1391, when Charles was at the zenith of his
emancipation under the Marmousets. He received an embassy of pilgrims from
the Holy Land, who brought news of a defeat they had experienced while
fighting with the King of Hungary ‘against the Turks of Lamorat Baxin’. When
Charles asked them about the genealogy and antecedents of the prince, whose
name they confused with that of his father, they knew nothing of him except that
he was ‘a vassal of the King of Persia’.
But of his character and ambitions they made a statement which we are
justified in quoting, because it throws light upon the notions prevailing in the
minds of the French aristocracy who went to their death at Nicopolis. ‘He was’,
said the pilgrims, ‘a man of wisdom and discretion, who feared God according to
the superstitious traditions of the Turks ... humane towards the conquered,
because he oppressed them very little with exactions, and did not expel them
from their lands so long as they were willing to promise allegiance under an
annual tribute, however small. He kept his promises, and permitted them to live
under their own laws.... His seal was so respected in his army that whoever saw
it fell upon his knees. He had interpreters and spies in Europe to instruct him
about the kings and their policies. He told the pilgrims that he would come to
France after he had finished with Austria.’[509]
The chronicler from whom this report is taken added that Charles was much
excited by this threat. He was anxious to make peace with England, in order that
he could accept the challenge of Bayezid, and go to fight him in single combat at
the head of his army. But Charles, in the following year, so completely lost his
mental balance that he could no longer maintain any personal power, and fell
under the influence of the princes of the lilies. But his sympathies remained
steadfastly attached to every scheme for fighting the Osmanlis.
In the spring of 1395, the Dukes of Berry and Burgundy, uncles of the king,
who had for the moment all the power of the French crown in their hands,
received at Lyons ambassadors from Sigismund, who came to demand aid
against the Osmanlis. Philip of Burgundy was greatly interested in this mission.
It is extremely improbable that he had any interest whatever in the Christians of
the Balkan peninsula, the aggrandizement of Hungary, or even the preservation
of Constantinople from Moslem sacrilege. But, since Flanders, Artois, and the
county of Burgundy had come to him through his wife on the death of Louis le
Mâle, Philip had begun to dream of establishing a new kingdom in Europe. It
was the dream which was to plunge France into the most bitter of her civil wars,
to call forth Jeanne d’Arc from the seclusion of Domrémy, and end in the death
of his great-grandson under the walls of Nancy.
Philip had every reason in the world to aid the project of Sigismund. Apart
from the fact that his immediate hold over the insane king, Charles VI, would be
strengthened by the absence from France of the energetic scions of noble
families, who, if successful in the struggle against Bayezid, might push on to the
Holy Land and find permanent interests—or a grave—there, Sigismund was well
worth cultivating. The elder brother of the king of Hungary, Wenceslaus, was
Roman emperor, but insecure in his position. At that very moment, Wenceslaus
was negotiating with Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti to create him Duke of Milan in
exchange for his support.[510] Galeazzo was the father-in-law of Louis of
Orleans, younger brother of the French king, and Philip’s formidable rival. The
future of the Valois of Burgundy demanded an entente with the German imperial
family. As this could not be concluded with Wenceslaus, and as Wenceslaus
might at any moment be deposed, it was policy for Philip of Burgundy to come
into close contact with Sigismund, whose future in Bohemia and in the empire
Philip foresaw. At the very least, by lending aid to Sigismund, Philip had an
excellent chance of getting Luxemburg, which was essential to the consolidation
of the new Burgundy in the Netherlands.
As earnest of the aid which would be forthcoming the following year, the
Duke of Burgundy allowed the Comte d’Eu to proceed immediately to Hungary
with some nobles and six hundred horsemen.[511] After the Hungarian envoys
had gone through the formality of an audience with the king at Paris, they
returned to Sigismund bearing a letter in which Philip promised substantial aid in
cavaliers and mercenaries, under the command of his own elder son, Jean Valois,
Comte de Nevers.
From England, the Netherlands, Savoy, Lombardy, and all parts of Germany,
Sigismund received assurances that the cream of chivalry would flock to his
standards, and that he could rely upon Europe to back him in the expedition
which was to drive Bayezid out of Europe.
VIII
The crusade which ended in the disaster of Nicopolis is one of the most
interesting events of the close of the Middle Ages, not only by reason of the
historical importance of those who took part in it, but also because it was the last
great international enterprise of feudal chivalry. It is the end of an epoch in the
history of Europe. So widespread was the interest in Sigismund’s call to arms
against the Osmanlis that there came to meet him at Buda in the spring of 1396
not only the French volunteers, but also scions of noble families from England,
Scotland, Flanders, Lombardy, Savoy, Bohemia, and all parts of Germany and
Austria. The English war in Normandy had ceased, Milan was supreme in
northern Italy, and for the moment there was peace in the Holy Roman Empire.
It was a favourable time to attract adventurers to unknown lands.
This expedition furnishes the most absorbing pages in the last portion of
Froissart;[512] it is mentioned in more or less detail in a number of other French,
Italian, German, and Latin chronicles. Several participants have left graphic
accounts of the gathering of the chevaliers, the march down the Danube, the
battle and its aftermath of massacre, the captivity and ransom of the prisoners.
The archives of Dijon and Lille tell the cost of the fitting out of the French
contingent and of the ransom of the prisoners. For this crowning event in
Bayezid’s career, we have more source material than for any episode of Ottoman
history until the fall of Constantinople.[513]
The French chevaliers numbered about a thousand. They were accompanied
by six or seven thousand attendants and mercenaries. They gathered at Dijon,
under the command of Jean de Nevers, the oldest son of Duke Philip of
Burgundy, and grandson of King John, who had been captured in the battle of
Poitiers. He was only twenty-two, and had just won his knighthood. The fact,
though, that he was heir to Burgundy, and a prince of the royal blood, gave him
the command. Philip charged the Sieur de Coucy, one of the boldest and most
experienced warriors in France, to have an eye on the boy, and to guide the
expedition with his counsel.[514]
Prominent among the French chevaliers were Philippe d’Artois, Constable of
France, Henri and Philippe de Bar, cousins of the king, the Sieur de Coucy,
Guillaume de la Trémouille, Jacques Bourbon de Vienne, admiral of France and
prince of the royal blood, Boucicaut, marshal of France, the Sieur de Saint-Pol,
and three Flemish princes who were the brothers of Jean de Nevers’s mother.
The heir to the duchy of Bavaria was anxious to join the French chevaliers, but
was restrained by the wise words of Duke Albert: ‘William, since you have the
desire to travel and go to Hungary and Turkey, and carry arms against people
and countries which have never done anything to us, and you have no reason for
going there, except the vainglory of this world, let John of Burgundy and our
cousins of France do their enterprises, and you do yours, and go into Friesland
and conquer our inheritance ... and in doing this I shall help you.’[515]
The chevaliers travelled through Germany and Bohemia, and were hospitably
received by the Duke of Austria. ‘On the way they spoke of Amorath-
Bacquin[516] and admired little his power.’ When they reached ‘a city called
Buda, the king made them a great reception and good cheer, and indeed he ought
to have done so, for they had come far to see him and bear arms for him’.[517] At
Buda they found the other chevaliers who had responded to the invitation of
Sigismund, among whom were the Bastard of Savoy,[518] Frederick of
Hohenzollern, grand prior of the Teutonic Order, Philibert de Naillac, grand
master of Rhodes, with a contingent of chevaliers of Saint-John, the Elector
Palatine, and John, Burgrave of Nürnberg, ancestor of the House of
Brandenburg.[519] A scholarly biographer of Henry IV of England has recorded
that he, as Count of Lancaster, was one of the participants in the Nicopolis
expedition.[520] This error has found its way into one, at least, of our most
reliable modern historians.[521] Although the successor of Richard II was not, as
a matter of fact, at Nicopolis,[522] the blood of the Nicopolis crusaders is in the
veins of the British royal house, as in that of practically every ruling family of
Europe.
Sigismund claimed to have been assured by Bayezid that the Osmanlis would
invade Hungary in the spring of 1396. When there were no signs of an Ottoman
invasion, the crusaders decided that, as Bayezid did not come to seek them, they
had best take advantage of the summer months to go and find the arch-enemy of
Christendom.[523] Arrangements had been made with Mircea, voïevode of
Wallachia, to break with the Osmanlis and join the coalition. Manuel, who had
been invited to co-operate with the invaders, prepared secretly to declare against
Bayezid.[524]
According to the chronicles, the invasion of Bulgaria was rather a picnic than
a serious military operation. This was true, at least, for the western chevaliers,
who had brought with them wine and women in plenty. Their baggage contained
all the luxuries to which they were accustomed at home. The French auxiliaries
travelled from Buda to the Danube by way of Transylvania and Wallachia,
crossing the Carpathians through the pass between Brassó (Karlstadt) and Sinaia.
The Hungarians, following the Danube, spread out into Serbia, pillaging and
murdering the inoffensive Christian population more thoroughly than Ottoman
akindjis would have done.[525] In spite of a lack of opposition, they persisted in
acting as if they were in the enemy’s country. Widin surrendered without a
struggle, and Orsova after five days.[526] In September, the armies joined before
the fortress of Nicopolis, whose surrender to the Osmanlis three years before had
marked the disappearance of Bulgarian independence. They were destined to go
no farther.[527]
For sixteen days Sigismund and his allies encamped in front of Nicopolis
without giving assault.[528] They had no idea of the whereabouts of Bayezid. It
was believed among the French (whose ignorance of geography and of distances
equalled ours of modern times) that Bayezid was in Egypt, gathering a great
army of all the Moslem world to oppose the triumphant march of the crusaders.
One reads in Froissart that Bayezid was ‘in Cairo in Babylonia [sic] with the
sultan to get men’, that he left the sultan there and rallied his forces at
Alexandria and Damascus, that ‘under the command and prayers of the khalif of
Bagdad and Asia Minor’, whose mandate went forth ‘to Persia, to Media, and to
Tarsus’, Bayezid received a ‘mass of Saracens and miscreants’, and that in his
army were ‘people of Tartary, Persia, Media, Syria, Alexandria, and of many faroff
countries of the miscreants’.[529]
Sigismund made a speech to the chevaliers from western and central Europe,
in which he declared: ‘Let him come or not come, in the summer which will
return, if it pleases God, we shall get through the kingdom of Armenia and shall
pass the Bras Saint-George and shall go into Syria and shall get from the
Saracens the gates of Jaffa and Beirut and several other [cities] to go down into
Syria, and we shall go to conquer the city of Jerusalem and all the Holy Land.
And if the Sultan, with all the strength he can muster, comes before us, we shall
fight him, and there will be no going away without the battle, in God’s pleasure.’
Froissart naïvely adds immediately after his report of this speech: ‘But it turned
out very much in another way.’[530]
It certainly did. Bayezid, who had been directing the siege of Constantinople,
knew no more about the khalif and the sultan and the ‘far-off countries of the
miscreants’ than did Froissart. Neither he nor his ancestors had ever had dealings
with the Moslem princes of Asia. Persians, ‘Saracens’ and Egyptians were
lacking in his army. He gathered together his trained warriors, called upon his
Christian vassals for their quotas, and set forth over the well-known route to the
Danube. From several recent campaigns, he and his soldiers were thoroughly
familiar with the country through which they passed, and in which the people
were less afraid of him than they were of the Christians who had come to deliver
them. When, after two weeks’ march, he pitched his camp near Nicopolis, he
was simply returning to a place where twice before the Ottoman arms had been
victorious.
Sigismund was dismayed at the prompt appearance of Bayezid with an army
which was reported to him in numbers varying from one hundred and twenty
thousand to two hundred thousand. In spite of his brave words to the chevaliers,
Sigismund knew the worth of the Osmanlis as fighting-men, and that they could
not be brushed aside by a few impetuous cavalry charges. So he begged Jean de
Nevers and his companions to consult with him, and to formulate a definite plan
of action. He suggested, and won over to this opinion the Sieur de Coucy, who
was the most experienced warrior among the chevaliers, that a reconnaissance be
made first of all to determine Bayezid’s position and intentions. Then, if Bayezid
was actually moving to the attack, or on the point of moving, it would be the part
of wisdom for the westerners to allow the foot-soldiers of Hungary and the
Wallachians to sustain the first attack. The valiant horsemen and western
mercenaries should form a second line, whether it be in attack or defence.
The chevaliers were furious at this suggestion. Philippe d’Artois, Comte d’Eu
and Grand Constable of France, who knew Sigismund best from longer
association with him, suspected him of an attempt to rob the chevaliers of the
glory of defeating Bayezid. ‘Yes, yes,’ he cried, ‘the king of Hungary wants to
have the flower of the day and the honour. We have the advance-guard, and
already has he given it to us. So he wants to take it away from us and have the
first battle. Whoever believes in this, I shall not.’ Then turning to the chevalier
who carried his banner, he called out, ‘Forward banner, in the name of God and
of Saint George, for they will see me to-day a good chevalier’.[531] This action
was contagious. Without knowing where the enemy was, without thinking where
or how far they were going, without waiting to agree upon a concerted action
with the bulk of their army, the French, German, and English noblemen rushed
forward to make the last charge of European chivalry against the followers of
Mohammed.
The outposts of Bayezid, taken by surprise, were cut down. The Osmanlis
who surrendered were massacred without mercy. Imagining that they were
winning a great victory, and that they were breaking through the only obstacle
between them and the Holy Sepulchre, the chevaliers rode to death and disgrace.
In the picturesque language of Rabbi Joseph, ‘they said “Aha! aha!”. But their
joy was quickly gone, for the horsemen of Bayezid and his hosts and chariots
came against them, in battle array, like the moon when she is new.’[532]
The chevaliers had put all their strength of man and horse into the charge.
Their swords ran blood. They thought the day was theirs, when suddenly they
found themselves confronting the army of Bayezid. As was his invariable
custom, Bayezid had sent out to meet the attack of the chevaliers, when he heard
that they had commenced the battle, his worthless untrained levies to be cut
down by the enemy and exhaust their strength. With deliberation he drew his
trusted divisions in battle array in an advantageous position, which he had ample
time to choose. His soldiers were intact and fresh. The Ottoman bowmen aimed
their arrows at the horses of the chevaliers. Unhorsed and quickly surrounded by
sixty thousand soldiers, there was nothing for the proudest warriors in Europe to
do but surrender to the foe whom they had despised.
As far as the chevaliers were concerned, the battle was over in three hours.
Jacques Bourbon, admiral of France, lay on the field with the banner of Notre-
Dame clasped tightly in his hands. Guy de la Trémouille, Philippe de Bar, and
others of the noblest blood of France, Flanders, Bavaria, and Savoy were killed
in the charge. But the greater part of the high-born auxiliaries of Sigismund were
prisoners in the camp of Bayezid. So handsomely were they accoutred that the
Osmanlis believed them all to be princes of the Occident, and saved them for
Bayezid to determine their fate.[533]
When Sigismund learned that the chevaliers had disregarded his advice, and
had already ridden forth to find the army of Bayezid, he was greatly worried, for
he knew the tactics of Bayezid, and feared the worst. He said to the grand master
of Rhodes, ‘We shall lose the day through the great pride and folly of these
French: if they had only believed me, we had forces in plenty to fight our
enemies’.[534]
From a comparison of the chronicles, one does not get a clear idea of what
happened after the failure of the assault of the chevaliers. A battle in which the
bulk of the forces on either side were engaged undoubtedly followed. But it is
impossible to state whether Sigismund followed up the way opened for him
through the Ottoman lines by the French charge, or whether the Hungarians and
their auxiliaries were on the defensive. Froissart and Morosini infer that
Sigismund did not attempt to fight after the failure of the chevaliers, and it was
believed in western Europe that the disaster of Nicopolis was due to the failure
of Sigismund to support the chevaliers rather than to their own folly. The
Hungarians and their king were bitterly denounced by the French survivors.[535]
On the other hand, Schiltberger, who took part in the battle, declares that the
king of Hungary was advancing in force, and that Bayezid was preparing to
retreat, when the Osmanlis received sudden and substantial support from the krai
of Serbia.[536]
The Serbians were so completely under Ottoman control after the battle of
Kossova, that they made no attempt to throw off the yoke of Bayezid.[537] In
Asia Minor as in the Balkan peninsula, against the Karamanians and Tartars as
against the crusaders, at Nicopolis as at Angora, the Serbian auxiliaries were
faithful supporters of Bayezid. Nicopolis was certainly won with the aid of the
Christians of the Balkan peninsula. It was not only the Serbian reinforcements
which won the day for the Osmanlis. As soon as Mircea of Wallachia saw how
the battle was going, he quickly withdrew from the field, and got his forces
across the Danube before the panic started.
Whether the action of Mircea was actuated by treasonable motives or not is
open to debate. He may have honestly believed that it was a case of sauve qui
peut. If so, his action was not more reprehensible than that of Sigismund himself.
The future Holy Roman Emperor, who was to play so important a part in the
history of Europe during the early decades of the fifteenth century, forgot his
bold words of the previous week: ‘And if the Sultan, with all the strength he can
muster, comes before us, we shall fight him, and there will be no going away
without the battle, in God’s pleasure.’ Sigismund and the grand master of Rhodes
hurried to the Danube, got away in a small boat,[538] and boarded one of the
galleys of Monicego, the Venetian admiral. Abandoning his army and his allies
to their fate, the king of Hungary sailed for home. He had the shame, if he felt it
at all, when passing through the Dardanelles, of seeing the chevaliers and other
prisoners of Nicopolis paraded before his eyes. One of these prisoners wrote:
‘The Osmanlis took us out of the tower of Gallipoli, and led us to the sea, and
one after the other they abused the king of Hungary as he passed, and mocked
him, and called to him to come out of the boat and deliver his people: and this
they did to make fun of him, and skirmished a long time with each other on the
sea. But they did not do him any harm, and so he went away.’[539]
Sigismund went to Modon, and then back to Hungary. This was the king who
had boasted that he would not only turn the Osmanlis out of Europe, but that he
had enough lances to support the sky, should it fall upon his army.[540] Although
his manhood had been put to the test, and had been found wanting, he was saved
to play a great, if unenviable, part in the closing events of the Middle Ages.[541]
After Sigismund’s escape, his great army, which was to redeem the Holy
Sepulchre, fled before the Osmanlis. Those who were not killed, or drowned in
the Danube, retreated through Wallachia. Froissart describes graphically the
hardships of the French, German, English, Scotch, Bohemian, and Flemish
crusaders in their painful march across the Carpathian Mountains. The chevaliers
could secure a bare sustenance. Their pages and men-at-arms were stripped of
their clothes and beaten by the peasants. It was not until they got into western
Hungary that they felt themselves safe.[542]
On the day following the battle of Nicopolis, Bayezid rode from his camp to
inspect the battle-field.[543] Orders had been given that the bodies of the nobles
who had fallen be put in a place apart from the common dead, so that the identity
of those who had lost their lives might be ascertained. An especial search for the
body of Sigismund was ordered. The Hungarian king was not among the
captives: it did not occur to Bayezid that he had fled. When Bayezid saw how
heavy had been his casualties, and learned the story of the massacre of prisoners
by the chevaliers after they had ridden through the Ottoman outposts, he could
not control his anger. A general massacre of the prisoners was ordered.
Only because Bayezid hoped for a great ransom for the grandson of the
French king was Jean de Nevers saved. There was in the suite of the Comte de
Nevers a Picard chevalier who knew a little Turkish. Through him Jean was able
to communicate with Bayezid, and to save twenty-four chevaliers who would
bring heavy ransom. Among these were the Comte d’Eu, the Comte de la
Marche, the Sieur de Coucy, Henri de Bar, and Boucicaut. But they were all
forced to stand beside Bayezid and watch the massacre of their companions.
Because of his youth, for none under twenty years was killed, Schiltberger
was spared to leave a description of this terrible massacre. ‘Then I saw the lord
Hannsen Greiff, who was a noble of Bavaria, and four others, bound with the
same cord. When he saw the great revenge that was taking place, he cried with a
loud voice, and consoled the horse- and foot-soldiers who were standing there to
die. “Stand firm”, he said, “when our blood this day is spilt for the Christian
faith, and we by God’s help shall become the children of Heaven.” He knelt, and
was beheaded together with his companions. Blood was spilled from morning
until vespers, and when the king’s counsellors saw that so much blood was
spilled and that still it did not stop, they rose and fell upon their knees before the
king, and entreated him for the sake of God that he would forget his rage, that he
might not draw down upon himself the vengeance of God, as enough blood was
already spilled. He consented, and ordered that they should stop, and that the rest
of the people should be brought together, and from them he took his share, and
left the rest to his people who had made them prisoners. The people that were
killed on that day were reckoned at ten thousand men.’[544]
So ended the last crusade.
IX
Immediately after the battle, Bayezid sent part of his army across the Danube
to hunt down the fugitives and to punish Mircea. This force was defeated by the
Wallachians in the plain of Rovine, and withdrew into Bulgaria.[545]
Other columns mounted the Danube through the Iron Gates, retaking on the
way the fortresses captured by the crusaders, and made a raid into Styria.
Everywhere the akindjis carried fire and death. The country was laid waste.
Peterwardein was burned, and sixteen thousand Styrians were carried off into
slavery in Macedonia and Anatolia.[546]
This invasion of Hungary made a deep impression upon the Slavic and
Teutonic races, who believed that it was the beginning of a Moslem conquest of
central Europe. The flagellants and the dancing processions of the plague days of
1348 and 1359 were revived. For a moment, even the Venetian Senate feared
that Bayezid had led in person his army into Hungary, and was engaged in an
aggressive movement that might bring the Osmanlis to the head of the Adriatic.
[547]
But Bayezid was not carried away by the ease of his victory. He let well
enough alone. For the moment, he had absorbing interests in the ransom of his
prisoners, the developments in the Greek peninsula, the question of
Constantinople, and the temptation to licentious pleasures that had come to him
with success.
X
Bayezid announced his victory from the battle-field to the Kadi of Brusa, and
later, from Adrianople, to the Moslem princes of Asia.[548] To the Sultan of
Egypt and other rulers he sent gifts of prisoners to corroborate his letters.[549]
The intercession of Jean de Nevers had saved the more illustrious of the
surviving French chevaliers. They were taken to Brusa. While not treated
royally, they were allowed to hunt, and were given opportunities to see the
grandeur of Bayezid.[550] But they were not kept together long. For some
months, the heir to the Duchy of Burgundy was separated from his companions,
and could talk with them only by the special permission of Bayezid. Some of
them were sent to Mikhalitch, where Philippe d’Artois, grand marshal of France,
died.[551] Enguerran de Coucy, worn out with anxiety for his family and the
disgrace that had come to him at the close of his brilliant career, soon followed
the Comte d’Artois to the grave.
In the meantime, Jacques Helly was sent by Bayezid to Paris to communicate
to the Duke of Burgundy and the other relatives of the captives the conditions for
their ransom—two hundred thousand pieces of gold, delivered to Bayezid at
Brusa. Froissart describes the feeling aroused at Paris by the first news of the
disaster. The stories of the survivors were not believed, and the bearers of bad
news narrowly escaped hanging or drowning. An order of the king’s council
forbade any man to mention Nicopolis. The anxiety of the families of the
chevaliers was not set at rest until Jacques Helly reached Paris on Christmas
night, three months after the battle. Only then was it known who had been saved
for ransom. What was joy to some was a crushing blow to others. Not since the
battle of Poitiers had such a calamity come to the noble families of France.
There was great lamentation throughout the kingdom. Chief among the mourners
was the Duchess of Burgundy, who had lost her three brothers, and whose son
was in the hands of Bayezid.[552]
While Jacques Helly was in France, Marshal Boucicaut was given permission
to go to Constantinople to try to raise the ransom. He spent the Lenten season of
1397 there without success.[553] The Duke of Burgundy resorted to every
expedient to raise the enormous sum demanded by Bayezid. For the ransom of
his son ‘great taxes were laid upon all the kingdom, and a large amount of
money was gathered and transported to Turkey, which was a great and
irreparable loss’.[554] It was not forgotten for many years. A decade later it was
used as one of the indictments against the Duc d’Orléans, who met his death
through the man he had helped to ransom.[555]
When, a year after the battle of Nicopolis, the money was at last delivered to
Bayezid through the intermediation of Gattilusio of Mytilene and the Genoese,
Venetian, and Cypriote merchants who traded with the Osmanlis, Bayezid gave
the chevaliers their liberty. To the Comte de Nevers, he said: ‘John, I know well
and am informed that you are in your country a great lord. You are young, and,
in the future, I hope you will be able to recover, with your courage, from the
shame of this misfortune which has come to you in your first knightly enterprise,
and that, in the desire of getting rid of the reproach and recovering your honour,
you will assemble your power to come against me and give me battle. If I were
afraid of that, and wanted to, before your release I would make you swear upon
your faith and religion that you would never bear arms against me, nor those
who are in your company here. But no: neither upon you nor any other of those
here will I impose this oath, because I desire, when you will have returned to
your home and will have leisure, that you assemble your power and come
against me. You will find me always ready to meet you and your people on the
field of battle. And what I say to you, you can say in like manner to those to
whom you will have the pleasure of speaking about it, because for this purpose
was I born, to carry arms and always to conquer what is ahead of me.’[556]
It is not true, however, as one would suppose and as Froissart records, that
‘these lofty words were always remembered by Jean de Nevers and his
companions so long as they lived’. The French chevaliers went to Rhodes, and
then home by way of the Adriatic. The Comte de Nevers took to himself a title
which he had not earned, unless one confuses folly with valour. To the end of his
days, he was known as Jean sans Peur. He never burned with a desire to wipe
out the disgrace of Nicopolis, but spent his whole life as a factional leader in the
civil wars of France. After a career which continued as ingloriously as it had
begun, he was stabbed to death on the Bridge of Montereau in 1420—tardy
vengeance for his own openly acknowledged instigation of the murder of the
Duc d’Orléans.
XI
There is recorded the capture of Thebes by the Turks in 1363,[557] and the
surrender of Patras in Thessaly to the Osmanlis in 1381.[558] The first Ottoman
army, however, to enter Greece went to the Morea in 1388, upon the invitation of
Theodore Palaeologos, to support his waning power as despot against the
indigenous Greeks and the Frankish lords. The Osmanlis under Evrenos carried
devastation everywhere they went, and did little to help Theodore.[559] They
were soon recalled by Murad to co-operate in the Kossova campaign. When
Theodore was hard pressed, in 1391, by Amadeo of Savoy and the Venetians, he
turned again to the Osmanlis. Once more Evrenos came to the Morea, and
helped to destroy the coast towns.[560]
After the famous council of Ottoman vassals at Serres, in 1395, Theodore,
who was one of the princes summoned by Bayezid to Serres, was compelled to
sign the cession of Argos and Monembasia to the Osmanlis. He was then thrown
into prison, and Bayezid contemplated having him assassinated. But before the
cities could be delivered to the Ottoman emissaries, Theodore escaped, and
declared the cession null and void.[561] The first impulse of Bayezid was to send
an army upon the heels of Theodore. This punitive expedition was postponed on
account of the activity of Sigismund, and the necessity of defending the northern
frontiers against the Hungarians.[562]
In the spring of 1397, while Bayezid was superintending the construction of a
mosque at Karaferia in Macedonia, he received a visit from the Greek bishop of
Salona, who laid before him a formal accusation of adultery, sorcery, and
oppression against Helena Cantacuzenos, who had been ruling the Duchy of
Salona with her paramour after the death of her husband, Louis Fadrique. The
bishop invited Bayezid to enter Greece, depicting to him the wonderful hunting
he would have in a country full of game.[563]
The promise of good sport with the falcon was not needed. It had long been
Bayezid’s intention to extend his sovereignty into the Greek peninsula. He had
against Theodore not only the old count from Serres, but also the complicity of
the Morean despot in the Nicopolis crusade. At the head of his army, he set out
upon the first Ottoman invasion of Greece. In Thessaly, Larissa, Pharsala, and
other strongholds surrendered without striking a blow. For thirty years the
Greeks of Thessaly had felt that the Ottoman conquest was inevitable. When
Bayezid crossed the pass of Thermopylae without opposition, Helena hurried to
meet him. She offered her principality, her daughter, and herself to the
conqueror. Bayezid did not want the duchess. She was set at liberty immediately.
But the beautiful grand-daughter of John Cantacuzenos was sent to his harem.
The duchy of Salona, in which was the shrine of Apollo, with all of Phocis,
Doris, and Locris, was added to Thessaly, and made an Ottoman province.[564]
Bayezid by this time had tired of the campaign. He felt an irresistible call to
return to the pleasures of the court. His military interests were beginning more
and more to be centred upon an extension of his power in Asia Minor—the
policy that was soon to prove his undoing. But there remained Theodore and the
Morea to be dealt with. He left Yakub and Evrenos, with an army of fifty
thousand, in charge of the invasion of the Peloponnesus.
Yakub struck south to Coron and Modon. The environs of Modon were
pillaged and burned. He defeated Theodore at Megalopolis, and forced him to
become a tributary of the Osmanlis. In the meantime, Evrenos had held in check
the papal mercenaries at Corinth, and had then taken Argos by assault, with a
terrible loss of life, and a booty of fourteen thousand male captives. Because the
Venetians could so easily reinforce and reprovision it from the sea, the siege of
Nauplia was abandoned. The two commanders, when October came, gave their
soldiers licence to pillage wherever they could as a reward for their services, and
afterwards withdrew to Macedonia.[565]
The population of the historic city of Argos was deported into Anatolia, and
Moslem colonies settled in the north-eastern corner of the Peloponnesus. This
was part of the general plan of Bayezid after Nicopolis. His successes in Asia
Minor had made possible, for the first time, a movement of an unmixed Turkish
element from Anatolia into the Balkan peninsula. While these colonists were
arriving in Argos, there was a similar immigration to Adrianople, Eski Zagora,
Philippopolis, and Sofia.[566]
Bayezid is credited by the Ottoman chroniclers with the capture of the two
great cities of Hellenism, Athens and Salonika. Nowhere else than in the
Ottoman historians can one find a record of the acquisition of Athens in 1397 by
the Osmanlis. If it were true, one would certainly find this event in the Venetian
archives, for Venice was particularly interested in Athens at this time.[567] Had
the Osmanlis entered Athens, would they have restored it to the Acciajoli
family? The fate of Argos in the same campaign makes this unlikely. Athens
remained in Christian hands until after the fall of Constantinople.[568]
As for Salonika, one finds authority for its capture by the Osmanlis after the
attempt of Manuel to retake Serres,[569] after a four years’ siege, in 1387,[570] and
in 1391 by Bayezid himself.[571] But since there is neither record nor explanation
of how the city returned to the Byzantines, even the temporary occupation of so
rich and important a maritime city, and so strongly defended,[572] during the
reigns of Murad and of Bayezid, is hardly possible. For in 1403 Salonika was
sold by the Byzantines to the Venetians,[573] and was not captured by the
Osmanlis until 1430.
Even if we cannot give to Bayezid the honour of the acquisition of Athens
and Salonika, or of the conquest of the Morea, his campaign of 1397 was the
beginning of the subjugation of Greece. Important districts had been added to the
empire, and a permanent foothold gained in the Morea. The maritime character
of the peninsula, however, made impracticable its complete conquest, until the
Osmanlis were able to hold their own against the Italians and Greeks upon the
sea.
XII
The blockade of Constantinople, in spite of all the concessions that Manuel
had made to Bayezid,[574] had become an active and pressing siege before the
Nicopolis expedition. In 1394, Bayezid had given orders from Adrianople to
pursue the siege vigorously.[575] But it was not until the spring of 1396 that
Bayezid contemplated seriously the taking of the city by assault. He was
diverted by the coming of the crusaders to Nicopolis. After Sigismund and his
allies had been defeated, Bayezid returned to Constantinople and called upon
Manuel to surrender the city.
The Constantinopolitans, stunned by the disaster which had attended the
Christian arms on the Danube, urged Manuel to yield, in order that they might be
free from the calamities that would follow a successful assault. But Manuel had
been cheered by the arrival of six hundred chevaliers and a small gift of money
from France. He resisted his people, and gave no answer to Bayezid.[576] He
married his eldest son John to the daughter of the Russian prince Vassili, whose
dowry was in gold pieces.[577] An inventory was made of the treasures of St.
Sophia.[578] Through the Patriarch, Manuel tried to get the Russian and Polish
Christians interested in the fate of the seat of orthodoxy.[579]
From Europe came the usual promises of aid. It is a merciful dispensation of
Providence that men ground their hopes upon desires rather than upon realities.
Manuel was merely human when he continued to receive strength and
inspiration from what experience should have taught him were will-o’-the-wisps.
Henry of Lancaster was projecting a new crusade;[580] but his energies were very
soon directed towards a crown rather than a cross. The Duc d’Orléans, in
response to a letter from Manuel to King Charles VI, answered for his insane
brother by promising to come in person to the relief of Constantinople. Almost
immediately afterwards he accepted rich presents from Bayezid.[581]
Venice, in 1397, urged Manuel and the Genoese of Pera, ‘for the honour of
Christianity’ and because the alternative ‘would be to the peril and shame of
Christianity’, not to treat with Bayezid. This advice was weakened by a saving
clause at the end of the letter to the effect that, if the Constantinopolitans and
Perotes did treat with Bayezid, they should include Venice, for ‘it would be too
risky for the Venetians to be at war alone with the Turks’.[582] Although Venice
sent ten galleys to Constantinople, and Genoa five galleys,[583] the republics
followed consistently their policy of flattering Bayezid, and trying to make him
believe that their dispositions towards him were altogether friendly.[584]
At the time that he summoned Manuel to deliver Constantinople, Bayezid
fortified the gulf of Nicomedia, and built at Scutari the castle called Guzel
Hissar.[585] About the same time, the castle of Anatoli Hissar was built at the
mouth of the Sweet Waters of Asia, the narrowest point on the Bosphorus. When
Clavijo passed through the Bosphorus, in 1403, he spoke of this castle as
strongly built and strongly fortified, in prophetic contrast to the ruined Byzantine
fortress directly opposite on the European shore.[586]
Perhaps it was because of the advice of Ali Pasha, who told him that the
taking of Constantinople would bring upon him a really effective European
intervention, or because he preferred to expend his energies in the Greek
peninsula and in Asia Minor, that Bayezid did not carry out his threat to Manuel.
These are the common explanations of the failure to follow up the victory of
Nicopolis with the extinction of the Byzantine Empire.[587] As far as the Greeks
were concerned, the inheritance of the Caesars was his. He had successfully
defended against Europe what he had won. Constantinople could have been
taken by assault. In fact, from his spies within the city, Bayezid knew that the
inhabitants were favourable to surrender, and would probably force the hand of
Manuel, if the Osmanlis made a show of beginning the assault. Bayezid must
have been deterred from this enterprise, however, by the realization of his
inability to hold the city without having the mastery of the sea.
One of Bayezid’s chief claims to greatness as a statesman is the way in which
he handled Venice and Genoa. At any time during his reign, the Italian republics
could have cut him off from Asia if he were in Europe, or from Europe if he
were in Asia. Bayezid was master of most of the Balkan peninsula and of half of
Anatolia; but he did not control the path from one portion of his empire to the
other. Since he had come to the throne, Genoa had fallen under the influence of
France. There was a strong anti-Ottoman sentiment in the Venetian Senate,
which at any instant might crystallize into open hostility.[588] Europe was for the
moment stirred over the fate of the Nicopolis crusaders. Bayezid knew that this
was not the time to take Constantinople.
Then, too, after the great victories of Kossova and Nicopolis, and his
successful campaign against Karamania, Bayezid allowed himself to succumb to
the insidious temptations that assail the warrior when he passes from the tent to
the palace. It was not astonishing that the pleasures of the table and of the harem
proved irresistible to him. Bayezid, who had the best qualities of his age,
allowed himself to become debauched by indulgence in shameful and
unspeakable vices. His brilliant mental and physical qualities began to suffer the
inevitable eclipse. His example was contagious. For, as the Osmanlis say, ‘the
fish begins to corrupt at the head’.
XIII
In April 1398, and again in March 1399, Boniface IX ordered to be preached
throughout Christendom a crusade for the defence of Constantinople.[589] His
appeals fell on deaf ears. Wenceslaus was approaching the end of his power in
the empire, Richard of England was fighting for his throne, Florence was in a
struggle with the Visconti, the Duke of Burgundy and the Duke of Orleans were
disputing the regency in France. Only Venice and Genoa were vitally interested
in the fate of Constantinople.
Because Genoa had put itself under the guardianship of the Duke of Orleans,
brother of Charles VI of France, and son-in-law of Duke Giovanni Visconti of
Milan, the interests of her Pera colony demanded some attention from the
powerful Valois and Visconti families. This made possible the sole response to
the appeals of Manuel and the Pope, the expedition of Marshal Boucicaut.
In the summer of 1399, a force of ten thousand Osmanlis, after coming into
more or less open conflict with the Genoese of Galata, attempted to enter
Constantinople. The defenders were few; for the inhabitants, as at the time of the
final siege in 1453, were more likely to be found in the bazaars than on the city
walls. They had little desire to prolong a condition which was paralysing their
business activities. Clavijo, who visited Constantinople four years later, was
informed that the attack failed only because of the lack of skill and energy
shown by the Osmanlis.[590] Until they had cannon to help them, the Osmanlis
never displayed fighting ability in an assault upon fortifications. At this critical
moment, aid arrived from Europe.
Boucicaut was the only one of the prisoners of Nicopolis that accepted the
challenge of Bayezid. He did not forget the biting words of the audience at Brusa
at the time of their release. On June 26, 1399, with four ships and two armed
galleys, he set sail from Aiguesmortes. His force of twelve hundred chevaliers
and foot-soldiers had much more cohesion and experience than the volunteers
who gathered round Jean de Nevers at Dijon three years before. He was joined at
Tenedos by several Genoese and Venetian galleys. After a victory in the
Dardanelles over seventeen Ottoman galleys, the first recorded naval combat of
the Osmanlis, Boucicaut reached Constantinople ‘just in time to save the city’.
He was received with great joy by Manuel, and given the rank of Grand
Constable.[591]
For several weeks, Boucicaut and his followers spread terror among the
Osmanlis in the Gulf of Nicomedia and the Bosphorus. The Ottoman sailors, no
match for the Provençals and Italians, took to cover. An assault on Nicomedia
failed, but the fearless marshal made several raids into the interior,[592] and
against the Ottoman settlements on the shores of the Marmora and gulfs of
Nicomedia and Mudania. His one notable success was against Riva, near the
Black Sea entrance of the Bosphorus, on the Asiatic shore.[593] After the castle
had been stormed, and the garrison put to the sword, Boucicaut attained the
objective of his raid. In the mouth of the river Riva, from which the town takes
its name, were hidden the Ottoman galleys and smaller vessels, which had taken
refuge there when Boucicaut first appeared in the Golden Horn. All the Ottoman
shipping was destroyed by fire.
In order to remove the danger to which Constantinople was subjected by the
presence of John Palaeologos, son of Andronicus, at Silivria, constantly
intriguing with the Osmanlis, Boucicaut urged Manuel to become reconciled
with his nephew. He went, himself—it was less than a day’s sail—to fetch John
to Constantinople.[594]
This intervention of Boucicaut in the quarrels of the Palaeologi was more
helpful than his military aid. The expeditions in the neighbourhood
accomplished little against Bayezid. The chronicler of Boucicaut would have
been astonished had he known that Bayezid considered the exploits of
Boucicaut’s chevaliers and sailors of too little importance to notice. Bayezid
cared only that the Italian republics did not come out openly against him, and
lend to the crusaders the powerful and decisive aid which they could have given.
The enterprise of Boucicaut demonstrated, however, the impotence of the
Osmanlis on sea, and how easily a united effort of Christendom, or of Venice
and Genoa alone, could have limited the activities of Bayezid to either Europe or
Asia.
When John had been installed as co-emperor, Boucicaut pointed out to
Manuel that his force was exhausted, and that he would have to return to France
to find recruits. According to some authorities, this action was due to the
inability or unwillingness of Manuel to pay the adventurers of Boucicaut for
their services in his behalf.[595] Men of their kidney were not fighting for fun or
for a cause, and there was no booty to be had from Ottoman sailors and
fishermen. Before he left Constantinople, Boucicaut secured the consent of
Venice, Genoa, and the chevaliers of Rhodes to his suggestion that Manuel do
homage to Charles VI for his empire. This honour the advisers of the French
monarch refused to accept. They did not want the king of France bound by the
obligation of protecting a vassal whose position was so precarious.
Boucicaut did not return. His restless energy found outlet later in Cyprus,
where, as French governor of Genoa, he forced the Cypriotes to raise the siege of
Famagusta,[596] and in pillaging the Syrian ports, where his adventurers did far
more damage to the Italian merchants than to the Saracens.[597] Even had he
returned to Constantinople, and with the highest motives personally, his
followers would certainly have done the Constantinopolitans more harm than
good, as had been the case with the Catalans, and, when money was not
forthcoming, have ended by being in open conflict with those of whom they
were posing as the defenders.
XIV
It was a bitter humiliation for Manuel to share the imperial throne with the
nephew whom he hated and distrusted. With him, the case of John was one of
‘like father, like son’, and certainly John had never given the emperor any cause
to think that he was more patriotic, more loyal than Andronicus. But there was a
strong party in the city in favour of John, and his association in governing
Constantinople would remove the pretext of righting a wrong, which Bayezid
had so skilfully used to interfere in the politics of what was now no more than a
city empire.
When France refused to receive him as a vassal, Manuel decided upon a
voyage in person to solicit the intervention of Europe. In spite of his misgivings,
he felt that this was the only way of salvation left. His own sons were too young
to raise to the purple, and Theodore had his hands full in the Morea. There was
nothing to do but to leave the government in John’s care.
On December 10, 1399, Manuel embarked on a Venetian galley to make his
supreme appeal to Europe. He stopped at Modon to leave the empress and his
sons with Theodore. The despot of the Morea was opposed to the project. He
told the emperor how the chevaliers of Rhodes, in conjunction with the Pope,
were trying to get possession of the last theme of the empire, and that this
scheme would have been successful had it not been for the Greek hatred and fear
of the Catholic Church. He declared that Manuel, like their father, was
embarking upon a hopeless voyage. Not only that, but he would run a risk of
losing his empire entirely by leaving it in charge of John, who was more friendly
to Bayezid and the Osmanlis than to his own family and race.[598]
Manuel would listen to no remonstrances, to no arguments. He said that his
position was like that of Esther before she went in to the king: ‘If I perish, I
perish.’ With that optimism which was one of his most redeeming traits, Manuel
bade farewell to his family, and set out for Venice.
In the only city of Europe that could rival his own capital in splendour, he
received a reception worthy of the cause for which he had come. The Senate, as
usual, promised much. But they had by this time become thoroughly won over to
the policy of quod vi armorum potest fieri, fiat arte et sagacitate, to quote the
words of a contemporary record in their archives.[599] At Padua, Vicenza, and
Milan, Manuel received an imperial ovation. Giovanni Visconti, shocked at the
wretched appearance of the emperor’s suite, gave him money to be used for
apparel fitting to the successor of Constantine and his companions.[600]
There was no attempt to arrange a conference with Boniface IX. Manuel, at
this stage of his career, could not play the hypocrite so easily as his father had
done. In fact, his orthodoxy was beyond suspicion. He did not hesitate in Paris to
celebrate high mass according to the eastern rite, and never allowed the reunion
of the churches to be the basis of his solicitations. In 1399, Boniface IX wrote a
long burning letter to the Bishop of Chalcedon, his nuncio in Hungary, ordering
him to preach and cause to be preached a crusade against the Osmanlis for the
relief of Constantinople.[601] In 1400, he had ordered a crusade, with increase of
indulgences.[602] But, when the Byzantine Emperor came to Italy, Boniface
seemed to be more interested in the Kingdom of Naples than in the Kingdom of
God.
From contemporary records, the reception of Manuel Palaeologos in France
and in England was all that the proudest and most important sovereign of
Christendom could wish for. This shadow of an emperor, who ten years before
had been a retainer at the court of Bayezid too insignificant to be bidden to the
emir’s table, and who was not even undisputed ruler of a single city, was treated
by Charles VI and Henry IV as if he actually held the dominions entrusted by
Constantine to his successors. This was especially true in England, where barons
and peasants, in spite of the crusades, were still uncouth and ignorant. To them
the East stood for a superior civilization, to which they must bow. There was a
glamour in the name of Constantinople and in Manuel’s imperial title. Perhaps,
even if they had realized the straits to which Manuel was reduced, it would have
been the same; for it was not to the intrinsic worth or power of the man, but to
the ten centuries of glory which he represented, that they did homage. The cry of
AVE IMPERATOR had outlived the empire.
Manuel did not appreciate this. Because his optimism could not grasp the
difference between what costs and what does not cost, he allowed himself to be
cradled with false hopes for two years.
Henry IV had personally great sympathy with the mission of Manuel; for in
Africa he had borne arms against the Moslems with the cross upon his breast,
and, until he succeeded Richard II, it had always been his dream to lead a
crusade. He understood the peril of Constantinople, and in a letter from
Westminster, in January, 1401, he called the attention of the Archbishop of
Canterbury to the necessity of helping Manuel, in order that Constantinople
might not be lost, and authorized a collection in all the churches of his realm.[603]
But Henry was not secure upon his throne. In France, the Dukes of Burgundy
and Orleans were still struggling for the power that the insane king was unable to
wield.
Manuel waited two years in western Europe. While he was making his heart
sick with deferred hope, the great events that were to change the personal fortune
of Bayezid, if not that of his family and his race, were shaping themselves in the
East. It was a Moslem prince who was to afford a respite to Constantinople.
After Manuel left for the west, only the small force of chevaliers under
Châteaumorand, who had remained behind from the crusaders of Boucicaut,
saved Constantinople. The inhabitants of the city were so hungry that they
slipped over the walls by cords, and surrendered themselves to the Osmanlis.
John did nothing. There was no money in the imperial treasury. The crusaders
got their own provisions by raids on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, and by
intercepting galleys. After the shock of the fall of Sivas, Bayezid realized that he
must expend the best of his force and energy in solidifying his conquests in
Europe and Asia, and in raising a larger army to combat Timur, if he threatened
again to invade Anatolia.
Although the siege was not pushed with vigour, the city was on the point of
yielding. The miserable John made a treaty to give up the city, should Bayezid
beat Timur.[604] Even the patriarch Matthew was supposed to have an
understanding with Bayezid to retain his position if the city were taken. In a
proclamation, which vividly depicted the misery of the city, afflicted by six years
of siege and famine, Matthew urged the inhabitants to repent of their crimes, and
defended himself from the charge of having treated with Bayezid.[605]
Not only against Constantinople was Bayezid preparing the final blow. In the
Morea, the Greeks feared for the safety of Modon, where Manuel had left his
family.[606] Since 1399, the Venetian Senate had been alarmed by the gradual
Ottoman conquest of Albania, and finally for the safety of Corfu, because the
Osmanlis had appeared in force in the Adriatic.[607]
In the early spring of 1402, Ottoman activities ceased in the Balkan
peninsula, and every soldier that could be mustered—Christian as well as
Moslem—was hurried into Asia Minor; for a greater than Djenghiz Khan was
marching westward.
XV
When the Tartars first saw iron, and their strongest warriors failed to bend it,
they thought there must be a substance under the surface. So they called it timur,
which means something stuffed or filled.[608] It soon became a custom to name
their great leaders Timur. But even among primitive peoples the qualities of
leadership have not necessarily included purely physical strength. Many
Samsons among the Tartars received the distinction of being called Iron. None of
them made an indelible mark upon the history of the world, save the great Timur,
who had his left arm and left leg partially paralysed.[609] At the height of his
career, when his hordes marched against Bagdad, he was too weak to sit upon a
horse, and was carried in a litter.[610]
Timur claimed descent from the grand vizier of Djagataï, son and successor
of Djenghiz Khan. He came to the throne of Khorassan, with residence at
Samarkand, in 1369. In thirty years, while Murad and Bayezid were winning an
empire in the Balkan peninsula, Timur became master of the greater part of the
Moslem world. Persia, Armenia, the upper valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates,
the steppes between the Caspian and Black Seas, Russia from the Volga to the
Don and Dnieper, Mesopotamia, the coasts of the Indian Ocean and the Persian
Gulf, and western and northern India was his path of conquest.
After he had captured Sivas, Bayezid had not been able to curb the altogether
natural impulse that led him into the valley of the Euphrates. In his way stood
Kara-Yussuf, a Turcoman prince of Kharput, who was to be, after Timur’s death,
the founder of the famous dynasty of the Black Sheep.[611] In 1399, Bayezid had
put his son Soleiman, assisted by several of his ablest generals, in charge of an
advance movement to the east. Sivas was the base of operations.
Kara-Yussuf, who had a claim upon Timur’s protection because he had
guided him on his first expedition into Armenia, appealed to the Tartar court.
Before Timur could remonstrate, Kara-Yussuf was captured by the Osmanlis.
When Timur learned this, his anger was for the first time directed specifically
against Bayezid. There were old complaints against Bayezid. The refugee emirs
had not lived at his court for years without impressing upon Timur their woes
and the injustice that had been done to them. But Timur was busy with other
plans and other conquests. Bayezid’s former activities had not directly touched
him.
In his memoirs, Timur records that he tried first to bring Bayezid to reason. ‘I
wrote to him a letter of which this is the substance: Praise to God, master of
heaven and earth, who has submitted to my authority several of the seven
climates and who has allowed the potentates and masters of the world to bend
their neck under my yoke. God have mercy upon his humble servant, who knows
the limits which are prescribed for him and who does not cross them by a single
step. All the world knows your origin, and it is not fitting for a man of your
extraction to advance the foot of pride; for you will be able to throw yourself
into the abyss of affliction and of misfortune: resist the suggestions of miserable
counsellors.... Refrain from opening to confusion and to evils the door of your
empire. Send me Kara-Yussuf: if not, by the coming together of our two armies
all that is hidden under the veil of destiny will be uncovered to you.’[612]
Instead of paying attention to this letter, Bayezid deliberately committed
another overt act by summoning Taharten, emir of Erzindjian, whom he knew to
be a vassal of Timur, to appear at the Ottoman court, bringing his treasures with
him! When Timur again remonstrated with Bayezid and reminded him of his
duty ‘gently and like a friend’, Bayezid responded by summoning Timur to
appear before him, and threatening to deprive him of his harem if he refused to
come. In order to express his contempt for the Tartar conqueror, Bayezid placed
his own name first in letters of gold, and Timur’s name underneath in small
black letters.[613]
Why Bayezid took this tack in dealing with Timur is inexplicable. It is
impossible to believe that he underrated the power of Timur. One can only
suppose that his informants and advisers, to whom Timur alluded in the first
warning to Bayezid, urged upon the Ottoman emir the improbability of a Tartar
invasion of Asia Minor; for, even after the terrible lesson of 1400, when Bayezid
had two years of respite, he took no steps to placate Timur or to prepare
adequately against an invasion. He went on blindly to his doom, and displayed
none of the consummate diplomatic and military skill that had made the first
eight years of his reign among the most brilliant of all Ottoman history.
When Timur saw that Bayezid would not even treat with him, he took the
field immediately. Soleiman sent an appeal to Bayezid, who was in Thessaly.[614]
There was no response. With feverish haste, Soleiman attempted to put into
condition the defences of Sivas, whose strong walls had been admirably
constructed by the Seljuk Sultan Alaeddin Kaïkobad
[Image unavailable.]
TIMUR’S INVASION OF ASIA MINOR
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 the famous campaigns that ended in the destruction of Damascus and
Bagdad.
XVI
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 selfconfidence
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 the Tartar 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 to withdraw 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.
XVII
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 with contempt. 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 harem was 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.
XVIII
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 appease his 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]
XIX
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 of the 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 maintain with 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?
APPENDIX A
TRADITIONAL MISCONCEPTIONS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE OSMANLIS AND THEIR
EMPIRE
WHAT has 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.
1. THAT OSMAN WAS A PRINCE OF ILLUSTRIOUS BIRTH.
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 of
Ottomanzich, 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 are very 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, for lack 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 rebellious some 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 mentioned in 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’.
2. THAT OSMAN BEGAN HIS CAREER AS A VASSAL OF ALAEDDIN III, SULTAN OF ICONIUM,
UPON WHOSE DEATH, IN OR ABOUT 1300, OSMAN AND NINE OTHER TURKISH PRINCES
DIVIDED THE INHERITANCE OF THE SELJUCIDES; THAT OSMAN PROVED MORE POWERFUL
THAN THE OTHER PRINCES, AND FOUNDED AN EMPIRE UPON THE RUINS OF THE SELJUCIDE
EMPIRE.
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 the Empire.[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 of Alaeddin 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 that the 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
quarters in 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 have given 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 the status quo of 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’s dominions 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 fight before any
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
have necessarily served 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 the precious 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.
APPENDIX B
THE EMIRATES OF ASIA MINOR DURING THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
IN order 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
Empire as 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, an exposé
of 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
[Image unavailable.]
THE EMIRATES OF ASIA MINOR IN THE 14TH CENTURY
is the first attempt to compare the Asiatic possessions of Osman, Orkhan,
Murad, and Bayezid with those of their Turkish rivals for the purpose of
illustrating the slow growth of the Ottoman Empire in Asia Minor, and the first
time that contemporary sources have been drawn upon for this purpose.
From the eleventh to the thirteenth century, we are able to reconstruct the
political status of Asia Minor, in a general way, from the narratives of pilgrims
and the experiences of the Crusaders. From the beginning of the fifteenth
century on to the present day, we have a wealth of sources for the history of Asia
Minor in the writings of European travellers, which are valuable not only for
their geographical indications and their observations on the life of the people,
but also for their testimony in corroborating or disproving the statements of
Oriental historians, who are so often lacking in precision and verisimilitude. For
the fourteenth century, however, reliable European sources are lacking.
This lacuna is filled by the travel records of two Moslems of more than
ordinary intelligence and powers of observation.
The long-lost manuscript of the travels of Ibn Batutah was one of those
important finds that made the French occupation of Algeria so memorable an
event in the annals of the advancement of learning. Its translation into French in
1843 made accessible for the first time a contemporary source of the highest
value for the political and social life of the whole Moslem world during the first
half of the fourteenth century. For Ibn Batutah travelled from his home in
Morocco to the confines of China. He lived a while in each country that he
visited, and wrote from the sympathetic and understanding point of view of a
member of the Moslem clergy. Ibn Batutah visited Asia Minor between 1330 and
1340.[734]
Shehabeddin was an Arabic writer from Damascus,[735] who died in 1349. He
wrote a voluminous work of twenty volumes, called Footpaths of the Eyes in the
Kingdoms of Different Countries.[736] He was a contemporary of Ibn Batutah.
Shehabeddin did not enjoy the advantage of visiting personally the many
emirates of western Asia Minor, as did Ibn Batutah; but he states that he has
based his record of these countries upon the eye-witness information furnished
to him by word of mouth by Sheik Haïdar of Sir Hissar.[737] The agreement
between Ibn Batutah and Shehabeddin on the state of affairs in Asia Minor
during the first half of the fourteenth century is so general that one can claim for
their statements, which are, in large part, the basis of this appendix, most
substantial grounding.
The other sources are the Byzantine historians, the chronicler of the Catalans,
the Catalan Map of 1375,[738] the annalist of Trebizond, the points of contact
with the Cypriotes, the chevaliers of Rhodes, the Italian traders, the Osmanlis
and the Mongols and Tartars. For a few of the emirates there are coins extant.
Inscriptions on public edifices, such as mosques, pious foundations, baths and
fountains, are unfortunately lacking, not only for the history of the Turkish
emirates but for the Osmanlis as well.[739]
In the list that follows, twenty-six of the emirates existed during the reign of
Orkhan, between the years 1330 and 1350. They are mentioned either by Ibn
Batutah or by Shehabeddin, in most cases by both, as independent in their day.
The others are either earlier or later than Orkhan’s reign, and comprise a portion
of earlier emirates, from which they had become detached. After the Turkish
emirates, given alphabetically, are placed the non-Turkish independent states in
Asia Minor.
Adalia: see Satalia
Adana (1)
Afion Kara Hissar: see Karasar
Aïdin (2)
Akbara (3)
Akridur (4)
Akseraï (5)
Aksheïr (6)
Alaïa (7)
Altoluogo: see Ayasoluk
Angora (8)
Armenia: see Little Armenia (44)
Arzendjian: see Erzindjian
Attaleia: see Satalia
Ayasoluk (9)
Balikesri (10)
Berkeri (Birgui, Berki): see Aïdin
Borlu (11)
Brusa (12)
Caesarea (13)
Cilicia: see Little Armenia (44) and Adana
(1)
Kermasti (26)
Kermian (27)
Konia: see Karamania
Kul Hissar: see Gul Hissar
Kutayia: see Kermian
Ladik (Laodicea): see Denizli
Larenda: see Karamania
Limnia (28)
Lydia: see Sarukhan
Magnesia: see Sarukhan
Marash (29)
Marmora (30)
Menteshe (31)
Milas: see Fukeh
Miletus: see Palatchia
Mikhalitch (32)
Nazlu (33)
Nicaea (34)
Palatchia (35)
Pamphylia: see Tekke
Pergama: see Karasi
Sarukhan (36)
Daouas: see Tawas
Denizli (14)
Djanik: see Kaouïa
Egherdir: see Akridur
Ephesus: see Ayasoluk
Erzindjian (15)
Fukeh (16)
Germian: see Kermian
Gul Hissar (17)
Guzel Hissar: see Aïdin
Halik (Halicarnassus): see Fukeh
Hamid (18)
Iakshi(19)
Ionia: see Aïdin
Kaïseriya: see Caesarea
Kandelore: see Alaïa
Kaouïa (20)
Karamania (21)
Karasar (22)
Karasi (23)
Kastemuni (24)
Keredeh (25)
Satalia (37)
Sinope (38)
Sis: see Adana
Sivas (39)
Sulkadir: see Marash
Tawas (40)
Tekke (41)
Theologos: see Ayasoluk
Tokat (42)
Tralles: see Aïdin
Ulubad (Lopadion) (43)
Little Armenia (44)
Trebizond (45)
Phocaea (46)
Smyrna (47)
Byzantine possessions (48)
Cypriote possessions (49)
Mongol and Tartar possessions
(50)
Rhodian possessions (51)
Egyptian possessions (52)
Catalan possessions (53)
The material that can be gathered about these Turkish emirates, the two
independent Christian states, and the spheres of influence of outside Christian
and Moslem states in Asia Minor in the fourteenth century, would make a book
in itself. In this appendix I desire to give only enough to indicate the relative
strength and vitality of each state. It must be borne in mind that my object is not
to write the history of these emirates, or of Asia Minor as a whole, during the
fourteenth century, but to demonstrate how little of Asia Minor was really
incorporated in the Ottoman possessions at the time that, and during the thirty
years after, the capital of the new empire was established in Adrianople.
ADANA (1)
In the Taurus Mountains, on the northern limits of Lesser Armenia, and to the
south-east of Karamania, the Turcoman tribes through whom Marco Polo passed
seemed to him to enjoy an independent existence. Up to the time of Murad I,
they formed no state, but between 1373 and 1375 the family of Ramazan took
the chieftainship. When the Mamelukes destroyed the Armenian kingdom
(1375), the Ben-Ramazan dynasty established itself at Adana, on the Sarus, in
the fertile Cilician plain.[740] The Ben-Ramazan emirs managed to keep from
being absorbed either by the Karamanians or the Egyptians. After the complete
subjugation of Karamania by the Osmanlis, they submitted to Selim I about
1510, under the stipulation, however, that the emir, Piri pasha, should hold office
for life as vali of Adana and Sis. Sis was frequently coupled with Adana in the
title of the Ben-Ramazan.
AÏDIN (2)
Aïdin comprised the greater part of Ionia, with a portion of Lydia, if we take
its boundaries to be those of the present vilayet of the same name. It comprised,
at the time of its greatest extent, Smyrna, Ephesus, and Tralles. Smyrna was
captured by the crusaders in 1344. Ephesus was at times independent under the
name of Ayasoluk. Tralles, called Guzel Hissar, and sometimes also Birgui or
Berki, was the capital of Aïdin in the time of Orkhan. Later, Ayasoluk, and, last
of all, Tira, were the successive capitals.
The emirate was founded by Aïdin, a contemporary of Osman, who was
succeeded by his son Mohammed about 1330. Ibn Batutah regarded Mohammed
as a very powerful prince, who was especially strong on the sea. His eldest son,
Omar, who succeeded him in 1341, met death in an unsuccessful attempt to
recapture Smyrna in 1348. His relations with Cantacuzenos are given in the
chapter on Orkhan. Isaac, fourth of the line, reigned from 1348, until he was
dispossessed by Bayezid in 1390. He died in exile at Nicaea. His sons, Isaac II
and Omar II, were placed again on the throne in 1403. The line of Aïdin became
extinct soon after. A usurper, Djuneïd, Ottoman governor of Smyrna, managed to
keep the power until he was assassinated in 1425. It was not until then that Aïdin
definitely passed into the hands of the Osmanlis.
After the death of Aïdin, the founder of the dynasty, the territory of the
emirate seems to have suffered some diminution, aside from the loss of Smyrna.
One of the sons, Soleiman, married a daughter of Orkhan, while another, Khidr,
ruled independently at Ayasoluk, which was lost for a time to Rhodes twenty
years later. Under Omar, the Turks of Aïdin were very active in the Aegaean Sea,
and made large invasions of Thrace and Macedonia in 1333 and 1334. They cooperated
with the Genoese of Phocaea against the Greeks and the Osmanlis, and
were at times allied with the emirates of Sarukhan and Menteshe, with whom
they are frequently mixed by the Byzantine historians. The western historians
almost invariably gave credit to the Osmanlis for the maritime exploits of these
emirates during the fourteenth century.[741]
AKBARA (3)
At some time before 1340, a certain Demir Khan, son of Karasai, emir of
Pergama, ruled in Akbara, whose location is given by Shehabeddin as ‘south of
Brusa and Sinope, and north of Mount Kasis’. This emirate was probably
destroyed by Orkhan in the expedition of 1339-40. It was a region along the
borders of Mysia and Phrygia, which had been able to resist the encroachments
of Kermian owing to the mountainous character of the country.[742]
AKRIDUR (4)
This city was at the south end of the lake of the same name (to-day called
Egherdir), and was within the limits of the emirate of Hamid. But, like Nazlu, it
had frequently a wholly independent existence, and both Shehabeddin and Ibn
Batutah, as well as other writers, mention its emirs as if independent of the emir
of Hamid, and these rulers are given from the families of Tekke and Hamid. The
Osmanlis first reached the northern end of Lake Egherdir in 1379, and
incorporated Akridur about 1390.[743]
AKSERAÏ (5)
This is the ancient Archelaïs, and is three days north-east of Konia on the
road to Kaïsariya (Caesarea). In the time of Ibn Batutah, it was one of the most
beautiful and most solidly built cities of Asia Minor, and was ruled by the emir
Artin, possibly an Armenian, who was vassal of the Mongol ruler of Persia.
Later, Ak Seraï was incorporated in Karamania, to which it belonged at the time
that the Osmanlis, under Bayezid, first entered it.[744]
AKSHEÏR (6)
Aksheïr, between Kutayia and Konia, belonged alternately to Kermian and
Karamania—perhaps at times it recognized the suzerainty of the emir of Hamid.
Its position made it a border city, prey to the changing fortunes of the Osmanlis
and Karamanlis for thirty years. In 1377, when Murad compelled the emir of
Hamid to sell a portion of his dominions, he regarded Aksheïr as having been in
Hamid. It was, however, at that time practically independent, using the rival
pretensions of the emirs to the east, west, and south as a means of preserving a
precarious autonomy.[745]
ALAÏA (7)
This city was sometimes called Kandelore, a corruption of its ancient name
Coracesium. Its fortunate position at the east side of the Gulf of Adalia enabled
it to play an important part in the commercial history of the eastern
Mediterranean for a century and a half. In the time of Ibn Batutah and
Shehabeddin, Yussuf, brother of the emir of Karamania, was its ruler. During the
fourteenth century Alaïa was more or less dependent upon Karamania, but
sometimes upon Tekke. For many years it paid tribute to Cyprus, and negotiated
its affairs independently of both Karamania and Tekke. In 1444 its prince, Latif,
meditated a raid upon Cyprus, from which he was deterred only by the defeat of
the Egyptians before Rhodes. In 1450 Latif concluded a treaty of peace with the
Cypriotes through the medium of Rhodes. His successor, Arslan bey, got help
from Cyprus against Mohammed II. Alaïa was subdued by the Osmanlis only in
1472.[746]
ANGORA (8)
The history of Angora during the first half of the fourteenth century is
obscure. It depended upon none of the emirates which arose after the break-up of
the Seljuk Empire of Konia. Throughout Phrygia there were small village
chieftains, such as Osman had been at Sugut. Angora may have acknowledged
Kermian for a short period, but the proprietors of that region resisted the efforts
of Karamania to incorporate them. The fortress of Angora was captured at the
beginning of the reign of Murad, but it was not until Bayezid broke the power of
Kermian and Karamania that the country round about the city became
ottomanized.[747]
AYASOLUK (9)
This is the Ottoman corruption of Altoluogo, the Genoese name for the
Byzantine Theologos (ἅγιος θεολόγος—St. John) which occupied nearly the
same site as the ancient Ephesus. This city has caused much confusion to
writers. It was captured from the Greeks by Sasan, who ruled there as its first
Turkish emir in 1308.[748] Later it seems to have fallen into the hands of Aïdin,
and became the principal commercial city of his flourishing emirate. The emir’s
coins were for a time struck there, but later when Guzel Hissar (Tralles) was
capital of Aïdin, Ayasoluk was practically independent under a younger brother
of Mohammed, and uncle of Omar. In 1365 the chevaliers of Rhodes had
evidently made a serious attempt to cut into the hinterland of Aïdin from
Smyrna, for they struck coins at Ayasoluk. Its later history is that of Aïdin and
Palatchia. Timur directed the operations against Smyrna from Ephesus in
December 1402.[749]
BALIKESRI (10)
This city is to the south-west of Brusa, on the road to Pergama. It would
naturally be included in the emirate of Karasi, but had an independent sovereign,
Demir-Khan, when Ibn Batutah visited it. It was annexed by the Osmanlis after
the deposition of the emir of Balikesri. The exact date of this acquisition cannot
be determined.[750]
BORLU (11)
An inland district south-west of Kastemuni and north of Angora, possibly the
same as Boli, where Ali, a son of Soleiman padishah, of Kastemuni and Sinope,
ruled as independent sovereign between 1330 and 1340.[751]
BRUSA (12)
The descriptions of Orkhan’s realm, which to Ibn Batutah and Shehabeddin
was the emirate of Brusa, as it was seen through the eyes of his contemporaries,
have been cited in the text of this book. Until the end of the reign of Murad, the
Ottoman possessions were small enough to be distinguished under the name of
Brusa, where the Osmanlis established an emirate at the death of Osman.
CAESAREA (13)
This important city, in the east of Asia Minor, on the confines of Armenia,
was during the first half of the fourteenth century under the control of the
Mongols, and, for a very few years, acknowledged the overlordship of
Karamania. But, for the thirty years coincident with the reign of Murad, it had
emirs of its own, as had Tokat and Sivas. For we know that Burhaneddin,
through whose misfortunes Bayezid became involved with Timur, had been kadi
of the emir of Caesarea, on whose death he divided ‘with two other emirs’ his
dominions. Caesarea fell into the power of the Osmanlis between 1392 and
1398.[752]
DENIZLI (14)
This emirate was on the site of Laodicea on the Lycus, and was called Ladik
by the Arabs, and Denizli, or Denizlu, by the Turks. Mount Cadmus and
Hieropolis were also within its limits. It was at the upper end of the Maeander
Valley, bounded on the west and north by Aïdin, and on the south by Menteshe
and Tawas. In the fourteenth century, the city of its emir was probably on the
Maeander and not on the Lycus. Shehabeddin compared the gardens of Ladik, or
Denizli, to those of Damascus. No higher praise could have come from his lips.
We know nothing of its later history. About 1350 it was probably absorbed by
Aïdin or Menteshe.[753]
ERZINDJIAN (15)
Erzindjian, like Erzerum, was subject to the Mongols in the early part of the
reign of Orkhan. There was a prince named Aïnabey ruling there in 1348,
however, who, with two generals of Hamid, attacked Trebizond.[754] Coins were
struck in the name of Alaeddin of Karamania in Erzindjian in the decade
following 1350. But coins of Mohammed Artin, emir of Erzindjian, were struck
there about 1360.[755] Bayezid pushed his conquests a day beyond Erzindjian to
the castle of Kemath. He did not, however, conquer Erzindjian; for we have its
emir, a vassal of Timur, appealing to his overlord for aid, when Bayezid
summoned him to appear at Angora, bringing the treasures of his dependencies
with him. His authority extended to and included Erzerum about 1400.[756]
FUKEH (16)
Ibn Batutah calls this country Milas. There were in fact two cities, Fukeh and
Milas, under one sovereign at the time of Ibn Batutah and Shehabeddin. As
Milas was near the site of Halicarnassus, or on that site, and was sometimes
called Halik, the geographical position of this emirate, on the coast opposite Cos,
is immediately grasped. It was dependent, in a certain sense, upon Menteshe, and
was later absorbed by Menteshe. Orkhan was the emir about 1330. Some years
later, Shehabeddin estimated that the emir of Fukeh had fifty cities and ten
thousand horsemen. The last vestige of the independence of Fukeh was
destroyed by the Rhodians with whom they were continually in conflict, and
who got a foothold on the mainland and built a castle at Halik in 1399.[757]
GUL HISSAR (17)
At the time of Ibn Batutah, Mohammed Tchelebi, brother of the emir of
Akridur, was established here on the border of Pamphylia and Caria, between
Satalia and the Maeander River.[758] The fact that in such a position an
independent prince could maintain himself as late as 1330—perhaps later—
demonstrates that the emirates of Tekke, Menteshe, and Hamid must have been
of very slow growth, like that of Brusa, and that these Turkish emirs who were
rivals of the house of Osman evolved slowly, just as the Osmanlis did. The
fiction of a tenfold division of the Seljuk dominions becomes very apparent
when we consider the position of Gul Hissar (often called Kul Hissar), Alaïa,
Tawas, and Fukeh—to cite instances only from the south-western corner of Asia
Minor.
HAMID (18)
This emirate, of very late development in comparison with those of Sarukhan
and Aïdin, was formed by the absorption of a number of little states—each
hardly more than a village. The emir of Hamid started by incorporating Akridur
and Nazlu. During the last decade of the reign of Orkhan, Hamid grew rapidly,
until it extended from Aksheïr to the western end of the Taurus. It was entirely
an inland emirate, and had little chance of resisting the Osmanlis under Murad.
The last emir willed his dominions to Murad in 1381, but the country had to be
conquered step by step. Bayezid made it an Ottoman province in 1391.[759]
IAKSHI (19)
A small emirate north-west of Sarukhan, on the sea-coast opposite Mitylene.
It is mentioned only by Shehabeddin, and for the purpose of fixing the
boundaries of Sarukhan.[760]
KAOUÏA (20)
This is the modern Djanik, on the Black Sea between Samsun and Sinope. It
had an independent line of four emirs, and probably maintained its independence
until after the Ottoman conquest of Kastemuni.[761]
KARAMANIA (21)
Until after the campaign of 1386, Karamania was a far more powerful
emirate in Asia Minor than that of the Osmanlis. The Karamanlis were the actual
successors of the Seljuks, and maintained themselves in Konia. While the
Osmanlis were confined to a very small corner of Anatolia, the Karamanian
dominions extended from the Euphrates and the Amanus to the Gulf of Adalia,
on both slopes of the Taurus. Except in the maritime emirates of the Aegaean
Sea, the Karamanlis and their emir were the great power in the peninsula of Asia
Minor. Their independence was not broken by Bayezid, for they recovered their
former glory after the intervention of Timur, and successfully withstood
Mohammed I, Murad II, and Mohammed II. As in the latter half of the
fourteenth century, the Karamanian emirs of the first half of the fifteenth century
were allied by marriage with the house of Osman, but refused to do homage to
the Ottoman sovereigns.[762]
Limits of space prevent mentioning here the many grounds upon which the
Karamanians were able to and did keep their independence in the face of both
Constantinople and Cairo. It was only at the end of the fifteenth century that we
find the fiction of the Karamanian vassalage to the Osmanlis and of the
connexion between the Seljuks and the Osmanlis appearing in the Ottoman
chronicles, which on this count are, as I have pointed out elsewhere, wholly
unreliable. It is astonishing that their version of the rise of the Osmanlis in Asia
Minor has been accepted for so many centuries by western historians.[763]
KARASAR (22)
An abbreviation of Kara Hissar. This is probably the modern Afion Kara
Hissar, a picturesque town between Eski Sheïr and Konia on southern limit of
the emirate of Kermian, of which its prince was a vassal. Its importance was in
its location at the junction point of the roads from the north-west and west into
Karamania.
KARASI (23)
The emirate which lay between the possessions of Orkhan and Sarukhan was
called, after the founder of its dynasty, Karasi. Its capital was Pergama. There is
a discrepancy between the accounts of Shehabeddin and Ibn Batutah, the
forming making Pergama subject to Balikesri, and the latter giving Balikesri as
independent. Ottoman historians make Balikesri the northernmost city of the
emirate of Karasi. The limits of Karasi, outside of the immediate vicinity of
Pergama, cannot be determined. There were several small independent emirates
in the hinterland of the lower end of the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles.
The emir of Karasi was an ally of Aïdin and Sarukhan in the first coalition
formed to combat the growing power of the Osmanlis. Karasi was the first
emirate to be destroyed by the Osmanlis, and the only one of importance
incorporated under Orkhan. This was because it lay nearest to the Ottoman
emirate.[764]
KASTEMUNI (24)
This emirate, at its zenith, comprised practically all of the ancient Roman
province of Paphlagonia. It was formed by Ali Omar bey, who started as lord of
the inland city of Kastemuni, and whose son Abdullah, in the lifetime of Osman,
drove Ghazi Tchelebi from Sinope. The emirate had many vicissitudes and
changes in dynasty. In the time of Ibn Batutah, Soleiman padishah was the
sovereign, and had extended his rule from Heraclea on the Black Sea coast
almost to Trebizond. His son Ali ruled at Borlu, and another son Ibrahim Shah,
who succeeded Soleiman, contested Samsun with the emperor of Trebizond.
Ibrahim was the younger son, and was designated as his successor by Soleiman.
Under the third dynasty of Kastemuni, the ben-Isfendiar, the emirate was at the
height of its power. Its fleets swept the Black Sea, and did much harm to the
Greeks of Trebizond and the Genoese of Kaffa. Kaouïa was absorbed, and its
eastern boundaries included Osmandjik. The emirs of Menteshe and Aïdin took
refuge here, and the refusal of the emir of Kastemuni, Bayezid, to give them up,
led to the invasion of 1392. Bayezid and the fugitive princes fled to Timur, who
restored them after the battle of Angora. Isfendiar, son of Bayezid, managed to
retain Sinope, and a large portion of the interior, for thirty years. He was fatherin-
law of the Ottoman sultan, Murad II. When Clavijo visited Sinope in 1404
Isfendiar had forty thousand men to put in the field against the Osmanlis. It was
not until after the fall of Constantinople that Kastemuni finally lost its
independence.[765] As the history of this emirate is involved with that of Sinope,
see also below under Sinope.
KEREDEH (25)
This was a small emirate, sometimes called also Kerdeleh, between
Kastemuni and Boli, which was absorbed by the Osmanlis in the latter part of
the reign of Orkhan. It was already in danger of Ottoman aggression when Ibn
Batutah visited it on his way from Brusa to Kastemuni.[766]
KERMASTI (26)
On the Adranos River, one day south of Mikhalitch, and two days west of
Brusa, this city was conquered by Orkhan in his first campaign after the fall of
Nicomedia.[767]
KERMIAN (27)
Kermian, or Guermian, took its name from a Turcoman chief who held
Kutayia about 1300. It was the earliest definite emirate which arose in western
Asia Minor after the dissolution of the Seljuk Empire. Shehabeddin wrote:
‘Turkish tribes seized the greater part of the Seljuk possessions. The Turks
recognized the pre-eminence of the emir of Kermian.’ The great fortress which
still crowns the hill of Kutayia is supposed to have been erected by Kermian.[768]
Kermian’s son Ali became master of all of Phrygia, possibly at one time
including Angora in his emirate. Orkhan wrote to Ali as equal to equal, and gave
him the title of ‘emir of Anatolia’.[769] Ali had forty thousand horsemen and
seven hundred castles and villages. He was the equal of the emir of Karamania
and more powerful than Orkhan.
Kermian was the first of the larger emirates to feel the change which the
successes in the Balkan peninsula had made in the fortune of the Osmanlis. A
granddaughter of the older Ali, and great-granddaughter of Kermian, was
married to Bayezid, and Murad compelled the emir of Kermian to cede the
north-western portion of his estates as his daughter’s dot. When Bayezid made
his first campaign against Karamania he annexed the remainder of Kermian. The
emir, his brother-in-law Yakub, fled to Timur, and was restored. The Osmanlis
definitely incorporated Kermian in their empire in the second decade of the
fifteenth century.[770]
LIMNIA (28)
A small emirate in the mountains between Trebizond and Erzindjian, whose
emir, Tasheddin, married the daughter of the emperor of Trebizond in 1379. In
1386, Tasheddin could put an army of twelve thousand men into the field. There
were several other very small Turkish emirates around Trebizond. Not enough,
however, is known of them to make it worth while to mention them.[771]
MARASH (29)
An independent emirate was established here after the fall of the Lusignans in
Cilicia, which was also known by the name of the founder of the dynasty,
Sulkadir. It maintained its independence against the Karamanians, Egyptians,
and Osmanlis until 1515, when its last prince fell in a battle with Selim.[772]
MARMORA (30)
An emirate on the borders of the Sea of Marmora, between Cyzicus and the
Dardanelles, which had struggles and alliances with the Catalans, Byzantines,
and Turks of Balikesri. It became a vassal state of Karasi, and was ruled from
Pergama. After the destruction of Karasi, its territory was shared by the Catalans
of Bigha and by Orkhan.[773]
MENTESHE (31)
Like Hamid, Menteshe was of late formation. The chief who gave his name
to this emirate was a contemporary of Orkhan, and was sometimes known by the
same name. He was allied by marriage to Soleiman, son of Aïdin, through whom
he gained the former possessions of Aïdin south of the Maeander River. The
emirate probably started at Mughla, and did not have much importance until it
had absorbed Tawas and most of Fukeh. The emir of Menteshe possessed great
influence during the latter part of Orkhan’s reign and the reign of Murad, and,
like Aïdin and Sarukhan, the Turks of Menteshe, through their trading, were
more in contact with the outside world than were the Osmanlis. Their port,
known to the Venetians as Palatchia, was the ancient Miletus. The emirate of
Menteshe suffered decline in the latter days of Murad’s reign through the
Venetian usurpation at Palatchia. At the time of Bayezid’s invasion, the emir fled
to Sinope and then to Timur. The emirate was restored by Timur, and was not
definitely incorporated in the Ottoman empire until the reign of Murad II.[774]
(See Fukeh, Palatchia, and Tawas.)
MIKHALITCH (32)
This was one day west of Brusa and a day south of Mudania. After the fall of
Brusa, Turkish or Byzantine rulers maintained themselves in Mikhalitch until the
expedition of Orkhan against Karasi. After that it became Ottoman.[775] Some of
the prisoners held for ransom after Nicopolis were detained in Mikhalitch, and
one of the most illustrious of them died there.[776]
NAZLU (33)
This was a small emirate east of Denizli, which was absorbed by Hamid
about 1350.[777]
NICAEA (34)
Shehabeddin says that Nicaea was the centre of an emirate whose ruler
possessed eight cities, thirty fortresses and an army of eight thousand horsemen.
The emir was Ali, a brother and neighbour of Sarukhan. I have been unable to
identify this place.[778]
PALATCHIA (35)
Like Ayasoluk in relation to Aïdin, Palatchia, the ancient Miletus, in relation
to Menteshe was at times independent, and at times the capital and seaport of the
emirate. Clavijo confused Palatchia with Ayasoluk, and claimed that Timur
summered (he means wintered) there. In another place he speaks of having
travelled with a brother of Alamanoglu, brother of the emir of Altoluogo and
Palatchia.[779] When Menteshe had his capital at Mughla, there was undoubtedly
another emir at Palatchia, who might also have been the man spoken of above as
emir of Fukeh. But there can be no certainty on this point. Venice, from 1345 to
1405—and later—was interested in Palatchia, and had a consul and large
commercial interests there. Different negotiations and treaties, in which the
Osmanlis do not figure, attest the interest of Venice, and the independence—at
least from the Osmanlis—of Palatchia throughout the fourteenth century.[780]
Cyprus and Rhodes at times tried to get the supremacy of Palatchia.[781]
SARUKHAN (36)
Sarukhan was throughout the fourteenth century an emirate of far more
importance than its rather restricted territory would seem to indicate. This was
largely on account of the high qualities of its rulers and the daring of its sailors.
It extended from the Gulf of Smyrna on the south to the Aegaean coast opposite
Mitylene on the north, and was wedged in between Aïdin and Karasi. The
hinterland was indefinite, and did not matter much as the Turks of Sarukhan
were first and last mariners. They were the most important factor in the triple
alliance against Orkhan in 1329 and 1336. After the Ottoman occupation of
Pergama, and the disappearance of Karasi, they held the Osmanlis back for a
hundred years (with the exception of the few years of Bayezid’s invasion). They
were frequently in alliance with the Genoese of Phocaea and the Byzantines, and
hired out as mercenaries and for transporting troops and food to Christian and
Moslem alike. The long lease of life which Philadelphia enjoyed as a city of the
Byzantine Empire is witness of their friendly relations with the Greeks
throughout the reigns of Osman, Orkhan, and Murad.[782] Magnesia was capital
of this emirate. It was not destroyed until Smyrna fell into the hands of the
Osmanlis in 1425.[783]
SATALIA (37)
Satalia is listed as an emirate separately from Tekke for the same reason that
Ayasoluk is given separately from Aïdin, Palatchia separately from Menteshe,
and Sinope separately from Kastemuni. It began and ended as a separate and
independent emirate, with its own lord. Its history is treated below under Tekke.
The modern name of Satalia is Adalia, from Attaleia, and gives its name to the
gulf on the southern coast of Asia Minor. Nicolay has confused Satalia with
Ayas, the ancient Issos.[784]
SINOPE (38)
An emirate was founded about 1307 in Sinope by the last descendant of the
Seljuks of Rum, who was known as Ghazi Tchelebi[785] who in 1313, in cooperation
with the Greeks of Trebizond, attacked Kaffa. But in 1318 we find the
Turks of Sinope burning almost all of the city of Trebizond, and in 1323
massacring the Genoese colony in their own city. Soon after this the emir of
Kastemuni conquered Sinope.[786] The Turks of Sinope were to the Black Sea
what those of Sarukhan were to the Aegaean. In 1361 they nearly captured
Kaffa.[787] Their later history is that of Kastemuni.
SIVAS (39)
The history of Sivas between the time of the Mongol withdrawal and the
aggression of the Osmanlis is not known. But that it must have had independent
princes can be inferred from the story of how Kadi Burhaneddin came to rule
there (cf. above under Caesarea). Its disastrous conquest by the Osmanlis, and
then by Timur, has been told in the chapter on Bayezid’s reign.
TAWAS (40)
This was a maritime emirate extending east into Lycia and west as far as the
mainland opposite Rhodes. It was the only one of the early emirates to possess
islands. Its pirates were true descendants of those whom Pompey opposed, and
were continually in conflict with the Rhodians and Cypriotes. Tawas was
absorbed by Tekke and Menteshe, but not before 1340.[788]
TEKKE (41)
Tekke grew up into a powerful emirate in Pamphylia and Lycia. Its expansion
to the north was stopped by the Taurus, and to the west by Alaïa and Karamania.
Tawas, which it later absorbed, Menteshe, Rhodes, and Cyprus were its other
great rivals. Its history is centred around the city of Adalia, then called Satalia, in
which there were merchants of the larger Italian cities. Adalia was taken from
the emirs of Tekke in 1361, but they regained it when the Genoese were
threatening Famagusta in 1373. The Osmanlis, under Murad, crossed the Taurus
by way of Sparta, into Tekke, but failed to capture Adalia. It remained
independent until 1450.[789]
TOKAT (42)
This city was either under the Mongols or independent throughout the
fourteenth century. Its fortunes were similar to those of Caesarea and Sivas.
ULUBAD (43)
This city, between Bithynia and Mysia, was conquered by Osman, and then
lost. It came again into the power of the Osmanlis in Orkhan’s campaign of
1339. A relative or ally of Andronicus III lived there.[790]
INDEPENDENT CHRISTIAN STATES
There were two Christian states in Asia Minor during the fourteenth century.
LITTLE ARMENIA (44), so called to distinguish it from the classical Armenia of
the upper Euphrates valley and the mountains between Asia Minor and the
Azerbaïdjan, was a portion of Cilicia in the south-eastern corner of Anatolia,
south of the Taurus mountains. A dynasty of Armenian kings, who had
successfully held off the Seljuks of Konia, and had maintained its position in the
fourteenth century by siding with the Mongols and Tartars against the Egyptians,
was overthrown between 1360 and 1374 in three invasions by the Egyptians,
who made Tarsus their frontier fortress.[791] Ahmed ben Ramazan, however, in
1379 established a Turkish emirate at Adana, which survived throughout the
fifteenth century. The Osmanlis were masters of a portion of Hungary before
their power was felt in Cilicia.
TREBIZOND (45), in the north-eastern corner of the peninsula, in the country
where Mithridates in his kingdom of Pontus had defied the Romans, came into
no contact with the Osmanlis during the century. Nor was it the object of
aggression on the part of Timur.[792] It resisted successfully, with its Greek and
Laze population, on land and sea, the attacks of the Turks of its hinterland and of
Sinope.
TERRITORIES DEPENDING ON OUTSIDE STATES
At the mouth of the Gulf of Smyrna, on the northern promontory, was the
Genoese self-governing colony of PHOCAEA (46), of which much has been said in
the chapter on the reign of Orkhan. Phocaea had many vicissitudes, but
maintained its independence as a Latin colony throughout the fourteenth century,
and knew how to turn aside the possible aggression of Timur. It was never even
temporarily dependent upon the Osmanlis.[793]
SMYRNA (47) was wrested from the emir of Aïdin by the crusaders of 1344,
and, for the rest of the fourteenth century was a Christian city, independent of the
Osmanlis and the Turkish emirs alike. It was Timur who brought it again under
Moslem control. But it did not pass to the Osmanlis for many years after this
reconquest.
The Byzantines, after they had been driven out of Bithynia and Mysia,
managed to maintain PHILADELPHIA (48), through their friendship with Sarukhan,
until the end of Murad’s reign.
The CYPRIOTES (49) exercised a powerful influence in the southern portions of
Asia Minor throughout the fourteenth century. As we have seen, they held
Adalia for some years. In 1360, the emirs of southern Anatolia were so divided
and opposed to each other, and needed so greatly the help of Cyprus against the
Karamanians, whom they feared much more than the Osmanlis, that they
became for many years tributary to Cyprus.[794] The Cypriotes were also
interested in Cilicia.
In 1327, the year after Osman’s death, the power of the MONGOLS (50)
reached for a few years the Mediterranean. After Bahadur Khan’s death, in 1335,
the Mongol Empire was divided up. Suzerainty in Asia Minor fell to the Sultan
of Irak (Persia), who, until Timur’s coming, fought with the Karamanians for
some of the most important cities of eastern Anatolia. When Ibn Batutah went
through the peninsula, Erzerum, Erzindjian, Sivas, Caesarea, Amassia, Nigdeh,
and Ak Seraï were ‘cities of the Sultan’.[795]
The chevaliers of RHODES (51) did not come into Asia Minor until 1310,
when they won from the Turks and Greeks the island which was to give them
their most commonly used name. They were continually in conflict with Tawas,
Alaïa, Adalia, Tekke, Menteshe, Fukeh, and Aïdin. But they never came into
contact with the Osmanlis until after the fall of Constantinople. On the mainland,
the chevaliers helped to take Smyrna in 1344, and defended it against the Turks
for sixty years. They wrested Ayasoluk from Aïdin for a while about 1365.
Several times they gained a foothold in Fukeh and Menteshe, and in the last year
of the century established a fortress at Halik (Halicarnassus).[796]
The Mamelukes of EGYPT (52) were not only interested in Cilicia, and held
that country from 1360 to 1379, and at other times, but also invaded Karamania
on different occasions. They reached Konia at the end of the thirteenth century,
the beginning of the fifteenth century, and again, under Ibrahim pasha, twice in
the third decade of the nineteenth century. During the reign of Murad I, the
Egyptians called Cilicia up to the Taurus Bab-el-Mulk, the Royal Gateway.
Konia was entered by an Egyptian Sultan in 1418. The Karamanians of that day,
who, according to the Ottoman historians, were vassals of the Osmanlis, had no
interest in or fear of Mohammed I. They were engaged in a civil war which led
to Egyptian intervention.[797] If Konia and the rest of Karamania was under the
Osmanlis, why was there not Ottoman intervention in the quarrel between
Mohammed and Ali for the Karamanian throne?
Last of all, the CATALANS (53), whose history is given in the chapter on
Osman, did not all leave Asia Minor with the ‘Grand Company’. Throughout the
reign of Orkhan the principality established at Cyzicus left its traces in the
Marmora and Dardanelles coast and hinterland. Nothing more strikingly
illustrates the lack of Ottoman activity in Asia Minor during Orkhan’s day, even
at the very threshold of Bithynia, than the fact that he left the Catalans in
possession of Bigha at his death. Murad, in 1363, although his presence was
urgently needed on the Maritza to defend his new conquest of Adrianople
against a Serbian invasion, was compelled to delay for months to eject the
Catalans from Bigha.[798]
CONCLUSION
Orkhan’s emirate, then, was but one of more than thirty independent states
which existed in Asia Minor during the decade from 1330 to 1340. During his
lifetime, and the lifetime of his father Osman, the other better-known emirates
had been slowly forming by the absorption of small independent villages and
cities. Although several of the emirates that have been given above were
ephemeral, and some of them duplicated practically the same territory at
different periods in the fourteenth century, others, such as Aïdin, Kermian,
Karamania, Sarukhan, and Tekke, were far more powerful in Asia Minor than
Orkhan or than Murad. That Bayezid had not crushed the life out of the larger
emirates is proved by the ease with which they were revived by Timur, and by
their survival during the first half of the fifteenth century.
Karamania, for one, remained powerful and flourishing long after the
political life of the Balkan states had become extinct. Karamania demanded one
hundred years of strenuous effort on the part of the conquerors of the Byzantine
Empire before it could be subjugated. The Osmanlis crossed the Balkans more
than a century before they crossed the Taurus.
This exposé was written in order to show:
1. That Osman fell heir to no part of the Seljuk dominions;
2. That the Seljuks had many more heirs than the traditional ten;
3. That Osman and Orkhan carved their state out of the remnants of the
Byzantine possessions along the upper end of the Sea of Marmora and in the
Valley of the Sangarius—a very small portion indeed of Asia Minor;
4. That Murad, the wonderful conqueror of the Balkan peninsula, was only
one of several rulers in Asia Minor, and not the most powerful of these, and that
there were large portions of Asia Minor with which neither he nor his successor
Bayezid came into contact at all;
5. That neither Bayezid, with his tremendous prestige in Europe, nor his
brilliant successors of the fifteenth century, gained undisputed possession of Asia
Minor. The Osmanlis were not masters of Asia Minor until long after their
inheritance of the Byzantine Empire was regarded in Europe as a fait accompli.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES
I. Approximate Dates in the Legendary Period.
II. Important Events in the First Century of Ottoman History.
III. Progress of Ottoman Congress under the First Four Sovereigns.
IV. Comparative Table of Rulers.
V. The Fourteenth Century in Byzantine History.
VI. Relations between Venice and Genoa and the Levant from 1300 to 1403.
VII. The Popes and the Moslem Menace in the Fourteenth Century.
I. THE LEGENDARY PERIOD
1219—Soleiman Shah, with 50,000 nomad Turkish families, settles
in neighbourhood of Erzindjian.
1224—Soleiman Shah is drowned in the Euphrates. Ertogrul and
Dundar, two of his sons, settle near Angora.
1230-40—Ertogrul establishes himself in the valley of the Kara Su,
north-west of Kutayia.
1259—Osman is born at Sugut.
1289—Ertogrul dies.
Osman captures Karadja Hissar and Biledjik.
1290—Osman kills his uncle Dundar.
1290-9—Osman, having extended his possessions westward, founds
an emirate, and takes up his residence at Yeni Sheïr.
II. IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE FIRST CENTURY OF OTTOMAN
HISTORY
1299—Osman, Turkish emir in the valley of the Kara Su, makes Yeni
Sheïr, between Brusa and Nicaea, his residence.
1301—Osman defeats the Byzantine heterarch Muzalon at Baphaeon,
near Nicomedia.
1308—Kalolimni, island in the Sea of Marmora, is occupied. Ak
Hissar and Tricocca are captured.
1317—Investment of Brusa begins.
1326—Brusa surrenders. Osman hears the news on his death-bed at
Yeni Sheïr.
1329—Byzantines under Andronicus III are defeated at Pelecanon
(Maltepé).
Nicaea surrenders.
1333—Alaeddin pasha, brother of Orkhan and first vizier, dies.
Death of Bahadur Khan removes the Mongol menace.
1337 or 1338—Nicomedia surrenders.
1338—Karasi, first of the Turkish emirates to be absorbed, is
incorporated in Orkhan’s state.
c. 1338—Osmanlis reach the Bosphorus at Haïdar Pasha.
1343—Empress Anna makes overtures to Orkhan for aid against
Cantacuzenos.
1345—Orkhan accepts proposal of alliance with Cantacuzenos.
First Osmanlis cross to Europe to fight for Cantacuzenos against
Anna.
1346—Orkhan marries Theodora, granddaughter of the Bulgarian
czar and daughter of Cantacuzenos, who is besieging
Constantinople with Ottoman aid.
1348—The ‘Black Death’ ravages Europe.
1349—Cantacuzenos calls again upon Orkhan for aid. Twenty
thousand Ottoman horsemen are sent to help in preventing
Salonika from falling into Serbian hands.
c. 1351—First convention between Orkhan and the Genoese.
1353—Soleiman pasha, Orkhan’s elder son, in response to the third
appeal of Cantacuzenos for Ottoman aid, brings an army into
Thrace, helps in the recapture of Adrianople, and defeats the
Serbians at Demotika. For this aid, a fortress on the
European shore of the Dardanelles, probably Tzympe, is
given to Orkhan.
1354—An earthquake, which damaged the walls of Gallipoli, enables
the Osmanlis of Soleiman pasha to capture the city. Orkhan
refuses to give up Gallipoli, breaks with Cantacuzenos, and
orders the Osmanlis in the Hellespont to extend their
conquest in the direction of Constantinople.
c. 1357—Demotika and Tchorlu are captured for the first time by the
Osmanlis under Soleiman pasha.
1358—Soleiman pasha dies from the fall of a horse at Bulaïr.
1359—Orkhan dies, and is succeeded by Murad.
1360-1—Conquest of Thrace.
1361—Second serious ‘Black Death’ plague in Europe.
c. 1362—Murad creates corps of ‘janissaries’.
1362 (1363)—John V Palaeologos binds himself by treaty to
recognize Murad’s conquests in Thrace, and to give him
military aid against the Turkish emirs of Asia Minor.
1363—Serbian and Hungarian crusaders are defeated on the banks of
the Maritza.
Murad takes up his residence in Demotika.
1365—Ragusa makes commercial treaty with Osmanlis, promising
tribute.
1366—Adrianople becomes the first capital of the Ottoman Empire.
Amadeo of Savoy’s crusade; captures Gallipoli, but soon abandons it
again.
1369—Capture of Yamboli forces Sisman of Bulgaria to become, like
the Byzantine Emperor, a vassal of Murad.
1371—Battle of Samakov gives the Osmanlis control of the passes
into the Plain of Sofia.
Battle of Cernomen opens up Macedonia to the Ottoman conquest.
1372—Moslem colonization of Macedonia, at Drama, Kavalla,
Serres, and Veles, gives the Osmanlis a position of
preponderance in the Balkan peninsula.
1373—John Palaeologos, failing to receive aid from the West,
becomes Ottoman vassal.
1374—Unsuccessful conspiracy of Manuel to recover Serres causes
Ottoman siege of Salonika.
1379—John and Manuel agree to increase their tribute of gold and
soldiers, and to surrender Philadelphia, the last Byzantine
possession in Asia, for Ottoman aid in ousting Andronicus
IV from Constantinople.
1384—Osmanlis aid Thomas in besieging Janina.
1385—First Ottoman invasion of Albania.
Battle of Savra destroys Balsa’s power.
Osmanlis occupy Sofia.
1386—Osmanlis capture Croia and Scutari, but return these
fortresses to prince of Zenta.
The fall of Nish makes Lazar of Serbia Ottoman vassal.
1387—Genoa concludes formal treaty with Murad.
Murad, with army containing Greek, Serbian and Bulgarian
contingents, defeats Alaeddin of Karamania at Konia, but
has to withdraw without tangible results.
1388—Venice concludes commercial treaty with Murad.
1388—Osmanlis are defeated by Serbians and Bosnians at Plochnik,
thus preventing invasion of Bosnia.
League of Serbians, Bosnians, Bulgarians, Wallachians, and
Albanians formed against the Osmanlis.
First Ottoman army enters Greece upon invitation of Theodore
Palaeologos to fight against the Franks.
1389—Osmanlis destroy Serbian independence at Kossova.
Murad is assassinated on the battle-field. Bayezid succeeds to the
throne, and has his brother Yakub strangled.
BAYEZID (1389-1403).
1387—Bayezid marries sister of Stephen, son of Lazar, and makes
Serbians his allies.
1390—First Ottoman naval expedition makes raid on Chios,
Negropont, and Attika.
First Ottoman raids into Hungary.
1391—Second invasion of Karamania, followed by siege of Konia,
results in cession by Alaeddin of north-western portion of
Karamania.
First Ottoman siege of Constantinople.
1392—First defensive campaign against Sigismund is fought in
Bulgaria. Hearing that Timurtash had been defeated by
Karamanlis, Bayezid transports army to Asia, and destroys
Alaeddin’s army at Ak Tchaï. The Osmanlis are now the
dominant race in Asia Minor.
1394—Osmanlis first appear in the Adriatic at the mouth of the
Boyana.
1395—Bayezid summons Ottoman vassals to his court at Serres.
Ottoman siege of Constantinople becomes pressing.
1396—Crusade of Western chivalry, co-operating with Sigismund of
Hungary, meets with disaster at Nicopolis in Bulgaria.
Ottoman invaders of Wallachia are defeated at Rovine, but in raids
into Hungary Peterwardein is burned, and sixteen thousand
Styrians carried off into captivity.
1397—First Ottoman invasion of Greece. In the Peloponnesus, Argos
is taken by assault.
After defeat at Megalopolis, Theodore becomes Ottoman vassal.
1397-9—Movement of Moslem Anatolian population into the Balkan
peninsula.
1398—Osmanlis and Serbians make destructive raid on Bosnia.
1400—Timur captures and destroys Sivas.
1402—Timur defeats and makes prisoner Bayezid at Angora,
overruns Asia Minor, occupies Brusa, and takes Smyrna
from the Christians by storm.
1403—Timur withdraws to Samarkand.
Bayezid, still a prisoner, dies on the homeward march at Ak Sheïr.
His sons dispute the succession.
III. PROGRESS OF OTTOMAN CONQUEST UNDER THE FIRST FOUR
SOVEREIGNS
OSMAN (1299-1326)
1299—Osman, local chieftain at Sugut, has extended his conquests
from the valley of the Kara Su westward to Yeni Sheïr.
1308—Kalolimni, island in the Sea of Marmora, becomes first
Ottoman maritime possession.
Ak Hissar, at the entrance to plain of Nicomedia, and Tricocca, which
ensured land communication between Nicaea and
Nicomedia, are captured.
1308-16—Sovereignty is extended over the peninsula between the
Gulf of Nicomedia and the Black Sea, almost up to the
Bosphorus.
1317—Fortresses are erected near gates of Brusa.
1326—Brusa surrenders.
ORKHAN (1326-59)
1329—Occupies Nicaea.
1330-8—Conquest of shores of Gulf of Nicomedia up to Scutari on
the Bosphorus.
1334-8—Conquest of emirate of Karasi.
1337-8—Occupies Nicomedia.
c. 1339—Acquires Mikhalitch, Ulubad, and Kermasti.
1353—Cantacuzenos cedes fortress on European shore of Hellespont.
1354—Gallipoli is occupied.
1354-8—The Osmanlis occupy the Thracian, Chersonese, and the
European shore of the Sea of Marmora as far as Rodosto.
Demotika is captured, and Constantinople cut off from
Adrianople by the occupation of Tchorlu.
MURAD (1359-89)
1360—Captures Angora and suppresses independence of village
chieftains between Eski Sheïr and Angora.
1360-1—Conquers Thrace from the Maritza River to the Black Sea,
including Adrianople.
1361—Lalashahin captures Philippopolis.
c. 1362—Creation of the corps of janissaries.
1362 or 1363—John V Palaeologos binds himself by treaty to
recognize Murad’s conquest of Thrace, and to give him
military aid against the emirs of Asia Minor.
1366-9—Conquest of Maritza Valley up to the Rhodope Mountains,
and of Bulgaria, up to the main Balkan range.
1370-1—Occupies the fortresses and passes in the Rhodope and Rilo
ranges.
1371-2—Conquers Macedonia up to the Vardar River.
c. 1376—Portion of emirate of Kermian, including Kutayia is
annexed as dot of the emir’s daughter, in marriage arranged
with Bayezid.
1377—Emir of Hamid sells to Murad territories between Tekke,
Kermian, and Karamania. The acquisition of Ak Sheïr brings
the Osmanlis to the frontier of Karamania.
1378—Conquers Tekke, except Adalia and Alaya.
1380—Conquers Macedonia, west of the Vardar. Prilep and Monastir
become Ottoman frontier fortresses.
1385—Occupies Okhrida.
Plain of Sofia and upper valley of the Struma River are conquered.
1386—Valleys of the Morava and Nisava are conquered, and Nish
falls.
1388—Invasion of northern Bulgaria reduces Sisman to more
humiliating vassalage. The Osmanlis retain the fortresses of
Shuman and Nicopolis.
BAYEZID (1389-1403)
1391—Captures Adalia, first Ottoman seaport on the Mediterranean.
Ak Sheïr and Ak Seraï ceded by Karamania.
1393—Bulgaria, to the Danube, becomes Ottoman territory.
1393-5—Conquers Samsun, Caesarea, and Sivas, and annexes
emirate of Kastemuni.
1397—Conquers Thessaly, Doris, Locris, and the north-eastern
corner of the Peloponnesus.
1398-9—Gradually occupies Southern Albania and a part of Epirus.
IV. COMPARATIVE TABLE OF RULERS
BYZANTINE EMPIRE[799]
The Palaeologi
ANDRONICUS II (the Old), 1282-1328.
MICHAEL IX (co-emperor), 1295-1320.
ANDRONICUS III (the Young), 1328-41, by whose second wife, Anna of
Savoy, was born
JOHN V, 1341-01, whose three sons were:
ANDRONICUS IV (co-emperor), 1355-?
MANUEL II, 1391-1425.
Theodore, despot of the Morea, 1359-.
The son of Andronicus IV was
JOHN VII (co-emperor), 1399-1403.
The Cantacuzeni
JOHN VI, regent, 1341-7, co-emperor, 1347-55, two of whose
daughters married Orkhan and John V, and whose son was
MATTHEW, co-emperor, 1355-6.
HUNGARY
LOUIS THE GREAT, 1342-82 (King of Poland, 1370-82).
His two daughters were:
Hedwig, to whom fell the crown of Poland, and who married Jagello
of Lithuania, who became King of Poland under the
Christian name of Ladislas V.
Mary, to whom fell the crown of Hungary, 1382-92.
Mary married
SIGISMUND of Luxemburg in 1386, who became sole ruler of Hungary
after Mary’s death, and, later, Holy Roman Emperor.
HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
House of Luxemburg
CHARLES IV (I as King of Bohemia), 1355-78.
His two sons were:
WENCESLAUS, who succeeded to the imperial crown on the death of
his father and was deposed in 1400;
and SIGISMUND, King of Hungary, who was elected emperor in 1410.
FRANCE
PHILIPPE IV, le Bel, 1285-1314, and his sons
LOUIS X, PHILIPPE V, and CHARLES IV, last of the Capetians. 1314-28.
PHILIPPE VI VALOIS, 1328-50.
JEAN, 1350-64.
CHARLES V, 1365-80.
CHARLES VI, 1380-1422.
Philippe de Bourgogne, son of King Jean, and father of Jean de
Nevers, and Louis d’Orléans, second son of Charles V, were
vying with each other for the control of their insane nephew
and brother, Charles VI, during the reign of Bayezid.
ENGLAND
EDWARD I, 1270-1307.
EDWARD II, 1307-27.
EDWARD III, 1327-77
(took the title of King of France in 1339).
RICHARD III, 1377-99.
Deposed in 1399, and succeeded by
HENRY IV (of Lancaster).
V. THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY IN BYZANTINE HISTORY
1300—The emir of Menteshe invades Rhodes.
1301—First Byzantine defeat at hands of Osmanlis at Baphaeon.
1302—Michael IX takes command of Slavic mercenaries in Asia
Minor: they force him to allow their return to Europe.
Roger de Flor arrives at Constantinople with eight thousand Catalans,
and is married to a niece of Andronicus.
1303—Catalans sack the island of Chios.
1305—Death of Ghazan Khan frustrates Byzantine hopes of a
Mongol attack upon the emirs of Asia Minor.
Catalans compel the emir of Karamania to lift the siege of
Philadelphia, but quarrel with Greeks and Slavic
mercenaries. Roger exacts title of ‘Caesar’ from Andronicus,
and is later assassinated by Michael IX at Adrianople.
1306-9—Catalan ‘Grand Company’ forms state at Gallipoli.
1310—Catalans leave for Greece, and set up military democracy in
Athens.
The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem capture Rhodes.
1311—The emir of Menteshe fails in attempt to recapture Rhodes.
1311-14—Turkish freebooter Halil defies the Emperor in the
Thracian Chersonese, and is finally defeated with the help of
the Serbians.
1317—Brusa, Nicaea, and Nicomaedia begin to be menaced.
1326—Brusa falls. Andronicus III, on his wedding trip from
Constantinople to Demotika, is set upon and wounded by
raiding Turks.
1327-8—Andronicus III plots to oust his grandfather, who, in turn,
invites Serbians to attack young Andronicus in the rear;
young Andronicus besieges army of his grandfather and
Serbians at Serres, and captures Salonika. Old Andronicus
calls upon Bulgarians, but before their aid arrives, young
Andronicus succeeds in entering Constantinople and
deposing his grandfather.
1329—Andronicus III is defeated at Pelecanon by Orkhan in an
attempt to relieve Nicaea. Nicaea surrenders.
Andronicus III, at Phocaea, tries to incite emirs of Aïdin and
Sarukhan to attack Orkhan.
1333—Turks of Sarukhan make a raid on Macedonia, while their
vessels enter the Sea of Marmora and seize Rodosto.
1334—Andronicus is compelled to send army to save Salonika from
raiding Turks.
1336—Andronicus asks Turkish emirs to help him in siege of
Genoese at Phocaea.
1337 or 1338—Nicomedia and the last Byzantine possessions in
north-western corner of Asia Minor are conquered by the
Osmanlis.
1340—Stephen Dushan crosses the Vardar, captures Serres, and
crowns himself there as ‘master of almost all the Roman
Empire’.
1341—After death of Andronicus III, Cantacuzenos crowns himself
at Demotika.
1342—Civil war between Cantacuzenos and widow and son of
Andronicus III, during which both sides make overtures to
Osmanlis, Serbians, and Bulgarians.
1345—Cantacuzenos receives aid from Orkhan, and pays for it by
marrying his daughter to the Ottoman emir.
1347—Dushan crowns himself Emperor of Constantinople.
Agreement between John Cantacuzenos and John
Palaeologos to share Byzantine throne.
Black Death plague reaches Constantinople.
1349—Cantacuzenos calls Osmanlis into Europe again to save
Salonika from the Serbians.
1349-53—Civil war between Cantacuzenos and Palaeologos.
Palaeologos flees to Tenedos.
1353—The Osmanlis, who had been helping Cantacuzenos against
Palaeologos, capture Gallipoli, and invade Thrace.
1354—Cantacuzenos, having vainly appealed to the Pope, Venice,
Bulgaria, and Serbia to aid him against the Osmanlis, is
deposed by popular revolution in Constantinople, and
becomes a monk.
John Palaeologos recalled from exile.
1355—Dushan dies on his way to attack Constantinople.
1354-8—Palaeologos succeeds finally in subduing Cantacuzenos’ son
Matthew.
1358—While Osmanlis are advancing in Thrace, John V, at command
of Orkhan, is besieging Phocaea.
1361—Adrianople and Philippopolis captured by the Osmanlis.
1363—John V signs treaty of vassalage to Murad.
1366—John V journeys to Buda to enlist aid of Louis of Hungary,
and on return journey is made prisoner by Sisman in
Bulgaria.
1373—John V, seeing that his visit to Rome and his appeals to
western princes are of no avail, recognizes Murad as his
suzerain, promises to do military service in Murad’s army,
and gives his son Manuel as hostage.
Thrace and Macedonia are practically lost, and the Byzantine Empire
has become merely the city state of Constantinople.
1374—As the result of a rebellion undertaken by Andronicus
together with the son of Murad against the two fathers, John
V consents to deprive his son Andronicus of his sight, and
shuts him up in the Tower of Anemas.
1375-89—Civil war between John and Manuel and Andronicus, in
which Venice, Genoa, and Osmanlis play a decisive part.
John and Manuel purchase Ottoman aid at the price of giving
up Philadelphia, the last Byzantine possession in Asia Minor.
1391—Manuel, serving as vassal in Ottoman army, is threatened with
loss of eyes, if Emperor John does not demolish the towers
on the walls of Constantinople, which he has rebuilt. He
obeys and dies soon after. Manuel escapes from Brusa upon
learning of his father’s death. His flight is followed by the
first Ottoman siege of Constantinople.
1396—Bayezid contemplates taking Constantinople by assault, but is
deterred by arrival of crusaders in Hungary.
1397—Siege of Constantinople is renewed, after Nicopolis.
1399—Crusade of Boucicaut helps Byzantines temporarily.
1400-2—Manuel, having made peace with his nephew John, sails for
Italy and spends two years in fruitless endeavour to get aid
from western princes.
1401—John makes treaty to give up Constantinople, if Bayezid
should win from Timur.
1402—After Bayezid’s defeat at Angora, Manuel returns to
Constantinople.
John is banished to Lemnos, and Ottoman colonists expelled from
Constantinople. Overtures are made to Timur.
1403—Manuel recognizes Soleiman as successor of Bayezid, and
renews treaty with him.
VI. RELATIONS BETWEEN VENICE AND GENOA AND THE LEVANT
FROM 1300 TO 1403
1328—Venetian sovereignty of Negropont is menaced by Turkish
pirates.
1344—Venice aids Cyprus and Rhodes in the capture of Smyrna.
1345-50—Dushan negotiates frequently with Venice for aid in
capturing Constantinople.
1351-3—War between Venice and Genoa. Sea power of Genoa is
broken at battle of Lojera. Genoese are assisted by Orkhan.
1355—Matteo Venier and Marino Faleri warn the Senate that the
Byzantine Empire must inevitably become the booty of the
Osmanlis, unless Venice gets ahead of them.
1361—Venetian Senate make overtures to John V for alliance against
Murad, but withdraw when they see the rapid success of
Murad’s campaign in Thrace.
1370-1—Venice and Greece are engaged in a struggle for economic
supremacy in Cyprus.
1375—John V gives Tenedos to the Venetians. The Genoese come
into conflict with the Venetians over economic privileges at
Constantinople.
1379-81—Venice and Genoa go to war over the question of Tenedos
and the Byzantine succession to the throne. In the Peace of
Turin, it is provided that Tenedos remain unfortified, and
that Andronicus IV be recognized the heir to John V.
1386—Genoese make treaty with Byzantines.
1387—Genoese make commercial treaty with Osmanlis.
1388—Venetians make commercial treaty with Osmanlis.
1389—Venice and Genoa renew treaties with Bayezid.
1393—Venice decides to treat with Sigismund of Hungary for
defensive alliance against Osmanlis.
1396—Venetian aid in Nicopolis crusade is half-hearted.
1397—Venice urges Genoese of Pera not to treat with Bayezid, and
makes accord with Genoa to aid Byzantines.
1401—Venice and Genoa engaged in another sea struggle for
supremacy in the Levant.
1402—Both Venetians and Genoese aid Osmanlis, fleeing from
Timur after Angora, to cross into Europe. They renew their
treaties with Osmanlis, recognizing Soleiman as Bayezid’s
successor.
VII. THE POPES AND THE MOSLEM MENACE IN THE FOURTEENTH
CENTURY
1306—Clement V exhorts the Venetians to co-operate with Charles
de Valois in the reconquest of Constantinople.
1307—Clement V urges Charles II of Naples to re-conquer
Constantinople, but his interest is diverted by a project of a
crusade to support Cyprus and Cilician Armenia against the
Egyptians.
1309—Papal court transferred from Rome to Avignon.
1310—Clement V encourages Knights of St. John to drive both
Greeks and Turks out of Rhodes.
1327—John XXII does not respond to appeal of Andronicus II to aid
Byzantium against the Turks.
1333—Similar unsuccessful overture is made by Andronicus III.
1334—Papal effort to form crusade against Turks results in the
capture of Smyrna.
1347—Marquis de Montferrat, heir to the Latin Emperors, makes
agreement with Clement VI to conquer Constantinople.
At the same time appeals are received at Rome from Cantacuzenos
for union of western princes against Osmanlis.
1349, 1350, 1353—Cantacuzenos makes three more overtures to
Clement VI and Innocent VI.
1352—Inhabitants of Philadelphia appeal to Pope for aid, promising
return to Roman communion.
1363—Urban V on Holy Friday gives the cross to several princes of
the Occident.
1366—Urged by Urban, Amadeo of Savoy sails for the crusade
against the Osmanlis. He spends his efforts in releasing John
V from the Bulgarians, and abandons the Byzantines when
they refuse to return to the Roman Church. Urban writes to
Louis of Hungary to put off his crusade until the union of the
Churches is accomplished.
Urban V denounces the traffic of the Italian Republics with Moslems.
1369—Emperor John V, at Rome, abjures errors of Orthodox Church,
and receives from Pope letters, recommending that Christian
princes come to his aid.
1371—Gregory XI makes appeal to Christian nations to co-operate
with Genoa in saving the last Christians of the Holy Land.
1372—Gregory urges Louis of Hungary to resist the Osmanlis before
they advance farther into Europe, and orders a crusade to be
preached in Hungary, Poland, and Dalmatia.
1373—Gregory, receiving the last envoy from John V, bursts into
tears, and says that he will save Constantinople, if only the
Byzantine Emperor will cause his people to renounce their
heresies and return to the Roman Church.
1378—The Great Schism.
1388—Urban VI sends two armed galleys for the defence of
Constantinople, but is unsuccessful in raising crusade.
1391—Boniface IX stirs up trouble between Latin and Greek
Christians in the Balkan peninsula.
1398 and 1399—Boniface IX orders crusade to be preached
throughout Christendom for the defence of Constantinople.
1399—Boucicaut, the only one to respond, goes to the aid of
Constantinople.
1402—Smyrna is lost to Timur.
1403—The strife between rival Popes, Benedict XIII and Boniface
IX, makes impossible a papal effort to take advantage of the
civil strife between the sons of Bayezid, after Timur’s
abandonment of his conquests in Asia Minor.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. CLASSIFIED BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOTE
THE Classified Bibliography contains only the names of authors. Following
the classification, the books and editions are given in detail under the authors’
names in alphabetical order.
I shall be grateful for corrections and amplifications. The work on this
bibliography has been done largely in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, and I
have been handicapped by the lack of a complete catalogue.
No attempt whatever has been made to follow a definite system of spelling of
Oriental and Slavic names, for arbitrary changes in spelling on my part would
confuse the reader who desires to find in a library catalogue the authors given. I
have retained the spelling (except in rare instances where there were
divergencies in different editions of the same book) of the author’s name as
given by himself or by his editor or publisher. As far as the letter ‘G’, I have
made the spelling conform to that of the General Catalogue of the Bibliothèque
Nationale. Beyond ‘G’, there is, as yet, no norm.
Bibliographers of Printed Books.
Apponyi; Auboyneau; Boecler; Chevalier; Dherbelot de Molainville; Eichhorn;
Fabricius; Fevret; Fitzclarence; Fraehn; Franke; Hadji Khalfa; Halle; Houtsma
et al.; Oesterly; Omont; Pogodin; Potthast; Welter; Zenker.
Bibliographers of Oriental MSS.
Ahlwardt; Ali Hilmi; Apponyi; Auboyneau; Blochet; Browne; Cusa; De Goeje;
De Jong; Derenbourg; Dorn; Dozy; Fevret; Flügel; Hadji Khalfa; Karamianz;
Lampros; Pertsch; Rieu; Rosen; Schéfer; Slane; Smirnow; Sprenger; Welter.
Numismatists.
Blau; Djevdet; Engel; Friedländer; Ghalib; Karabacek; Lane-Poole; Lavoix;
Makrisi; Pinder; Schlumberger; Serrure; Stickel.
Chronographers.
Aladdin Ali; Arabantinos; Assemanus; Hadji Khalfa; Knaus; Loeb; Mas Latrie;
Mullach; Müller; Muralt; Rasmussen; Strzygowski; Wüstenfeld; Chronicon
Breve (in Ducas).
Collections of Contemporary Records.
OTTOMAN: Feridun, Collection of.
The class="c">The authenticity of the documents in this collection cannot be
definitely established.
BYZANTINE: Dieterich; Miklositch; Müller; Predelli; Sathas.
HUNGARIAN, SLAVIC, and RAGUSAN: Daničić; Fejér; Gelčić; Jorga; Ljubić;
Makusev; Miklositch; Miltitz; Müller; Noradounghian; Racki; Safařík
(Schaffarik); Sathas; Thallóczy; Theiner; Wenzel. (See also under Kossova and
Nicopolis.)
VENETIAN: Alberi; Brown; Fejér; Jorga; Ljubić; Makusev; Miklositch; Minotto;
Müller; Noiret; Noradounghian; Predelli; Racki; Romanin; Rymer; Safařík;
Sathas; Testa; Thomas.
PAPAL (Avignon and Rome): Baluze; Bosquet; Dudik; Jorga; Romanin; Theiner;
Werunski.
The literature about the individual popes, and the collections of documents
published, registers, letters, etc., are so numerous, that I cannot include even a
selection here. The reader is referred to Chevalier’s Répertoire des sources
historiques du Moyen Âge, where, under each pope, will be found the most
complete and most recent bibliographical references.
GENOESE (including Pera Colony): Belgrano; Jorga; Miklositch; Müller;
Noradounghian; Olivieri; Predelli; Testa.
OTHER ITALIAN CITIES: Jorga; Müller.
FRENCH: Boislisle; Bongars; Bouchon; Charrière; Delaville Leroulx; Dorez;
Garnier; Jorga; Kunstmann; Leuridan; Lot; Molinier; Moranvillé; Potansque;
Raimboult; Roncière; Tarbé.
ENGLISH: Rymer.
Contemporary Chronicles.
BYZANTINE: Cantacuzenos; Nicephoros Gregoras; Pachymeres; Panaretos (for
Trebizond).
CATALAN: Moncada; Muntaner. (See also Frenzel.)
FRENCH: Enguerran de Monstrelet; Eustache des Champs; Froissart; Gilles;
Marche; Nangis; Ursins; Wavrin; Anon.: Cronicorum Karoli Sexti; Chronique
du duc Loys de Bourbon; Chronique du religieux de Saint-Denis; Chronique
des quatre premiers Valois; Livre des faicts de Jean le Maingre, dit Bouciquaut;
Relation de la Croisade de Nicopolis (serviteur de Gui de Blois). (See also
under the Editors: Bellaguet; Géraud; Godefroy; Kervyn de Lettenhove;
Lacabane; Lemaitre.)
HEBREW: Joseph ben Joshua.
MOREA: Chronique de Morée; Breve Chronicon (see Ducas).
ORIENTAL: Aboulpharadji; Hayton.
RUMANIAN: Urechi.
SAVOY: Anon. Anciennes Chroniques.
SERVIAN: Abbey of Tronosho; Chronicle of Pek.
VENICE: Bonincontrius; Caroldo; Guazzo; Villani (3).
Venetian Archives (History and Guides to).
Alberi; Baschet; Cecchetti; Mas Latrie; Toderini.
The archives for the fourteenth century are listed in the Alphabetical
Bibliography.
Travellers and Geographers. (Those in italics are contemporary or nearly
contemporary.)
ASIA MINOR: Abulfeda; Ainsworth; Baedeker; Belon; Bergeron; Bertrandon de la
Broquière; Bruun; Busbecq; Chardin; Cholet; Cuinet; Edrisi; Evlia Tchelebi;
Fresne-Canaye; Ghillebert de Launoy; Hadji Khalfa; Hellert; Houzeau; Huart;
Huber; Ibn Batutah; Macarius; Mandeville; Marco Polo; Michelant; Mostras;
Naumann; Nicolay; Ortellius; Ramsay; Rennell; Sarre; Schiltberger; Seiff;
Shehabeddin; Sidi Ali Ibn Hussein; Tavernier; Tchihatcheff; Texeira; Texier;
Trémeaux; Vivien de St. Martin.
Ibn Batutah is the best contemporary authority.
CONSTANTINOPLE AND BALKAN PENINSULA: Abulfeda; Baedeker; Belgrano; Belon;
Bergeron; Boué; Bruun; Busbecq; Clavijo; Hadji Khalfa; Hammer; Hellert;
Huber; Jireček; Macarius; Manutio; Miklositch; Mostras; Nicolay; Olivieri;
Ortellius; Sathas; Schiltberger; Sefert; Sidi Ali Ibn Hussein; Tafel; Tozer.
Clavijo is the best contemporary authority for Constantinople in the latter part
of the reign of Bayezid.
I have listed only those whose works I have referred to, or who seem to me to
have intimate, direct bearing on the subject. Many others, however, could be
consulted to advantage. See Potthast, Bibliotheca Historica Medii Aevi, ii. 1734-
5.
Seljuk Historians.
Ahmed Ibn Yusuf; Houtsma (editor); Ibn-Bibi; Mirkhond (Mirkhwand).
Early Arabic, Persian, and Armenian Historians.
Ahmed Ibn Yusuf; Ahmed Ibn Yahia; Hayton; Ibn al Tiktaka; Ibn Khaldun;
Khondemir; Makrisi; Mirkhond (Mirkhwand); Mohammed-en-Nesawi;
Reshideddin; Texeira; Anon. Derbend Namé.
Ottoman Historians and Chroniclers.
Abdul Aziz; Ahmed Jaudat; Alaeddin Ali (Ibn Kadi Said); Ali (Mustafa Ibn
Ahmed); Ashik-pasha-zadé (Ahmed Ibn Yahia); Atha; Ayas Pasha;
Djelaleddin, Mustapha; Djemaleddin; Djemaleddin-al-Kifty; Djevad bey,
Ahmed; Fehmi; Feridun, Collection of; Geropoldi, Antonio (trans.); Hadji
Khalfa; Hezarfenn, Hussein; Ibn Ali Mohammed Al-Biwy; Idris, Mevlana (of
Bitlis); Kheirullah; Kourbaddinmakky; Mohammed Ferid bey; Moukhlis
Abderrahman; Mustafa; Nedim; Neshri; Nichandji pasha Mehmet; Said;
Seadeddin; Tahir-Zade; Anon. Mira-ari-tarikh.
No authenticated Ottoman records exist for the fourteenth century. The
nearest writers to events are Ashik-pasha-zadé, Idris, Mouklis Abderrahman and
Neshri. The historian enjoying the greatest reputation for authority is Seadeddin.
Western writers on Ottoman Empire before 1600.
Adelman; Aenaeus Sylvius; Alhard; Aretinus (Leonardo Bruni); Augustinus
Caelius; Aventinus; Bertellus; Boecler; Bongars; Busbequius; Cambini;
Camerarius; Campana; Cervarius; Chytraeus; Clavijo; Corregiaio; Cousin
(Cognatus); Crusius; Cuspianus; Donado da Lezze; Drechsler; Egnatius;
Foglietta; Foscarini; Geuffraeus; Giorgievitz; Giovio; Gycaud (ed.); Hoeniger;
Konstantynowicz; Lonicerus; Menavino; Montalbanus; Pfeiffer; Podesta;
Postellus; Ramus; Reusner; Richer; Sabellicus; Sansovino; Schiltberger;
Secundinus; Spandugino; Traut; Anon. Series Imp. Turc. and Tractatus de ritu
et moribus Turc.
Most of the early western books are in Latin, but the authors are Greek,
Italian, French, German, Spanish, Austrian, and Polish. The majority of them are
as early as, if not earlier than, the first Ottoman chroniclers.
Clavijo and Schiltberger are contemporary and eye-witness authorities for the
reign of Bayezid. Konstantynowicz’s book claims to be the memoirs of a
janissary in the reign of Murad II.
Busbequius, Donado da Lezze, Geuffraeus, Giorgievitz, Menavino,
Spandugino, and the author of Tractatus de ritu gained their information firsthand
from living in Turkey.
General Western Ottoman Historians (seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries).
Cantemir (a Rumanian); De la Porte; Du Verdier; Febvre; Formanti; Gibbon;
Knolles; Mignot; Ohsson; Petits de la Croix; Ricaut; Sagredo; Schulz; Servi;
Vanel.
General Western Ottoman Historians (nineteenth century).
Castellan; Collas; Creasy; Dräseke; Ebeling; Errante; Fehmi (a Turk); Ganem (a
Syrian); Hammer; Hertzberg; Jonquière; Jorga; Jouannin; La Garde de Dieu;
Lamartine; Lane-Poole; Lavallée; Lüdemann; Rambaud; Salaberry, de; Wirth;
Wüstenfeld; Zinkeisen.
Hammer and Zinkeisen wrote the exhaustive and authoritative histories of the
nineteenth century. The splendid work of Professor Jorga, of the University of
Bucarest, belongs to our own twentieth century, and is the most important
contribution of contemporary scholarship to the history of the Balkan peninsula
under Ottoman domination. But none of these three authoritative historians pays
particular attention to the actual foundation of the Ottoman Empire. Dräseke and
Rambaud have only touched upon the problems involved in reconstructing the
fourteenth century period.
Mongol and Tartar History.
Aboul-Ghazi-Bahadour; Bonaparte; Bretschneider; Cahun; Chavannes; Dorn;
Erdmann; Guignes; Hammer; Hirth; Howorth; Khondemir; Mohammed en
Newasi; Reshideddin; Vambéry; Wolff.
Byzantine Empire and Frankish and Italian Greece.
Ameilhon; Arabantinos; Berger de Xivrey; Byzantine Historians (see under
Alphabetical Bibliography, on p. 367); Curtius; Djelal; Ducange; Finlay;
Florinsky; Gibbon; Gregorovius; Hammer; Hase; Hertzberg; Hody; Hopf;
Kampouroglou; Karamzin; Lampros; Lüdemann; Migne; Miller; Moncada;
Moniferratos; Mullach; Müller; Muntaner; Niebuhr; Paparregopoulos; Parisot;
Rodd; Sathas; Stritter; Tafel; Tozer. (See also Slavs of Balkan Peninsula.)
Collections of Byzantine writers.
Bonn (Niebuhr); Migne; Paris (Louvre) and Venice.
Historians and Chroniclers of Rumania.
Cantemir; Costin; Hasdeu; Miller; Picot; Urechi; Xénopol.
Costin and Urechi are nearest the events.
Slavs of Balkan Peninsula.
Borchgrave; Daničić; Dlugosz; Drinov; Engel; Florinsky; Guérin-Songeon;
Jireček; Kállay; Kanitz; Konstantynowicz; Miller; Orbini; Pray; Pučić; Raić;
Ranke; Safařík (Schaffarik); Thallóczy. (See also under Kossova and
Nicopolis.)
No contemporary writers.
Hungary (including biographers of Sigismund).
Acsady; Aschbach; Beckmann; Bonfinius; Engel; Fessler; Furnhaber; Fvaknói;
Kern; Kupelwieser; Levec; Maélath; Maurer; Pór; Pray; Sambucus;
Schoenherr; Schwandtner; Szálay; Szentkláráy; Szilagyi; Theiner; Thurocz;
Vambéry; Wenzel. (See also under Kossova and Nicopolis.)
Venice.
Agostini; Barbaro; Bembo; Berchet; Bonincontrius; Caresino; Caroldo; Cicogna;
Dandolo; Daru; Guazzo; Hazlitt; Hodgson; Mas Latrie; Romanin; Sanuto;
Sismondi; Villani; Anon. Cronica Dolfina.
Genoa.
Belgrano; Canale; Giustiniani; Sauli; Sismondi; Stella.
Other Italian cities.
Cambiano; Datta; Gattaro; Guichenon; Müller; Sismondi; Anon. Anciennes
Chroniques de Savoye and Monumenta Pisana.
Collections of Italian writers.
Muratori; Tartini.
Rhodes.
Bosio; Caoursin; Vertot.
Cyprus.
Bustron; Macairas; Mas Latrie.
Papal Archives, Guide to Brom.
Papal relations and Crusades against Turks.
Baluze; Bernino; Boislisle; Bongars; Bosio; Bosquet; Caoursin; Cribellus; Datta;
Delaville Leroulx; Dozy; Dräseke; Eubel; Jorga; Kunstmann; Lardito; Lot; Le
Quien; Mas Latrie; Mézières; Molinier; Paris; Petrarca; Postansque;
Raimboult; Raynaldus; Sanudo; Stewart; Theiner; Thomas; Torez; Wylie.
See note above under Collections of Contemporary Papal Records.
Kossova.
Avril; Mijatovitch; Novakovitch; Pavitch.
Nicopolis.
Brauner; Froissart; Kiss; Koehler; Rez; Schiltberger; Szentkláráy; Anon.
Relation ... par un serviteur de Gui de Blois.
Relating to Timur.
Abderrezzah; Arabshah; Clavijo; Hayton; Hussein Abu Halib; Langlès; Mexia;
Mezdob; Moranvillé; Nazmi Zadé; Perondino; Sherefeddin; Silvestre de Sacy;
White; Anon. Dominican Friar and Memoirs of Tamerlane.
Arabshah, Clavijo, Sherefeddin, the Dominican friar and the Memoirs
(possibly) are contemporary.
Art and Architecture.
Djelal; Franz; Karabacek; Kuhnel; Lavoix; Migeon; Parvillée; Saladin.
Literature and Languages and Oriental Ethnology.
Alberi; Aristov; Dethier; Dieterici; Donner; Dufresne; Fejér; Huart; Jacob;
Koelle; Krumbacher; Kúnos; Liliencron; Miklositch; Mordtmann; Mullach;
Nemeth; Pavitch; Rémusat; Toderini; Vambéry. (See also under Kossova and
Nicopolis.)
Commercial History.
Charrière; Cornet; Delaville Leroulx; Depping; Heyd; Jorga; Mas Latrie;
Pigeonneau; Schanz; Tafel.
Black Death.
Covino; Hecker.
Covino is a contemporary.
II. ALPHABETICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
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CABASILAS, S. Editor of Martin Crusius.
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Excellent for relations of Piedmont with the Levant up to 1560.
CAMBINI, ANDREA. Commentario della origine de’ Turchi et imperio della casa
ottomanna. Florence, 1527, 12mo (2nd ed. s. l., 1537). Also published in
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CAMERARIUS, JOACHIMUS. De rebus turcicis commentarii duo accuratissimi, a filiis
... collecti ac editi. Frankfort, 1598, fol.
CAMPANA, CESARE. Compendio historico ... con un sommario dell’origine de’
Turchi, e vite di tutti i prencipi di casa ottomanna.... Venice, 1597, 8vo.
CANALE, MICHEL GIUSEPPE. Nuova istoria della repubblica di Genova. Florence,
1858-64. 4 vols. 16mo.
CANTACUZENOS, JOHN. See under Byzantine Historians.
CANTEMIR, DEMETRIUS. Istoria imperiului Ottomanu. Rumanian trans. from Latin,
by Joseph Hodosiu. Bucharest, 1876. 2 vols. la. 8vo. Eng. trans. from orig. MS.
by N. Tindal, London, 1734, 2 vols. 4to. French trans., Paris, 1734; German,
Hamburg, 1735.
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found in his Opera, Ulm, 1496, fol. Anon. English trans. under title: History of
Turkish Wars with Rhodians, Venetians, &c.... written by Will Caoursin and
Khodja Afendy, a Turk. London, 1683, 8vo.
CARESINO, RAPHAEL. Continued Dandolo’s Cronica in Muratori, vol. xii.
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CASTELLAN, A. L. Moeurs, usages, costumes des Othomans et abrégé de leur
histoire. Paris, 1812. 6 vols., 18mo.
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commentarii. Florence, 1590, 8vo.
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Clauser and recension by I. Bekker (for Bonn edition).
I have found the Latin trans. very incorrect in many places: there are frequent
glosses. (See Appendix A, first footnote.)
CHAMPS, EUSTACHE DES. [Oe]uvres inédites de ..., ed. by Tarbé. Paris, 1849, 8vo
(vol. i).
CHARDIN, JEAN. Voyage en Perse et autres lieux de l’Orient. Amsterdam, 1711. 10
vols. 12mo.
CHARRIÈRE, ERNEST. Négociations de la France dans le Levant, ou
Correspondances, mémoires et actes diplomatiques des ambass. de France à
Constantinople, ... Venise, Raguse, &c. Paris, 1848-60. 4 vols. 4to.
CHAUVIN, VICTOR. French trans. of Dozy’s Essay on Islam.
CHAVANNES, ÉDOUARD. Documents sur les Tou-kioue occidentaux. With map
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CHEVALIER, ULYSSE. Répertoire des sources historiques du Moyen Age. (Nouvelle
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Most complete reference work in existence for bibliography of 14th Century
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1892, 8vo.
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enarracion del Viage de la Embaxada que Gonzalez le hizó, por mandada del
muy poderoso Señor Rey Don Henrique el Tercero de Castilla. Seville, 1582,
fol. Madrid, 1782, 4to. English trans., by Clements R. Markham, in Hakluyt
series, London, 1859, 4to. Russian trans., by L. Sreznavski, Petrograd, 1881,
8vo.
2. Extracts from above, describing Constantinople in 1403, translated into
French with notes by Bruun, Philip, under whom it is listed.
COGNATUS. See Cousin.
COLLAS, LOUIS. Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman. Paris, 1862, 16mo. Republished
1880, 1898. Fourth edition, revised by E. Driault, Paris, 1913, 32mo.
COLOTENDI. French trans. of Texeira.
CORREGIAIO, DON MARCO U. Della vera maniera del vincere il Turco. Padova,
1571, 12mo.
COURNAND, Abbé. French trans. of Abbé Toderini.
COUSIN, GILBERT. Gilberti Cognati Chronicon Sultanorum et principum Turciae
serie continua usque ad Solymannum magnum. Frankfort, 1558, 8vo.
Best consulted in vol. i, pp. 399 f., of Opera in 3 tomos digesta, Basel, 1562,
fol.
COVINO, SYMON DE. Bibl. Nat., Paris, MSS., fonds latin 8369-70: contemporary
account of the Black Death of 1348 by a Paris physician, mostly in form of a
hexameter poem.
CREASY, SIR EDWARD S. History of the Ottoman Turks. New ed. London, 1877,
12mo.
This abridgement of von Hammer has no historical value. It contains,
however, an admirable chapter by Creasy himself on the legislation of
Mohammed II.
CRIBELLUS, LEODRISIUS. De expeditione Pii papae II in Turcas libri duo. In
Muratori, xxiii. 21-80.
From MS. in secret archives.
CRUSIUS, MARTIN. Turco-Graeciae libri octo ... quibus Graecorum status sub
imperio Turcico in politia et ecclesia ... describitur.... Edidit S. Cabasilas.
Basel, 1584, fol.
Book I contains political hist. of Constantinople from 1391 to 1578.
CUINET, VITAL. La Turquie d’Asie. Paris, 1890-5. 4 vols. la. 8vo.
CURTIUS, ERNEST. Griechische Geschichte. 6th ed. Berlin, 1887-9, 3 vols. 8vo.
French trans. of 5th ed., by A. Bouché-Leclercq, Paris, 1883-4. 5 vols. 8vo.
Greek trans. by S. P. Lampros, Athens, 1898-1901. (Βιβλιοθήκη Μαρασλῆ.) 6
vols. 8vo.
The last volume, in all editions, covers our period.
CUSA, S. Ex codicum orient. qui in R. Bibl. Panormi asservantur catalogo.
Panorma, 1878, 8vo.
CUSPIANUS, JOHANNES. 1. De Turcarum origine, religione et tyrannide. Leyden,
1654, 12mo (1st ed., Antwerp, 1541, fol.).
2. Oratio protreptica: qua Christiani ad bellum Turcicum excitantur. 1527. In
Camerarius, fol. ed. of Frankfort, 1598.
CZINÁR, M. Index to Fejér’s Codex Diplomaticus.
DANDOLO, ANDREA. Cronica. (Venetian history from earliest times to 1339.
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DANIČIĆ, GJURO. Rječik iz kniřevnich starina srpskich (Dictionary of the minor
Old Servian Chronicles). Belgrade, 1863-4. 3 vols. 8vo.
DANIELL, F. H. B. Collab. with Forster in editing and trans. Busbecq.
DARU, PIERRE ANTOINE. Histoire de Venise. Paris, 1819. 7 vols. 8vo.
DATTA, P. Spedizione in Oriente di Amadeo VI conte di Savoia. Turin, 1826, 8vo.
DAVY, MAJOR WILLIAM. English trans. of Prof. White’s ed. of Persian text of
Timur’s memoirs.
DAWSON. English trans. of Nicolay’s Voyages.
DÉFRÉMÉRY, CHARLES. Editor of Mirkhond’s Hist. of Sultans of Kharesm; and
French trans. of Khondemir and Ibn Batutah.
DE GOEJE, M. J., and DE JONG, P. Catalogus codicum orient Bibl. Acad. Lugduno-
Batavae. Leyden, 1865. 3 vols. 8vo.
DE LA PORTE, Abbé(?). Tableau de l’Emp. ottoman, où on trouve tout ce qui
concerne la religion, la milice, le gouv. civil, et les grandes charges et dignités
de l’Empire. Frankfort, 1757, 12mo.
DELAVILLE LEROULX, J. La France en Orient au XIVe siècle. Paris, 1868. 2 vols.
8vo.
Vol. ii contains ‘pièces justificatives’ and admirable bibliography.
DEPPING, J.-B. Histoire du commerce entre le Levant et l’Europe depuis les
Croisades jusqu’à la fondation d’Amérique. Paris, 1830. 2 vols. 8vo.
DERENBOURG, HARTWIG. Les manuscrits arabes de l’Escurial. Paris, 1884.
(Uncompleted.)
DESCHAMPS, EUSTACHE. OEuvres inédites d’Eustache Deschamps. Éd. par P. Tarbé.
Reims, 1849, 2 vols. 8vo.
Volume i. 164-6 contains the remarkable ballads on the battle of Nicopolis.
DESMAISONS, BARON. Trans. into French and edited Abul-Ghazi.
DETHIER, P.-A. (in collab. with Mordtmann). Epigraphie von Byzanz und
Konstantinopel (up to 1453). Vienna, 1864, 4to.
DHERBELOT DE MOLAINVILLE. Bibliothèque orientale. Paris, 1697, fol.
DIETERICH, KARL. Byzantinische Quellen zur Länder-und Völkerkunde (5.-15.
Jhd.). Leipzig, 1912. 2 vols. 4to.
Selections, translated into German. In our field, at least, not well chosen, and
of little value to the serious student.
DIETERICI, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH. Chrestomathie ottomane, précédée de tableaux
grammaticaux et suivie d’un glossaire turco-français. Berlin, 1854, 8vo.
DIEZ, H. F. VON. German trans. of Sidi-Ali.
DJELAL, ESSAD. Constantinople de Byzance à Stamboul: traduit du turc par
l’auteur. Paris, 1909, la. 8vo.
Very unsatisfactory from historical and archaeological point of view for early
Ottoman and Byzantine periods: but the second part gives an interesting study of
Ottoman architecture of the post-conquest period.
DJELALEDDIN, MUSTAPHA. Les Turcs anciens et modernes. Constantinople, 1869,
8vo.
DJEMALEDDIN. Osmanli Tarikh. (Ott. hist. with bibliographical notice of the
Ottoman historians.) Constantinople, 1896, 8vo.
DJEMALEDDIN-AL-KIFTY. MS. of Seljuk hist. up to 1245 in Konia. Kasan MS., no.
155.
DJEVAD bey, AHMED (Colonel). État militaire ottoman, depuis la fondation de
l’Emp. jusqu’à nos jours.... Trans. into French by Georges Macrides. Only
volume which has appeared is: Le Corps des Janissaires depuis sa création
jusqu’à sa suppression. Constantinople, 1882, 8vo. With album 4to containing
311 pictures and designs.
Col. Djevad is the only writer who has used the oldest documents in the
Ottoman Ministry of War.
DJEVDET, Effendi. ‘Coup d’oeil sur les monnaies musulmanes.’ Trans. from
Turkish by Barbier de Meynard in Journal asiatique for 1862, p. 183.
DJUVARA, T. J. Cent projets de partage de la Turquie, 1281-1913. Paris, 1913,
8vo.
DLUGOSZ, JOHANN. Historiae polonicae libri XII. Ed. by J. G. Krauss, with extra
book, also in Latin, containing extracts from other early Polish writers.
Leipzig, 1711-12. 2 vols. fol.
DOCHEZ, LOUIS. French trans., abridged, of Hammer.
DOMENICHI, LUDOVICO. Italian trans. of Giorgievitz.
DONADO DA LEZZE. Historia turchesca. (1300-1514.) Edited, with notes in
Rumanian, by Dr. I. Ursu. Bucharest, 1909, 8vo.
This is a collation of two MSS., Bibl. Nat., fonds ital. 1238, and Arch. Nat.
Fr., Aff. étrangères, Turquie, no. 2, fol. 410-517.
DONNER, O. Sur l’origine de l’alphabet turc. In the Suomalais-Ugrilaisen Seuran
Aikakanskirja (Journal of the Finno-Ougrian Society), xiv. Helsingfors, 1896,
8vo.
DOREZ, LÉON. Editor of fragments of Sanudo the Elder in conjunction with
Roncière, and translator into French of Morosini’s Cronica.
DORN, B. 1. Muhammedanische Quellen zur Geschichte der südlichen
Küstenländer des Kaspischen Meeres. Shireddin, Ali ben Shemseddin and
Abul Fallah Fumeni, trans. and annotated by Dr. Dorn. 4th volume contains
short stories of Khans by Persian, Arabic, and Turkish writers. Petrograd and
Leipzig, 1850-8. 4 vols. 8vo.
2. Die Sammlung von morgenl. HSS. zu St. Petersburg. (Including Kasan
MSS.) Petrograd, 1866, 8vo.
DOZY, REINHART P. A. 1. Essai sur l’hist. de l’Islamisme. Trans. from Dutch by
Victor Chauvin. Leyden, 1879, 8vo.
2. Cat. Cod. orient. Bibl. Acad. Lugd. Batav. Leyden, 1851-77. 6 vols. 8vo.
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wissensch. Theologie, 1891.
2. ‘Der Uebergang der Osmanen nach Europa im XIV. Jahrhundert.’ In Neues
Jahrbuch für das klassische Altertum, xxxi, p. 7, fol.
DRECHSLER, WOLFGANG. Chronicon Saracenicum et Turcicum. With additions by
Reiskius and Bosio. Leipzig, 1689, 8vo. The original Chronicon is printed in
Sansovino, i. 207-17, and in Augustinus Caelius, pp. 73-90.
DRINOV, M. S. The origin of the Bulgarians and the commencement of their
history. (In Bulgarian.) Philippopolis, 1839, 8vo.
DUCANGE, CHARLES. 1. Historia Byzantina. Paris, 1680, fol. Ibid., ed. par Buchon,
Paris, 1826. 2 vols. 8vo.
2. Histoire de Constantinople sous les emp. français. Paris, 1659, fol.
DUCAS, JOHANNES. See under Byz. Historians.
DUDIK, B. Auszüge aus päpstlichen Regesten für Oesterreichs Geschichte, von
1308-1604. In Archiv für Oest. Gesch., xv, 185 f.
DUFRESNE, C. Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae graecitatis. Paris,
1682, 2 vols. fol. Leyden, 1688. 2 vols. fol.
DU PONT, Mlle. Editor of Wavrin’s Chronique d’Engleterre.
DU VERDIER, GILBERT SAULNIER. Histoire générale des Turcs. With Sultans’
portraits. Paris, 1653. 2 vols. 12mo; 3rd ed. 1662. Paris, 1665. 3 vols. 12mo.
Lyon, 1682. 3 vols. 12mo. Ital. trans. by Ferdinando Servi, with additions from
1647 to 1662. Venice, 1662, 4to.
EBELING, FRIED. WILHELM. Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches in Europa.
Leipzig, 1854, 8vo.
ECKHARDT, FRANZ. German trans. of Thallóczy, L.
EDRISI, MOHAMMED (Sherif). Géographie, traduite par A. Jaubert, Paris, 1836-40.
2 vols. 4to. Latin trans. by Gabriel Sionita and John Hesronita. Paris, 1619, 4to.
Arabic title: ‘The jewels touching the division of the countries.’ Hadji Khalfa,
no. 12734, fol. 2142-3, says this work was composed for Roger of Sicily.
EGNATIUS, JO. BAPTISTA. De origine Turcarum. Paris, 1539, 12 mo.
EICHORN, J. G. Repertorium für biblische und morgenländische Litteratur.
Leipzig, 1777-86. 9 vols. 8vo.
ENGEL, ARTHUR (in collaboration with Raymond Serrure). Traité de numismatique
du moyen âge. Paris, 1891-1905. 3 vols., la. 8vo.
Vol. iii contains for our period coins of Balkan States, pp. 1399-1427; of Byz.
Emp. and Trebizond, pp. 1408-9; and of emirates of Asia Minor, pp. 1421-2.
ENGEL, JOHANN CHRISTIAN VON. 1. Geschichte des Ungrischen Reichs und seiner
Nebenländer. Halle, 1797-1804. 5 vols. 4to. I. Geschichte des alten Pannoniens
und der Bulgarey (1797). II. Staatskunde und Gesch. von Dalmatien, Croatien
und Slawonien (1798). III. Gesch. von Servien und Bosnien (1801). IV. Gesch.
der Moldau und Walachey (2 vols., 1804).
2. Geschichte des Freystaates Ragusa. Vienna, 1807, 8vo.
ENGUERRAN DE MONSTRELET. Chronique. Ed. by Douël d’Arcq. (Vol. i.) Paris,
1857, 8vo.
ERDMANN, FRANZ VON. Temudschin der unerschütterliche. Life of Djenghiz Khan.
Leipzig, 1862, 8vo.
Pp. 172-84 contain translation of Resheddin, giving account of tribes of Asia
at accession of D. K., which Erdmann had previously published as a trans. at
Kasan, 1841.
ERRANTE, VINCENZO. Storia dell’ Impero osmano. Rome, 1882-3. 2 vols. 16mo.
EUBEL, CONRAD. Hierarchia Catholica Medii Aevi, sire Summorum pontificum, ...
cardinalium, ecclesiarum antistitum series, ab anno 1198 ad annum 1431
perducta. Regensburg, 1898, 1901. 2 vols. 4to.
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Constantinople. Bulak (Cairo), 1848, 8vo.
2. Siyyah Nameh. Constantinople, various editions. Narratives of Travels in
Europe, Asia, and Africa. Trans. by Joseph von Hammer. London, 1834-50. 2
vols. 4to.
FABRICIUS, J. A. Bibliotheca latina mediae et infimae aetatis. Hamburg, 1734-46.
6 vols. 8vo. Florence, 1856. 6 vols. 8vo. (A reprint of Mansi’s 1754 Padua
edition.)
FALLMERAYER, JAKOB P. Editor of Michel Panaretos.
FEBVRE, MICHELE. Teatro della Turchia, dove si rappresentano i disordini di essa,
il genio, la natura et i costumi di 14 nazioni che l’habitano.... Milan, 1681, 4to.
Venice, 1684, 4to. French trans. by author, Paris, 1682, 4to.
FEHMI, YOUSSOUF. Histoire de la Turquie. Paris, 1909, 8vo.
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1829-44. 43 vols. 8vo. Chron. tables by K. Knaus, Buda, 1862, 8vo. Index by
M. Czinár, Buda, 1866, 8vo.
2. Croatiae ac Slavoniae cum regno Hung. nexus et relationes. Buda, 1839,
8vo.
3. A Kunok eredete. (The Cumani.) Pest, 1850, 8vo.
4. Editor of Pray’s Commentarii.
FERIDUN, Collection of. Letters and answers of Ottoman Sultans to eastern
monarchs and to their own subjects. Paris, MS. anc. fonds turc, Bibl. Nat., 79.
Printed in Constantinople, 1847, 2 vols. fol. For list of letters, with description
of contents, see Langlès, in Notices et Extraits, v. 668-9.
FESSLER, IGNAZ AURELIUS. Geschichte von Ungarn. German trans. from
Hungarian by Ernest Klein. 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1867-83. 5 vols. 8vo. (Vol. ii
contains 1301-1457.) Publ. 1869.
FEVRET, A. Collab. with G. Auboyneau in compiling bibliography for Ottoman
History.
FINLAY, GEORGE. History of Greece from the Conquest by the Romans to 1864.
Edited by H. F. Tozer. Oxford, 1877. 7 vols. 8vo. (Vol. iv contains mediaeval
Greece and the empire of Trebizond.)
FIORINI, VITTORIO. Editor of new edition of Muratori.
FIRNHABER, FRIEDRICH. ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte Ungarns.’ In the Archiv zur
Kunde österreichischer Geschichtsquellen, 1849.
FITZCLARENCE, GEORGE (assisted by A. Sprenger). Kitab Fihrist al-Koutoub. (A
catalogue of Arabic, Persian and Turkish books relating to the art of war and to
history.) S. l., c. 1840, 8vo.
FLORINSKY, P. T. 1. Joujnie Slaviane i Visantia vo vloroi tchetverti XIV veka. (The
South Slavs and Byzantium in the 2nd quarter of the 14th cent.) 2nd ed.
Petrograd, 1882. 2 vols. 8vo.
2. The Younger Andronicus and John Cantacuzenos (in Russian). Journal of
the Ministry of Public Instruction, Petrograd. July 1879.
FLÜGEL, GUSTAV. 1. Die arab., pers. und türk. Handschriften der k.-k. Hofbibl. zu
Wien. Vienna, 1865-7. 3 vols. 8vo.
2. Latin trans. of Hadji Khalfa’s bibliographical lexicon.
FOGLIETTA, UBERTO. 1. De causis magnitudinis Imperii Turcici. Leipzig, 1594,
12mo. (1st ed., Rome, 1574.)
2. Historia Genuensium libri XII. Genoa, 1585, 4to.
FORMANTI, NERIOLAVA. Raccolta delle historie delle vite degl’ imperatori ottomani
sino a Mehemet IV regnante.... Venice, 1684, 4to.
FORSTER, C. T. Ed. and trans. Busbecq in collab. with Daniell.
FOSCARINI, LUDOVICO. Writings against the Turks found in Agostini, i. 65-107.
FRACASSETTI, J. Editor of Petrarch’s Letters: Italian trans. of the Senilium.
FRAEHN, C. 1. Indications bibl. relatives ... à la litt. historico-géograph. des
Arabes, des Persans et des Turcs. Petrograd, 1845, 8vo (Russian and French in
parallel columns).
2. Fraehn was the first editor of Abul-Ghazi.
FRANCK, SEBASTIAN. German trans. of anon. Tractatus de ritu et moribus
Turcarum.
FRANKE, O. Beiträge aus chinesischen Quellen zur Kenntnis der Türkvölker und
Skythen Zentralasiens. In Abhandlungen der K. preuss. Akad. der
Wissenschaften. Berlin, 1904, 4to.
FRANZ pasha, JULIUS. Die Baukunst des Islam. 3rd vol. of 3rd part of the
Handbuch der Architektur. Darmstadt, 1887, la. 8vo.
FRENZEL, C. Ramon Muntaner. Berlin, 1852, 8vo. Halle, 1854, la. 8vo.
FRESNE-CANAYE. Voyage du Levant. Edited by H. Hauser. Paris, 1897, 4to.
FRIEDLÄNDER, JULIUS (in collab. with Pinder). Beiträge zur älteren Münzkunde.
Berlin, 1851.
FROISSART. Chroniques. 1. J. A. C. Buchon, ed. Paris, 1835. 3 vols. 8vo.
2. Luce, S., ed. up to 1377. Paris, 1869-82. 8 vols. 8vo. Continued and
finished by Gaston Raynaud. Paris, 1884-99. 3 vols. 8vo.
3. Kervyn de Lettenhove, ed. Bruxelles, 1870-77. 25 vols. 8vo. Vol. xv
(1871), 1393-6; vol. xvi (1872), 1397-1400.
GAGNIER, J. Latin trans. of Pocock MS. of Abulfeda.
GALLAND, ANTOINE. Translations in MS. in Bibl. Nat., Paris, of Seadeddin, of
Mirkhond’s Hist. of Djenghiz Khan, and of Abderrezzah (2 separate
translations).
GANEM, HALIL. Les Sultans ottomans. Paris, 1901. 2 vols. 8vo.
GARNIER, J. Chambre de comptes de Bourgogne, in ‘Inventaire-Sommaire des
archives départementales, Côte-d’Or, arch, civ.’ Dijon, 1878.
GATARO, ANDREA. Historia Padovana, 1311-1506. In Muratori, xvii. 1-944.
GAUDIER, JOHANNES. German trans. of Ali Muhieddin.
GELČIĆ, JOSEPH. 1. Monumenta Ragusina. Libri reformationum Tomus v (1301-
36). In Mon. spect. hist. Slavorum merid., vol. xxix. Agram, 1897, 4to.
2. Collab. with Thallóczy in Relat. Ragus. cum regno Hung.
GÉRAUD, HERCULE, Ed. Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis de 1113 à 1300.
Paris, 1843, 8vo.
GEROPOLDI, ANTONIO. Bilancia historico-politica dell’ impero ottomano, &c.
Venice, 1686, 4to. Contains: Annali de’ Sultani Osmanidi scritti dal Gran
Cancellier ALI: portati da C/poli all’imp. Ferdinando l’anno 1551 da Girolamo
Bek da Leopoldstorf: Per ordine di Cesare tradotti in tedesco da Giovanni
Gaudier Interprete Cesareo, in Latino da Giovanni Leunclavio, etc. Corretti
poi, e confrontati con nuovi MSS. dall’ Auttore.
This is Ali Muhieddin. See under Ali (Mustafa Ibn Ahmed) above, and note
accompanying. Also under Zenker.
GEUFFRAEUS, ANTONIUS (or GEUFFROY). (Cheval. de S. Jean de Jérusalem.) Briefve
description de la court du Grant Turc et ung sommaire du règne des
Othmans.... Paris, 1543, 4to. (Reprinted in Schéfer’s ed. of Spandugino.) Latin
trans. by W. Godelevoeus in Historia Belli Cyprii and in Petro Bizara, Bellum
Pannonicum, Basel, 1573, 1578, 1596. German trans. by Nicolaus H. von
Tauber, Basel, same dates. English trans. by R. Grafton, London, 1546. Italian
trans., Florence, 1551.
GHALIB, ISMAIL. Imperial Museum: Catalogue of old Moslem coins. (In Turkish.)
Constantinople, 1894, 8vo.
GHILLEBERT DE LANNOY. OEuvres de ——, Voyageur, diplomate et moraliste ...
recueillies et publiées par Ch. Potvin. Notes géogr. et carte par J.-C. Houzeau.
Louvain, 1878, 8vo.
GIBBON, EDWARD. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Ed. J. B. Bury.
London, 1896-1900. 7 vols. 8vo.
GIORGIEVITZ, BARTOLOMEO. 1. Prophetia de maometani et altre cose turchesche.
Trans. by L. Domenichi. Florence, 1548, 12mo.
2. Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Italian trans., in Lonicerus, vol. i.
3. De origine imperii Turcarum eorumque administ. et disciplina. Wittenberg,
1560, fol. Reprinted 1562. Also in Lonicerus, vol. i. Trans. into Dutch, 1544.
(For editions, see Hauser ed. of Fresne-Canaye, p. 318.)
GIOVIO, PAOLO. 1. Commentario delle cose de’ Turchi.... Addressed to Emperor
Charles V. Rome, 1535; Venice, 1540; in Sansovino, pp. 226-45.
2. Origo Turcici imperii, vitae omnium Turc. imperatorum, ordo ac disciplina
Turcarum militiae exactissime conscripta. Ex Italico Latinus factus Francisco
Bassianate interprete. Paris, 1539, 12mo.
3. Vida del Gran Tamerlan. Spanish trans. by Gaspar de Baeca, in Clavijo.
GIUSTINIANI, AGOSTINO. Annali della repubblica di Genova. Genoa, 1537, fol.
Modern edition, Genoa, 1855. 2 vols. 8vo.
GODEFROY, THÉODORE. Editor of Jean d’Ursins and of Le Livre des faits de
Boucicaut.
GODELEVOEUS, W. Latin trans, of Geuffracus.
GOESANUS. See Ramus, Johannes.
GOLIUS, JACOB. Editor of Elzevir edition of text of Arabshah.
GONZÁLES. See Clavijo.
GREGORAS, NICEPHOROS. See under Byzantine Historians, p. 367.
GREGOROVIUS, FERDINAND. Geschichte der Stadt Athen im Mittelalter, von der Zeit
Justinian’s bis zur türk. Eroberung. Stuttgart, 1889. 2 vols. la. 8vo. Greek
trans., with notes, by Lampros, S. P., Athens, 1904. 2 vols. 8vo. (In Βιβλιοθήκη
Μαρασλῆ.)
GREIFFENHAG, ANDRÉ MÜLLER. Latin trans. of Hayton.
GRIGORIEFF. French trans. of Khondemir.
GUAZZO, MARCO. Cronica. Venice, 1553, fol.
GUÉRIN-SONGEON. Histoire de la Bulgarie depuis ses origines jusqu’à nos jours
(485-1913). Paris, 1913, 8vo.
GUICHENON, S. Histoire généalogique de la royale maison de Savoye (999-1643).
Lyons, 1660, 3 vols. 4to.
GUIGNES, JOSEPH DE. Histoire générale des Huns, des Turcs et des Mongols. Paris,
1756-8. 5 vols. 4to.
GUYARD, STANISLAS. Collab. with Reinaud in French trans. of Abulfeda.
GYCAUD, B. (publisher). La Généalogie du Grand-Turc, ... avec l’origine des
princes, &c. Lyon, 1570, fol.
HADJI KHALFA, MUSTAFA IBN ABDALLAH, KIATIB TCHELEBI. 1. Djihannuma (mirror
of the world). A Universal geography, but does not include Europe. Uses 19
Arabic sources, but principally Abulfeda. Printed in Turkish, Constantinople,
1732, fol. Latin trans. in MS. by Mathias Norberg, at Lund, Sweden (see
Toderini, iii. 135). French trans. in MS. by M. Armain, in Bibl. Nat., Paris,
fonds français, nouv. acq., nos. 888-9, with exhaustive index, and splendid
introduction on life and work of Hadji Khalfa.
2. Geography of Balkan peninsula, trans. by Hammer under title Rumeli und
Bosna, Vienna, 1812.
3. Kitab Kyachfaddyunoun an atamy alkontoub alfounoun: The Clearing of
doubts concerning the names of books and sciences. A bibliographical
dictionary, in Arabic, containing 13,494 titles, and referring to 25,614 works.
Latin trans. from Vienna, Paris, and Berlin MSS. by Gustavus Flügel. London,
1835-42. 3 vols. 4to. French trans. in MS. in Bibl. Nat., Paris, fonds arabe, 4462-
4, by Petits de la Croix, 3 vols. la. fol., with minute index. M. de la Croix rightly
boasted of his work that it was ‘traduit, recueilly et redigé avec grand travail, et
grande assiduité et exactitude’. Arabic original in parallel columns.
4. Tuhfatu’l-Kibar fi Esfari’l-Bihar. History of the Maritime Wars of the
Osmanlis. Publ. at Constantinople, with 7 maps, 1729, fol. A French translation
of this printed edition by La Rocque is in the Leyden Library, MSS. orientaux,
no. 1599. It is called: ‘Histoire des conquêtes des Ottomans sur les Chrétiens tant
dans la mer Noire que dans la mer Méditerranée avec les noms des places et les
circonstances des victoires.’ First part trans. into English by James Mitchell.
London, 1831, 4to.
5. Takvimi-Tevarikh. Chronological Hist., in Turkish, Persian, and Arabic.
Constantinople, 1733, fol. Italian trans. by Rinaldo Carli, Venice, 1697, 4to.
Zenker, following Reiske, regards Carli’s trans. as incorrect and unfaithful.
But Toderini, iii. 145, vigorously defends Carli from this charge. Hadji Khalfa,
in Dict. Bibl., no. 3474, fol. 553, calls this work of his ‘the erection of histories’,
and describes how he compiled it.
HALLE, J. Hungarica et Turcica ... betreffende Bücher und HSS., &c. Kat. XXXV.
Munich, 1907.
169 titles before 1550 listed.
HAMMER, JOSEPH VON. 1. Geschichte des Osmanischen Reichs. Pest, 1827-34. 10
vols. 8vo. French trans. by Hellert, in collab. with author. Paris, 1843. 18 vols.
8vo and atlas, la. fol. French abridged trans. by Dochez, Paris, 1844. 3 vols., la.
8vo. Also Italian trans. by Antonelli, Venice, 1829. Concise English
abridgment by Creasy.
2. Trans. of Hadji Khalfa’s geography of Balkans under title: Rumeli und
Bosna.
3. English trans. of Evlia Tchelebi’s voyages.
4. Geschichte der Goldenen Horde. Buda-Pest, 1840.
5. De byzantinae historiae ultimis scriptoribus ex historia Osmanica
elucidandis. In Commentationes of Kön. Akademie der Wiss., Göttingen, 1823-
7.
6. Study on Ahmed-ibn-Yahia-ibn-Ashik pasha, in Journ. asiatique, vol. iv.
HARTMANN, R. Editor of Encyclopédie de l’Islam. See Houtsma et al.
HASDEU. Istoria critica a rominilor. Bucharest, 1875, 8vo.
HASE, C. B. See Manuel II Palaeologos.
HAUSER, H. Editor of Fresne-Canaye’s Voyage.
HAYTON, FRÈRE JEHAN. 1. Le Livre des merveilles et des royaumes. Illuminated
MS. Bibl. Nat., fonds fr., no. 2810 réserve. A trans. into French by Nicolas
Salcon, who received the story from the author’s own mouth. Les Fleurs des
histoires de la terre dorient compillées par frère Hayton ... cousin du Roy
Darménie, par le commandement du Pape. La première partie contient la sit.
des royaulmes dorient environ 1300. Paris, 1475, 4to. Also in Bergeron.
2. Historia Tartarorum. In MS. Leyden, fonds latin, no. 66; Oxford, cod.
Ashmol., no. 342.
HAZLITT, WM. C. The Venetian Republic. New ed. London, 1900. 2 vols. 8vo.
HECKER, J. F. K. Der schwarze Tod im 14ten Jahrhundert. Berlin, 1832.
HELLERT, J. J. Trans. into French and edited Hammer. Made atlas to go with his
translation.
HELMOLDUS OF BUZOVIA. Chronica Slavorum, seu Annales. Edited by Reiner
Reineccius. Frankfort, 1581, fol.
All except first two books written by Arnold of Lübeck. About Slavs of
central Europe in relation to Holy Roman Empire. Helmoldus’s chronicle ends
1150.
HERTZBERG, GUSTAV FERDINAND. Geschichte der Byzantiner und des Osmanischen
Reiches bis gegen Ende des 16ten Jahrhunderts. Berlin, 1883, 8vo.
HESRONITA, JOHN. Latin trans. of Edrisi in collab. with Gabriel Sionita.
HEYD, WILHELM. 1. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Levantehandels im 14. Jahrh., in
Festschrift zur 4. Säcular-Feier der Universität zu Tübingen.
2. Geschichte des Levantehandels im Mittelalter, Stuttgart, 1879. 2 vols. 8vo.
French trans. by Furcy-Raynaud, Paris, 1885-6. 2 vols. la. 8vo.
HEZARFENN, HUSSEIN. Kanounnamé. Dated 1673. MS. col. I. L. O. St. Petersburg,
no. 10. French trans. by Petits de la Croix, under title ‘État général de l’Emp.
ott., par un solitaire Turc’. Paris, 1695. 3 vols. 12mo.
Petits de la Croix does not give Hezarfenn as author, but I find in M. de la
Croix’s MS. index to Hadji Khalfa’s bibliographical lexicon, in the Bibl. Nat.,
Paris, in vol. iii. fol. 186, in his own handwriting, the statement that Hezarfenn is
the ‘solitaire Turc’.
HIRTH, F. China and the Roman Orient: researches into their ancient and
mediaeval relations as represented in old Chinese records. Leipzig and Munich,
1885, 8vo.
HODGSON, FRANCIS C. Venice in the 13th and 14th Centuries. London, 1910,
12mo.
HODOSIU, JOSEPH. Rumanian translator of Cantemir.
HODY, H. De Graecis illustribus. London, 1742.
HOENIGER, NICHOLAUS VON KOENIGSHOFEN. Der türckischen Historien und
wahrhafften Geschichten, Thaten, Handtlungen, Krieg, Schlachten, Sieg,
Belagerungen und Eroberung zu Wasser und zu Landt aller Staetten, etc.... bis
auff das Jahr 1578. Basel, 1578, fol.
For 16th cent. in history, but reflects German ideas of the Osmanlis and their
origin. The author calls the Prophet Mohammed ‘eyn Engel des Teufels’.
HOLMES, GEORGE. Editor of 3rd ed. of Rymer.
HOPF, K. 1. Griechenland im Mittelalter und der Neuzeit. Parts 85 and 86 of
Ersch and Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyklopädie. Leipzig, 1870. 2 vols. 4to.
A marvel of erudition, but marred by poor printing and lack of index.
2. Les Giustiniani, dynastes de Chios. Trans. into French by E. A. Vlasto.
Paris, 1888, 12mo.
3. Veneto-Byzantinische Analekten, in Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie,
xxxii. Vienna, 1859, 8vo.
4. Chroniques gréco-romanes. Berlin, 1873, la. 8vo.
HOUDAS, O. Ed. and trans. Mohammed-en-Nesawi.
HOUTSMA, TH. 1. Editor of Seljuk texts, including Ibn Bibi.
2. Article on Seljuks in Encycl. Britan.
This has hardly been changed in the new edition, so reference to 9th ed. is
satisfactory.
3. Editor, in collaboration with Basset, Arnold and Hartmann, of new
Encyclopédie de l’Islam.
HOUTSMA, BASSETT, ARNOLD, HARTMANN, Editors. Encyclopédie de l’Islam.
Dictionnaire géographique, ethnographique et biographique des peuples
musulmans, publié avec le concours des principaux orientalistes, par Th.
Houtsma, R. Bassett, T. W. Arnold et R. Hartmann. Leyden, 4to. Vol. i (A-D)
appeared in 1913.
HOUZEAU, J.-C. Notes géogr. and map for Ghillebert de Lannoy’s Voyage.
HOWORTH, HENRY H. History of the Mongols from the 9th to the 19th Century.
London, 1876-88. 4 vols. 8vo. (Lacks index.)
HUART, CLÉMENT. 1. Konia: la ville des Derviches Tourneurs. Paris, 1897, 8vo.
2. Paper on ‘Épigraphie arabe d’Asie Mineure’, in the Revue sémitique, Paris,
1895, 8vo.
HUBER, MAJOR R. Map of Ottoman Empire, with administrative divisions and
military routes. Constantinople, 1901.
HUSSEIN (un solitaire Turc). See Hezarfenn.
HUSSEIN ABU HALIB. Persian trans. of Mongol or Turkish MS. found in the
Yemen, which purported to contain the autobiographical memoirs of Timur.
See under Anonymous, p. 366 ad fin.
IBN AL TIKTAKA. History of the Islamic Empire (in Arabic). Ed. by W. Ahlwardt.
Gotha, 1860, 8vo.
IBN ALI MOHAMMED AL-BIWY. Dourar-al-Othman. ‘The precious pearls touching
the source and origin of the Ottoman House.’ Hadji Khalfa, in Dict. Bibi., fol.
867.
This is the only Ottoman genealogy mentioned by Hadji Khalfa, although he
gives more than sixty Arabic titles of genealogies.
IBN BATOUTAH (ABU ABDULLAH). Arabic text of Voyages, edited and translated
into French by C. Défréméry and B. R. Sanguinetti. Paris, 1853-9. 4 vols. 4to.
Vol. ii, 1854, pp. 255-353, gives Voyage through Asia Minor.
IBN BIBI (NASREDDIN YAHIA). Seljuk-Namé. Persian original lost. An abridgement,
in Persian, of the original is no. 1185 of the Schéfer MSS. in the Bibl. Nat.,
Paris, and has been edited and published by Th. Houtsma, in his Recueil de
Textes relatifs à l’hist. des Selj., vol. iv, Leyden, 1892, 8vo. M. Schéfer
translated several chapters of this MS. into French in Bibl. de l’École des
langues viv. orientales, série 3, vol. v, Paris, 1889, 8vo. Turkish translation, as
contained in Warner MS. 419, Leyden, and MS. turc 92, Bibl. Nat., Paris,
edited by Houtsma in Recueil above cited, vol. iii, Leyden, 1891, 8vo. M.
Houtsma promised a French translation, but it has never been forthcoming.
This is the work of which Nöldeke speaks in Zeitschrift der D. M. G., xiii.
170 (1859), as an unidentified work by an Ottoman historian of the reign of
Murad II. As a matter of fact it is merely a translation, and was not written by an
Osmanli.
IBN KHALDOUN. Universal History. The Prolegomena, Arabic text, are edited by
Quatremère in Notices et Extraits, vol. xvi (1858), and translated by Baron de
Slane in vol. xvii (1859). German abridged trans, by Thornberg in Nova acta
Reg. Soc., vol. xii, Leipzig, 1844.
IDRIS, Mevlana (of Bitlis). Ilesht-Bihisht. The Eight Heavens.
One of the two earliest extant Ottoman histories. Written in Persian for
Bayezid II about 1500. There is no translation, and complete MSS. are rare. But
one has access, not only to the facts recorded and opinions of Idris, but also to
his wonderful imagery, for Seadeddin has copied him copiously and, in fact,
embodied many literal translations of Idris in his ‘Crown of Histories’.
JACOB, GEORG. Türkische Bibliothek. Folk-stories. Berlin, 1904-5. 3 vols. 8vo.
JAUBERT, A. M. Editor of Mirkhond’s Djenghiz Khan; and French translator of
Edrisi’s Geography.
JIREČEK, CONST. JOSEPH. 1. Geschichte der Bulgaren. Prague, 1876, 8vo.
2. Die Heerstrasse von Belgrad nach Konstantinopel, und die Balkanpässe.
Prague, 1877, 8vo.
JONQUIÈRE, Vte A. DE LA. Histoire de l’Empire ottoman. Paris, 1881, 8vo. New
edition, revised and enlarged, with excellent maps. Paris, 1914. 2 vols. 8vo.
JORGA, N. 1. Notes et Extraits pour servir à l’hist. des croisades au XVe siècle.
Paris, 1899-1902. 3 vols. 8vo. I. Comptes de la colonie de Péra. Documents
pol. des Arch, de Venise et Gênes jusqu’à 1436. II. Archives de Vienne, du
Vatican, de Naples, Florence et Raguse jusqu’à 1453. (Mostly Ragusa.) III.
Venise et Gênes de 1436 a 1453. Traités, ... projets et exhortations,—opuscules
jusqu’à 1453.
2. Philippe de Mézières et la croisade au XVIe siècle. Fascic. 110, 2e série,
Bibl. de l’École des Chartes, vol. xviii. Paris, 1896, 8vo.
3. Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches nach den Quellen dargestellt. Gotha,
1908-13. 5 vols. 8vo. In Allgemeine Staatengeschichte, I, 37 Werke. (Vol. i up to
1451.)
JOSEPH BEN JOSHUA, Rabbi (Sephardic). Chronicles (in Hebrew). Venice, 1554;
Amsterdam, 1730. English trans, by C. H. F. Biallobotzky. London, 1835-6. 2
vols. 8vo.
JOUANNIN, J. M. La Turquie. In collaboration with Jules Van Gaver. Paris, 1840,
8vo. (Coll. Univers pittoresque.)
JOURDAIN, A. L. M. French trans. of Mirkhond.
JOVIUS, PAULUS. See Giovio, Paolo.
KÁLLAY, BENJAMIN VON. Geschichte der Serben von den ältesten Zeiten bis 1815.
Trans. into German by J. H. Schwicker. Buda-Pest, Vienna, and Leipzig, 1878-
9. 2 vols. 8vo. (Einleitung ‘bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrh.’, i. 1-173.)
KAMPOUROGLOU, D. G. Ιστορια τῶν Άθηναίων· Τουρκοκρατία. Vol. i. Athens,
1899.
KANITZ, FELIX. Das Königreich Serbien und das Serbienvolk von der Römerzeit
bis zur Gegenwart. (Monographien der Balkanstaaten, vol. i.) Leipzig, 1904,
4to.
KARABACEK, J. Das angebliche Bilderverbot des Islams. Vienna, 1876.
KARAMIANZ, N. Verzeichnis der arabischen Hss. der K. Bibl. zu Berlin. Berlin,
1888, 4to.
KASEM BEY, MIRZA A. Trans. and ed. of Derbend Namé.
KATONA, ST. Historia critica Regum Hungariae. Buda-Pest and Klausenburg,
1779-1817. 42 vols. 8vo.
KEEN, MRS. A. English trans. of von Ranke’s Serbien.
KEENE, H. Editor and reviser of Beale’s Oriental Biographical Dictionary.
KERN, TH. VON. Editor of Anon. Chronik aus Kaiser Sigmunds Zeit.
KERSCH. Latin trans., in collab. with Bruns, of Abulfaradj.
KERVYN DE LETTENHOVE. Editor of most complete edition of Froissart.
KHALFIN, IBRAHIM. Turkish trans. of anon. memoirs of Timur.
KHEIRULLAH. Hist. of Ottoman Emp. from foundation to Ahmed I (in Turkish).
Constantinople, 1854. 2 vols. 8vo.
KHONDEMIR. Habib Essher. History of the Mongols, in Persian. French trans. by
Grigorieff. Petrograd, 1834, 8vo. Also partly trans. by Ch. Défréméry in
Journal asiatique, Paris, 1852, no. 2.
KISS, K. A’ Nikapolyi ülkoset. Thesis of Magyar Academy. Buda, 1855, 8vo.
KLEIN, ERNEST. German trans. of Fessler.
KNAUS, F. Chronological Tables for Fejér.
KNOELLE, S. W. ‘On Tartar and Turk.’ In Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, New
Series, xiv. 125-59. London, 1882, 8vo.
KNOLLES, RICHARD. The general Historie of the Turkes to the rising of the
othoman family, with all the expeditions of the Christian princes against them.
Together with the lives and conquests of the othoman kings and emperors. 5th
ed., with continuation from 1621 to 1638. 30 portraits. London, 1638. 2 vols.
fol.
KOEHLER, G. Die Schlachten von Nikopoli und Warna. Breslau, 1882, 8vo. With
2 plans.
KOLLAR, A. F. Latin trans. of Seadeddin.
KONSTANTYNOWICZ, MICHAIL. Panietniki Janczari (Memoirs of a Janissary).
Warsaw, 1828.
Trans. into French by Théodore d’Okszu. But I could find no copy of this
trans. in the Bibl. Nat., Paris.
KOUTBADDINMAKKY. History of the conquests of the Osmanlis (in Arabic verse).
Turkish trans. by Mevlana Mustafa ibn Mohammed Khosreu-zadé.
Detailed description in Hadji Khalfa, no. 1795, fol. 324-5.
KRAUSS, J. G. Editor and continuator of Dlugosz.
KRUMBACHER, KARL. Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (527-1453). 2nd
ed. Munich, 1897, 4to. (9th vol. of Handbuch der klassischen
Altertumswissenschaft.)
KUHNEL, ERNST. ‘Zur Geschichte der byzantinischen und türkischen Kunst.’ In
Baedeker’s Konstantinopel und Kleinasien, 2. Aufl., 1914, pp. xliii-lxiv.
KÚNOS, IGNACE. ‘Chansons populaires turques.’ With Turkish text in Latin
characters. Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenl. Gesellschaft (1899), liii. 233-55.
KUNSTMANN. Studien über Marino Sanudo den Älteren. Munich, 1855, 4to.
KUPELWIESER, L. Die Kämpfe Ungarns mit den Osmanen bis zur Schlacht bei
Mohacz. Vienna, 1895, 8vo.
LACABANE, LÉON. See, on ‘Chroniques de S. Denis,’ in Bibl. de l’École des
Chartes (1840-1), ii. 62.
LA CROIX. See Petits de la Croix.
LA GARDE DE DIEU, L. DE. Histoire de l’Islamisme et de l’Empire ottoman.
Brussels, 1892, 8vo.
The author of this book took no trouble whatever to get at the facts of
Ottoman history. It is more full of errors than a modern work has any reason to
be.
LAMARTINE, A. DE. Histoire de la Turquie. Paris, 1855. 8 vols. 8vo.
LAMPROS, SPIRIDON P. 1. Catalogue illustré de la collection de portraits des
Empereurs de Byzance. Athens, 1911, 8vo.
2. Greek trans. of Gregorovius’ Geschichte der Stadt Athen im Mittelalter.
3. Catalogue of the Greek MSS. on Mt. Athos. Cambridge, 1895, 1900. 2 vols.
4to.
4. Greek trans. of Curtius’ Griechische Geschichte.
LANE-POOLE, STANLEY. 1. Catalogue of Oriental Coins in the British Museum,
vol. viii. The Coins of the Turks. London, 1883, 8vo.
2. The Mohammedan Dynasties. London, 1894, 8vo.
This book contains an amplification of a paper on the successors of the
Seljuks in Asia Minor, which appeared in vol. xiv, New Series, of the Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Soc., pp. 773-80. London, 1882, 8vo.
3. Catalogue of the Bodleian Library Mohammedan Coins. Oxford, 1888,
4to.
4. Turkey. In the ‘Stories of Nations’ series. London, 1888, 8 vo.
LANGLÈS, L. 1. French trans. of the anon. memoirs of Timur.
2. Listing and translation of titles in the Collection of State Papers of Feridun,
which see.
LANZ, K. FR. W. German trans. of Muntaner’s Cronica.
LARDITO, J. B. Historia del estado presente del imperio otomano, con un
compendio de los progresos de la Liga Sagrada contra los Turcos. Salamanca,
1690, 4to.
LA ROQUE. French trans. of Hadji Khalfa’s Maritime Wars, in MS. in Leyden
Library.
LAVALLÉE, THÉOPHILE. Histoire de la Turquie. Paris, 1859. 2 vols. 8 vo.
LAVOIX, HENRI. 1. Cat. des Monnaies musulmanes de la Bibl. Nat. (Vol. iii
finished by M. P. Casanova.) Paris, 1887-92. 3 vols. 4to.
2. ‘Les Arts musulmans.’ In the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1875.
LE BAS, PH. Asie Mineure depuis les temps les plus anciens jusqu’à la bataille
d’Ancyre, 1402. Paris, 1863, 8vo.
This is the first part of Texier’s work in the series L’Univers pittoresque.
LEBEAU, CHAS. See Ameilhon, H. P.
LEBEUF, Abbé. Collab. with P. Paris in a paper on Philippe de Mézières.
LEFÈVRE-PONTALIS. Introduction and commentary to the French trans. of
Morosini.
LEMAÎTRE, HENRI, ed. Gilles le Muisit. Paris, 1905, 8vo.
LE QUIEN, MICHEL. Oriens Christianus. Paris, 1740. 3 vols. fol.
LE ROULX. See Delaville Leroulx.
LEUNCLAVIUS, JOHANNES (Johann Lewenklau). 1. Annales Sultanorum
othmanidorum a Turcis sua lingua scripti Hieronymi Beck a Leopoldstorf
Marci fil. studio et diligentia C/poli advecti 1551. Divo Ferd. Caes. opt. max.
D. D. jussuque Caes. a Joanne Gaudier dicto Spiegel, interprete turcico,
germanice translati. Joan. Leunclavius ... latine redditos illustravit et auxit
usque ad annum 1588. Cum omnium memorabilium toto opere contentorum
accuratissime elaborati.... Frankfort, 1596, fol.
A translation of Ali, and not of Seadeddin, as has been erroneously believed.
2. Pandectes historiae turcicae, &c. Notes in same volume with 1.
1 and 2 are reprinted in vol. clix of Migne’s Patrologia Graeca, Paris, 1866,
pp. 572-922.
3. Historiae Musulmanae Turcorum de monumentis ipsorum exscriptae libri
XVIII. Frankfort, 1591, fol.
Von Hammer, in his monumental work, is far more indebted to Leunclavius
than to any other previous writer for the earlier part of his history.
LEURIDAN, E. Les châtelains de Lille. Paris, 1873.
LEVEC, FR. Die Einfälle der Türken in Krain und Istrien. Laybach, 1891, 8vo.
LILIENCRON, R. VON. Die historischen Volkslieder der Deutschen vom 13. bis 16.
Jahrh. Leipzig, 1865-6. 2 vols., la. 8vo.
For songs on Nicopolis defeat.
LJUBIĆ, SIME. Monumenta spectantia ad hist. Slavorum meridionalium. Agram,
8vo. Vol. iv (1358-1403), 1874. Vol. v (1403-11), 1875. Vol. v contains a
supplement of documents from 1301-97.
LOEB, ISIDORE. Tables du calendrier juif depuis l’ère chrét. jusqu’au XXXe siècle.
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LONGNON, JEAN. Editor of anon. Chronique de Morée.
LONICERUS, PHILIPPUS. Chronicorum Turcicorum, in quibus Turcoman origo,
principes, imperatores, bella, praelia, caedes, victoriae, reique militaris ratio
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LUCE, SIMÉON. Editor of Froissart, and of Chronique des quatre premiers Valois.
LÜDEMANN, W. VON. Geschichte Griechenlands und der Türkei. Dresden, 1827. 4
vols. 12mo.
MACAIRAS, LÉONCE. Cyprus Chronicle, Greek text with French trans., by E.
Miller and C. Sathas. Paris, 1881-2. 2 vols., la. 8vo. The text alone is published
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MACARIUS, Patriarch of Antioch. Travels of. Trans. from Arabic into English by
F. C. Belfour. London, 1829-36. 2 vols. 4to.
MACRIDES, GEORGES. French trans. of Col. Djevad bey.
MAÉLATH, Count J. Geschichte der Magyaren. Regensburg, 1852-3. 5 vols. 8vo.
MAKRISI, ABU MOHAMMED. 1. Hist. des Sultans mameluks. French trans.,
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Silvestre de Sacy, Paris, 1797, 12mo.
MAKUSEV, W. 1. Italjanskie archiwy i chranjaschtschiessja w nich materialy alja
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2. Also contributed to Monumenta hist. Slav. merid.
MANAVINO. Italian trans. of Lonicerus.
MANDEVILLE, SIR JOHN. Voiage and travel, which treateth of the way to
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MANGER, SAMUEL HENRY. Latin trans. of Arabshah.
MANUTIO, ANTONIO (?). Viaggi fatti da Venezia alla Tana ... et in C/poli; con la
descrittione ... di Città, Luoghi, etc. Contains, fol. 120-58, Libri tre delle cose
de’ Turchi. Venice, 1543, 12mo.
MARCHE, OLIVIER DE LA. Mémoires. Ed. by Beaune and d’Arbaumont. Vol. i.
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MARCO POLO. Le Livre de Marco Polo, citoyen de Venise ... rédigé en français
sous sa dictée en 1298. Edited, with notes, by M. G. Pauthier. Paris, 1865. 2
vols., la. 8vo. Trans, into English and edited by H. Yale. London, 1875. 2 vols.
8vo. Wm. Marsden’s earlier English trans. has recently been republished in
Everyman’s Library.
MARKHAM, CLEMENTS R. English trans. of Clavijo.
MARSDEN, WILLIAM. English trans. of Marco Polo.
MAS LATRIE, Comte RENÉ DE. 1. Histoire de Chypre sous les Lusignans. Paris,
1852-61. 3 vols. 8vo.
2. Editor of Florio Bustron’s Cronica, 1191-1489. (In Italian.) In Mélanges
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3. Le Trésor de chronologie, d’histoire et de géographie pour l’étude et
l’emploi des documents du moyen âge. Paris, 1889, la. fol.
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I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness to 3 and 4 of Comte de Mas Latrie
in my study of the emirates of Asia Minor.
5. ‘Liste des princes et seigneurs de divers pays, dressées pour l’expédition
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l’École des Chartes, vol. 26, pp. 43 fol.
MAURER, CASPAR. Ungarische Chronica oder Beschreibung von allen
ungarischen christlichen Königen, wie auch Kriegs-Empörungen, Schlachten,
etc.... mit den Türcken (1390-1661).... Nürnberg, 1664, 12mo.
MENAVINO, GIOVANNI ANT. I cinque libri delle leggi, religione e vita dei Turchi e
della corte e d’alcune guerre del gran Turco. Florence, 1518 and 1551. Venice,
1548. Also in Sansovino, i. 107-36. German trans. by Heinrich Müller.
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Menavino was brought up as a slave-page in the serail of Bayezid II.
MESSERSCHMID, D. G. German trans. of Abul-Ghazi.
MEXIA, PEDRO. Petri Messiae von Sibilia vilualtige beschreibung, Christenlicher
und Heidnischer Keyseren, Kunigen, weltweiser Manneren gedachtnuszwirdige
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in Seville ed. of Clavijo.
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See Appendix BB in Wylie’s History of Henry IV, iv. 323-6; also Bibl. de
l’École des Chartes for 1873, and Académie des Inscriptions, xvi. 491 and xvii.
219; and under A. Molinier and P. Paris below. Title of citizen of Venice given
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MICHELANT, HENRI (in collab. with Gaston Raynaud). Itinéraires à Jérusalem, et
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MIGEON, GASTON. Manuel de l’Art musulman: II. Les Arts plastiques et
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historians, Ali Muhieddin and Leunclavius.
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de Belgrade en 1740. Paris, 1771. 3 vols. 12mo.
MIJATOVITCH, ELODIE LAWTON. Kossova: an attempt to bring Servian national
songs at the battle of Kossova into one poem. London, 1881, 12mo.
This is a translation, following Pavitch in general lines.
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3. In collab. with Müller. Acta patriarchatus Constantinopolitani, 1315-1402.
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MILES, COLONEL. English trans. of Abul Ghazi.
MILLER, E. Edited and trans., in collab. with Sathas, the chronicle of Macairas.
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Jaubert. Paris, 1841, 4to. Three separate trans. into French by Galland are in
the Bibl. Nat., Paris, in MS. fonds fr., 6080-83.
2. The History of the Ismaelians of Persia has been trans. into French by
Jourdain.
3. A Latin trans. of the History of the Seljucides was published at Giessen,
1837.
4. The Persian text of the Hist. of the Sultans of the Kharesm was edited by
Défréméry, Paris, 1842, 8vo.
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MONTALBANUS, JOHANNES BAPTISTA. De Turcarum moribus commentarius.
Leyden, 1643, 32mo. Ibid., 1654, 16mo. This work was first published more
than a century earlier in the De origine, &c., of Cuspianus.
MORANVILLÉ, HENRI. ‘Mémoires sur Tamerlan et sa Cour.’ Bibl. de l’École des
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Timur to Charles VI, after MSS. in Bibl. Nat., fonds fr. 5624 and 12201. Text of
this letter is reprinted and commented upon by A. I. Silvestre de Sacy in Acad.
des Inscriptions (1822), vi. 470-522. Together with Clavijo and Schiltberger, the
Dominican Friar gives contemporary evidence of highest value for the battle of
Angora.
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2. Collab. with P.-A. Déthier in Epigraphie von Byzanz und Konstantinopel.
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MOUKHLIS ABDERRAHMAN. Enis out Moussamirin. Schéfer MS., quoted by him in
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around Adrianople.
MULLACH, A. Conjecturen. Berlin, 1852. (Corrects narrative of Ducas.)
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Sitzungsberichte der k.-k. Akademie der Wissenschaften, hist.-phil. Kl., Vienna,
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MURALT, ÉDOUARD DE. Essai de Chronographie byzantine (1057-1453). Basel and
Geneva, 1871-3. 2 vols. 8vo.
There is a wealth of erudition and research in this work. The bibliography,
however, is very unsatisfactory, and one is frequently puzzled in verifying
important references. Muralt confuses Arabshah with Sherefeddin, puts Ibn
Batutah at 1320, and Shehabeddin at 1331.
MURATORI, LUDOVICO ANTONIO, editor. Rerum Italicarum Scriptoree. Milan, 1732-
51. 28 vols., la. fol. (For Florentine writers see Tartini.)
A new edition of Muratori, including Tartini, has just been completed by a
body of Italian scholars, working at Rome under the direction of Vittorio Fiorini.
MUSTAFA IBN MOHAMMED KHOSREU-ZADE (Mevlana). Turkish trans. of
Koutbaddinmakky.
NANGIS, GUILLAUME DE. Chronique latine de 1113 d 1300. Paris, 1843, 8vo.
NAUMANN, EDMUND. Vom goldenen Horn zu den Quellen des Euphrat. Munich
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NAZMI ZADÉ. Turkish trans. of Arabshah.
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NESHRI. The Vienna Codex, Hist. Osm. 15, is partly trans. by Th. Nöldeke in
ZDMG., vols. xiii and xv (1859 and 1861). xiii. 176-218 contains the
beginnings of the Ottoman family and its history up to death of Osman, xv.
333-80 contains Bayezid I. József Thúry, in Török Magyarkori Történelmi
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NORADOUNGHIAN, GABRIEL. Recueil d’actes internationaux de la Sublime Porte
avec les Puissances étrangères. Tome i, 1300-1789. Paris, 1879, 8vo.
In Turkey there are no Archives d’état before the 17th cent. From 1307 to
1534 in this volume the editor merely refers to other books. His compilation is of
no value until 1535 for furnishing source material for Ottoman History.
NORBERG, MATTHIAS. Latin trans. of Hadji Khalfa’s Djihannuma.
NOVAKOVITCH, STOJAN. Kosova, Srbske narodne pjesmé o boju na Kosova.
Belgrade, 1871, 8vo; also Agram, 1872, and Belgrade, 1876.
Attempt to bring fragments of folksong into one narrative of battle of
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This work, interrupted by the Revolution and the author’s death, was
completed, after d’Ohsson’s notes, by his son Charles. Vols. v-vii appeared in
1824.
2. Histoire des Mongols depuis Ghengiz Khan jusqu’à Timour Bey.
Amsterdam, 1852. 4 vols. 8vo.
OKSZA, THÉODORE D’. Editor and French trans. of Konstantynowicz.
OLIVIERI, A. Carte e chronache manoscritte per la storia genovese esistenti nella
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PACHYMERES. See under Byzantine Historians, p. 367.
PAGANO, C. Delle imprese e del dominio dei Genovesi nella Grecia. Genoa,
1846, 8vo.
PALAEOLOGOS, MANUEL. Dialogi XXVI cum Persa quodam de Christianae
religionis veritate. Bibl. Nat., Paris, fonds grec, no. 1253.
C. B. Hase, in Notices et Extraits, vol. viii, 2e partie, pp. 309-82, gives
interesting critical account of this MS., with Greek text and Latin trans. of first
two dialogues. The dialogues were with a Moslem Hodja, probably in 1390,
when Man. Pal. was serving in the Ottoman army at Angora.
Most valuable description of Bayezid’s court and eloquent testimony to the
humiliation of the Byzantine imperial family.
For other works of M. Palaeologos, see Migne, Patrologia Graeca, clvi. 82-
580.
PANARETOS, MICHAIL. Περὶ τῶν τῆς Τραπεζοῦντος βασιλέων τῶν Μεγάλων
Κομνηνῶν. Chronological account of Trebizond (1204-1386), with a
continuation to 1424.
Edited by J. F. Tafel, in the Opuscula of Eusthasius of Thessalonika, pp. 362-
70, Frankfort, 1832, 4to. Also by Fallmerayer, in Abhandlung der k. Bayerischen
Akad. der Wissenschaften, Munich, 1844, 8vo.
PAPARREGOPOULOS, K. Ιστορία τοῦ Έλληνικοῦ ἔθνους ἀπὸ τῶν ἀρχαιοτάτων
χρόνων μέχρι τῶν νεωτέρων. Athens, 1865-74. 5 vols. 8vo. 4th edition, revised
by P. Karolides, Athens, 1903.
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PARISOT, VAL. Cantacuzène, homme d’état et historien, ou examen critique
comparatif des ‘Mémoires’ de J. C. et des sources contemporaines. Paris, 1845,
8vo.
PARVILLÉE. Architecture et décoration turques au XVe siècle. With preface by
Viollet-le-Duc. Paris, 1874, la. fol.
It was Parvillée who, under Ahmed Vewfik pasha, restored the monuments of
Brusa.
PAUTHIER, M. G. Editor of Marco Polo.
PAVITCH, A. Narodne Pjesme o boju na Kosova, 1389. In Mem. of the Acad. of
Sciences and Arts of Agram. Agram, 1877, 8vo.
A critical essay on the national songs of the Servians, followed by a narrative
in verse, combining the songs which deal with Kossova.
PERONDINO, PIETRO (Pratense). Magni Tamerlanis Scytharum imperatoris vita.
Florence, 1553, fol.; Basel, 1556, fol.
PERTSCH, WILHELM. Verzeichniss der türkischen Hss. der k. Bibl. zu Berlin.
Berlin, 1899.
PETITS DE LA CROIX. 1. Abrégé de l’hist. ottomane. Paris, 1768. 2 vols. 12mo.
2. French trans. of Hussein Hezarfenn.
3. French trans. in MS. of Hadji Khalfa’s lexicon under title Dictionnaire
bibliographique. In the Bibl. Nat., Paris.
4. French trans. of Sherefeddin’s hist. of Timur.
PETRARCA, FRANCESCO. Epistolae de rebus familiaribus et variae.... Stud. et cura
J. Fracassetti. Florence, 1859-63. 3 vols. 8vo. Italian trans. of Senilium by the
same author. Florence, 1869-70. 2 vols. 12mo.
PFEIFFER, DAVID. Imperatores Turcici, Libellus de Vita, Progressu et rebus gestis
principum.... Basel, before 1550, 12mo. Reprinted under title Imperatores
Ottomannici, Basel and Wittenberg, 1587, 8vo.
Eulogy of Ottoman sultans in verse.
PHRANTZES, GEORGE. See under Byz. Historians.
PICOT, ÉMILE. 1. Editor and French trans. of Urechi’s Rumanian chronicle.
2. Généalogie de la famille Brankovitch, in Columna lui Traianu, new series,
4th year, Jan.-Feb. 1883, pp. 64 f. Bucharest, 8vo.
PIGEONNEAU, HENRI. Histoire du commerce de la France. Vol. i. Paris, 1885, 8vo.
PINDER, M. Collab. with Friedländer in numismatic work.
POCOCK, EDWARD. Editor and English translator of Abulfaradji.
PODESTA, JO. BAPTISTA. 1. Trans. from the Turkish De gestis Tamerlanis.
2. Translatae Turcicae Chronicae. Pars prima, continens originem
Ottomanicae stirpis, undecimque eiusdem stirpis Imperatorum gesta, iuxta
traditionem Turcarum. Omnia a praenominato authore ex originali Turcico in
Latinam, Italicam et Germanicam linguam translata. Nürnberg, 1672, fol. But
only into Latin.
A trans. from diff. MSS. of Ali. But Bratutti’s trans. of Scadeddin has been
used for interpolations and corrections or additions.
POGODIN, P. Übersicht der Quellen zur Geschichte der Belagerung von Byzanz
durch die Türken. Journal of the Ministry of Public Instruction, St. Petersburg,
August 1889.
POLO, MARCO. See Marco Polo.
PÓR, A. (in collab. with G. Schönherr.) Volume covering period 1301-1429 in
Szilagyi’s A Magyar Nemzet Története. (History of the Hungarian Nation.)
Budapest, 1895, la. 8vo.
POSSINUS, PETRUS, S. J. Notes to Pachymeres.
POSTANSQUE, A. De libro secretorum fidelium crucis. (For Marino Sanudo.)
Montpellier, 1854, 8vo.
POSTELLUS, GUILLAUME. 1. De la Republique des Turcz ... exposant la manière de
lever et nourir ceulx dont on en guerre se serft, avec son origine, estatz,
Revenu et Domeyne, en brief. Dédié à François Premier. Bibl. Nat., Paris, MS.
fonds fr., no. 6073. (Written c. 1520.) Published: Poitiers, 1560, 8vo.
2. De originibus Gentium Orientalium, maxime Turcarum. Basel, 1540, 8vo.
This Latin text differs from 1, so I have listed it as a separate work.
POTTHAST, A. Bibliotheca Historica Medii Aevi. Berlin, 1896. 2 vols. 4to.
Vol. ii. 1047-1735 contains a very suggestive (but not thorough)
Quellenkunde für die Geschichte der europäischen Staaten während des
Mittelalters.
POTVIN, CHARLES. Editor of Ghillebert de Lannoy.
PRAY, GEORGE. 1. Annales regum Hungariae, ab an. 997 ad an. 1564 deducti.
Vienna, 1754-74. 5 vols. 8vo. (Vol. ii, 1301-1457.)
2. Commentarii historici de Bosniae, Serviae ac Bulgariae, tum Valachiae,
Moldaviae ac Bessarabiae, cum regno Hungariae nexu. Edited, with documents,
by G. Fejér. Buda, 1837, 8vo.
PREDELLI, RICCARDO. 1. (In collaboration with Thomas.) Diplomatarium Veneto-
Levantinum, sive acta et diplomata res Venetas, Graecas atque Levantinas
illustrantia a 1300 ad 1454. Venice, 1880, 1899. 2 vols. 4to.
2. Editor of I libri commemoriali della republica di Venezia regesti. Vols. 1-3
(1081-1375), in Monumenti storici della deput. Veneta, series I, Venice, 1876,
8vo.
PUČIČ, MEDO. Spomenitzi Srbski od 1395 do 1423. Belgrade, 1859.
QUATREMÈRE, ÉTIENNE. French trans. of Shehabeddin, Makrisi, and Reshideddin
(unfinished). Editor of the Prolegomena of Ibn Khaldun.
RAČKI, FRANCIS. Documenta historiae Croatiae periodum antiquam illustrantia.
Agram, 1877.
RAIČ. Hist. variorum Slavorum, imprimis Bulgarorum, Chrobatorum et
Serborum. Buda, 1823.
RAIMBOULT, MAURICE. ‘Les dessous d’un traité d’alliance en 1350.’ Bulletin
historique et philologique, Paris, 1902.
Notice on two documents: 1. Latin text of project of treaty between Pope,
Cyprus, Venice, and Rhodes, of which Mas Latrie, Hist. de Chypre, ii. 217,
published the text after Commemoriali, vols. iv and v. 2. Unpublished Provençal
text of letter which set forth in detail difficulties of getting this treaty signed,
from MS. in Arch. des Bouches-du-Rhône, Fonds de Malte, liasse 86.
RAMBAUD, ALFRED. ‘L’Europe du Sud-Est: Fin de l’Empire grec.—Fondation de
l’Empire ottoman (1282-1481).’ In Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire générale, iii.
789-868. Paris, 1894, la. 8vo.
RAMSAY, SIR W. M. Historical Geography of Asia Minor, with 5 maps. London,
1890, la. 8vo.
RAMUS, JOHANNES (GOESANUS). De Rebus Turcicis libri tres. Louvain, 1553,
12mo. The first book of the three is by Secundinus.
RANKE, LEOPOLD VON. History of Servia and the Servian Revolution. Trans. by
Mrs. A. Keen. London, 1858, 16mo.
First chapter contains an illuminating résumé of relations between Byzantium
and Serbia in middle of 14th cent.
RASMUSSEN, JANUS LASSEN. Annales islamismi, sive tabulae
synchronistochronologicae Chaliforum et regum orientis et occidentis.
Copenhagen, 1825, sm. 4to. Contains, pp. 61-134, trans. of Ahmed ben Yussuf,
Historia Turcarum, Karamanorum, Selgiukudarum, Asiae Minoris, &c.
RAYNALDUS, ODERICUS. Annales ecclesiastici ... Baronii ... ab anno 1198. Tomes
xiii-xxi. Rome, 1646-77. 9 vols. fol. Lucca, 1746-56. 15 vols. fol.
There have been so many editions, abridgements, and translations of the
Annales that I have given my references to this work under the year, so that any
edition might be consulted.
RAYNAUD, GASTON. Editor of Froissart, and, with Michelant, of the Jerusalem
Itineraries.
RAYNAUD, FURCY. French trans. of Heyd’s Levantehandelsgeschichte.
REINAUD, J. T. French trans. of Abulfeda.
REINECCIUS, REINER. Editor of Helmoldus and Arnold of Lübeck.
REISKE, JO. JACOB. Latin trans. of Abulfeda and Chronological Tables of Hadji
Khalfa; editor of Drechsler.
RÉMUSAT, ABEL. Recherches sur les langues tartares. Paris, 1820, 4to.
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RESHIDEDDIN, FADHL ALLAH. Djami ut Tevarikh. Hist. of the Mongols of Persia.
Quatremère trans. into French the first part, Paris, 1836, la. fol. Erdmann trans.
into German the review of the various tribes of Asia at accession of Djenghiz
Khan, with account of their origin. Kasan, 1841. In his German life of Timur,
pp. 172-84, Erdmann practically repeats this portion verbatim.
The earlier portion of Abul-Ghazi is practically an abridgement of Reshid.
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libri XIV. Frankfort, 1598-9. 4 vols. 4to.
‘in quibus Epistolae de rebus Turcicis summorum pontificum, imperatorum,
regum, principum ... ad nostra tempora leguntur.’
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the Political maxims of the Turks, their religion, &c. 5th ed. London, 1682, fol.
6th ed., ibid., 1693. 2 vols. 8vo. French trans. by Briot. Amsterdam, 1678,
16mo; 1696, sm. 8vo, with 16 engravings. Italian trans. by Costi Belli. 2nd ed.
Venice, 1673, 4to.
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83. 3 vols.
2. Supplement to above. London, 1895.
3. Catalogue of Turkish MSS. in the British Museum. London, 1888.
RODD, SIR RENNELL. The Princes of Achaia and the Chronicles of Morea: a Study
of Greece in the Middle Ages. London, 1907. 2 vols. 8vo.
Excellent map of mediaeval Greece.
ROMANIN, SAMUELE. Storia documentata di Venezia. Venice, 1853-61. 10 vols.
8vo.
For attempts of Venice in 14th cent. to league Christians against the Turks,
vols. iii and iv.
RONCIÈRE. Editor, in collab. with Dorez, of fragments of Marino Sanudo.
ROSEN, BARON VICTOR. 1. Notices sommaires des MSS. arabes du Musée
asiatique. Petrograd, 1881.
2. Remarques sur les MSS. orientaux de la col. de Marsigli à Bologna. Paris,
1884, 4to.
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Angliae et alios ... ab 1101 ... ad nostra ... tempora. Editio tertia. Revised from
original MSS. in Tower of London, by George Holmes. London, 1739-45. 12
vols., la. fol.
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reliquorum Slavorum meridionalium ... quae in archivo Venetiarum
reperiuntur. Belgrade, 1858, 4to.
The notes are in Servian, but with Latin translation.
2. Acta archivii Veneti spectantia ad historiam Serborum. Belgrade, 1860.
SAFAŘÍK, PAUL JOSEPH. Slovanské Starořitnosti. Prague, 1837, 4to. Trans. under
title Slawische Alterthümer by Moses von Aehrenfeld, with notes by Heinrich
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fol.; 1688, 4to.
The first of modern writers who, though acquainted with Ottoman ‘sources’,
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SAGUNDINO, NICHOLAS. See Secundinus.
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SALADIN, H. Manuel d’Art musulman. Vol. i. L’architecture. Paris, 1907, 8vo.
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SAMBUCUS, JOANNES (of Tirnovo). Reges Ungariae ab anno 401-1567 uersibus
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SANGINETTI, B. R. French trans., in collab. with Ch. Défréméry, of Ibn Batutah.
SANSOVINO, FRANCESCO. 1. Gli annali turcheschi o vero vita de’principi della casa
athomana. First edition. Venice, 1568, 4to. Edition from which I quote is
Venice, 1573, 4to.
2. Historia universale dell’ origine et imperio de’ Turchi, nella quale si
contengono la origine, etc., de’ Turchi. Venice, 1654. 2 vols., la. 8vo.
A collection of various writers on the Ottoman Empire.
SANUTO, MARINO (TORSELLO). 1. Memorial to King of France urging crusade,
1321. Written in French. In Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos, ii. 5.
2. Letters published by Dorez and Roncière in Bibl. de l’Ecole des Chartes
(1895), lvi. 34-44.
3. Secreta fidelium crucis. In Bongars, vol. ii. See also thesis of Postansque,
and study by Kunstmann. Four books, written between 1306 and 1321, urging a
crusade. Book III trans. into English by Aubrey Stewart, in Palestine Pilgrims’
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SANUTO, MARINO (THE YOUNGER). 1. Vite de’ Duchi di Venezia. (1421-93.) In
Muratori, xxii. 399-1252.
2. Diarii. Ed. by Gugl. Berchet. Venice, 1877-1900. 56 vols. 4to.
I have given the younger Sanuto’s work here, because he is so often confused
with the elder.
SARRE, FRIEDRICH. Reise in Kleinasien, Sommer 1895. Forschungen zur
seldjukischen Kunst und Geographie des Landes. 76 Tafeln. Map by Kiepert.
Berlin, 1896, la. 8vo.
SATHAS, C. N. 1. Documents inédits relatifs à l’hist. de la Grèce au moyen âge
(1400-1500). Paris, 1880-1. 2 vols. 4to. Maps of Crete, the Aegean, and Sea of
Marmora in 15th cent. I. contains Canc. Secreta, 208 doc., from 1402 to 1500;
II. Misti, 549 doc., from 1400 to 1412.
2. Τουρκοκρατουμένη Έλλάς. Athens, 1869.
3. Edited and trans., in collab. with Miller, the Cyprus chronicle of Macairas.
4. Bibliotheca graeca medii aevi. 6 vols. I-III, Venice, 1872-3; IV-VI, Paris,
1874-7.
SAULI, LUIGI. Della colonia Genovesi in Galata. Turin, 1831. 2 vols. 8vo.
The valuable information in these volumes is practically without dates, and
there is no index.
SCHAFFARIK, JANKO. See Safařík, Ivan.
SCHÉFER, CHARLES. French trans. of portion of Ibn Bibi. Editor, with copious
notes, of Bertrandon de la Broquière, Spandugino, and a portion of Geuffraeus.
His collection of oriental MSS. has recently enriched the Bibliothèque
Nationale. The catalogue of his library, published in 1903 by H. Welter, Paris,
is an addition to the bibliography of Oriental history, geography, and philology.
SCHILTBERGER, JOHANNES. Gefangenschaft in der Turckey. Frankfort, 1557, 4to.
Best modern German edition is: Ed. by K. Fr. Neumann under title Reisen des
Johannes Schiltberger. Munich, 1859, 8vo. (Hammer used earlier reprint of
Munich MS., Reise in den Orient, Munich, 1813.) English trans. by J. Buchan
Telfer, R.N., with notes by Prof. P. Bruun of Odessa, published by the Hakluyt
Society, London, 1879, 8vo, under title The Bondage and Travels of Johann
Schiltberger.
SCHLUMBERGER, G. Numismatique de l’Orient latin. Paris, 1878, 4to.
SCHMITT, JOHN, Editor. The chronicle of Morea. Τὸ Χρονικὸν τοῦ Μορέως.
(From the Copenhagen and Paris MSS.) London, 1904, 8vo.
SCHÖNHERR, G. Collab., with Pór, A., in the latest authoritative Hungarian history
covering the 14th century.
pp. 478-90: Monnaies d’Imitation à légendes latines frappées par les princes ou
émirs turcomans du Saroukhan, d’Aïdin, et de Mentesché.
SCHULZ, C. G. Geschichte des osmanischen Reichs. Leipzig, 1772, 8vo.
SCHWANDTNER, J. G., editor. Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum veteres ac genuini.
Tomus i. Vienna, 1746, fol.
SCHWICKER, J. H. German trans. of Kállay.
SEADEDDIN, MOHAMMED BEN HASSAN (KHODJA EFFENDI). Tajul-Tevarikh. The
Crown of Histories. Constantinople, 1862. 2 vols. 4to. Of this most celebrated
Ottoman historian, whose chronicle covers from the origin of the family, there
are translations as follows:
1. BRATUTTI, VICENZO. Cronica dell’ origine e progressi della casa ottomana,
composta da Saidino Turco. Parte prima, Osman-Mohammed I, Vienna, 1649,
12mo. Parte secunda, Murad II and Mohammed II, Madrid, 1652.
Hammer uses this translation.
2. KOLLAR, A. F. Seadeddini annales Turcici usque ad Murad II. Turcice et
Latine cura Ad. Fr. Kollar a Kerestan. Vienna, 1755 fol.
3. SEAMAN, WM. The Reign of Sultan Orkhan, translated from Hodja effendi.
London, 1652, 8vo.
4. History of the Turkish war with Rhodians, Venetians, Egyptians, Persians
and other nations, written by Will Caoursin and Khodja Afendy, a Turk. London,
1683, 8vo.
This is an anon. trans. of Caoursin’s Historia Rhodi and Seadeddin’s recital
of the siege of Rhodes under Mohammed II.
5. GALLAND, ANTOINE. Histoire ottomane, écrite par Saadud-din Mehemed
Hassan, plus connu chez les Turcs sous le nom de Cogia Efendi, mise en françois
par Antoine Galland, Professeur et Lecteur royal en langue arabe. A translation
in MS. of Bibl. Nat., Paris, fonds turc, 64. Vol. i, up to Murad II, is lacking. Vol.
ii is in the Bibl. Nat. under fonds fr., 6074. A third volume, fonds fr., 6075,
contains Bayezid II and Selim I.
Zinkeisen used this translation. But Jorga, i. 150, n. 1, is in error in believing
that Zinkeisen had access to complete trans. This has been lacking since 18th
cent. The whole comment of Jorga is confusing. He mixes Seadeddin with
Neshri, and follows Zenker’s erroneous statement that Leunclavius’s Annali is a
trans. of Seadeddin.
6. The story of the capture of Constantinople by Mohammed has been
translated into French by Garcin de Tassy, Paris, 1826, and by Michaud, in his
Bibl. des Croisades, vol. iii; into English by Gibb, Glasgow, 1879; and, in part,
into German by Krause, Die Eroberungen von Konstantinopel im XIII. und XV.
Jahrhundert, Halle, 1870, 8vo.
SEAMAN, WILLIAM. English translator of portion of Seadeddin.
SECUNDINUS, NICOLAUS. Liber de familia Autumanarum ad Eneam, Senarum
episcopum. Fol. 133-41 of MS. Latin 414 of K. Bibl., Munich. Published as
Liber I in Johannes Ramus, which see.
This letter, written to Aenaeas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II, from Naples,
is one of the first western accounts of the Osmanlis. In the title-page of ‘De
rebus Turcicis’, printed 1553, Secundinus is called ‘vetustissimo autore’.
SEFERT, M. La Dalmatie, y compris ... Patras, Athènes. Manuel de voyageur avec
88 gravures et 32 cartes et plans. Guide illustré Hartleben, no. 64. Vienna and
Leipzig, 1912, 12mo.
SEIFF, J. Reisen in der asiatischen Türkei. Leipzig, 1875.
SERVI, FERDINANDO. Compendium Historiae Turcicae. Venice, 1689. This is a
trans. into Latin, then Italian, of Du Verdier. Some bibliographers have treated
this as an original work.
SHEHABEDDIN, ABUL ABBAS AHMED. Mesalek al absar fi memalek alamsar.
Footpaths of the eyes in the Kingdoms of the different Countries. Existing
fragments, which include Asia Minor, trans. into French by Quatremère, in
Notices et Extraits, xiii. 152-384, from MS. in Bibl. Nat., Paris, fonds arabe,
no. 2325.
Quatremère in discussing whether S. is from Damascus, Marash or Morocco,
has overlooked Hadji Khalfa, Lex. Bibl., no. 10874, fol. 1832, who
unhesitatingly calls him ‘écrivain de Damas’.
SHEREFEDDIN ALI (YEZDI). Zéfer Namé. But MS. in Bibl. Nat., Paris, reads Kitabi
fatih namehi Emir Timour (a Life of Timur by his own secretary). Trans. into
Turkish by Mohammed ben al Agemi. Trans. into French by Petits de la Croix,
under title Histoire de Timourbec, connu sous le nom du Gran Tamerlan,
empereur des Mongols et Tartares. Paris, 1722. 4 vols. 12mo. No index.
Another edition of same, Delft, 1723. 4 vols. 8vo.
Muralt, in the bibliography of his Chronographie byzantine, has fallen into
the error of identifying Sherefeddin with Arabshah.
SHIREDDIN. See Dorn.
SIDAROUSS, S. Les Patriarcats dans l’Empire Ottoman et spécialement en Égypte.
Paris, 1907, la. 8vo.
SIDI ALI IBN HUSSEIN (Khatib Roumi). The Mirror of the Countries. Narration of
Voyages. German trans. of Diez, trans. into French by Moris, with foreword on
life and times of Sidi Ali. Paris, 1827, 8vo.
SILVESTRE DE SACY, A. I. French trans. of Makrisi’s Numismatics. Editor of letter
of Dominican Friar. See note under Moranvillé, Henri de.
SIONITA, GABRIEL. Latin trans. of Edrisi in collab. with John Hesronita.
SISMONDI, J. C. L. SISMONDE DE. Histoire des républiques italiennes du moyen
âge. Paris, 1809. 8 vols. 12mo. New ed., Paris, 1840. 10 vols. 8vo.
SLANE, G. DE. 1. Catalogue des bibliothèques de Constantinople. In MS. Bibl.
Nat., Paris, fonds arabe, no. 4474.
2. Cat. des MSS. arabes de la Bibl. Nat., Paris. 2 vols., 1883 and 1895. Still
in MS.
3. Trans. into French Ibn Khaldun’s Prolegomena.
SMIRNOW, W. D. Collections scientifiques de l’Inst. des Langues orientales du
Ministère des aff. étrang. Vol. viii, Manuscrits turcs. Petrograd, 1897, 8vo.
SOLAKZADÉ. Hist. Ott. Emp. from beginning to Soleiman II, in 1 vol.
SPANDUGINO, TEODORO. I commentari di Teo. Spandugino Cantacusino,
gentil’huomo Constantinopolitano. Costumi e leggi de’ Turchi: origine de’
Prencipi Turchi. Lucca, 1550. Florence, 1551. Also in Sansovino, pp. 107-36,
182-206. Charles Schéfer has published and edited an early French MS. trans.
of above: Petit traicté de l’origine des Turcqz. Paris, 1896, 8vo.
Excellent for erudite display of bibliographical knowledge, but Schéfer’s
comments on chronicle are disappointing, and his chronology is inaccurate.
SPIEGEL. See Jo. Gaudier.
SPRENGER, A. See Fitzclarence, George.
SREZNAVSKI, L. Russian trans. of Clavijo.
STELLA, GIORGIO. Annales Genuenses. (1298-1409.) Continued by ‘Frater
Johannes’ to 1435. In Muratori, xvii. 947-1318.
STEWART, AUBREY. English trans. of portion of Secreta fidelium crucis of Marino
Sanuto (Torsello).
STEWART, CHARLES. English trans. of anon. Memoirs of Timur.
STRITTER, J. G. Memoriae populorum, olim ad Danubium, Pontum Euxinum,
paludem Maeotidem, Caucasum, mare Caspium et inde magis ad septentriones
incolentium, e scriptoribus Byzantinis erutae et digestae. Petrograd, 1779. 4
vols. 4to.
Numerous writers have gone to Stritter, and quoted from him, in citing
Byzantine writers of 13th and 14th cent.
STRZYGOWSKI, JOSEF. Die Calendarbilder des Chronographen vom Jahre 354, mit
30 Tafeln. Berlin, 1888, 4to.
SZALAY, LADISLAS. Geschichte Ungarns. Trans. from Hungarian by Heinrich
Wögerer. Buda-Pest, 1866-9. 3 vols. 8vo.
SZILAGYI, ALEXANDER. Editor of A Magyar Nemzet Törtenete.
TAFEL, G. L. F. 1. De Via Egnatia. Tübingen, 1842.
2. Symbola critica ad geographiam Byzantinam spectantia. K. Bayer.
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3. Editor of Panaretos.
4. Urkunden zur älteren Handels-und Staatsgeschichte der Republik Venedig.
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TAHIR-ZADE, AHMED AGA. Tarikhi-Aga. Constantinople, 1876. 5 vols. 8vo.
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TARBÉ, P. Editor of Eustache Deschamps.
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TAUBER, NICHOLAS VON. German trans. of Geuffraeus.
TAVERNIER, JEAN-BAPTISTE. Les six voyages ... qu’il a faits en Turquie, en Perse et
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5 vols. 12mo.
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TEXIER, CHARLES. Asie Mineure: description géogr., hist. et archéol. Paris, 1862,
8vo. In series ‘L’Univers illustré’. A larger and earlier edition was published in
Paris, 1839-49. 3 vols. fol., with 241 plates and maps.
THALLÓCZY. (In collab. with Gelčić.) 1. Diplomata relationum reipublicae
Ragusinae cum regno Hungariae. Buda-Pesth, 1887.
2. Studien zur Geschichte Bosniens und Serbiens im Mittelalter ... übersetzt
von Dr. Franz Eckhardt. Munich, 1914, 8vo.
THEINER, AUGUSTUS. 1. Monumenta vetera historiam Hungariae sacram
illustrantia. Maximam partem nondum edita. Ex tabulariis vaticanis
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and Agram, 1863, 1875. 2 vols. 8vo.
Contains papal letters for our period.
THOMAS, A. Les lettres à la cour des papes ... 1290-1423. Rome, 1884, 8vo. Also
in Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire, vols. ii and iv.
THOMAS, G. M. 1. Collab. with Tafel in compilation of Urkunden zur älteren
Handels-und Staatsgeschichte.
2. Collab. with Predelli in Diplomatarium Veneto-Levantinum.
THORNBERG. Latin trans. of Ibn Khaldun.
THURÓCZ, JOHANN. Illustrissima Hungariae regum chronica. In Schwandtner, i.
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THURY, JOSEF. Hungarian trans. of Neshri.
TINDAL, N. English trans. of Cantemir.
TODERINI, Abbé JEAN-BAPTISTE. De la littérature des Turcs. Trad. de l’italien en
français par l’abbé Cournand. Paris, 1789. 3 vols. 8vo.
Toderini was chaplain to the Bailie of Venice at Constantinople from 1779 to
1785. In historical points he follows Cantemir pretty closely. Of the Ottoman
historians he seems to know only Seadeddin and Hadji Khalfa.
TODERINI, T. (in collab. with B. Cecchetti). Il R. Archivio di Venezia. Venice,
1873, 8vo.
TOZER, H. F. 1. The Church and the Eastern Empire. London, 1888. 4to.
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TRAUT, VEIT. Türkischer Kayser Ankunft Krieg und Sieg wider die Christen biss
auf den Zwelfften yetzt Regierenden Tyrannen Soleymannum. With 15
woodcuts. Augsburg, 1543, fol.
TUDELLE, BENJAMIN DE. In Bergeron.
TYCHSEN, O. G. Latin trans. of Makrisi.
URECHI, GRÉGOIRE. Chronique de Moldavie, depuis le milieu du XIVe siècle
jusqu’à 1594. Texte roumain en caractères slavons. Traduction par Émile Picot.
École des Langues viv. orientales, vol. ix. Paris, 1879, 8vo.
URSINS, JEAN-J. DES. Histoire de Charles VI. Edited by Godefroy. Paris, 1614,
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URSU, I. Editor, with Rumanian notes, of Donado da Lezze.
VAMBÉRY, HERMANN. 1. Alt-osmanische Sprachstudien. Leyden, 1901, 8vo.
2. Hungary. ‘Story of Nations’ series. London, 1898, 8vo.
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VANEL. Abrégé nouveau de l’histoire gén. des Turcs ... depuis leur établissement
jusqu’à présent. Avec les Portraits des Empereurs ottomans tirez sur les
meilleurs originaux. Paris, 1689. 3 vols. 12mo.
VAN GAVER, JULES. Collab. with Jouannin.
VATTIER, PIERRE. French trans. of Arabshah.
VERTOT, ABBÉ. Histoire des chevaliers de Saint-Jean. Amsterdam, 1732. 7 vols.
12mo.
VIGÉNAIRE, BLAISE DE. French trans. of Chalcocondylas.
VILLANI, GIOVANNI. Historia universalis (in Italian). Muratori, xiii. 1-1002.
Villani died of the plague in 1348.
VILLANI, MATTEO, and his son FILIPPO. Historia ab 1348 ad 1365. A continuation
of the Historia universalis. (Also in Italian.) Muratori, xiv. 1-770.
A most valuable contemporary record for first conquests of Murad I in
Europe.
VIVIEN DE SAINT-MARTIN, LOUIS. Description historique et géogr. de l’Asie
Mineure. Paris, 1852. 2 vols. 8vo.
VLASTO, E.-A. Trans. into French portion of Hopf which relates to Giustiniani
family of Chios.
VULLERS, J. A. Latin trans. of Mirkhond.
WAVRIN, JEAN DE. Les Chronicques d’Engleterre. Edited by Mlle. du Pont. Paris,
1858-63. 2 vols. 8vo.
WENZEL, G. Monumenta Hungariae historica. Buda-Pest, 1876, 8vo.
WERUNSKI, E. Excerpta ex registris Clementis VI et Innocentii VI ... (541
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memoirs.
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WOLFF. Geschichte der Mongolen. Breslau, 1872.
WRIGHT, J. Editor of Mandeville.
WÜSTENFELD, FERDINAND. 1. Vergleichungs-Tabellen der muhammedanischen und
christlichen Zeitrechnung, nach dem ersten Tage jedes muham. Monats
berechnet und im Auftrage und auf Kosten der Deutschen Morgenländischen
Gesellschaft. Leipzig, 1854, 4to.
This is reproduced in Mas Latrie’s Trésor de Chronologie, &c., pp. 549-622.
2. Geschichte der Türken mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des
vermeintlichen Anrechts derselben auf den Besitz von Griechenland. Leipzig,
1899, 8vo.
A book full of inaccuracies and misleading statements: altogether unworthy
of the author of the Tabellen.
WUTTKE, HEINRICH. Editor of German trans. of P. J. Safařík.
WYLIE, H. History of England under Henry IV. London, 1884-98. 4 vols. 12mo.
XÉNOPOL, A. D. Histoire des Roumains. Paris, 1896. 2 vols. 1a. 8vo. This is a
translation, revised and abridged by the author himself, of Istoria Rominilor
din Dacia traiana. Jassy, 1888-93. 6 vols. 8vo.
YAHIA, NASREDDIN. See Ibn Bibi.
YALE, H. English trans. of Marco Polo.
ZAGORSKY, VLADIMIR. François Rački et la renaissance scientifique et politique
de la Croatie. Paris, 1909, 8vo.
pp. 178-81 contain exposé of Bosno-Serbo-Croatian relations at time of Ottoman
conquest.
ZENKER, J. TH. Bibliotheca Orientalis. Leipzig, 1848-61. 2 vols. 4to. Vol. i
contains: Arabic, Persian, and Turkish books from invention of printing to
1840; vol. ii, a supplement of preceding up to 1860, and books on Christian
Orient.
Compiled in haphazard fashion: very incomplete: most important works are
omitted: in giving translations Seadeddin is confused with Ali.
ZINKEISEN, JOHANN WILHELM. Geschichte des Osmanischen Reichs in Europa.
Gotha, 1840-63. 7 vols. 8vo. In Allgemeine Staatengeschichte, I, 15 Werke.
Vol. i up to 1453.
Jorga’s recent work is 37 in the same series.
ZOLLIKOFER, LUCAS. German trans. of Pedro Mexia.
ZOTENBERG, H. French trans. of Jean of Nikiou.
ANONYMOUS
Acta patriarchatus Constantinopolitani (1315-1402). In Miklositch and Müller,
Acta et diplomata, vol. i.
Anciennes Chroniques de Savoye. Cols. 1-382 in Monumenta Historiae Patriae:
Scriptores, vol. i.
Contemporary account of Amadeo’s expedition to the Levant.
Chronik aus Kaiser Sigmunds Zeit (1126-1434). Edited by Th. von Kern, in Die
Chroniken der deutschen Städte, Nürnberg, i. 344-414. Leipzig, 1862, 8vo.
La Chronique du duc Loys de Bourbon. Ed. by P. P. Chazaud, Paris, 1876, 8vo.
Chronique de Morée. Edited for Soc. Hist. France by Jean de Longnon. Paris,
1911, 8vo.
See also Rodd, Sir Rennell, Schmitt, John, and Morel-Fatio, A.
Chronique du religieux de Saint-Denis. Edited by Bellaguet, in Coll. des Doc.
inédits sur l’hist. de France, XVII, tome ii. 504. Paris, 1839-52. 6 vols. 4to.
Nicopolis expedition, ii. 425-30, 483-532.
Chronique des quatre premiers Valois. (1327-93.) Edited by S. Luce. Paris,
1861, 8vo.
Cronica Dolfina. Bibl. Marc., Venice, MS. ital., class 7, no. 794.
Derbend Namé. English trans. with Turkish text, by Mirza A. Kazem bey. St.
Petersburg, 1851, 4to.
The Dominican Friar’s Account of Timur. See Moranvillé, Henri, and Silvestre
de Sacy, A. I.
Έπιρωτικά (Epirotica). Historia Epiri a Michaele Nepote Duce conscripta. Six
fragments, forming pp. 207-79, in Historia et Politica Patriarchica
Constantinopoleos. (In Corpus Script. Byz.) Bonn, 1849, 8vo.
La Généalogie du Grand-Turc (Lyon ed.). See Gycaud.
Livre des faicts du bon messire Jean le Maingre, dit Bouciquaut. Bibl. Nat.,
fonds fr., no. 11432. Th. Godefroy edited and published this MS., Paris, 1620,
4to. Modern editions: Collection Petitot, VI and VII; Michaud et Poujoulat, II;
and Buchon, Choix de chroniques (Panthéon littéraire), III. Paris, 1853.
Memoirs of Timur. Supposed to be an autobiography in Djagatai Turkish, MS. of
which was discovered in the Yemen.
1. Persian trans. by Abu Halib Hussein. The text was edited by Professor White,
and publ. by the Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1783, with a trans. into English by
Major Davy. A second English trans. was made by Charles Stewart, under title
Mulfuzat timüry or autobiographical memoirs of the Moghul emp. Timur.
London, 1830, 4to.
2. French trans. from Persian by L. Langlès, under title Instituts politiques et
militaires de Tamerlan, écrit par lui-même. Paris, 1787, 8vo.
Mira-ari tarikh Osmani. (Ottoman history.) Constantinople, 1876, 8vo.
Monumenta Pisana. In Muratori, xv. 973-1088.
Relation de la Croisade de Nicopolis par un serviteur de Gui de Blois. The two
MSS. in the Library of the Duc d’Arenbourg and the Ashburnham collection
are published by Kervyn de Lettenhove, in his edition of Froissart, xv. 439-
508; xvi. 413-43.
Series Imperatorum Turcicorum. In Foglietta, de Originibus.
Tractatus de ritu et moribus Turcarum. Cologne, c. 1488; Wittenberg, with
preface by Martin Luther, 1530; German trans. by Sebastian Franck, without
place, 1530; augmented edition of Franck’s trans., Berlin, 1590. The same
work under title Tractatus de ritu, moribus et multiplicatione nequitiae
Turcarum, Paris, 1514, 8vo.
By a Christian slave under Murad II. Rambaud, Hist. gén., iii. 867, cites an
edition of Paris, 1509, 4to, which he attributes to Ricoldus. But I do not find
this name in other editions.
SERBIAN CHRONICLES
Chronicle of the Abbey Tronosha. Chronicle of Pek, quoted by Mijatovitch.
BYZANTINE HISTORIANS
1. Historiae byzantinae scriptores. Louvre ed. Paris, 1645-1711. 38 vols. fol.
Venice, 1727-33. 23 vols.
2. Corpus scriptorum historiae byzantinae. Ed. by Niebuhr. Bonn, 1828-78.
49 vols. 8vo.
3. Patrologia Graeca. Ed. by Migne. Paris, 1857-66, 161 vols. 4to.
The writers who deal with the 14th cent. are:
1. Pachymeres (1258-1308). Bonn, 1835. 2 vols. 8vo. Rome, 1660.
2. Nicephorus Gregoras (1204-1351). Bonn, 1855. Paris, 1702, 2 vols.
3. Johannes VI Cantacuzenos (1320-57). Bonn, 1828-32. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris,
1645. Migne, ciii-civ.
4. Manuel I Palaeologos (1388-1407). Migne, clvi. 82-582.
5. Chalcocondylas, Laonicus (1298-1462). Bonn, 1843. Paris, 1650. Migne,
vol. clix.
6. Ducas, Johannes (1341-1462). Bonn, 1834. Migne, clvii. 750-1166. Paris,
1649. Chronicon Breve—added to Ducas.
7. Phrantzes, George (1259-1477). Bonn, 1838. Migne, vol. clvi. Vienna,
1796.
8. Panaretos, Michail (1204-1386). For Trebizond. See editions under his
card.
9. Historia Epirotica. Bonn, 1849. (In vol. xxiii.)
VENETIAN ARCHIVES
Original MS. collections referred to in my book:
I. Commemoriali. A transcription of miscellaneous acts, bulls, &c., 1295-
1787. 33 vols. la. fol. Vols. i-ix, 1295-1405. i, 1295-8. ii, 1309-16. iii, 1317-26.
iv, 1325-43. v, 1342-52. vi, 1353-8. vii, 1358-62. viii, 1362-76. viii (2), 1376-97.
ix, 1395-1405. The Commemoriali have been edited by Riccardo Predelli. See
also Thomas.
II. Misti (Deliberationes mixtae). ‘Continentes res terrestres et maritimas.’
1293-1440. First 14 volumes (1293-1331) were burned in 1574 or 1577, but
indices have been preserved in the Rubricarii. 60 vols. fol. xv-xxxii, 1332-67;
xxxiii-xli, 1368-88; xlii-xlix, 1389-1413. Rubricarii. Indices of the Misti. 4 vols.
i, 1293-1368 (32 registers); ii, 1368-89 (9 registers); iii, 1389-1413 (9 registers).
III. Secreti (Deliberationes secretae). For foreign affairs. 1345-1401.
Numbered by letters. 19 vols., A to S, of which only four remain. A and B, 1345-
50; R (now called E), March 1388-97; and L, May 1373-Feb. 1376. One feels
deeply the loss of these records, especially of S, which went from April 1397 to
Feb. 1400.
IV. Patti. 7 registers of treaties from 883 to 1496.
V. Liber Albus. Treaties, privileges, &c., with the Levant (principally for
commerce) up to 1348.
VI. Libri Secretorum Consilii Rogatorum, commonly called ‘Cons. Rog.’. A
continuation of the Secreti from April 10, 1401, to Feb. 26, 1476. These volumes
bear Arabic numerals, not letters. There are 27 registers, of which no. 1 contains
the Anatolian campaign of Timur and the downfall of Bayezid.
In the classified bibliography, the collections in which documents from
Venetian records have been published are grouped.
INDEX
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, V, W, Y.
Adalia, 158, 296, 297-8.
Adana, 74, 282, 296, 298-9.
Adrianople, 39, 91, 100, 103, 112, 114, 121, 123, 125-6, 171-87, 207, 231-2,
261;
unique place of, in Ottoman history, 139.
Afion Kara Hissar, 11, 290.
Aïdin, 65, 86, 158, 185-6, 191, 228, 283, 286, 291;
Ottoman absorption of, 185, 259, 274, 287.
Akbara, 69, 284.
Akridur, 284, 288-9.
Ak Seraï, 16, 162, 187, 189, 237, 284, 300.
Ak Sheïr, 154, 187, 260, 284-5.
Ak Tchaï, battle of, 188-90.
Alaïa, 285, 289.
Albania, Ottoman invasions of, 147, 159-60, 170, 183, 206, 243.
Albanian nobility, conversion of, to Islam, 76.
Albanians, value of, in Ottoman army, 159.
Alaeddin Kaï Kobad, composition of army of, 16-17;
connexion with Osmanlis, 20-2, 264, 266, 269;
fortifies Sivas, 246.
—— of Karamania, 165-7, 187-90, 288;
sons of, set free by Timur after Angora, 257.
—— pasha (brother of Orkhan), 70-2.
Alexander of Bulgaria, 103, 138-9, 170.
Ali pasha (grand vizier of Bayezid), 171-2, 199-200, 234.
Altoluogo, 286.
Amadeo of Savoy, crusade of, 128, 130;
proselytizing zeal of, aids conquests of Murad, 141-2;
intervenes to make peace between Venice and Genoa, 155;
hostility to Theodore Palaeologos, 228.
Amassia, 250, 300.
Anatoli Hissar, 234.
Anatolia (see Asia Minor).
Angora, 16, 68, 155, 162, 188, 191, 250, 259, 264, 285-6, 288;
battle of, 251-5, 262;
capture of, by Osmanlis, 68, 156.
Anna of Savoy, 91-4, 129.
Argos, population of, deported to Anatolia, 230.
Armenia, Little, kingdom of (see Cilicia).
Armenians, bravery and massacre of, at Sivas, 248.
Asia Minor, railways in, 11-12;
new ethnic elements in, 14-15;
obscure geographical names in, 32;
exodus of Greeks to coast of, 35;
Catalans in, 36-8, 123, 301;
importance of Aegaean islands for control of, 43;
not conquered by early Osmanlis, 68-9, 300-2;
Black Death in, 96;
Crusaders’ road through, 162;
Bayezid nominal master of greater part of, 191;
Timur invades, 257-60;
Mongol invasions of, 270-3, 300;
Turkish emirates in, 277-301.
Athens, Osmanlis in, 231.
Attika, Ottoman invasions of, 147, 186, 205.
Ayasoluk, 185, 283, 286, 295.
Bagdad, 244, 249, 269.
Balikesri, 66, 69, 286, 291, 294.
Balkan Christians prefer Ottoman rule to that of Catholics, 133, 194, 240.
—— peninsula, distance between cities of, 162;
Moslem immigration into, 196, 230-91;
Venetian fear of Hungarian hegemony in, 207;
Ottoman activities cease in, 243.
Balsa of Albania, 159.
Baphaeon, battle of, 34, 45.
Bayezid, assassinates Yakub upon his accession, 180;
marries daughter of Lazar, 183;
conquers Anatolian emirates, 184-91, 274;
invests Smyrna, 185;
completes conquest of Bulgaria, 195;
receives privileges in Constantinople, 199;
propitiated by Venetians and Genoese, 204-5, 207;
continues subjugation of Albania and Greece, 230, 243;
defeats crusaders at Nicopolis, 216-24;
invades the Morea, 228-32;
settles Anatolian Turks in Balkan peninsula, and pushes siege of
Constantinople after Nicopolis, 230-4;
extends conquests to valley of the Euphrates, and comes into contact with
Timur, 244;
defies Timur, 246;
defeated by Timur at Angora, 251-5;
taken prisoner and humiliated, 253-6;
dies at Ak Sheïr, 256;
arrogance of, 181-2, 209, 227, 246, 249;
origin of nickname Yildirim, 188;
contemporary western conception of, 208;
change of character after success, 225, 235, 249, 257;
claims to greatness as a statesman, 235;
humble origin of, 245, 267;
wrong tactics at Angora, 251-2;
discussion of cage story, 255-6;
durability of conquests of, 262.
Bayezid, sons of, confusion of western writers concerning identity of, 246, 252;
fate of, after Angora, 255;
fight for succession, 259.
Belgrad, 162.
Bigha, Catalan colony of, 123, 294, 301.
Biledjik, 11, 12, 22, 33.
Black Death, 95-6, 115.
—— Sheep, dynasty of, 245.
Bogomile heresy, 93.
Boli, 286, 292.
Borlu, 286.
Bosnia, Ottoman invasions of, 147, 184, 191.
(See also Tvrtko.)
Bosnian nobility, conversion to Islam, 75.
Bosphorus, 32, 45, 59, 233-4, 237, 260-1.
Boucicaut, crusade of, 128, 236-9;
in Nicopolis campaign, 212-23;
tries to raise ransom at Constantinople, 226;
crusaders left behind by, save Constantinople, 242.
Brusa, 12, 13, 22, 32, 45, 46, 54, 84, 122, 125, 152, 185, 188, 198, 225, 257,
275-6, 286-7;
captured by the Osmanlis, 46-8;
place in Ottoman history, 125.
Buda, John Palaeologos at, 130;
Nicopolis crusaders at, 211.
Bulaïr, 101, 111.
Bulgaria, incorporated in Ottoman Empire, 195.
Bulgarians, early propagation of Islam among, 26;
refuse to aid Byzantines against Osmanlis, 103;
first conflict with Osmanlis in Thrace, 111-14;
make John Palaeologus prisoner, and are attacked by Savoyard crusaders, 129-
30;
struggle against Osmanlis in Thrace, 139-40;
resist Hungarian attempts to convert them to Catholic faith, 141;
lose Sofia, 161;
Ottoman invasion and conquest, 171-3, 194-5;
aid Osmanlis in Karamanian campaign, 188;
oppressed by Greek patriarchate, 195-6.
Bunar Hissar, 112, 139.
Burgas, 129, 142.
Burhaneddin of Caesarea, 190, 287, 297.
Byzantine architecture, influence of, upon Ottoman, 275-6.
—— emperor, glamour of title in Western Europe, 241.
Byzantines, civil dynastic strife among, 35, 47-9, 57-61, 91-4, 98-105, 149-54,
197-200, 237-9, 259;
first contact with Osmanlis, 34;
receive aid from Catalans, 37-40;
seek aid of Genoese and Serbians, against Turks, 41;
menaced again by western schemes of conquest, 42;
lose Bithynia to Osmanlis, 45-9;
defeated by Osmanlis at Pelecanon, 59-61;
weakness of opposition of, to Orkhan, 106;
abasement of, before Murad, 122;
fail to cooperate with other Balkan Christians against Osmanlis, 123, 139;
make treaty with Genoese, 162;
reduced to city state of Constantinople, 232-4, 242-3;
aided by Boucicaut’s crusade, 236-9, 242;
fail to take advantage of defeat of Bayezid by Timur, and help Ottoman armies
in retreat to Europe, 261.
Caesarea, 16, 190, 248, 272, 284, 287, 300.
Callixtus, patriarch, 101-3, 144.
Cantacuzenos, Helen, 94.
——, Irene, 91, 94, 103.
——, John, wounded by Turks, 48;
at battle of Pelecanon, 60;
prevents marriage alliance between Orkhan and Dushan, 90;
usurps imperial purple, 91;
marries daughter to Orkhan, 93;
forces widow of Andronicus III to recognize him as co-emperor, and marries
daughter to John Palaeologus, 93-4;
asks aid of Orkhan against Dushan, 98;
dynastic war with John Palaeologus, in which Osmanlis help him, 99-102;
forced to abdicate, and becomes monk, 103;
character of, 104-5;
responsibility for introducing Osmanlis into Europe, 92-5, 97-100, 102-3,
105-10;
grand-daughter of, in harem of Bayezid, 230.
——, Matthew, turns against father, 98;
Patriarch Callixtus refuses to consecrate as co-emperor, 101-2;
forced by John Palaeologus to abdicate, 103.
——, Theodora, wife of Orkhan, 93-4, 98, 107.
Catalans, aid Byzantines in Asia Minor, 37-8;
form state at Gallipoli, 39;
go to Thessaly, 40;
sack Chios, 43;
mercenaries of Cantacuzenos, 103;
remnants of, at Bigha, 123, 301.
Cattaro, 134.
Charles IV (Holy Roman Emperor), 138.
—— of Durazzo, 192.
—— VI of France, rejoices over death of Murad, 178;
opposes Bayezid, 202, 208-9, 233;
insanity of, 202, 209, 242;
receives Manuel Palaeologus, 241;
Timur proposes to share world with, 249;
misinformed about origin and power of Osmanlis, 208-9, 274.
—— Thopia, lord of Durazzo, 159.
Chios, 43, 163, 186, 205.
Chivalry, last effort of, in crusade against Bayezid, 211-14, 217-20, 222-4, 225-
8.
Christians in Ottoman Empire, civil status of, 77-8.
Cilicia, 13, 271, 282, 293, 298-9, 300.
Constantine, Bulgarian prince of Kustendil, 140, 143, 173.
Constantinople, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 24, 36, 41, 79, 91, 100, 121, 125, 148-9, 162,
196-200, 205-7, 232-4, 235-9, 241-3, 259-60.
Corfu, Venetians alarmed about safety of, 243.
Croia, 160.
Crusaders, road of, to Jerusalem, 162.
Crusades, end of, 13, 14, 203;
perversion of, in 14th century, 143.
——, Nicopolis the last, 203.
Cypriotes, join league against Murad, 163;
fighting Genoese, 239;
relations with Rhodes and Anatolian emirates, 285, 290, 295, 297, 299-300.
Damascus, 240, 250, 279, 287.
Dardanelles, 22, 128, 261, 291, 293;
‘question’ of, 152, 203, 237.
Demotika, 48, 57, 90, 91, 99, 100, 105, 112, 114, 121, 125, 150.
Despina, daughter of Lazar, marries Bayezid, 183;
disgraced by Timur, 256.
Djagataï, 244.
Djenghiz Khan, 13, 16, 26, 41, 53, 74, 243-4, 256, 264, 270.
Dobrotich, 140, 170.
Drama, 146, 158, 161.
Durazzo, 159, 162, 201-2, 206.
Dushan, Stephen, 86-90, 94, 98-9, 143, 201.
Edebali, Sheik, 23-4, 27.
Egherdir, 284, 288.
Elbassan, 159.
Emir, confused by contemporary western writers with Murad, 213;
transcribed into ‘admiral’, 163.
Enos, 114, 123.
Ephesus, 258-9, 283.
Epiros, Ottoman invasion of, 159.
Ertogrul, father of Osman, 20-2, 28, 263-4, 267.
Erzerum, 20, 266, 270, 288, 300.
Erzindjian, 20, 246, 248, 259, 266, 270, 272, 288, 293, 300.
Eski Baba, 112.
—— Sheïr, 11, 12, 22, 32, 290.
Evrenos, general of Murad, 112, 143, 146.
——, general of Osman, 48, 76.
—— of Yanitza, 171, 228, 230.
Famagusta, 239, 298.
Flor, Roger de, 37-9, 43.
Fratricide, Ottoman legal sanction of, 180-1.
Gallipoli, 39, 41, 100-3, 111, 129, 221.
Genoese, aid Michael IX, 41;
supposed to have instigated Turkish attack on Rhodes, 44;
help Osmanlis, 97-8, 100, 107, 165;
fight with Venetians for Tenedos, 152-5;
make treaty with Byzantines in 1386, 162;
make treaty with Osmanlis in 1385, and join league against them in 1386,
163;
fail to aid Nicopolis crusade, 207;
under protection of France, 236;
encourage Timur to attack Bayezid, 249;
help Ottoman army to cross to Europe after Angora, 261;
wars with Venetians, 96-7, 152-5, 262;
at Kaffa, 294.
Ghazan Khan, 26, 36-7.
Grand vizier, origin of office, 71.
Greece, conquests of Osmanlis in, 171, 186, 228-30, 232.
Gul Hissar, 69, 288-9.
Gumuldjina,
112.
Guzel Hissar, 283, 286.
Hadji Ilbeki, 123-4.
Halicarnassus, 288, 300.
Hamid, 86, 157, 165-6, 187, 284-5, 289.
Hedwig of Hungary, becomes Queen of Poland, 192.
Henry IV of England, not at Nicopolis, 214;
turns from crusades to efforts for English crown, 233;
receives Manuel Palaeologus, 241;
wants to help to save Constantinople, 242;
tries to convert Timur to Christianity, 259.
Hungarians, first conflict with Osmanlis, 122-4;
aid of, solicited by John Palaeologus, 128-30;
urged by Gregory XI to fight Osmanlis, 136-7;
attack Bulgarians,
and are driven back, 141;
attack Venice, 154;
border nobles co-operate with Serbians at Kossova, 170.
Hungary, first Ottoman raid into, 183-4;
first battle of Osmanlis on soil of, 191;
separation of crown of, from Poland, 192;
interest of, in checking progress of Osmanlis, 203-4;
hegemony of, in Balkans feared by Venice, 207;
Ottoman invasion of, after Nicopolis, 224.
Hunyadi, 194.
Ibn Batutah, 69, 277-80.
Ishtiman, 142, 160-2.
Islamic state, theocratic conception of, 72-3.
—— teaching, concrete results of, 75.
Ispahan, 259.
Istip, 158, 160-2.
Italians, city ideal of, 14.
Jagello of Lithuania, converted and becomes Ladislas of Poland, 192.
Janina, 159.
Janissaries, institution of, 80, 117-21;
number of, in early Ottoman history, 118-19, 253;
rôle of, in early history not important, 119-20, 173.
Jean de Nevers, 210, 212, 218, 223, 225-8.
Jeanne d’Arc, 106, 209.
Jews, cruelty of Tartars to, at Brusa, 267.
Kaffa, 165, 264, 291.
Kaouïa, Ottoman absorption of, 69.
Karamania, 165-7, 187-90, 259, 274, 285, 289-90, 300-2.
Karamanlis, power of, in fifteenth century, 190, 290, 301-2.
Kara Khalil Tchenderli, 112.
—— Yuluk, 190.
—— Yussuf, 244-5.
Karasi, 66, 69, 257, 286, 291, 294.
Kastemuni, 191, 259, 291-2, 297.
Kastriota, George, 170.
Kavalla, 146, 161.
Keraïtes, 14.
Keredek, Ottoman absorption of, 69.
Kermasti, 68, 292.
Kermian, 156, 166, 188, 271, 274, 284, 285, 292-3.
Khaïreddin, 146, 159.
Kharesmians, 17.
Kharesm, distinct from Khorassan, 19.
Kharput, 190, 244.
Khorassan, 19, 25, 244, 264.
Kirk Kilissé, 112, 139.
Kir Sheïr, 250.
Koësé, Michail, 52, 76.
Konia, 6, 11, 13, 16, 166-7, 187, 189, 260, 270-2, 274, 284, 290-300.
Kossova, battle of, 174-8, 203-4;
regarded as victory by Bosnians, Italians and French, 178.
Kustendil, 140, 143, 173.
Kutayia, 12, 22, 34, 156-7, 166-7, 188, 257-8, 284, 292.
Lalashahin, 111, 114, 123-4, 126, 142-3.
Laodicea, 287.
Lazar, election of, 148;
tributary to Murad, 149;
increases tribute after fall of Nish, 162;
sends contingent to Murad for Anatolian campaign, 166;
dies at Kossova, 177.
Lemnos, 269.
Louis of Hungary, defeated by Osmanlis, 124;
attacks Bulgarians, 141;
prejudices Christians of Balkans against Catholic faith by attempts of forcible
conversion, 141, 194;
ignored by Tvrtko of Bosnia, 168-9;
death, and contest over succession of, 192.
Lulé Burgas, 112.
Macedonia, Ottoman conquest of, 145-9, 158-9.
Macedonians, uncertainty of, regarding nationality, 144.
Maeander River, caution concerning identity of, 294.
Magnesia, 258.
Malkhatun, wife of Osman, 23-4, 27, 275.
Mamelukes, in Asia Minor, 282, 293, 300-1.
Marash, 279, 293.
Maritza, battle of, 122-4, 144.
Marko, 52, 76.
Marmora, Ottoman absorption of, 69.
Marriage, reason for abandonment of, by Ottoman sultans, 183, 256.
Mary of Hungary, marries Sigismund, 193.
Matthew, patriarch, 243.
Megalopolis, battle of, 230.
Menteshe, 158, 185-6, 191, 259, 274, 283, 287-8, 289, 294, 297, 300;
emir of, invades Rhodes, 43-4.
Messembria, 139.
Mézières, Philippe de, agitation of, for crusade, 160, 203.
Michael Asan, conflict with Byzantines, 59;
repudiates Serbian marriage alliance, 87.
Midia, 139.
Mikhalitch, conquered by Osmanlis, 68;
Nicopolis prisoners at, 225, 294;
Timur’s army reaches, 257;
emirate of, 294.
Miletus, 294, 295.
Mircea of Wallachia, promises to co-operate with Lazar against Osmanlis, 170;
defeated by Osmanlis, and helps Bayezid against Hungarians, 192;
negotiates with Bayezid to desert crusaders, 214;
withdraws from Nicopolis during battle, 221;
defeats invading Ottoman army, 224.
Modon, 230, 240, 243.
Mohammed I, becomes undisputed Ottoman sultan, 262;
building activity of, 275-6;
Karamanians not dependent upon, 301.
—— II (the Conqueror), legislation of, 72-3, 195;
desire of, to connect origin of family with Byzantine imperial family, 265.
—— Sultan, grandson of Timur, 251-2.
Monastir, 158-9, 195.
Mongols, invasion of Asia Minor, 13, 16, 17, 36-7, 300;
attempts of Christian missionaries to convert, 14, 26;
connexion with Byzantines, 36-7, 41, 65;
exposure of women symbol of conquest among, 256.
Morea, 170-1, 228-32, 240, 243.
Mughla, 294, 295.
Murad, first European conquests, 111-15;
creates corps of janissaries, 117-20;
decides to build Ottoman empire in Balkan peninsula, and makes Adrianople
his capital, 125;
extension of conquests in Bulgaria, 138-43, 159-61;
conquers Macedonia, 145-9, 158-9;
extends sovereignty in Asia Minor, 155-8, 274;
treaties with Ragusa, Venice, and Genoa, 126-7, 163-4;
first conflict with Karamania, 165-7;
reaches Danube by further conquests in Bulgaria, 172;
destroys Serbian independence, and is killed, in battle of Kossova, 175-7;
method of assimilating Balkan Christians, 115-21;
policy in empire-building, 125;
organization of conquered territories, 147-9;
policy in Byzantine dynastic quarrels, 149-55;
anxious not to alarm Venice, 160;
kindness to non-combatants, 167;
policy towards Serbian league, 171;
character of, 178-9;
confused with Bayezid by western travellers and writers, 208-13;
contemporary western conception of, 208.
Musalla, highest mountain in Balkan peninsula, 143.
Mytilene, 163, 205.
Nagy Olosz, battle of, 191.
Nauplia, 230.
Nazlu, 284, 289, 295.
Nicaea, 12, 13, 32, 45-6, 54, 84, 111, 185, 257, 275;
captured by the Osmanlis, 56-7, 61-3;
emirate of, 295.
Nicomedia, 11, 12, 13, 32, 45-6, 54, 84, 111, 185;
captured by the Osmanlis, 63-4.
Nicopolis, 172-3, 193-4, 196;
crusade and battle of, 203, 206, 208-24;
identification of, 215;
significance of battle of, 262;
ransom of prisoners taken at, 225-8.
Nilufer, wife of Orkhan, 25, 62.
Nish, 158, 161-2, 183-4.
Okhrida, 159.
Orkhan, first battles of, 46;
adds Nicaea and Nicomedia to his emirate, 56-7, 61-4;
defeats Byzantines at Pelecanon, 60-1;
completes conquest of Bithynia, 64;
invades and annexes portions of neighbouring emirates, 66-8, 291-2, 294;
invited by Cantacuzenos to aid him against Anna, and receives
Cantacuzenos’s daughter as bride, 92-4;
invited again by Cantacuzenos into Europe to aid him against John
Palaeologus, 98-9;
first conquests in Europe, 100-6;
has Byzantines at his mercy, 107-8;
Ottoman historians unsatisfactory in accounts of reign of, 65;
contemporary statements as to power of, 69-70;
legislation of, 70-3;
policy of towards Christians, 75-80;
organization of army of, 81-4;
death of, and estimate of his character, 109;
extent of emirate of, 301-2.
Orsova, 215.
Orthodox Christians, animosity against Catholics and unwillingness for reunion
of Churches, 128, 132-4, 141, 194.
—— Church, loses hold on Levantine Christians, 49;
oppresses Bulgarians, 195-6.
Orthography, oriental, 5-6.
Osman, birth of, 22;
conversion, marriage, and dream of, 23-9;
principality of, in 1300, 32;
first battle with Byzantines, 34;
conquests of, from Byzantines, 45-9;
legends concerning power and character of, 50-2, 263-76;
reincarnation of early khalifs, 52;
elected as chief of tribe, 55;
army of, 81;
parentage of, 263-5, 267;
relation of with Anatolian Turkish emirs, 17, 44-5, 273-4, 300-2;
error of attributing coinage to, 51.
Osmandjik, 265, 291.
Osmanli, connotation of this word, 29, 50, 78, 80-1.
Osmanlis, originate on border of Bithynia, 19, 25, 28, 30-2;
complete conquest of Bithynia, 62-4, 80;
become a distinct race, 78-81;
first invasion of Europe, 100;
advance into Thrace, 101;
conquer Thrace, 121-6, 149;
conquer Bulgaria, 139, 143, 149, 160-1, 171-3, 193-6;
conquer Macedonia, 144, 149, 158-9, 183;
conquer Servia, 161-2, 173-8, 182;
conquer Thessaly, 147, 228-30, 232;
invade Albania, 147, 159-60, 183, 206, 243;
invade Attika, 147, 186, 205;
invade Bosnia, 147, 184;
invade Hungary, 183-4, 191, 224;
invade Wallachia, 192, 224;
invade the Morea, 171, 228-30, 232;
conquests of, in Greece, 171, 186, 228-30, 232;
absorb Anatolian Turkish emirates, 66-9, 155-8, 185-7, 190-1, 274;
invade Karamania, 165-7, 187-90, 290;
besiege Constantinople, 198-9, 232-4, 236;
naval raids of, 186, 205;
first cross the Danube, 191-2;
first cross the Vardar, 147;
contemporary western misconception of their character, 216-17, 247;
composite blood of, 115-17, 126;
character of, 74-5;
distinct from other Anatolian Turks, 19, 28, 31, 78-9, 115, 126, 217, 228, 283;
tolerance of, 74, 81, 115, 179;
rule of, preferred by Balkan Christians to that of Catholics, 133, 141, 194-5;
not raiders, but colonists, 149, 186;
not feared by Europe until they appeared in Thrace, 111.
Ottoman architecture, Byzantine influence in, 275-6.
—— army, organization of, 81-4;
Christian elements in, 166, 173, 184, 187-8, 217, 252.
—— ceremonial of holding ambassadors’ arms in audience with Sultan, 178.
—— historians, unsatisfactory accounts of reign of Orkhan, 65.
—— history, lacks early sources, 17, 265.
—— legislation, beginning of, 71-3.
—— navy, beginning of, 186;
weakness in reign of Bayezid, 205-6, 234, 237-8.
Palaeologos, Andronicus II, looks to Mongols and Catalans for aid against
Turks, 35-7;
bestows title of Caesar on Roger de Flor, 39;
menaced by Mongols, Venice, and French princes, 41-2;
civil strife with grandson, 48, 57-9;
refuses to co-operate in crusade planned by Marino Sanudo, 49;
seeks aid of papacy against Turks, 85.
——, Andronicus III, set upon by Turks on wedding journey, 48;
captures Salonika, 58;
deposes grandfather, 59;
defeated by Osmanlis at Pelecanon, and abandons Nicaea, 59-61;
invites aid of Anatolian emirs in siege of Phocaea, 65-6, 86;
makes overtures to John XXII, 85;
marries sister to Czar Michael of Bulgaria, 87;
on death-bed entrusts empress and son and heir to care of Cantacuzenos, 91;
assassinates brother, 181.
——, Andronicus IV, charged with suggesting to Bulgarians that they keep his
father prisoner, 128;
rebels against father, and is imprisoned, 149-51;
escapes, imprisons father and brothers, and gives Tenedos to Genoese, 153;
treaty with Genoese, 163.
——, John V (I), under guardianship of Cantacuzenos, 91;
forced to marry daughter of Cantacuzenos, and to accept father-in-law as coemperor,
94;
exiled by Cantacuzenos to Tenedos, 99;
returns from exile, and forces John and Matthew Cantacuzenos to abdicate,
103;
at the mercy of Orkhan, 106-8;
unpopularity of, with Byzantines, 115;
treaties of, with Murad, 122, 128, 136;
fails to send aid to Balkan crusaders at Maritza, 122;
tries to get aid from Venetians against Osmanlis, 128;
goes to Buda to seek aid from Louis of Hungary, and is made prisoner by
Bulgarians, 128-9;
release secured by Amadeo of Savoy, and promises to submit to Roman
Church, 129-30;
visits Rome, and becomes Catholic, 134-5;
last desperate appeal to Pope, 137;
war with Alexander of Bulgaria, 139;
passes over Andronicus, and raises Manuel to imperial purple, 149;
blinds son Andronicus at Murad’s command, 150;
refuses to receive fugitive Manuel at Constantinople for fear of Murad, 152;
gives Tenedos to Venetians, 153;
aids Osmanlis to conquer Philadelphia, last Byzantine possession in Asia, 154,
197;
treaty with Genoese, 152-3;
ignominious death of, 198.
Palaeologus, John VII (II), rebels against grandfather and uncle, 197;
co-operates with Osmanlis against Manuel, 199-200, 237-8, 243;
becomes co-emperor with Manuel, 238-9;
banished by Manuel to Lemnos, 259.
——, Manuel II (I), ransoms father from Venetian merchants, 135;
serves in Ottoman army, 136, 149, 154, 187, 197;
made co-emperor by father, 149;
fails in conspiracy to drive Osmanlis from Serres, and has to seek pardon of
Murad at Brusa, 151-2, 231;
gives Bayezid privileges in Constantinople, 199;
fails to enlist support of Pope and Western princes, 200, 206, 233, 239;
marries son to Russian princess, 232;
receives aid from Boucicaut, 236-9;
accepts John VII as co-emperor, 238;
unsuccessful visit to Europe, 240-3;
expels Osmanlis from Constantinople, and offers to become vassal of Timur,
259;
appeals to Rome and Venice for aid against Timur, 260.
——, Michael IX, unsuccessfully opposes Turks in Anatolia, 35;
at Adrianople, 39;
flees before Turks of Halil, 40.
——, Theodore, serves in Ottoman army, 149;
imprisoned by Andronicus IV, 153;
summoned, as ruler of the Morea, to do homage to Bayezid at Serres, 171,
200, 229;
invites Osmanlis to enter the Morea to aid him against Frankish lords, 228;
defeated by Osmanlis at Megalopolis, 230;
tries to dissuade Manuel from trip to western Europe, 240.
Palatchia, 286, 294-5.
Papacy, and Eastern crusades, 41, 85;
invited to intervene to save Constantinople from Osmanlis, 95;
tries to raise crusades against Osmanlis, 122, 129, 132, 136-8, 141, 153, 201-
2, 235-6, 241;
consistently denounces traffic of Italian republics with Moslems, 154.
(See also under Popes.)
Pasha, origin of this title, 71-2.
Pergama, 284, 286, 291, 294.
Petrarch, hatred of schismatics, 133.
Philadelphia, 13, 34, 105, 154, 296, 299.
Philippe d’Artois, 212, 217-18, 223, 225.
—— de Bourgogne, 202, 209-10, 212, 218, 226, 236, 242.
—— le Bel, plans to retake Constantinople, 41-2;
aids in conquest of Rhodes, 44.
Philippopolis, 114, 122, 139, 161-2, 231.
Phocaea, Byzantines and Anatolian emirs besiege, 66, 283, 296;
John Palaeologus attacks at command of Orkhan, 107-8;
not dependent upon Osmanlis, 299.
Plochnik, battle of, 169.
Popes:
Gregory X, 164.
Boniface VIII, 164.
Clement V, 41-2, 44.
John XXII, 85.
Clement VI, 95.
Urban V, 122, 129-32, 134-6, 141, 164.
Gregory XI, 136-8, 153, 164.
Urban VI, 201.
Boniface XI, 201-2, 235, 262.
Benedict XIII, 202, 235-6, 241.
Popova Shapkah, 143.
Prilep, 158.
Princes’ Islands, 35.
Pristina, 92, 144.
Ragusa, first Christian state to make tributary treaty with Osmanlis, 127.
Raïa, meaning of the word, 77.
Rhodes, 43-4, 186, 205;
grand master of, at Nicopolis, 219, 221;
chevaliers of (see Saint John, Knights of).
Rhodope Mountains, 140, 143, 147.
Rilo, monastery of, 195.
Riva, 237.
Rodosto, 65, 101.
Rumeli Hissar, 234.
Rustchuk, 172.
Saint John, Knights of, conquer Rhodes, 43;
resist Turks, 44, 283;
capture Smyrna, 85, 283;
conspire with Pope to seize the Morea, 240;
lose Smyrna to Timur, 258;
relations with Cyprus and Anatolian emirates, 285-6, 295, 297, 299-300.
—— Sophia, mosque of, 60, 93, 94, 102, 154, 233.
Salona, duchy of, conquered by Bayezid, 229-30.
Salonika, 40, 58, 65, 79, 92, 98, 100, 121, 145, 181, 231.
Samakov, battle of, 142-3, 160.
Samarkand, 244, 251, 256, 260.
Samsun, 191, 196, 291.
Sangarius, 11, 12, 32, 38, 45, 302.
Sarukhan, 65, 86, 158, 185-6, 191, 228, 259, 283, 291, 295-6.
Savoy, origin of armies of, 44.
(See also Amadeo and Anna.)
Savra, battle of, 159.
Scutari (in Albania), 160.
Scutari (on the Bosphorus), 60, 64, 94, 108, 234.
Seljuk architecture, influence upon Ottoman, 275-6.
Seljuks, invasions of Asia Minor, 15-16;
changes of religion, 26.
—— of Rum, contest Asia Minor with Byzantines, 13;
relations with Osmanlis, 20-2, 32, 268-76;
subject to Mongols, 270-2;
end of dynasty, 297.
Serbian Church, autocephalous, 144-5.
—— empire of Stephen Dushan, 86-90.
Serbians, illusions of, concerning their fourteenth-century empire, 86, 90, 175,
201;
first enter Macedonia to help Byzantines against Turks, 41;
aid Andronicus II against his grandson, 58;
conflict with Orthodox Church, 89-90, 144-5;
refuse to aid Byzantines against Osmanlis, 102;
defeated by Osmanlis at Maritza, 122-4;
anarchy among chieftains of, in Macedonia, 144;
defeated by Osmanlis at Cernomen, and lose Macedonia, 145-8;
become subject to Osmanlis, 160-2;
help Murad in Karamanian campaign, and are punished for looting, 167;
form league against Murad, and are defeated at Kossova, 168-78;
treachery of their nobles, 173;
cast fortunes definitely with Osmanlis, 182-3;
aid Bayezid in Karamanian campaign, 188;
last of Dushan’s following disappear in Macedonia, 201;
fidelity of, to Bayezid at Nicopolis, 220;
fight in Ottoman army at Angora, 252.
Serres, 58, 144, 147, 152, 158, 161, 200, 229.
Shah-Rokh, son of Timur, 255, 258.
Shehabeddin, 69, 277-80.
Shuman, 172.
Sigismund, first invasion of Bulgaria, 188, 193-5;
becomes king of Hungary, and sends threat to Bayezid, 193;
tries to get support of Italian republics against Bayezid, 205-7;
leads Nicopolis crusade, 210-24;
boastfulness of, before Nicopolis, 216;
flees from battle-field, 220-1;
character of, 193, 222.
Silistria, 196.
Silivria, 237.
Sinope, 191, 291-2, 296, 297.
Sis, 282.
Sisman, John, 128, 140-3, 170, 172-3, 194-6.
Sivas, 190, 270, 272, 274, 287, 297, 300;
destruction of, by Timur, 243, 245-8.
Slavery, Greek abhorrence of, 116;
connivance of Italian republics in, 165.
Smyrna, 11, 79, 85, 185, 258-60, 270, 283, 286, 299-300.
Sofia, 142, 158, 160-2, 172, 231.
Soleiman pasha, son of Orkhan, 100-1, 105, 108, 111.
Soleiman Shah, grandfather of Osman, 20, 266.
—— tchelebi, son of Bayezid, 195, 245-8, 252-3, 257-61.
South Slavs, character of, 170.
Sozopolis, 129, 142.
Stambul, origin of name, 199.
Stephen Lazarevitch, kral of Serbia, vassal and brother-in-law of Bayezid, 182-3;
fights for Osmanlis at Nicopolis, 220;
and at Angora, 253.
Stracimir, 140-1.
Sugut, 12, 22, 25, 33, 63, 115, 285.
Taharten, emir of Erzindjian, 246.
Tarsus, 24, 216, 298.
Taurus Mountains, 24, 125, 187, 289, 298, 300-2.
Tchataldja, 115.
Tchorlu, 105, 112, 162.
Tekke, emirate of, 158, 165-6, 186-7, 285, 289, 297-8.
Tenedos, importance of, to control Dardanelles, 152;
struggle of Venice and Genoa for, 152-5;
John VII Palaeologus banished to, 236.
Thessaly, Ottoman conquest of, 147, 228-30.
Thingizlu, 69.
Thomas, despot of Janina, 159.
Timur, origin of name, and conquests of, 244;
charges against Bayezid, 190, 245-6;
destroys Sivas, 247-8;
makes overtures to Occidental princes, 249;
invades Asia Minor, and crushes Bayezid at Angora, 250-4;
degrades Bayezid and Despina, 255-6;
pushes to Aegaean Sea, and captures Smyrna, 257-60;
death of, 260;
infirmity of, 244;
lacked constructive policy in conquests, 257, 260-1;
restores Anatolian emirs deposed by Bayezid, 257, 259, 283, 288, 290, 292-3,
294.
Timurtash, 142, 158, 166, 187, 188-9, 254.
Tirnovo, 140, 142, 172, 194-6.
Tokat, 190, 250, 287, 298.
Trebizond, 13, 162, 270, 280, 288, 291, 293, 297, 299.
Tughra, origin of, 127.
Turin, treaty of, 155.
Turk, connotation of word in Ottoman Empire, 78-81, 228;
lacks family ties and family name, 267.
Turkey, connotation of word in fourteenth century, 107.
Turkish chieftainship elective rather than hereditary, 54, 276.
—— raids in Aegaean Sea, Macedonia and Thrace, 36-40, 65, 84, 185-6, 261,
283.
—— emirates of Asia Minor stronger than Osmanlis, 30, 274, 290, 301-2.
—— refugees from Thrace in 1912, 16.
—— women not veiled in fourteenth century, 157.
Turks, character of Anatolian, 15.
Tvrtko, kral of Bosnia, 168-70, 178, 183-4, 201.
Ulubad, 68, 298.
Uskub, 88, 174, 183.
Valona, 159.
Varna, 129, 172.
Venetians, interfere in Byzantine dynastic quarrels, 35;
invited by Clement V to co-operate in reconquest of Byzantine Empire, 42;
menaced in Aegaean by Turks, 84;
relations with Stephen Dushan, 88-90;
wars with Genoese, 96-7, 152-5, 262;
urged by fellow countrymen to oppose Orkhan, 107;
fail to protect Byzantines against Murad, 128;
detain John Palaeologus because of debts, 135;
refuse to contribute seriously to crusade against Osmanlis, 137;
struggle with Genoa for Tenedos, 152-5;
sapped by prosperity, 163;
make commercial treaty with Murad, 164;
opposition to Hungarians, 169;
indifference to Murad’s conquests, 170;
refuse to buy Lemnos from Byzantines, 200;
fail to aid in Nicopolis crusade, 203-7;
in Athens and Salonika, 230-1;
prefer to curry favour with Bayezid rather than defend Constantinople, 233;
reception of Manuel Palaeologus and their pacifist policy, 240;
alarm over appearance of Osmanlis on Adriatic, 243;
help Ottoman army tocross to Europe after Angora, 261;
at Palatchia, 294-5.
Visconti, Giovanni Galeazzo, 131, 210, 236, 240.
Viza, 139.
Vukasin, 145-6, 159, 173.
Wallachia, Ottoman invasions of, 192, 224.
Wallachians, aid Bulgarians against Hungarians, 141;
aid Osmanlis against Hungarians, 192;
worth of, as soldiers, 192;
aid Osmanlis in Bulgaria, 193;
withdraw during battle of Nicopolis, 221;
successfully resist Ottoman invasion after Nicopolis, 225.
Wenceslaus, 210, 235.
Western Europe, inability to understand Eastern Europe, 132-3.
White Sheep, dynasty of, 190, 245.
Widin, 140, 141, 142, 196, 215.
Yakub, killed by brother Bayezid after Kossova, 180.
Yakub, general of Bayezid, 230.
Yamboli, 140, 142.
Yeni Sheïr, 28, 32, 34, 258, 275.
Printed in England at the Oxford University Press
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Keraites, a tribe of large numbers, established on the frontier of China, were Christians in
the early times: Resheddin, Quatremère edition, i. 93. The Council of Lyons sent missionaries to
Mongols in the reign of Innocent IV, 1245. For account of missions to Mongols in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries see Howorth, i. 68 f., 189-92; ii. 183 n.; iii. 72-5, 278-81, 348-55, 576-80: also
documents of the Ming period, trans. by Hirth, p. 65.
[2] I have witnessed a similar migration, when the Bulgarians broke into Thrace in October 1912.
The progress of the fleeing Turks, even on the plains, was painfully slow, and the mortality was
frightful.
[3] Neshri (Nöldeke’s translation), in Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft,
xiii. 190.
[4] Seadeddin, Casa Ottomana (Bratutti trans.), i. 6.
[5] Neshri, xiii. 190.
[6] See Appendix B for these emirates.
[7] There is a collection of State papers in Persian, Arabic and Turkish, Feridun (Bibl. Nat., Paris,
MS. turc, 79), which contains some letters and decrees of the earliest sultans, but there is no proof of
the authenticity of these documents.
[8] Neshri and Idris, end fifteenth century; Seadeddin, end sixteenth century; Hadji Khalfa,
seventeenth century. See Bibliography.
[9] In the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, I have examined, as far as I know, all the books
concerning Turkey printed before 1600. See list in Bibliography.
[10] Jorga, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches (in the Geschichte der europaïschen Staaten),
published 1908-13, preface and i. 152-3.
[11] Up to the death of Ertogrul (1288), I follow Neshri, ZDMG., xiii. 188-98, unless otherwise
specified. Direct quotation is indicated by quotation marks.
[12] A.D. 1219. Evliya effendi, i. 27, gives A.H. 600; Seadeddin and Hadji Khalfa, A.H. 619;
Drechsler, Chron. Saracenorum, A.H. 610.
[13] Or Kharesm? Schéfer, in preface to his translation of Riza Kouly’s embassy to Kharesm,
Bibl. de l’École des langues viv. orientales, 1re série, vol. iii., says that Kharesm in part was identical
with Khorassan. But Shehabeddin, trans. by Quatremère in Notices et Extraits, xiii. 289, declares that
Kharesm is a country distinct from Khorassan. Hadji Khalfa, Djihannuma, MS. fr., Bibl. Nat., Paris,
nouv. ac., no. 888, p. 815, supports this opinion. The very fact that these writers are so careful to
make this assertion shows, however, that there was much confusion as to these terms. According to
Vambéry, Kharesm is still in Djagatai Turkish, the diplomatical and political name for the modern
Khanate of Khiva. Howorth, History of Mongols, ii. 78, says that the Turkish tribes remained in these
countries after the Mongol conquest. Is this the Organa or Urgheuz of Marco Polo?
[14] Hussein Hezarfenn, ii. 287, and Chalcocondylas (Patr. Graec., Migne, vol. clix), 21, call the
father of Ertogrul Oguzalp. For critical discussion see Appendix A.
[15] This title is invariably given by Neshri to every ruler in the direct line of Osman, just as he
calls the Christian opponents of the Osmanlis unbelievers.
[16] Probably Sultan Inoenu, anticipating the later name of this district.
[17] Sagredo, the Italian historian, whose work was greatly esteemed by Gibbon, makes the
curious error of calling Alaeddin ‘Lord of Aleppo and Damascus’.
[18] ‘A great mountain situated between Kutayia and Brusa’: Hadji Khalfa, Djihannuma, fol.
1975; ‘The paths up this mountain are so difficult that one on foot has a thousand pains to reach the
top’: ibid., fol. 1850.
[19] Rasmussen, Annales Islamici, p. 41, confuses this city with Kutayia, and gives its capture by
Ertogrul under date of 1285.
[20] Thus in Ali and Neshri. Seadeddin attributes this dream to Ertogrul. But the confusion
between Ertogrul and Osman is marked in all the Ottoman historians.
[21] The Ottoman historians give as reason for the refusal the social difference between his
daughter and the ‘young prince’. This is an excellent illustration of how, writing in the zenith of
Ottoman prosperity, the historians lost their sense of proportion or were actually compelled to write in
flattering terms of the founder of their royal house.
[22] Hammer, i. 67, in relating this dream, has transcribed with fidelity and felicity the Persian
poetry of Idris.
[23] Leunclavius, Pandectes, p. 113, following Ali, attributes the moon dream to Ertogrul, and
places it at Konia. Boecler, Commentarius de rebus turcicis, pp. 104-5, following Chalcocondylas,
does likewise, but relates the Koran dream of Osman. Seadeddin, p. 11, makes the dream distinctly
religious, and while not mentioning the love story or Malkhatun by name, infers that Osman receives
intimation of his marriage with Edebali’s daughter only through Edebali’s interpretation of the dream.
This failure to mention Malkhatun is all the more significant when we see later how much attention
Seadeddin gives to Nilufer. Evliya effendi, ii. 19, says that through the marriage of Osman to
Malkhatun, the Ottoman sultans became descendants of the Prophet!
[24] I should except from this statement Rambaud, who, in Hist. générale, iii. 822-4, states that
the conversion of the Osmanlis to Islam took place during the chieftainship of Osman. The general
character of the work to which he was contributing, and the limits of space, did not allow him to give
any reasons in support of this position. Vanell, Histoire de l’Empire ottoman, p. 357, says that
Ertogrul was a pagan until he became converted through reading the Koran.
[25] From personal acquaintance with them, I can testify that these nomads (Yuruks) have
remained up to the twentieth century with only the most vague idea of Mohammed and with no idea
at all of the Koran and the ritual observances of Islam.
[26] See Shehabeddin, MS. Paris, Bibl. Nat., fonds arabe 2325, fol. 69 vº-70 rº, citing Mesoudi
and earlier writers for the propagation of Islam among the Bulgarians.
[27] Cf. Cahun’s masterly contribution to Hist. générale, ii. 887.
[28] Abul Faradj, Chronicon Syr., pp. 606-8.
[29] The Ottoman historians mention none, either of friendship or enmity, during the entire life of
Osman.
[30] The improbable connexion between Ertogrul and Osman and the Seljuk sovereigns of Konia
has been accepted without question by European historians, on the strength of the assertions of the
Ottoman historians. This is curious, because the evidence against this connexion is overwhelming.
The Seljuk Empire of Rum lost its independence at the battle of Erzindjian, 1244 (cf. Heyd, Histoire
du commerce dans le Levant, i. 534). Neshri himself confesses that after this date ‘now remained only
the bare name of the Seljuk Kings’: ZDMG., xiii. 195. In view of the established facts of history, it is
astonishing that European historians should have up to this time perpetuated, and given their sanction
to, a fiction which was invented for the purpose of helping Mohammed II to incorporate Karamania
in his empire! The limits of a footnote forbidding the adequate discussion of this question and the
citation of the authorities, I must refer my readers to Appendix A.
[31] Neshri, ZDMG., xiii. 196, says seventy years. But in his reckoning he constantly contradicts
himself. Sheïr means city, eski old, and yeni new.
[32] All the Ottoman historians agree upon this number.
[33] ‘The unbelievers and believers of that land honoured Ertogrul and his son’: Neshri, p. 197.
That Christians lived everywhere without molestation in the midst of non-converted Turkish tribes is
asserted by Heyd, ii. 65.
[34] It is altogether likely that Osman received his name at the time of his conversion. Is it not
significant that his father, his brothers, his son even, as well as most of his warriors, had purely pagan
Turkish names?
[35] Tableau de l’Empire ottoman, iv. 373.
[36] See Appendix B.
[37] During the late war with the Balkan allies, the newspapers of the world spoke of ‘driving the
Turks back to Asia, where they belong’, and of the re-establishment of the Ottoman capital at Brusa
or Konia!
[38] See Armain’s translation of the Djihannuma (Mirror of the World), a universal geography by
Hadji Khalfa, in the Bibl. Nat., Paris, MS., fonds français, nouv. ac., nos. 888-9. The section on Asia
Minor, although written in some detail, does not contain many of the names which we find in the
Ottoman historians. I wish to register a protest against inflicting on students and readers of history
lists of names that can have no possible meaning to them. I have omitted from this work the names of
places and persons upon which I can get no light.
[39] Hadji Khalfa, op. cit., fol. 1917, makes an error in giving the distance from Brusa to Yeni
Sheïr as two days. I have driven from Brusa to Nicaea in one day of not fast going. Yeni Sheïr is on
the main road between these cities, six hours from Brusa and four hours from Nicaea.
[40] The early European historians make the wildest statements about Osman’s field of action.
Many of them call Ottomanjik, a place four days or five north-east of Eski Sheïr, his first conquest:
Cuspianus (Antwerp ed., 1541), p. 6; Spandugino, in Sansovino, p. 143; Egnatius, p. 28. Cf. Hadji
Khalfa, op. cit., fol. 1789. But this place was not captured by the Osmanlis until the reign of Bayezid:
Evliya, op. cit., ii. 95. Paulo Giovio, an Italian historian greatly esteemed in his day, puts among the
notable conquests of Osman the city and district of Sivas, as does also Rabbi Joseph, in his famous
Chronicles, Eng. trans. of Biallobotzky, ii. 505. Donado da Lezze, Historia Turchesca, Rumanian
edition of Ursu, pp. 4 and 5, makes him conqueror of Rum, province of Sivas, Phoenicia, ‘et altri
luoghi’! Cuspianus, De Turcarum Origine, quotes Donado da Lezze almost literally. Richer, De
Rebus Turcarum, written for the information of Francis I of France, says, p. 11: ‘Circiter 1300,
Ottomannus impune invitis omnibus summam imperii, quod ante partitum tenebant factiosi
magistratus, occupavit, seseque Asiae minoris sive Anatoliae imperatorem nominare sit aggressus.
Syvam, quae eadem cum Sebaste est, expugnavit, et oppida ad Euxinum posita non pauca cepit.’ (The
italics are mine.) Hussein Hezarfenn, one of the Ottoman historians whose work has been most
widely read and quoted in Europe, says of Ertogrul, who never saw the sea, ‘He equipped several
ships, with which he made a raid into the Aegaean Sea, pillaged the islands, descended upon Greece,
penetrated up to the Peloponnesus, and returned to his home (the little village of Sugut!) laden down
with wealth and followed by a great army composed of experienced warriors of all sorts of nations
whom the renown of his bravery and his good fortune attracted to his service: which increased so
greatly his reputation in Asia that Sultan Alaeddin even found it to his advantage to cultivate him’:
trans. of Petits de la Croix, ii. 288-9.
[41] I am not sure that I am justified in using the expression ‘undisputed sway’ even for this small
territory. Pachymeres, IV. 30, pp. 345-7, speaks of a certain Soleiman pasha, who was threatening
Nicomedia in 1303; and V. 23, p. 427, of Alisur retiring to the Sangarius after Roger had relieved
Philadelphia in 1307.
[42] Probably the first conquest of Osman. This city, on the Kara Su, is still a thriving place. Its
situation is most picturesque. The author of the Arabic History of the Kurds (Bibl. Nat., Paris, MS. of
Ducaurroy, fol. 151 rº, 152 rº) makes Biledjik the city granted to Ertogrul by Alaeddin, and declares
that he captured Sugut (Sukidjeh) from the ‘infidels of Tekkur’.
[43] Angelcoma of the Byzantines.
[44] The only conquest of Osman not in the direction of Byzantium. Hadji Khalfa, op. cit., fol.
1851.
[45] ‘Situated between Yeni Sheïr, Brusa, and Aïnegoel. They count one day from Yeni Sheïr to
Yar Hissar by the road which goes to Kutayia’: Hadji Khalfa, fol. 1917.
[46] The Ottomans name this place Kuyun Hissar. See Schéfer edition of Spandugino, p. 16 n.
[47] Pachymeres, IV. 25, p. 327, says the battle was fought July 27. Jorga, Geschichte des
Osmanischen Reiches, i. 157, is in error in placing date June 27; Hammer, i. 190, and Jorga both give
year 1301. Muralt, Chronographie Byzantine, ii. 480, has this battle under 1302.
[48] Pach., IV. 25, p. 335.
[49] Cantemir, Rumanian ed., i. 20, seems to infer that Osman attacked Nicomedia after this
battle. He is certainly wrong in stating that Osman captured Kutayia. See pp. 274, 292-3.
[50] Pach., V. 9; Gregoras, VII, i, p. 214.
[51] Pach., in Stritter, Memoriae Populorum, iii. 1086-7; D’Ohsson, Histoire des Mongols, iv.
315. Andronicus made a second appeal in 1308, and gave his own sister, Marie, who is known to later
Mongol historians as ‘Despina Khatun’, to Mohammed Khodabendah Khan, after Khodabendah’s
conversion to Islam: ibid., iv. 536; Hertzberg, Geschichte der Byzantiner und des Osmanischen
Reiches, p. 461.
[52] I can find no justification for Howorth’s statement, ‘This alliance seems to have had a
restraining influence upon the Turks’, in his History of the Mongols, iii. 464.
[53] See Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, vi. 318, where the date of this momentous event is
given as ‘vers 1305’.
[54] Pach., V. 14, pp. 399-400; 21, pp. 410, 417.
[55] Pach., V. 23, pp. 426-8; Greg., VII. 3, p. 221.
[56] Pach., V. 21, p. 423; Greg., loc. cit.
[57] Greg., loc. cit. Cf. Muralt, after Latin authorities, ii. 487.
[58] Pachymeres, Books V, VI, and VII; Gregoras, Book VII, passim, and Phrantzes, Book I;
Moncada, Expedicion de los Catalanes; Muntaner, in Bibliothek des lit. Vereins zu Stuttgart, vol. viii.
For their later adventures there is an excellent account in Finlay, History of Greece, iv. 146-56.
[59] Andronicus wrote to his empress, urging her not to try to return to Constantinople from
Salonika by land: Pach., VII. 12, p. 586; Chalcocondylas (ed. Bonn), I, p. 19.
[60] Greg. VII. 8, pp. 254-8; Chalc., I, p. 19; Jorga, op. cit., i. 160, speaks of ‘die schöne mit
Perlen und Edelsteinen geschmückte Krone’ of Michael. Was it not rather a turban? See Hammer, i.
364, note x.
[61] ‘The emperor of Constantinople fears the anger of the Khan of Kapdjak and is eager to
disarm him by protestations of submission and efforts to obtain a continuance of the truce. Things
have always been on this footing since the children of Djenghiz Khan began to reign in this country’:
Shebabeddin, Paris MS., fol. 70 rº.
[62] Ducange, Hist. de Constantinople sous les Emp. Français, map section, p. 46.
[63] Ducange, Hist. de Constantinople sous les Emp. Français, map section, p. 54.
[64] The Venetians were jealous of the growing power of Genoa and the hostility shown to
Venetian merchants at Constantinople. See Appendix B. Also Heyd, Handelsgeschichte des
Mittelalters, i. 366.
[65] Ducange, ibid., p. 57; Buchon, Collection des chroniques nat. fr., p. lv.
[66] Muralt, Chronographie Byzantine, ii. 493, no. 21, n.
[67] A rabble without arms actually arrived at Marseilles. The ships were prevented from leaving
Brindisi by a storm. Cf. Iacomo Bosio, Della Historia della Religione, ii. 1. At the very moment this
effort to start a crusade was ending in dismal failure, the two kings on whose behalf it was planned
were engaged in a bitter quarrel! Clement V, Epistola Comm. vii. 773-4, 787.
[68] Les Giustiniani, Dynastes de Chios, Vlasto’s French translation of Hopf’s great monograph,
p. 8.
[69] Mas-Latrie, Histoire de Chypre, ii. 602.
[70] Mas-Latrie, op. et loc. cit.; Heyd, French edition, i. 537.
[71] A splendid field for historical research, which, as far as I know, has never yet been touched,
is the compilation, from the Vatican records, of the dates for the extinction of the dioceses of the early
Christian world in Africa and Asia. When did the bishops of these dioceses begin to be appointed and
consecrated in partibus?
[72] Bosio, op. cit., ii. 37; Abbé Vertot, Histoire des Chevaliers de Malte, i. 106.
[73] See Bosio, ii. 37 f., and Vertot, i. 101 f. With a view to glorifying the Order, and also the
Duke of Savoy, this fiction has been fabricated and perpetuated. Even such a serious work as that of
Muralt gives, upon the strength of Raynaldus, who merely quotes Bosio, Osman as leader of this
attack upon Rhodes: see Chronographie Byzantine, ii. 507. During the recent war between Italy and
Turkey, when it was a question of Rhodes, more than one leading Italian newspaper revived this story
of the founder of the Italian royal house defeating the founder of the Ottoman royal house. There is,
of course, no foundation whatever for the statement.
[74] So Clement V evidently believed. See his letter to the Genoese in Epistola Comm. vii. 10.
[75] That the Sangarius used to run into the Gulf of Nicomedia instead of into the Black Sea is
the opinion of many geographers, ancient as well as modern. There have been a number of projects to
connect the Sangarius, Lake Sabandja, and the Gulf of Nicomedia by canals that would give a deep
waterway across the plain and prevent the frequent overflooding which has always been a source of
loss to cultivators in that region.
[76] Idris, quoted by Hammer, i. 192.
[77] Brusa is three hours by carriage from its port on the southern side of the Gulf of Mudania, or
one hour by narrow-gauge railway. One can reach Nicaea either from the Gulf of Mudania or that of
Nicomedia.
[78] Pach., VII. 18, pp. 597-9.
[79] Pach., VII. 25, p. 620. The Turks call this castle Hodjahissar.
[80] Ibid., loc. cit. But Pachymeres puts the number of these Tartars as 30,000, which must be at
least a tenfold exaggeration.
[81] Seadeddin, translation Brattuti, p. 27. Bratutti, whose transcription of Turkish names is often
unintelligible to me, calls Karadja Hissar ‘Codgia’.
[82] Ibn Batutah, Voyages, ii. 320, speaks of buildings which must have been erected at these
baths by Orkhan within the decade following the capture of Brusa. Earlier buildings, according to
him, were constructed ‘by a Turcoman king’: ibid., p. 318. Tchekirdje is still a favourite resort for
foreigners as well as for natives.
[83] Cantacuzenos and Gregoras.
[84] Greg., IX. 2, p. 401.
[85] Cant., I. 42, pp. 204-6, 208; Greg., VIII. 15, p. 384; Greg., IX, c. 1, pp. 390-2, says it was the
young Andronicus who first planned to break again with his grandfather. However that may be, the
impression among the Greeks in Asia Minor who were endeavouring to hold back the enemies of the
empire must have been the same!
[86] Greg., IX. 1, p. 392.
[87] In the volume on ‘L’Ancien Régime’ in Taine’s Origines de la France contemporaine, pp. 3-
6, there is a wonderful analysis of the effect of early Latin Christianity upon the pagan mind. The
Greek Church of the fourteenth century could produce no such impression.
[88] From the earliest Ottoman times to the present day religion and nationality have not been
divorced. Osmanli and Moslem were synonymous terms, just as to-day in the Balkan peninsula,
where the Ottoman Empire was really founded, Turk and Moslem are synonymous terms. When once
this is understood, the student and traveller is freed from his preconceived notion that the ‘Turks’, as
that expression is to-day understood in Turkey, are an Asiatic race, who have held the country as
conquering invaders.
[89] Jorga, i. 162, is mistaken in saying, ‘überall wurden die Goldmünzen Osmans gern
angenommen.’ Hadji Khalfa says that Osman struck no money. Also Colonel Djevad bey, Histoire
militaire de l’Empire ottoman, i. 95. Save several silver pieces, which are not proven genuine, of the
collection of Abbé Sestini (Salaberry, Hist. de l’Emp. ott., iv. 193), I can find record in numismatic
collections of no money of Osman. For discussion of this question see Hammer, i. 117, who cites
several Ottoman historians against coinage before Orkhan, and Toderini, Historia della letteratura
ottomana, French trans., iii. 183.
[90] Appendix B, on the Emirates of Asia Minor during the Fourteenth Century, contains the
identification and description of these neighbours.
[91] See Shehabeddin, Paris MS., 139 vº, which is cited in part on p. 70.
[92] The chieftainship among the Turks was elective rather than hereditary. The Armenian
Haython, who had excellent opportunities for observing their customs at this period, wrote: ‘Puisque
les Turcs pristrent la seigneurie de Turquie, ilz ordonnerent un seigneur entre eulx, lequel ilz
appelerent le Soudan’: MS. Bibl. Nat., Paris, fonds français, 2810, fol. 230 vº. Hussein Hezarfenn
says (ii. 287-9) that Ertogrul succeeded his father by election and, in turn, manoeuvred to secure the
election of Osman. Evliya effendi, i. 27, declares that Osman was elected chief. This is also stated by
Barletius, in Lonicerus, vol. ii, fol. 231-2; Spandugino; Cantemir (Rumanian ed.), i. 19; and Vanell, p.
359. Cf. Chalcocondylas (ed. Migne), col. 24.
[93] For dates see Bibliography.
[94] Nöldeke’s translation, in Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlândischen Gesellschaft, xiii. 214-
17.
[95] Gregoras, IX. 1, pp. 390-2. But Cantacuzenos, I. 42, pp. 208-15, maintains that young
Andronicus heard that his grandfather was preparing a coup before he thought of taking any action
himself.
[96] Cant., I. 44, pp. 215-16; Greg., IX. 1, p. 392; Phrantzes, I. 6, p. 35.
[97] Cant., I. 4-5, pp. 216-23; Greg., IX. 1, p. 396.
[98] Cant., I. 50, pp. 248, 252; Greg., IX. 3, pp. 405-7.
[99] Cant., ibid.; Greg., IX. 3, pp. 407-9.
[100] Cant., I. 52, pp. 260-2; Greg., IX. 4, pp. 409-10; Cant., I. 53, pp. 267-70.
[101] Cant., I. 55, pp. 277, 281-2; Greg., IX. 4, p. 414.
[102] Cant., I. 55-II. 1, pp. 277-312; Greg., IX. 4-8, pp. 411-32; Phr. I. 6, p. 35.
[103] IX. 8, p. 431.
[104] Cant., II. 28, p. 473; Greg., IX. 14, p. 461, and X. 1, p. 474.
[105] II. 3, p. 324.
[106] Cantacuzenos uses this same expression concerning the collecting of the army with which
Andronicus III repelled an invasion of seventy Turkish vessels in the autumn of the same year. Cf. II.
13, p. 390.
[107] I have gathered the account of this battle from Cant., II. 6-8, pp. 341-60; Greg., IX. 9, pp.
433-5; Phr., I. 7, pp. 36-7; Chalcocondylas (ed. Migne), I. 11, col. 32. It is interesting to note how
much space Cantacuzenos gives in contrast to the brevity of the other writers.
[108] II, c. 8, 363. Seadeddin, Neshri, and Idris agree with Gregoras, IX. 13, p. 458, in putting the
fall of Nicaea in 1330 or 1331. Gregoras euphemistically says the city was ‘pillaged by the Turks’.
But Leunclavius, on the authority of Ali, gives A.H. 734, which would be 1333 or 1334.
[109] Phr., I. 7.
[110] In Djihannuma, Paris MS., fol. 1934.
[111] When I was in Nicaea in 1913, the imam of the Yeshil Djami told me that there were
seventy thousand houses at the time of the Ottoman conquest. This is the local tradition.
[112] Hammer, i. 146, makes this claim.
[113] Ibn Batutah, ii. 322-3. For discussion of the value of Ibn Batutah’s testimony see Appendix
B and Bibliography.
[114] Miklositch-Müller, Act. LXXXII, anno 1339, and Act. XCII, anno 1340.
[115] There is no way of establishing the date of the fall of Nicomedia. The Ottoman historians
report that it was added to the dominions of Orkhan in 1326, the year of his accession and of the fall
of Brusa. It is best here to follow the unanimous testimony of the Byzantine sources, which is in
accord with the natural inference that Nicomedia fell some time after Nicaea: Greg., XI. 6, p. 545;
Phr., I. 8, p. 38. Hammer cannot disregard the testimony of Gregoras here. He ingenuously suggests
that the city might have been lost by the Osmanlis, and recaptured. Cantacuzenos (II. 24, p. 446, and
26, p. 459) says that Andronicus III went twice to the aid of Nicomedia in 1331, but he does not
record the loss of either Brusa or Nicomedia. In the collection of Feridun, Bibl. Nat., Paris, MS. anc.
fonds turc 79, there is a diploma appointing Soleiman governor of Nicomedia in 1332, but the
authenticity of the earlier pieces in this collection is open to grave suspicion (cf. Bibliography).
[116] Howorth, iii. 613.
[117] Canale, i. 215.
[118] Not an actual defensive alliance against Orkhan, as Schlumberger, Numismatique de
l’Orient latin, p. 480, supposes. See Cant., II. 13, pp. 388-90; Phr., I. 8, p. 37.
[119] Cant., II. 28, pp. 470-3.
[120] Ibid., 22, p. 435.
[121] Ibid., 25, pp. 455-6.
[122] Cant. II., 29-30, pp. 480-4; Greg., XI. 2, p. 530.
[123] Hammer, quoting Ashikpashazadé, i. 150-1.
[124] Mordtmann, in ZDMG. (1911), lxv. 105, basing his statement, like Hammer, on
Ashikpashazadé, Vatican MS., fol. 33, gives A.H. 735, 737, or 740. The earliest of these dates is
precluded by the testimony of Ibn Batutah, who found these places still independent about A.H. 735.
A.H. 737 might be possible, if we decide that Orkhan accomplished everything during the one
expedition against Pergama. Mordtmann, still quoting Ashikpashazadé, says that these three cities
were held by relatives of the Palaeologi. If this be true, it goes to prove that there must have existed
all along in the reigns of Osman and Orkhan quasi-friendly relations between Moslem and Christian.
There was certainly no religious fanaticism during this period of Ottoman history.
[125] ‘Les Osmanlis avaient étendu leur domination en Asie Mineure et absorbé les états dont
l’indépendance avait jusqu’alors empêché l’unité politique de l’Empire musulman!’ Delaville-
Leroulx, France en Orient au XIVe siècle, i. 118. ‘Osmans Sohn Orkhan Kleinasien unterworfen
hatte’: Wüstenfeld, Geschichte der Türken, p. 16. ‘Orkan s’impadroni di quasi tutta la Natolia’:
Alberi, in preface (viii) to series III, vol. i, of Relazione Ven. Amb. One of the earliest western
historians gives Orkhan’s ambition as ‘solus cupiens in minore Asia regnare’: Cervarius, p. 5. Even
Hammer, i. 150, is considerably ahead of time in saying, in one of his chapters on Orkhan, ‘Les
hordes ottomanes se précipitèrent du haut de l’Olympe comme une avalanche, franchissant
montagnes et vallées, ajoutant à leurs possessions les neuf royaumes nés des débris de l’Empire
seljukide, inondant Asie Mineure depuis l’Olympe jusqu’au Taurus.’ Hammer does not mean to give
this wrong impression, but one has to read very closely not to get it. See discussion of this error in
Appendix B.
[126] Cant., IV. 37, p. 284. Is it on the strength of this evident error of a Greek writer that Evliya
effendi, ii. 229, says ‘Orkhan captured Angora from the Prince of Kutayia of the Kermian family’?
Hussein Hezarfenn, following Chalcocondylas, is an example of an Ottoman historian basing his
statements on a Greek authority.
[127] For the time of Ibn Batutah and Shehabeddin see Appendix B, p. 279. Mas-Latrie, Trésor
de Chronologie, col. 1796, after careful collation of Shehabeddin and Ibn Batutah, comes to the
conclusion that Orkhan added the emirates of Balikesri, Marmara, Akbara, Kaouïa, Keredek, Kul
Hissar, and Thingizlu to his state between 1349 and 1360. This, too, is discussed in Appendix B.
[128] Marmara, for example, is given by the Ottoman historians as a conquest made by Osman.
See Hammer, i. 89. But it is mentioned as an independent principality by Shehabeddin, in Notices et
Extraits des MSS. de la Bibl. du roi, xiii. 358, 366.
[129] Ibn Batutah, ii. 321-2.
[130] Shehabeddin, Paris MS., fonds arabe 2325, fol. 139 vº-140 rº.
[131] Ibid., fol. 125 vº.
[132] Hammer, i. 110-11, says that Alaeddin, ‘stranger to the profession of arms, occupied
himself solely with the cares of state’, but on p. 133 he has Alaeddin commanding the troops in battle
while Orkhan watches from the top of a hill!
[133] For the derivation of vizier, with the double meaning of burden-bearer and the one who
aids, see Ibn Khaldun, Prolegomena, in Notices et Extraits, xx. 4.
[134] Gen. xxviii. 11-18.
[135] Sale’s translation, c. 20, verse 30, p. 234.
[136] Col. Djevad bey, p. 20, n. 2. Col. Djevad claims that von Hammer’s derivation of the word
‘pasha’ from the Persian is wrong. But he gives no reason which would satisfy the philologist when
he asserts that this word is essentially Turkish. Nor does he attempt to explain its original meaning.
‘Pasha’ is probably a shortened form of ‘padishah’. See Century Dictionary, v. 4228.
[137] According to the biographer of Brusa, cited by Hammer, i. 146, n. 4.
[138] I do not understand what Hammer means when he says, i. 116, that the Kanunnamé must
be taken in the sense of political rather than ecclesiastical law. The two cannot be separated in Islam.
Or, perhaps, it is better to say that there is no political law. The very word Kanun was taken from the
Greeks, was used by them for ecclesiastical law, and its adoption by the Osmanlis (at a much later
period than Orkhan) serves to emphasize the fact that there was no other land of law conceivable than
the law of the Church. The word Kanun had of course other meanings, but in its collective legal sense
it seems to have stood only for rules or laws that had to do with things ecclesiastical or religious. See
the various meanings of this word in A. Souter’s Text and Canon of the New Testament (London,
1913), pp. 154-5.
[139] This petition is in the Litany of the Prayer Book of Edward VI. Cf. Schaff, Church History,
iv. 151.
[140] I do not mean to assert that religious feeling has played no part in the massacres of our own
day. But these massacres were arranged by the government, who incited the Moslems to attack their
Christian neighbours, inflaming the ignorant mind more by an appeal to racial hatred, to loot, to lust,
than to defence of the sacred faith. In the Armenian massacres it was represented to the ignorant
village Moslem that the Armenians were plotting to set up an independent government or to betray
the fatherland to some European power. I was in Adana during the terrible massacre of 1909, and
make this statement from personal experience and observation.
[141] Michail Koëzé, Marco, and Evrenos were Greeks. Cf. Leunclavius, Pandectes, p. 125.
[142] Up to the time of the Tanzimat, in 1849, Christians were called raïas. The original meaning
of raïa was a flock, and was not a term of contempt, but a recognition of the fact that Christians were
a taxable asset to the nation, at so much per head.
[143] In western Asia Minor, in Macedonia and Thrace, up to the present day the convert to
Islam, no matter of what race, is immediately classified before the law as a Turk. When the Sublime
Porte, after the reoccupation of Adrianople in the summer of 1913, laid a memorial before the
Powers, it was claimed that the large majority of the population of the vilayet of Thrace was
‘Turkish’. This word had absolutely no racial significance. Every Mohammedan in Thrace, no matter
what his race or language, would be considered a Turk. The Young Turks, when they established the
Constitution in 1908, tried to revive the word ‘Osmanli’ as a term including all Ottoman subjects. But
they not only failed to convince the nation—they failed to convince themselves—that a Christian
could really be an Osmanli, with the full rights and privileges enjoyed by the Moslems.
[144] Ricaut, ed. 1682, p. 148. For confusion of the name ‘Turk’ with ‘Saracen’ by early western
writers, see Chronique latine de Guillaume de Nangis, Géraud ed., i. 46, 86-8; Mémoires d’Olivier de
la Marche, Beaune and d’Arbaumont ed., i. 22-5, iv. 83; Gilles le Muisit, Lemaître ed., p. 196. The
mistake of Ricaut is common with many of the fifteenth-to seventeenth-century writers on the
Crusades.
[145] Matthew of Edessa (Urfa), fol. 8 of MS. Bibl. Nat., Paris, fonds arménien, No. 95, quoted
in Notices et Extraits, ix, 1^[ère] partie, p. 281, speaks of ‘les calamités que des peuples barbares et
corrompus, tels que les Turcs et les Grecs, LEURS SEMBLABLES, ont causées’.
[146] This was true even of the conquest of Constantinople, which caused much more dismay
and regret in Europe than among the Greeks. See the remarkable letter of Francis Fielphus to
Mohammed II in Bibl. de l’École des langues vivantes orientales, série 3, xii. 63-6, 211-14.
[147] Cf. Rambaud in Hist. Générale, ii. 816.
[148] In Constantinople, Smyrna, Salonika, and the lesser coast cities of the Ottoman Empire, as
well as in many of the cities of the interior, one feels the atmosphere of Sabbath rest much more on a
Sunday than on a Friday.
[149] Evliya effendi, ii. 241.
[150] In the Djihannuma, p. 951.
[151] In a popular Anatolian love-song, there is the line, ‘Benim sevdijimie din var iman yok’,
‘She whom I love has religion, but not a bit of faith’, which illustrates the lack of deep religious
feeling in the Osmanli. In this he is like the Greek, and different from the Slav, the Persian and Arab.
See Kúnos, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, liii. 237.
[152] At Balikesri the sultan Dambur told Ibn Batutah that ‘the men follow the religion of their
king’: ii. 317. Here was the principle of cuius regio eius religio two centuries before Augsburg!
[153] Col. Djevad bey, pp. 18-19.
[154] Edward III of England had created a sort of obligatory military service. His organized
infantry took part in the Battle of Crécy, 1346. Lavisse-Rambaud, Hist. générale, iii. 76.
[155] Halil Ganem, i. 39.
[156] This still holds. In October 1912, on the Seraskerat Square in Constantinople, I saw Sultan
Mehmed V give over the command of the army for the Balkan War to Nazim pasha.
[157] Col. Djevad bey, p. 18.
[158] Bertrandon de la Broquière, Schéfer ed., pp. 220-1.
[159] This statement needs especial emphasis, as many historians have followed Chalcocondylas
and Bosio in attributing the corsair fleets to Osman and Orkhan. An instance of a careful modern
historian making this error is found in Romanin, Historia documentata di Venezia, iii. 147, where he
says, ‘La lega ... per raffrenare l’ognor erescente potenza ottomana.’
[160] In Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos, ii. 313.
[161] This letter, from the manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, is published in Bibl.
de l’École des Chartes (1906), lxvii. 587. Other documents on this mission, ibid. (1892), liii. 254-7.
[162] See papers of H. Lot in Bibl. de l’École des Chartes, 4e série (1859), v. 503-9, and (1875)
xxxvi. 588-600. Also Bosio, ii. 58.
[163] Raynaldus, Ann. 1334, pp. 17-19. As the repetition of all the negotiations in connexion
with papal attempts for crusades cannot be included in the text of my book, I refer the reader to the
section on papal negotiations in the Chronological Tables.
[164] Deliberation of Senate, November 18, 1333, in Misti, XVI, fol. 40.
[165] Raynaldus, Ann. 1344, p. 11; Stella (in Muratori), col. 1080; Dandolo, p. 418; Greg., II, p.
686; Cant., III, p. 192; Mon. Hist. Patr. x. 757; Misti for 1344, fol. 30; Rymer, Acta Publica, vol. ii,
part IV, p. 172; Commemorialia, iv. 80.
[166] For relations of Rhodes with Smyrna from 1347 onwards, see Bosio, passim, but especially
ii. 80 and 118-19.
[167] Serbian chronicles, quoted by von Kállay, Geschichte der Serben, i. 66.
[168] In the fratricidal war of July 1913, the ignorant Serbian peasants really believed that they
were fighting to take from the Bulgarians ‘the sacred soil of the fatherland’, as their newspapers and
addresses to the soldiers called Macedonia. The name of St. Stephen was invoked when they went
into battle.
[169] Orbini, Il Regno degli Slavi, p. 259, gives a circumstantial account of the assassination. He
says that Stephen gave the order to men who strangled the old king in his cell at midnight. This does
not prevent Orbini from saying later of Stephen ‘fu huomo molto pio’! Borschgrave, p. 266, is not
certain of Stephen’s connivance.
[170] J. Schafarik, Elenchus actorum spectantium ad historiam Serborum, XXV-XXVII.
[171] I find no documentary authority for the often repeated statement that this coronation took
place at Skoplje (Uskub or Scopia). At the time of the recent Balkan War, the Serbians, in order to
preserve their friendly relations with Greece, supported the Uskub theory. But see Ljubić, Monumenta
spectantia ad hist. Slavorum meridionalium, ii. 278, 279, 326; Commemorialia, IV; Secreta Rog., A.
33.
[172] ‘Stephanus, D. G. Serviae ... Albaniae, maritimae regionis rex, Bulgariae imperii princeps
et fere totius imperii Romaniae dominus’: Ljubić, ii. 278.
[173] Ibid., ii. 326.
[174] Ibid., loc. cit.
[175] Secr. Rog., A. 33.
[176] Misti, xxiv. 12.
[177] Ibid., xxiv. 110.
[178] Secr. Rog., II, B. 4; Misti, xxiv. 103.
[179] Cf. Misti, xxv. 7, 10. Fiorinsky, The South Slavs and Byzantium in the second quarter of the
Fourteenth Century, quoted by Borchgrave in Bulletin de l’Académie royale de Belgique for 1884, 8e
série, iv. 429-30.
[180] Commem. iv. 172.
[181] Misti, xxvi. 16-22; Commem. iv. 157.
[182] MS. Vatican 3765, quoted by Raynaldus, ann. 1347, XXX.
[183] Fiorinsky, p. 207.
[184] Engel, Geschichte von Serbien, 285-6; Müller, Beiträge Byz. Chron., p. 406 n.
[185] Cant., IV. 43, p. 315; Greg., XXVII. 50, p. 557; von Kállay, i. 69.
[186] Cant., II. 9, pp. 363-70; Greg., XII. 3, p. 582; Ducas, p. 6.
[187] Cant., II. 1, pp. 14-18; 40, p. 560; and III. 4, p. 91; Greg., IX. 11, pp. 560-8; XII. 2, p. 576.
[188] Cant., II. 24-7, pp. 145-67; Greg., XII. 11-16, pp. 608-26; Phr. I. 9, p. 40; Ducas, 6, p. 24,
to 7, p. 26.
[189] Cantacuzenos tries to make out that this was a justifiable arrangement, as this district had
already been conquered by Stephen Dushan. But Ducas, 6, p. 26, and 8, p. 30, declares that
Cantacuzenos sacrificed the empire to the Serbians.
[190] Cant., III. 57, pp. 347-8; Greg., XIII. 4, pp. 648-52.
[191] Misti, xxi. 35.
[192] Greg., XVI. 6, pp. 834-5; Ducas, 7, p. 29; Clement VI, Epp. Secr. vii. 99. ’Άμυρ is either
‘Emir’ or ‘Omar’.
[193] Cant., III. 31, p. 498; Ducas 9, pp. 33-4; Chalc., I, p. 24.
[194] Cant., III. 81, pp. 501-2; 84, pp. 518-19; 85, pp. 525-9.
[195] Cant., III. 95, pp. 585-9; Greg., XV. 5, pp. 762-3; Ducas, 9, p. 35.
[196] Greg., XV. 2, p. 749.
[197] For the action against Barlaam spoken of here, see Muralt, ii. 575, No. 17; p. 576, No. 22;
p. 578, No. 37.
[198] Cant., III. 98, p. 604, to IV. 4, p. 29; Greg., XV. 9, p. 781, to 11, p. 791; Ducas, 9, p. 37, to
10, p. 38.
[199] Cant., IV. 1, p. 12, to 2, p. 19.
[200] Cant., IV. 4, p. 30; 5, p. 32; 20, p. 147.
[201] Cant., IV. 9, pp. 53-7.
[202] Raynaldus, ann. 1349, XXXI.
[203] Clement VI, Epp. Secr. viii. 248-50.
[204] Cant., IV. 13, p. 85.
[205] Marco Guazzo, Cronica, p. 269; Stella, Annales Genuenses, in Muratori, xvii, col. 1090.
[206] MS. Vatican 2040, cited by Muralt, ii. 618: Petrarch, Epp. fam. vii. 7. For historical and
medical importance of the black death, see Hecker, Der schwarze Tod im 14ten Jahrhundert (Berlin,
1832). MSS. Bibl. Nat., Paris, fonds latin 8369-70, contain an interesting contemporary account,
mostly in hexameter verse, by Symon de Cavino, a Paris physician.
[207] Breve Chronicon at end of Ducas, cited by Finlay, History of Greece, iv. 409 n.
[208] In 1340 Venice had refused a loan of ships and money to Edward III of England on the
ground that she needed all her resources ‘to guard against the Turkish danger about to become
universal’: Wiel, p. 204.
[209] On March 17, 1351, Petrarch addressed from Padua to Doge Andrea Dandolo a letter of
remonstrance and warning against engaging in a war with Genoa. This letter is quoted in Hazlitt, iii.
122.
[210] The Genoese archives contain a treaty between the Byzantine Empire and Genoa, dated
May 6, 1352, which says: ‘debbono eziandio ritenersi per valide e ferme le convenzioni e la pace
stipulata dai genovesi con Orcan bey.’ Belgrano, Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, xiii. 124.
[211] The Signory of Genoa, writing to the Podesta of Pera, March 21, 1356, said: ‘Nobis, vobis
ac omnibus ianuenibus est notorium et manifestum quantum bonum et gratias habuimus a domino
Orchano amirato Turchie ad destructionem et mortem tam venetorum quam grecorum tempore guerre
nostre’: ibid., p. 127.
[212] In the treaty of 1387 with Murad, the Genoese said: ‘quam inter recolendam memoriam
magnifici domini Orchani patris sui ex una parte et illustrem Commune Ianue ex altera’: ibid., p. 147.
[213] Cant., IV. 11, pp. 68-77; Greg., XVI. 6, p. 835, to XVII. 7, p. 865.
[214] Cant., IV. 16-17, pp. 104-5, 108-11, 114-30; 19, pp. 133-5; 22, p. 156; Greg., XVI. 1, p.
795; XVIII. 2, p. 876. Phr., I. 9, p. 40, gives this as the time Cantacuzenos married his daughter to
Orkhan.
[215] Cant., IV. 30, pp. 218-20; Greg., XXVI. 19, p. 86, and 22, p. 88. For explanation of action
of Venetian admiral, Pisani, see histories of Daru and Romanin.
[216] Villani, Historia Venetiana (Muratori), xiv. 200; Canale, Nuova istoria di Genova, i. 222.
[217] Cant., IV. 33, pp. 246-7; 36, p. 266. Cantacuzenos had tried to get the Bulgarians to attack
Stephen Dushan in 1351. Cf. Cant., IV. 22, pp. 162-6.
[218] Greg., XXVII. 30, pp. 150-1.
[219] Cant., IV. 36, pp. 265-6; Greg., XXVII. 55, p. 171, and XXVIII. 3, pp. 177-8; Cant., IV. 34,
pp. 247-50; Greg., XXVIII. 7, pp. 181-2.
[220] Cant., IV. 34, pp. 250-3; 36, p. 266; Greg., XXVIII. 19, p. 188.
[221] About two hours on horse from Gallipoli.
[222] Seadeddin, i. 58-63.
[223] Gilbert Cousin, Opera, i. 390 (evidently copying Drechsler), and Egnatius, de Origine
Turcarum (Paris, 1539), p. 29, give date A.D. 1363. But do they not follow Phr., I. 26, p. 80?
[224] Donado de Lezze, p. 7, and Paolo Giovio, both ardent Venetians, and Rabbi Joseph, i. 245,
give the names of these vessels, though differently. Nicolas de Nicolay, who passed through the
Hellespont in 1551, says that this story of the Genoese was a tradition of the locality. He locates the
castle of Tzympe a few miles from the Aegaean end of the strait! Les quatre livres des navigations
(1587 ed.), p. 58. Sauli, Della Colonia Genovese in Galata, ii. 44-5, vigorously defends the Genoese
against this calumny.
[225] There is no room for doubt about this date. Cf. Cant., IV. 38, pp. 277-80; Greg., XXXIII.
67, p. 220, and XXVIII. 40-2, pp. 202-4; Villani, p. 105; Byz. Annalen, ed. Müller, in Sitzungs-
Berichte der Wiener Akademie, ix. 392; Muralt, Chronographie Byz., ii. 643.
[226] This place figured in the recent Balkan War. It was here that the Osmanlis stationed their
army for the defence of the Dardanelles.
[227] Greg., XXIX. 26, p. 241.
[228] Greg., XXVIII. 30, pp. 195-201.
[229] Cant., IV. 37, pp. 270-2; 38, p. 276; Greg., XXIX. 17-18, pp. 234-6; 49, p. 257.
[230] At least, Cantacuzenos, IV. 38, p. 276, claims that he ransomed Tzympe.
[231] Cant., IV. 38, p. 283.
[232] Rumanian Chronicle, cited by Gregorović, Relations of Serbia with her Neighbouring
States, principally in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, Kazan, 1859, in an appendix.
[233] Cant., IV. 39-43, pp. 284-307; Greg., XXIX. 27-30, pp. 242-3.
[234] Cant., IV. 49, pp. 358-60.
[235] Tchorlu was the head-quarters of the Ottoman General Staff during the first month of the
Balkan War. After the battle of Lulé Burgas, it became the head-quarters of the Bulgarians. From here
the attack upon the defences of Constantinople was directed.
[236] Muralt, ii. 640, No. 10, n.
[237] Greg., XXIX. 34, pp. 224-6.
[238] During the five years following the proclamation of the Constitution in 1908, I lived, and
travelled extensively, in the Ottoman Empire. Rarely did I meet a foreigner engaged in business there
who had the slightest sympathy with the Osmanlis in their aspirations or in their successive crushing
misfortunes. This is not a criticism, but merely the record of a fact.
[239] Schafarik, CVII.
[240] The expression ‘la terre que les Turcs tiennent’ is always used to designate Asia Minor in
the opinion which the council of the French King Philippe de Valois gave concerning the route to be
followed in the abortive crusade of 1332. See Archives Nationales, Paris, P. 2289, pp. 711-12.
[241] See p. 97, and notes 3 and 4 on that page.
[242] Quoted from the Cancelleria Secreta by Romanin, iv. 232.
[243] This letter is reproduced by Jireček, Geschichte der Bulgaren, p. 309.
[244] Greg., XXXVII. 52, p. 558; 59-63, pp. 561-3; 67-9, pp. 565-6; XXXVI. 6-8, pp. 504-9;
Cant., IV. 44, p. 320.
[245] The generally accepted date of Orkhan’s death is 1359 or 1360, following Ottoman sources.
But Jireček, a careful and able scholar, p. 321, n. 10, is inclined to accept March 1362. There is great
confusion about this period. I think that the Ottoman date is undoubtedly correct here.
[246] ‘Der eigentliche Begründer der osmanischen Macht war Orchan’, Fessler, Geschichte von
Ungarn, ii. 151.
[247] Col. Djevad bey, p. 254.
[248] Seadeddin, i. 80.
[249] Seadeddin, i. 82; Hadji Khalfa, Rumeli, p. 19.
[250] But Matteo Villani, in Muratori, xiv. 672, who is followed by Leunclavius, says that
Demotika was abandoned to Orkhan in November 1361.
[251] Cf. marginal note in Barberini MS. of Pachymeres, cited by Muralt, ii. 663, No. 9.
[252] Seadeddin, i. 84-5; Hadji Khalfa, Rumeli, p. 22.
[253] All the Ottoman historians.
[254] MS. Bibl. Nat., Paris, fonds turc, No. 79, p. 25; Leunclavius, Annales, p. 30; Seadeddin, i.
85.
[255] Muklis Abderrahman Efendy, quoted by Schéfer, in his edition of Bertrandon de la
Broquière, p. 170, n. 3.
[256] Seadeddin, i. 89; Hadji Khalfa, Rumeli, p. 52.
[257] Villani tells of its terrible ravages in 1360 ‘ricominciata in diversi paesi del mondo’,
Muratori, xiv. 653, 688-90, 727.
[258] Ibid., pp. 649-50. He declares that Murad had been ‘molte volte tentato di vincere
Constantinopoli’.
[259] Cf. Finlay, iv. 45, 169.
[260] Seadeddin, i. 42. Hammer, i. 384-5, n. viii, says that Ottoman historians are unanimous in
this assertion as against Byzantine sources. Col. Djevad bey, the modern Ottoman authority on
military history, is disappointing and unconvincing in his discussion of this question. On p. 25 he
gives 726 (1326) for the date, and on p. 78 730 (1329). He cites no sources, for there are none, and
has to admit, p. 54, that Murad I made the laws for the janissaries. Among early European historians
there is much divergency. Spandugino, p. 185, attributes their origin to Osman, and the name from
the village of Sar: they are ‘the young men of Sar’. Ricaut, ed. 1682, p. 357, also attributes to Osman.
Reineccius, influencing the Latin editor of Chalcocondylas (see ed. Migne, p. 26, n. 11), makes
Osman the founder, and derives the name from ‘Januae’: they are the custodes corporis. Leuncl.,
Pandectes, p. 129, discusses these theories without coming to any conclusion. Giovio, Geuffraeus,
and Nicolay, p. 83, attribute origin to Murad II. Certainly it was not earlier than his day that the
janissaries attracted attention in Europe. D’Ohsson, vii. 311, asserts that there was no definite
organization until Mohammed II. Mignot, i. 119-20, is in favour of the theory that Murad I created
this corps.
[261] Seignobos, in Hist. générale, ii. 334.
[262] Col. Djevad bey, p. 251, says that Anatolian Christians were exempt to give time to
recuperate ‘after the exhausting struggles of generations’. But exhausting struggles had been no less
frequent and no less severe in the Balkan peninsula. Gibbon’s suggestion, that the levies were made
in Europe because Moslem and Christian Anatolians were not apt for war, shows how completely the
great English historian missed the raison d’être of the janissaries.
[263] Hammer, i. 126.
[264] Col. Djevad bey, p. 90.
[265] Ibid.
[266] Ibid., pp. 55-6; Ducas, p. 16; Leunel., Annales, p. 34; Ricaut, pp. 358-9.
[267] Lavallée, i. 190-1.
[268] Phr., I. 26, p. 86; Chalc., I, p. 25. Cf. Michaud, Hist. des Croisades, v. 275.
[269] Seadeddin, i. 91.
[270] This colony was at Bigha. See Appendix B, p. 301.
[271] Phr., I. 26, p. 80.
[272] Katona, x. 393.
[273] Chale., I, p. 30, and the chronicle of Rabbi Joseph, i. 240, confuse this battle with that of
Cernomen, near the same place and with the same result, in 1370. But there were certainly two
distinct battles. Louis of Hungary took part in the first, as is shown by the date recorded at Mariazell
and by a diploma in Fejér, Cod. Dipl. Hung., 9e partie, vii. 212. Cf. Aschbach, Geschichte Kaiser
Sigmunds, I. 87. The account in Vambéry’s Hungary, Story of Nations Series, p. 171, is wholly
wrong.
[274] Seadeddin, i. 94.
[275] Miltitz, ii. Ière partie, 166.
[276] Col. Djevad bey, p. 97, n. 1; Engel, Geschichte Rag., p. 141; Hammer, i. 231, 405. But this
was also Timur’s ordinary method of signing ordinances: cf. Shereffeddin, iv. 55. The document, with
the marks of Murad’s hand, is preserved in the museum of the Communal Palace at Ragusa.
[277] Villani, x. 30.
[278] Cf. Hazlitt, iii. 216.
[279] Urban V, Epp. secr. iv. 114.
[280] ‘Il le print por prisonnyer, et le destint a cause de ce que le roy de Bourgarye sy sestoit
accorde et alyez secrettement avecques le turc’: Chronicques de Savoye, col. 300.
[281] Cf. Jireček, Geschichte der Bulgaren, p. 325.
[282] Cibrario, Storia di Savoya, iii. 193. But I have followed closely the account of the
expedition as given in the anonymous French chronicle, cols. 299-319, in Monumenta Historiae
Patriae, Turin, 1840, vol. i. There is a modern book by Datta. Cf. also Delaville le Roulx, i. 148 f.
[283] Urban V, Epp. secr. iv. 124.
[284] Ibid., iv. 240.
[285] Greg., XXV. 17, p. 41.
[286] Urban V, Epp. secr. ii. 230; Petrarch, Senilia, iv. 2.
[287] ‘Nescio enim an peius sit amisisse Hierusalem an ita Bizantion possidere. Ibi enim non
agnoscitur Christus, hic neglegitur dum sic colitur. Illi (Turcae) hostes, hi scismatici peiores hostibus:
illi aperte nostrum Imperium detractant: hi verbo Romanam ecclesiam matrem dicunt: cui quam
devoti filii sint, quam humiliter Romani pontificis iussa suscipiant, tuus a te ille datus patriarcha
testabitur. Illi minus nos oderunt quam minus metuunt. Isti autem totis nos visceribus et metuunt et
oderunt.’ Senilia, vol. vii.
[288] In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, and in the Church of the Holy Nativity,
Bethlehem, anarchy—even bloodshed—is prevented only by the constant vigilance of the Ottoman
military authorities. If one asks the Latin and Greek priests in Jerusalem, they will admit without
shame that this statement is true.
[289] Miklositch-Müller, Acta et diplomata graeca, CLXXXIV.
[290] Epistolae secretae, vi. 1-10.
[291] Ibid., vi. 3.
[292] The date of this visit is certain from the formal act of abjuration, which is given in full in
Raynaldus, ann. 1369, XI. Ducas, c. 11, and Chalc., I, p. 25, are in error in placing this voyage later.
Berger de Xivrey, Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscriptions, xix, 2e partie, p. 35, suggests that the Byzantine
historians have confused this voyage with that of Manuel, thirty years later.
[293] Epp. secr., viii. 37, 38, 80.
[294] By an encyclical: Epp. secr., viii. 4. Cf. also his letters to the doges of Venice and Genoa,
ibid., p. 24.
[295] Ibid., viii. 55.
[296] Phr., I. 22, pp. 52-3; Chalc., I, pp. 50-1; Morosini, p. 13.
[297] Phr., I. 11, p. 46.
[298] Gregory XI, Epp. secr. iii. 36, 58.
[299] Chalc., I, pp. 51-2.
[300] Raynaldus, ann. 1371, VIII.
[301] Epp. secr., ii. 32, 87. Similar letter to Louis in December 1375, ibid. v. 46. Other letters
reprinted in Fejér, 9e partie, iv. 583 4; v. 54-6; vi. 155-6.
[302] Bernino, pp. 15-20.
[303] Fejér, 9e partie, iv. 427-8.
[304] Ibid., v. 52-3.
[305] Rymer, Acta Publica, III, part 3, pp. 38-40.
[306] On December 12, 1374, Gregory XI wrote to John from Avignon, predicting that his
‘alliance with Murad’ would bring about the destruction of the empire: Epistolae secretae, iv. 68.
[307] Raynaldus, ann. 1378, XIX.
[308] Jireček, Geschichte der Bulgaren, p. 317.
[309] Cant. IV, 50, pp. 362-3.
[310] Although Engel says 1353, others 1356, and the Rumanian chronicle 1371, there can be no
question that 1365 is the correct date; for both Byzantine and Ottoman historians speak of Alexander
as Bulgarian Czar in 1364, and do not mention him later, while Sisman and his brothers come
immediately into prominence.
[311] Schiltberger, Neumann ed., p. 93.
[312] Orbini, pp. 472-3.
[313] Bonfinius, II. 10.
[314] Fessler, Geschichte von Ungarn, ii. 152.
[315] Wadding, Annales minorum, ann. 1369, XI.
[316] Epp. secr., VI. 131, 136.
[317] Called Ishebol by the Ottoman historians.
[318] By the second division of the Ottoman army under Timurtash. Murad himself had captured
Sozopolis. Cf. Jireček, p. 326.
[319] Seadeddin, i. 104. He does not give the name of the Serbian kral.
[320] The peasantry around Samakov will point out to you the ridge, south-east of the modern
town, over which he vanished. They believe that Sisman haunts the foothills of the Rhodope
mountains, and rides headless in the night down into the plain. This tradition, and the statement of
Ducange, viii. 289, that Sisman died in 1373 in Naples, makes possible the theory that there were
three successive Sismans connected with the Ottoman conquest of Bulgaria.
[321] Hadji Khalfa, Rumeli, p. 38.
[322] von Kállay, Geschichte der Serben, i. 152.
[323] Ibid., i. 152-9; Jireček, op. cit., 319-20; Ljubić, Monumenta spect. ad hist. Slav. merid., iv.
189.
[324] Cant. IV., 50, pp. 360-2; Müller, Chron. Byz., under 1364.
[325] Miklositch, Acta Serbica, CLIII.
[326] Ibid., CLX.
[327] Sons of a poor Dalmatian nobleman: Ducange, Familiae Byz. viii. 294.
[328] At Ipek, with an independent patriarch: Engel, Geschichte von Serbien, p. 279.
[329] Miklositch-Müller, Acta gr., CLXII; MS. Wiener Bibl., Gesch. gr., No. 47, fol. 290.
[330] Ibid., CLX; ibid., fol. 286.
[331] Orbini, p. 275.
[332] Engel, op. cit., pp. 321 f. For documented details, Müller, ed. Byz. Analekten, pp. 359-64,
405-6, based on Vienna MS. referred to above.
[333] Now called Cermen or Tchirman.
[334] Svilengrad, now the frontier station of Bulgaria, was known from 1361 to 1913 as
Mustapha Pasha. Before the recent Balkan war, it was the frontier railway station of Turkey.
[335] But there were certainly two distinct battles here, in 1363 and in 1371. See p. 124, n. 2,
above.
[336] Ducange, op. cit., p. 294; Bialloblotszky’s translation of Rabbi Joseph, i. 240; Klaić, p. 199;
Jireček, pp. 329-30. Zinkeisen, i. 224, confuses this battle with the one fought in 1363.
[337] In Miklositch, Chrestomathia palaeoslav., p. 77.
[338] Phr., I. 26, p. 80, gives the capture of these cities in the same campaign as that in which
Monastir was acquired, with 1386 as date. But the Serbian chronicles are so explicit here that we can
follow them without hesitation, especially as they are seconded by the Ottoman historians. Cf.
Hammer, i. 241, and Zinkeisen, i. 229.
[339] Pope Gregory XI, writing to Louis of Hungary, May 14, 1372, informed him that the
Osmanlis had conquered some parts of Greece, ‘subactis quibusdam magnatibus Rasciae, tum in eis
dominantibus’. Rascia was Servia. Theiner, Monumenta Hungarica, ii. 115.
[340] Gregory XI, Epp. secr. ii. 32-3.
[341] According to Amilhau and Jireček, who rely on Reynaldus, ann. 1364, XXVIII, this first
invasion of the Greek peninsula took place in 1363. But the Turks referred to in that year, probably of
the perennial corsair type, could not have been Osmanlis. They were from Aïdin or Sarukhan.
[342] Klaić, Geschichte Bosniens, p. 200.
[343] Hammer, i. 242, 409, places the first relations of Lazar with Murad after the fall of Nish,
which he erroneously puts in 1376. See below, p. 161, n. 3.
[344] Gregory XI, Epp. secr. iii. 42.
[345] June 15, 1373: Andrea Gataro, in Muratori, xvii, col. 176.
[346] Ducas, 12, pp. 43-4; Phr., I. 11, pp. 49-50.
[347] Chalc., I, pp. 42-3. But Murad, according to the Collection of Feridun, when he wrote to
the Prince of Karamania, stated that Saoudji had been conquered in a pitched battle: MS. Bibl. Nat.,
Paris, fonds turc, No. 79, p. 30.
[348] Letter just cited; Chalc., I, pp. 44-5; Phr., I. 12, p. 51. Saoudji is called Kontouz by Ducas,
Mosis by Phrantzes, and Saouzis by Chalcocondylas. I cannot find the reading Siaous which
Hammer, i. 412, and n. lix, attributes to Chalcocondylas.
[349] Chalc., I, p. 46; II, p. 69; Phr., I. 12, p. 51; Duc., 12, p. 44.
[350] Canale, ii. 16.
[351] Clavijo de Gonzáles, 15 vº and 16 rº.
[352] So Phrantzes thinks, I. 12, p. 51: ταύτην ὠμότητα καὶ ἀπανθρωπίαν ὁ ’Αμουράτης
ἐποίησεν ἀεὶ εἰς τὰ πάντα καλῶς πολιτευόμενος.
[353] Chalc., I, pp. 46-7; Phr., I. 11, pp. 47-9.
[354] Romanin, iii. 255. This project, according to Cicogna, Istoria di Venezia, vi. 95, was first
broached to John at the time of his visit to Venice in 1370.
[355] Raynaldus, ann. 1376, XXIII.
[356] Epp. secr., vi. 236.
[357] Ducas, 12, p. 45.
[358] Caresino, in Muratori, xii.
[359] Ducas, 12, p. 45; Chalc., II, p. 63; and Phr., I. 13, p. 54, say that Bayezid had given him
1,000 men, and had often advised him to have his father and brothers assassinated. Cf. Muralt, ii.
706.
[360] Sauli, ii. 57.
[361] Quirino, Vita di Zeno, cited by Muralt, ii. 707, Nos. 6-9.
[362] Ducas, 12, p. 45.
[363] The fortunes of Salonika at this period are obscure. See p. 231, below.
[364] Chalc., II, p. 63; Phr., I. 13, pp. 55-6.
[365] Chalc., II, p. 64. But Ducas, 4, p. 19, says that Bayezid captured this city.
[366] Bonlinius, II. 10; Sanudo, Vite de’ Duchi, in Muratori, xxii, col. 680.
[367] An excellent brief account of this war is found in Wiel’s Story of Venice, pp. 227-37.
[368] The Genoese forced John V to make peace with Andronicus in November 1382: Sauli, ii.
260.
[369] Cicogna, op. cit., vi. 97; Romanin, iii. 301.
[370] Hadji Khalfa, Djihannuma, fol. 1852; Evliya effendi, ii. 229.
[371] The testimony of Ibn Batutah, who travelled extensively among the Turks in Anatolia,
southern Russia, and elsewhere between 1325 and 1340, is conclusive on this point. ‘Whenever we
stopped in a house of this country (Anatolia), our neighbours of both sexes took care of us: the
women were not veiled ...’: ii. 256. ‘I was witness of a remarkable thing, that is, of the consideration
which the women enjoy among the Turks: they hold, in fact, a rank more elevated than that of the
men.... As for the women of the lower classes, I have seen them also. One of them will be, for
example, in a cart drawn by horses. Near her will be three or four young girls.... The windows of the
cart will be open and you can see the women’s faces: for the women of the Turks are not veiled....
Often the woman is accompanied by her husband, whom whoever sees him takes for one of her
servants’: ii. 377-9. No student can have any doubt whatever upon the position of Turkish women
during the fourteenth century. As among all vigorous peoples, the women of the Osmanlis held a high
place, and were never secluded. It was not until Murad II that even the sovereign had a harem. The
Moslem conception of the inferiority of women was not prevalent among the Osmanlis until after the
reign of Soleiman the Magnificent. Immediately it became prevalent, the race began its decline.
So universal did veiling become in the seventeenth century that it was adopted by Christian and
Jewish women in Turkey as well. See Père Febre, Théâtre de la Turquie (1682), pp. 164-5. Père Febre
spoke from personal experience ‘dans la plupart des lieux de la Turquie’.
[372] Hadji Khalfa, Rumeli, p. 96.
[373] Historia epirotica, Bonn ed., p. 228.
[374] Ibid., pp. 230-1.
[375] Ducange, viii. 292.
[376] Jireček, op. cit., 340.
[377] Misti, XL. 154.
[378] See below, p. 203.
[379] Silvestre de Sacy, in Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscript., vii. 327-34. But the commandant could
hardly have been carried by his falconer in such a fashion as far as Philippopolis. The Ottoman
historians probably forgot that Ishtiman, at the mouth of the pass, on the road to Philippopolis from
Sofia, contained an Ottoman garrison.
[380] According to the anonymous Ein gantz neu Reysebuch von Prag auss biss gen
Constantinopel, Nürnberg, 1622, p. 33, Sofia was captured in 1362. Hadji Khalfa, Rumeli, p. 51, with
whom Schéfer, ed. Bertrandon de la Broquière, p. 202 n., seems to agree by citing, says Sofia
capitulated in 780 (1378). Seadeddin, i. 125, is followed by Hammer, i. 250, Klaić, p. 237, and others
in fixing the date as 1382. But these same authorities give 1375 and 1376 for Nish, which is
altogether impossible. Phr., I. 26, p. 80, seems to place the capture of Sofia for 1385. This is the most
reasonable date. It is consistent both with the topography of the places in question and with Murad’s
methods of campaigning, as exemplified by all his conquests, to place the taking of Sofia close to the
end of his reign, and within a year or two before the capture of Nish. To corroborate this date, letters
in the collection of Feridun can be cited. Indje Balaban’s letter to Murad, announcing the acquisition
of Sofia, is not dated. But immediately after it is the response of Murad, in which he gives to Indje
Balaban for life the government of the new province, and states that he is sending him a fine horse
and robes of honour because of his success. This letter is dated from Adrianople in the middle of the
month of Redjeb, 788, which corresponds to 1386 in our era. These letters are in MS. Bibl. Nat.,
Paris, fonds turc, No. 79, pp. 31-2.
[381] Nish, from its geographical position, could not have fallen in 1375, as Chalcocondylas
says. Hammer, i. 241, and Zinkeisen, i. 230, show an amazing nonchalance in transporting the
Osmanlis from Kavalla, Drama, and Serres in the course of this one year, 1375. Engel, Geschichte
von Serbien, p. 341, who, according to Hammer, ‘deceives himself by thirteen years in placing the
capture of Nish in 1388’, is eleven years nearer the truth than Hammer! Strumnitza, from a diploma
delivered in the name of the Serbian empress Eudoxia (Müller, Acta Serbica, CXXXI), was
independent in 1379. Sofia did not fall before 1382. How, then, could Nish have been an Ottoman
fortress from 1375?
[382] Von Kállay, i. 166.
[383] For distances between cities in the Balkan peninsula, see Jireček’s important and interesting
work, Die Heerstrasse von Belgrad nach Konstantinopel und die Balkanpässe, p. 122. Jireček, for
time of transit, depends upon Hadji Khalfa.
[384] Text in Sauli, ii. 260-8.
[385] armiratus or amiratus, then amiralus, of which we have made admiral, originally had
nothing whatever to do with the sea. It is a corruption of emir.
[386] ‘Magnificus et potens dominus, dominus Moratibei, magnus armiratus et dominus
armiratorum Turchie’: the whole text is reproduced from the Genoese archives by Belgrano, in Atti
della Società Ligure di Storia, xiii. 146-9, and by Silvestre de Sacy, in Notices et Extraits, xi. 58-61.
Cf. Canale, ii. 59.
[387] ‘Contra illum Turcum filium iniquitatis et nequiciae, ac Sancte Crucis inimicum, Moratum
bey et eius sectam, cristianum genus sic graviter invadere conantes.’ The text of this treaty is also in
Belgrano, ibid., xiii. 953-65.
[388] Text in Romanin, iii. 386-9. There was an earlier law of similar nature enacted in 1334.
[389] Cf. Delaville Leroulx, i. 159-60.
[390] Romanin, iii. 331.
[391] Bullarum, III, part 2, pp. 4, 92, 338; Urban V, Epp. secr. iii. 25, iv. 256; Gregory XI, Epp.
secr. ii. 32-3, v. 88-9, 311; Philippe de Mézeray, p. 19; Raynaldus, ann. 1372, XXIX. In 1425 Martin
V repeated the anathema against those who sold Christian slaves to the Turks: Bullarum, III, part 2, p.
454.
[392] MS., Bibl. de Bâle, A 1, 28, fols. 232-54, cited by Delaville Leroulx, i. 70, n. 2. Adam’s
project was a revival of Sanudo’s attempt to ruin Moslem trading.
[393] Monumenta historiae patriae, i. 320; iii. 336, 371.
[394] In 1432 Bertrandon de la Broquière met at Damascus one of these Genoese of Kaffa, who
sold slaves to the Sultan of Egypt: Voyage, Schéfer ed., p. 68.
[395] Chalc., I, p. 53; Phr., I. 26, p. 81. Cf. Hertzberg, p. 503.
[396] Seadeddin, i. 130-2, draws here upon Idris and Neshri, and has been followed by all the
Ottoman historians down to the present day.
[397] Col. Djevad, pp. 62-3. He speaks of Alaeddin bey ‘ayant levé l’étendard de la révolte’, and
calls the punishment of the Serbians in this campaign the chief cause of Kossova.
[398] Chalc., I, p. 53; Phr., I. 26, p. 81.
[399] Up to 1383, in outlining the career of Tvrtko, I have followed Klaić, pp. 201-3.
[400] Schaffarik, Acta archivii Veneti, &c., CXLI.
[401] In a letter of April 1, published in Ljubić, iv. 185-6.
[402] Misti, xxxix. 113.
[403] Klaić, p. 237; Jireček, p. 341. But von Kállay, i. 166, attributes this victory to George
Kastriota of Albania.
[404] Orbini, p. 361.
[405] Hopf, in Ersch-Gruber, Allgemeine Encycl., lxxxvi. 49.
[406] Chronique de Morée, p. 516. Evrenos is called Branezis. This is not the Evrenos heretofore
mentioned, but another Christian renegade, of Macedonia. Cf. Finlay, iv. 233 n.
[407] Jireček, Die Heerstrasse, &c., p. 147.
[408] Leunclavius (1611 Frankfort ed.), pp. 268-76. Jireček, Geschichte der Bulgaren, pp. 341-2,
points out that Seadeddin and Leunclavius, whom Zinkeisen, i. 252-5, follows, are in error in
representing the Bulgarians as wholly subdued in 1388.
[409] Mijatovitch, from Serbian sources, p. 13.
[410] Ibid., pp. 16-17.
[411] The railway between Mitrovitza and Skoplje (before the Balkan War Uskub) passes through
the plain of Kossova. When this railway is connected through the former Sandjak of Novi Bazar with
the Austrian (?) railways in Bosnia, Kossovapol will be on one of the great transcontinental routes.
[412] The date June 15 is fixed by the Serbian chronicles and songs and by unbroken tradition.
Also by Tvrtko’s letter to Florence. But Tvrtko, in another letter to the inhabitants of Trau in
Dalmatia, gives June 20 (Pray, Annales, ii. 90). Seadeddin stands alone in placing the death of Murad
on the 4th Ramazan (August 27). The other Ottoman historians, as well as Chalcocondylas, Ducas,
and the anonymous Hist. Epirot., speak of these events occurring ‘in the springtime’.
[413] Chron. of Abbey of Tronosha, section 54, p. 84, and Chron. of Pek, p. 53: cited by
Mijatovitch, p. 12 n.
[414]
‘Sans arrêter, pendant quinze jours pleins,
J’ai cheminé le long des hordes turques,
Sans en trouver ni la fin ni le nombre.’—A. d’Avril, p. 36.
[415] Orbini, pp. 314-15. See also the Serbian songs about Kossova, which are accessible in the
form of a continuous narrative in French by Adolphe d’Avril, and in English by Mme Mijatovitch,
based on the composite poems of Stoyan Novakovich and A. Pavich.
[416] Solakzadé, cited by Col. Djevad bey, p. 196. The bow was used as an offensive arm by the
Osmanlis until the middle of Murad II’s reign.
[417] Seadeddin, i. 147-52; Chalc., I, p. 53; Ducas, 3, pp. 15-16; Hist. Epir., p. 234; the Serbian
chants; Bonincontrius, col. 52; and the modern writers, Hertzberg, pp. 503-7; Jireček, pp. 342-4;
Fessler, ii. 254; von Kállay, i. 166; Klaić, pp. 236-40. Most illuminating of all is Rački, in Croatian, in
Jugoslav. Akademie, iii. 92 f.
[418] Clavijo de Gonzáles, fol. 27 rº.
[419] Annales, ii. 186.
[420] This speech, from the chronicle of Monk Pahomye, is given in Mijatovitch, p. 17.
[421] Busbecq, English ed., i. 153; cf. Ricaut, ed. of 1682, p. 159.
[422] Const. Porphyr., i. 394, 396, 405.
[423] Howorth, ii. 796, commenting on Stoddard’s audience with the Emir of Bukhara.
[424] Text in Mon. spect. hist. Slav. Merid., i. 528-9.
[425] Chronique du Religieux de St.-Denis (ed. Bellaguet), ii. 391.
[426] MS., Wiener Bibl., Gesch. gr., 48.
[427] As far as such records are accessible in the great collection of Miklositch and Müller. The
statement of Ducas, 23, p. 137, about the persecutions of Christians by Murad, is without any
foundation.
[428] Phr., I. 26, p. 82; Chalc., I, p. 59; Duc., 3, p. 16; also the Ottoman historians.
[429] Sura IV, verse 94 (Sale trans., p. 64).
[430] Sura V, verse 53 (ibid., p. 77).
[431] Hammer, iii. 302-4. Rambaud, Histoire générale, iii. 831, is mistaken in attributing this law
to Bayezid.
[432] Ruled 1350 to 1369.
[433] In 1330. Panaretos, p. 7.
[434] In 1320 at Salonika: Greg., VII. 13, p. 271.
[435] Month of Shaban, a.h. 791: MS. turc, Bibl. Nat., Paris, No. 79, pp. 35, 40. Cf. Langlès, in
Notices et Extraits, v. 672.
[436] Froissart, IV. c. 47, in Kervyn ed., xv. 216-17. Froissart calls Bayezid ‘Amoruth-Baquin’,
confusing him with Murad. See below, p. 213, n. 2.
[437] Abul Yussif ibn Taghry, Elmanhal Essafy, Bibl. Nat., Paris, fonds arabe, No. 748, ii, fol. 70.
[438] Vuk Brankovitch, as the reward of his treason, received half of Lazar’s inheritance,
however, with Pristina as capital. His family continued as Ottoman vassals, with varying fortunes, for
a hundred years.
[439] Ducas, 4, p. 6.
[440] Kantitz, Serbien, pp. 254 f.
[441] Busbequius was informed at Constantinople that marriage had been abolished in the
Ottoman royal family because Bayezid took to heart the disgrace of Despina by Timur. But Ricaut, p.
296, thinks that it was because of dowry expense and the desire of the Ottoman sovereigns to keep
free from family alliances. Naturally, the difference of religion in time prevented the Osmanlis from
finding brides for their sovereigns among the European royal families. If they married among their
subjects, there was always fear of intrigues in the wife’s family. At a time when family alliances
meant so much in Europe, the Ottoman Empire suffered greatly from this disability.
[442] Seadeddin, i. 158.
[443] Klaić, p. 248. I think Romanin, iii. 331, has confused Stephen Bulcovitch with Stephen
Tvrtko. For it is difficult to understand what he means by the ‘pace vergognosa’ with Venice.
[444] Old Servian chronicle, quoted by Klaić, p. 271: ‘quasi totaliter destruxerunt Bosniam et
populum abduxerunt.’
[445] Klaić, pp. 324-5.
[446] Accounts differ as to the place. There is some doubt as to whether the independence of
Aïdin was totally destroyed before the restoration of Isa’s sons by Timur. Cf. Schlumberger, p. 484;
Mas-Latrie, Trésor de Chronologie, col. 1800. Hammer, i. 300, cites no authorities for his statements
about this usurpation.
[447] Bosio, ii. 143.
[448] Ibid., ii. 148.
[449] There is the same dearth of information about the details of the destruction of the power of
the emirs of Sarukhan and Menteshe as there is about Aïdin. Hammer says simply, ‘Les principautés
de S. et M. furent incorporées à l’empire ottoman,’ i. 300. He gives no authorities.
[450] Ducas, 13, p. 47.
[451] Dialogi XXVI cum Persa quodam de Christianae religionis veritate, Bibl. Nat., Paris, fonds
grec, No. 1253: partly printed in Notices et Extraits, vol. viii, 2e partie, and in Migne, 156, pp. 111-
74. In Notices et Extraits, loc. cit., C. B. Hase has given an interesting critical account of the
dialogues, and the circumstances under which they were written.
[452] Seadeddin, i. 163. In Hammer, i. 301, in the sentence ‘quoique, depuis la paix renouvelée
avec lui par Orkhan, les deux nations eussent continuellement vécu dans des relations de sincère
amitié’, is not Murad meant instead of Orkhan?
[453] Evliya effendi, ii. 21, tells how Bayezid passed seven times in one year from Anatolia to
Wallachia.
[454] In matters relating to the progress of Ottoman conquest in Asia Minor, French, German,
and British writers have been content to repeat, without critical comment, what they have culled from
Leunclavius or the translations of Seadeddin. In many cases, they have gone back no farther than
Hammer, and have transcribed, often literally, Hammer’s words. Hammer himself, in this early period
of Ottoman history, in spite of his attainments as an orientalist, has relied mainly on Leunclavius, and
on Bratutti’s Italian translation of Seadeddin.
[455] ‘La principauté fut pour toujours réunie à l’empire,’ Hammer, i. 308. In speaking of this
second campaign, Hammer starts by saying, ‘Le prince de Karamanie avait de nouveau levé
l’étendard de la révolte’. This is hardly the expression to use for the action of an independent prince.
Alaeddin had never made himself the vassal of the Ottoman emirs.
[456] Striking testimony to the later power of the Karamanlis is given by Bertrandon de la
Broquière, who visited the court of Ibrahim with the Cypriote ambassador in 1443: cf. Schéfer’s
edition of his voyage, pp. 108-20. See Appendix B below, where the relations of the Osmanlis with
the emirates of Asia Minor during the fourteenth century are discussed in detail, with fuller citation of
authorities.
[457] Howorth, iii. 749.
[458] Sherefeddin, iii. 256, who is the only contemporary authority, says that Bayezid put him to
death. This was one of the charges made by Timur against Bayezid.
[459] The earliest possible date could be 1393. Perhaps the Osmanlis first appeared near Sivas at
this time. But Bayezid would hardly have undertaken so long and perilous an expedition before his
position was secure in Karamania. Sherefeddin gives the more likely date 1395, while Ibn-Hedjir
places the death of Burhaneddin in 1396.
[460] So d’Ohsson fils, vii. 442, says, but gives date 1390. Hammer more correctly puts it in
1391. Xénopol, in his authoritative and carefully documented history, gives a little different account
of Mircea’s early relations with Bayezid, and attributes to Mircea a larger influence in the
calculations of Murad than he deserves. But the exposition of Mircea’s policy in relation to Poland,
Hungary, and the Osmanlis, as given by Xénopol, cannot be overlooked or disregarded by the student
of this period.
[461] ‘Pierre Aron fut le premier des hospodars qui paya un tribut aux Turcs’: Costin’s Hist. de la
Moldavie, p. 367, in Notices et Extraits, vol. xi.
[462] Phr., I. 13-14, pp. 58-9, and 26, p. 82; Bonfinius, iii. 2; Chron. Anon. de St.-Denis; Chron.
of Drechsler; Campana, fol. 8 (but gives date 1393). Leuncl., Annales, p. 51, following Ottoman
sources, speaks only of Sigismund’s defeat. This earlier victory and the disastrous retreat are
mentioned also in several of the French chronicles which relate the expedition of 1396.
[463] Engel, Gesch. von Ungarn, ii. 368, who draws on all the earlier Hungarian authorities.
[464] Russian source cited by Muralt, vol. ii, No. 10 n.
[465] Cf. Baedeker, Konst. und Kleinasien, 2. Aufl., p. 46.
[466] Jireček, Gesch. der Bulgaren, pp. 347-9, gives Slavic sources for this date, and quotes
Camblak’s graphic description of the terrible sacking of the city, the massacre, and the destruction of
the churches.
[467] In Czech, the word jazyk signifies language as well as nation (cf. Lützow, Life and Times of
Master John Hus, p. 239). This illustrates the Slavic conception of nationality, and explains in a
nutshell the Austro-Hungarian and Balkan problems. To the Slav, there can be no other test of
nationality. The Bulgarian propaganda in Macedonia, carried on through the church and the schools,
has been the resurrection of the nation through the language. The Greeks have used the Orthodox
Church to combat and stifle this movement. They claim as Greeks all members of the Orthodox
Church, while the Bulgarians claim that Bulgarophones, even if not attached to the exarchate, belong
to the Bulgarian nation.
[468] Schiltberger, Neumann ed., p. 65. On this question cf. Jireček, op. cit., pp. 350-2; Miller, p.
189; and illuminating note of Rambaud, in Hist. générale, iii. 832 n. Also p. 143 of this book and
accompanying foot-note.
[469] Schiltberger, op. et loc. cit.
[470] These cities, or rather, their fortresses, were captured and evacuated several times by the
Osmanlis, especially Widin.
[471] Hammer, at the beginning of the reign of Bayezid, i. 295-7, relates the history of the quarrel
between Andronicus and his father and Manuel, the rescue from the Tower of Anemas, &c., as if
these events happened in 1389 and 1390, and gives the capture of Philadelphia for 1391. He has been
led astray here by the story of Ducas, and by the fact that the Byzantine historians speak of Bayezid
instead of Murad in connexion with the negotiations for restoration. By the internal evidence in the
Byzantine historians themselves, the chronology of this period cannot be decided. But, by reading
Phrantzes and Chalcocondylas in the light of Quirino, the continuation of Dandolo, and the archives
of the colony of Pera, and also by piecing out the length of time of these events and matching them
with Bayezid’s occupations during the first two years of his reign, it is not difficult to decide to place
the Andronicus versus John and Manuel struggles just before the Chioggia war. At any rate,
Andronicus died ten years before the date Hammer gives to these events!
[472] Poem cited by Muralt, ii. 738, No. 1.
[473] MS. Bibl. Nat., Paris, fonds grec, No. 1253, fol. 198 vº.
[474] John V Palaeologos was of those who, in the words of Bernino (p. 9), ‘consumavasi
vanamente il tempo più in dolersi delle calamità che in repararle’.
[475] Ducas, 13, pp. 25-49 passim; Chalc., II, pp. 66, 81-2.
[476] Evliya effendi, i. 29-30; ii. 21, who repeats the persistent Ottoman tradition of his day, that
is also found in Hadji Khalfa and Nazmi Zadé. Cf. the Genoese accounts of Pera in Jorga’s scholarly
Notes à servir, &c. i. 42. According to Schéfer, in his edition of Bertrandon de la Broquière, p. 165,
there was a provision that slaves escaping to Constantinople should be given back, but we cannot be
sure that this stipulation was made under Bayezid I. The date of the installation of the cadi, &c., is
open to question. Some authorities place it after Nicopolis.
[477] Shehabeddin, fol. 72 rº, writes Istanbul; Sherefeddin, iv. 37, is transcribed by Petits de la
Croix Istanbol; Arabshah, p. 124, transcribed by Vattier Estanbol. Wylie, i. 156, n. 2, gives the timeworn
popular derivation from εἰς τὴν πόλιν; also Telfer, in his edition of Schiltberger, p. 119. Why go
so far afield? Istambul is a natural contraction of Constantinople. As the Greeks pronounced this long
word, the syllables stan and pol bore the stress, and were naturally put together for a shortened form.
As for the initial I, which has troubled the philologists, its explanation is easy to one who knows the
Osmanlis. They cannot to this day pronounce an initial St without putting I before it.
[478] Neshri, trans. Nöldeke, ZDMG., xv. 345; Seadeddin, i. 189; Saguntinus, p. 187; Drechsler,
p. 228, says: ‘octo annos vexatur et obsidetur.’
[479] Duc., 13, p. 50.
[480] Muralt, ii. 753, No. 29.
[481] Secr. Cons. Rog., III, E 84.
[482] Chalc., II, pp. 80-1; Phr., I. 13, pp. 57-8; 26, p. 82.
[483] Miklositch, Acta Serbica, CCIV. Hammer, i. 341, calls this Constantine ‘fils de Twarko’,
meaning Stephen Tvrtko, I suppose. But I cannot find that the Bosnian king had such a son, or any
reason, if he had, why this son should have been at Serres.
[484] Ibid., CCXXIII. For the later kings of the dynasty which Vuk founded, see Picot’s careful
article in Columna lui Traianu, new ser., Jan.-Feb. 1883, p. 64 f.
[485] Epp. cur., ii. 64.
[486] Epp. cur., ii. 103-4. Urban VI in 1387 had written a letter from Lucca inciting the Frankish
princes to a war against ‘schismatics’ in Achaia.
[487] Secr. Cons. Rog., iii, E 74.
[488] Miklositch-Müller, Acta Graeca, CCCCXXXV.
[489] Chalc., II, p. 75; Duc., 13, p. 73.
[490] Chalc., loc. cit.; Epp. cur., ii. 300-1, 311; iii. 261.
[491] Cf. Jorga, in Bibl. de l’École des Chartes, 2e série, 110e fascic.; Molinier, MSS. de P. de
Mézières, in Arch. de l’Orient Latin, i. 335-64; Del. Leroulx, i. 201-8.
[492] ‘Nostra dominatio audiverat de morte ipsius dom. Morati, de qua maximam displicentiam
habuerat, quia semper eum habuimus in singularissimum amicum, et dileximus eum et statum suum.
Similiter audivimus de felici creatione sua ad imperium et dominium ipsius patris sui, de quo nos
fuerimus valde letati, quia sicut sincere dileximus patrem, ita diligimus et diligere dispositi sumus
filium et suum dominium et habere ipsum in singularem amicum’ ... &c.: Misti, xli. 24, reprinted in
full in Ljubić, iv. 269-70.
[493] Ibid., xlii. 58-9; the treaty is in Commem., viii. 150. Cf. Romanin, iii. 330.
[494] Euboea is called Negropont, the Peloponnesus Morea, Lesbos Mytilene, while Crete is
frequently called Candia and Chios Scio, in mediaeval and modern times.
[495] Misti, xlii. 55.
[496] Ibid., xliii. 156.
[497] Secr. Cons. Rog., iii. E 81.
[498] ‘Ire contra dictos Turchos ad damnum et destructionem suam’: ibid., p. 94, cited in Ljubić,
iv. 335-6.
[499] Misti, lxiv. 140.
[500] Ibid., lxiv. 156.
[501] We must reject the statement of Morosini, MS. Wiener Bibl., fol. 135 rº, that Bayezid
‘entered in arms in the Strait of Romania with so many galleys that one could not navigate in the
strait’, and doubt the opinion that Monicego, with his forty-four Venetian and Genoese galleys, had to
force the Bosphorus, and contributed powerfully ‘a la destrucion del dito Turcho’.
[502] Misti, xliii. 29.
[503] Ibid., xliii. 5: ‘confidasse in Dio, confidasse nei provedimenti che saprebbero à fare i
principi christiani, scrivesse al Papa e a questi promovendo una lega generale’.
[504] Ibid., xliv. 108.
[505] Ibid., xliv. 128.
[506] Belgrano, pp. 152-3.
[507] Lib. iurium, ann. 1392, fol. 474, in Turin archives, printed in Bibl. de l’École des Chartes
(1857), 4e série, iii. 451-2.
[508] Religieux de St.-Denis, ed. Bellaguet, i. 319-21.
[509] Chronicorum Karoli Sexti, ed. Bellaguet, i. 709-11. The relations of the ambassadors of
Sigismund with the Duke of Burgundy and with Charles VI are found in Religieux de Saint-Denis.
[510] On September 13, 1395, in the presence of ambassadors from all parts of Christendom, and
also ‘del gran Turco, del Rè de’ Tartari, del gran Soldano, del gran Tamerlano e di molti altri Principi
infedeli e ribelli alla Fede christiana’, who were treated like Christians and lodged at the expense of
‘il Signore di Milano’, Galeazzo was solemnly raised to ducal rank and invested with the Duchy of
Milan by Wenceslaus: Andrea Gataro, in Muratori, xvii, col. 820.
[511] Mémoires de Madame de Lussan, iii. 5.
[512] The references to Froissart which follow are given from vol. xv of Kervyn de Lettenhove’s
edition, and the references to Schiltberger from the English translation in the Hakluyt Society series,
vol. lviii, unless otherwise specified.
[513] See the sources and references for Nicopolis grouped in the classified bibliography.
Although the citations in the text of my narrative are mostly from Froissart and Schiltberger, all
chronicles and contemporary sources available have been used in the preparation of this section,
especially Bellaguet’s edition of Religieux de Saint-Denis, ii. 425-30, 483-522 (Bellaguet’s notes,
however, on these sections are very disappointing).
[514] Froissart, pp. 218, 221, 223.
[515] Ibid., pp. 227-8, 230, 394-8. A complete list of the chevaliers, compiled from sources, is
found in Buchon, and, in much more complete and accurate form, in Delaville Leroulx, ii. 78-86.
[516] Froissart, and other earlier writers, have several ways of designating Bayezid. Froissart
calls him Amorath-Baquin (p. 216), Amorath (p. 226), le roy Basaach, dit l’Amourath-Bacquin(p.
230), l’Amourath-Bacquin many times, and l’Amourath three times in one paragraph (p. 311).
Chroniclers and writers of the fifteenth century were continually confusing Bayezid with Murad (cf.
Cuspianus, Secundinus, Sylvius Aeneas, Donado da Lezze, Paolo Giovio, et al.). From the different
ways Froissart designates Bayezid, it is very clear that he is not mixing him with Murad, but that by
‘dit l’Amourath-Bacquin’ he means ‘l’émir-pacha’. The fact that he uses the definite article so
frequently and says several times ‘l’Amourath’ is proof positive of this. His transcription of the title
emir, and that of many other western writers, led later historians to think the chroniclers meant
Murad! It is merely a coincidence that the words are so similar. Froissart, however, would be capable
of mistaking Murad for Bayezid. On p. 216 he calls Sigismund Henry, and on p. 334 Louis! Olivier
de la Marche (éd. Beaune et d’Arbuthnot), i. 83-4, speaks twice of ‘Lamourath-bahy’. Here, too,
there is not a confusion of Murad and Bayezid. He, like Froissart, means to say ‘l’amiral-pacha’. On
‘amiral’ for ‘emir’ see above, p. 163, n. 2.
[517] Froissart, pp. 230-1, 242.
[518] Donado da Lezze, p. 9.
[519] Leunclavius, Hist. Musul. Turc., preface, p. 14, speaks of how grateful Sigismund was later
for the services rendered to him personally by the Burgrave in the Nicopolis campaign, and that the
friendship formed then led to the later advancement of the house of Brandenburg.
[520] Wylie, i. 6, 158, quoting Ducas, 13, and Venetian State Papers (Brown), i. 85. Ducas knew
nothing of Nicopolis, while the Venetian reference is based on a misapprehension.
[521] Lavisse, Histoire de France, iv. 311: ‘on l’avait vu à la bataille de Nicopoli sur les bords de
la Baltique avec les chevaliers teutoniques.’ Lavisse has evidently mixed up the Nicopolis expedition
with the earlier Prussian one in which Henry did take part. His statement on the same page that Henry
IV took part in the Boucicaut expedition is another error.
[522] Conclusive proof of the whereabouts of Henry in the summer of 1396 is found in the letter
‘escript ... le xxe jour d’augst’. This letter is in Arch. Nat., Paris, J. 644: 3511. For the expeditions in
which Henry did take part, when he was Henry of Derby, see vol. lii of the Camden Society, edited by
Lucy Toulmin Smith, London, 1894, 4to.
[523] Froissart, p. 244.
[524] Phr., I. 14, p. 59; Bontinius, III. 2.
[525] Engel, Geschichte der Bulgaren, p. 468. According to the authority who has made the most
exhaustive study of the Nicopolis expedition, Sigismund disposed of 120,000 men in all, including
the western allies: Kiss, in À Nikápolyi ülkozet, p. 266. Kiss’s estimate is corroborated by the Cronica
Dolfina, which says that Sigismund had one hundred thousand men under arms in 1394. Sanuto
quotes this in Muratori, xxii, col. 762. Cf. also Hungarian Nat. Archives, Dipl. 8201, 8212, 8214,
8493, 8541.
[526] Schiltberger, p. 2.
[527] Bruun, in his Geographische Anmerkungen zum Reisebuch von Schiltberger (Sitz.-Ber. k.
Bay. Akademie, 1869, ii. 271), tried to prove that the battle was fought, not at Nicopolis on the
Danube, but near the ancient Nicopolis of Trajan’s foundation. But in his notes to the English
translation of Schilt., Hakluyt, lviii. 108-9, he assents to the contention which Kanitz makes in
Donau-Bulgarien, ii. 58-70, that the battle was near Nicopolis-on-the-Danube. An examination of the
chronicles corroborates Kanitz’s hypothesis over against the ingenuous argument of Jireček. Some
historians have been so unmindful of geographical considerations as to put the battle at the ancient
Nicopolis ad Haemum, of which Ortellius, p. 225, speaks.
[528] Schiltberger, p. 2.
[529] Froissart, pp. 251, 262-3, 310, 329. ‘Miscreant’, of course, in its original sense.
[530] Ibid., p. 310.
[531] Ibid., pp. 311-17; Relig. de St.-Denis, pp. 490-7. Schiltberger, p. 3, attributes this initiative
to Jean de Nevers, whom, like many other writers on Nicopolis, he calls, by anticipation, Duke of
Burgundy. Cf. Donado da Lezze, p. 9, who says: ‘Il signor Carlo, prima Duca di Borgogna.’ Also
Morosini, p. 6. Sigismund is frequently spoken of as German emperor at the time of Nicopolis. Cf.
Chalc., ed. Migne, col. 76: ἡγουμένου Σιγισυούνδου Ῥωμαίων βασιλέως τε καὶ αὐτοκράτορος.
[532] Rabbi Joseph, i. 252.
[533] Froissart, pp. 313-16; Relig. de St.-Denis, pp. 490 f.; Rabbi Joseph, p. 253; Schiltberger, p.
3; Seadeddin, i. 184; Neshri, in ZDMG., xv. 345-8. Cf. authorities cited in Bibliography.
[534] Froissart, p. 317. Hermann de Cilly and the Burgrave of Nürnberg are said by some
authorities to have thrown themselves in front of Sigismund, and to have saved him and carried him
off to the boat.
[535] The bitterness against and contempt for the Hungarians is expressed in the following
verses:
‘Nichopoly, cité de payennie,
Au temps là où li sièges fut grans,
Fut delaissés par orgueil et folie;
Car les Hongres qui furent sur les champs
Avec leur roy, fuitis et récréans,
Leur roy meisme enmainent par puissance,
Sans assembler.’
OEuvres inédites d’Eustache des Champs, ed. Tarbé, 1849, i. 166.
[536] Schiltberger calls him ‘der hertzog auss der Sirifey, der genant despot’: Bibl. des Lit.
Vereins (Tübingen), clxxii. 4.
[537] Cf. Miller, in Story of Nations Series, pp. 290-1.
[538] Belonging to the grand master of Rhodes: Froissart, p. 317. But Morosini, p. 15, and others,
say that he went directly on board Monicego’s galley. It is a pity that Hammer, in his description of
the battle of Nicopolis, relied so much on such an unreliable third-hand authority as Abbé Vertot.
Skentkláráy, À dunai hajóhadak törtenéte, says that Jean de Vienne commanded the galleys.
[539] Schiltberger, p. 6.
[540] Bonfinius, one of the earliest Hungarian historians, recorded that Sigismund had boasted
that he would not only turn the Osmanlis out of Europe, but also that with the army under his
command, if the sky fell, it could be held up on their lances: Decades, ii. 403.
[541] ‘Sigismund was cruel and sensual, perjured and frivolous, rapacious and dissolute, fierce
and pusillanimous, a byword and object of horror to the Bohemians, hated and despised by the
Germans, a warning to all rulers. His companion, John XXIII, lewd and murderous, a simonist and an
infidel, was a true comrade for Sigismund in all evil deeds’: Dr. Flajshans, in Mistr Jan Hus:
quotation translated by Count Lützow, John Hus and his Times, pp. 137-8.
[542] Froissart, pp. 330-1.
[543] But not until he ‘regracioit les dieux et les déesses selon la loy où il creoit et que les paiens
croient’: Froissart, p. 321. The ignorance among the western chroniclers of everything pertaining to
the Osmanlis—or the wider circle of Mohammedan peoples—was appalling.
[544] Schiltberger, p. 5. Cf. Froissart, pp. 322-8; Relig. de St.-Denis; Chronique de Boucicaut;
Chronique des 4 premiers Valois, éd. Luce, p. 326; and the other chronicles and secondary authorities
given in Bibliography.
[545] Xénopol, in Hist, générale, iii. 882, whose writings furnish the most reliable and most
accessible data for Rumanian history, allows his patriotism to get the better of his judgement when he
writes that this unimportant skirmish was a complete defeat inflicted upon Bayezid, and that ‘le
Sultan court jusqu’à Adrinople’! Xénopol makes no attempt to explain the battle of Nicopolis, and
Mircea’s action in and after the battle.
[546] Schiltberger, p. 6. Chalc., II, pp. 76-80, who exaggerates the raid to the point of saying that
Bayezid reached the environs of Buda.
[547] Secr. Cons. Rog., iii. 134-5. Mém. d’Olivier de la Marche (éd. Beaune et d’Arbuthnot), i.
199-200, reads as if Bayezid had actually taken possession of Hungary.
[548] MS. Bibl. Nat., Paris, fonds turc, No. 79, pp. 61 f. (collection of Feridun). For wrong date,
see Langlès, in Acad. des Inscriptions, iv. 673-4.
[549] Schiltberger, p. 7, who would have been chosen himself for Egypt but for the fact that he
had been wounded.
[550] Froissart, p. 341; Rabbi Joseph, p. 254.
[551] Froissart, p. 345. In xvi. 40, Froissart makes a mistake in saying that the body of the Comte
d’Eu was ‘en ung sarcus rapporté en France et ensevely en l’eglise Saint-Laurent d’Eu, et là gist
moult honnourablement’. The tomb in St. Laurent is merely a memorial. Philippe was buried in the
chapel of a monastery in Galata, where, seven years later, Clavijo, fol. 17 vº, saw his burial-spot, but
unmarked. His tomb is described by Bulladius, who saw it in 1647, in his notes to Bonn ed. of Ducas,
p. 560. Cf. Mordtmann, Beiträge zur osmanischen Epigraphik, I, in ZDMG. (1911), lxv. 103.
[552] Froissart, xv. 329, 332, 342 f., 355-8; xvi. 16.
[553] Godefroy, Hist. de Boucicaut (1620 ed.), i. 16; Ducas, p. 52.
[554] Chronique d’Enguerran de Monstrelet (ed. Douet d’Areq), i. 332-3; Froissart, xvi. 57-9.
[555] Jean de Nevers, as Duc de Bourgogne and leader of the faction against the king’s brother,
openly accepted the responsibility of the assassination of the Duc d’Orléans. This was the beginning
of the Burgundy-Armagnac civil war, which delivered France to the English until Jeanne d’Arc
appeared to awaken the French to a feeling of nationality.
[556] Froissart, xvi. 47. For ransom, ibid., pp. 37-8, and Rabbi Joseph, i. 254; also Livre des
faicts of Boucicaut, passim.
[557] Raynaldus, ann. 1364, No. XXVIII. Jireček, Gesch. der Bulg., p. 323, says that at this time
‘Osmanen erschienen in Attika’. He has mistaken roving Turkish corsairs of Sarukhan or Aïdin for
the Osmanlis. It must have been these Turks who attacked Thebes.
[558] For the deliverance of the grand master of Rhodes, Jean Ferdinand d’Hérédia: Ducange,
viii. 296.
[559] Chron. Breve at end of Ducas, p. 516.
[560] Ibid. According to Finlay, iv. 233, he captured Akova. Cf. Muralt, ii. 741, citing Guichenon
MS., and Ducange, viii. 39, 296.
[561] Phr., I. 16, p. 62; 26, p. 83; Chalc., II, pp. 67-9.
[562] Muralt, under 1395 and 1397, gives the same expedition. From internal evidence of
Byzantine historians, one might put the Morean expeditions in either or both of these years. But cf.
Chron. Breve, p. 516, and the silence of the Ottoman historians on an expedition in 1395.
[563] Chalc., II, p. 67; Seadeddin, i. 192.
[564] Chalc., II, p. 67; Seadeddin, i. 192.
[565] Chron. Breve, p. 516; Phr., I. 16, p. 62; Chalc., II, pp. 97-9.
[566] Seadeddin, i. 193.
[567] The Venetians seized Athens in 1395, and sent Antonio Contareno to act as governor.
[568] Hammer describes the capture of Athens in 1397 in i. 350, and again in 1456 in iii. 51.
[569] Gibbon and Hammer follow Chalcocondylas in this error. Cf. Berger de Xivrey, in Mém. de
l’Acad. des Inscr., vol. xix, partie 2, pp. 29-30.
[570] Seadeddin, i. 180.
[571] Ducas, 13, p. 50; Chalc., II, p. 59; Idris.
[572] The land walls of Salonika, still standing, are eloquent proof of the difficulty which
confronted their assailants before the days of cannon.
[573] Phr., I. 17, p. 64.
[574] See p. 199. There is serious difference of opinion as to just when these concessions were
made.
[575] Feridun collection, letter from Adrianople, ordering kadis to prepare for siege of
Constantinople: Bibl. Nat., Paris, fonds turc, No. 79, p. 60.
[576] Ducas, 14, p. 53; Canale, ii. 62. Leunclavius, Annales, p. 52, puts this in 1391/2.
[577] Karamzin (Russian ed. of 1819), v. 164.
[578] Miklositch-Müller, Acta Graeca, DCXXXVI.
[579] Ibid., DXIV, DXV, DXVI.
[580] Froissart, xvi. 132-3.
[581] Religieux de Saint-Denis, ii. 559-62, 564.
[582] Secreta Consilii Rogatorum, E iii. 138, 146, printed in Ljubić, iv. 404.
[583] Ibid., p. 137.
[584] Misti, xliv. 210, xlv. 443; Belgrano, Arch. Gen., 1396-1464, pp. 175 f.
[585] Ducas, 14, p. 53; Chalc., II, p. 80; Sherefeddin, iv. 38.
[586] ‘El Cuirol castello de Grecia está despoblado y destruydo y el dela Turquia está poblado’:
Seville ed., 1582, fol. 17 v°. Busbecq, i. 131, wrote: ‘stand two castles opposite each other, one in
Europe and the other in Asia.... The former was held by the Turks a long time before the attack on
Constantinople.’ Busbecq was, of course, misinformed, as Rumeli Hissar was built in 1452. It is still
standing in excellent preservation. Anatoli Hissar, of which only one tower remains intact, was built
between 1392 and 1397. There is no way of determining the exact date. But Saladin, in Manuel de
l’Art Musulman, i. 482, displays his usual inaccuracy concerning facts of Ottoman history, when he
gives 1420 as the date for Anatoli Hissar.
[587] Phr., I. 14, p. 60; Chalc., II, p. 83; Ducas, 14, p. 53.
[588] Venice contemplated action against the Osmanlis with the aid of France, Hungary, and
Genoa. Cf. Secr. Cons. Rog., E iii. 137-44.
[589] Epp., v. 26, 99, 293-5.
[590] Edition of Seville, 1582, fol. 16 v°-17 r°.
[591] My account of this expedition is taken from MS. Bibl. Nat., Paris, fonds fr., No. 11432,
Livre des faicts du bon messire Jean le Maingre, dit Bouciquaut. For printed editions, see
Bibliography.
[592] The chronicler makes the most astonishing assertions as to these raids, saying that the
chevaliers reached Ak-Seraï! He evidently had no idea of local geography. I have been unable to
identify several of the places mentioned.
[593] I have walked in one day from Riva to a point on the Bosphorus not many miles above
Constantinople. When one reads the history of the Osmanlis in the country of their origin, the fact
that from the very beginning of their history they were practically within sight of the imperial city is
vividly impressed upon one.
[594] The Byzantine historians give little attention to Boucicaut, and are in contradiction with his
chronicler on this point. Phr., 15, p. 61, says that John, who had been in the court of Bayezid, fled to
his uncle because he had been slandered to Bayezid, and was afraid for his life; and Chalc., II, p. 84,
that it was John who commanded the 10,000 Osmanlis against the city, and that Manuel shared the
throne with him in order to save the city. Muralt, ii. 762, is a year in advance of the actual date.
[595] Chron. de Saint-Denis and Juvenal d’Ursins. But these are really the same source,
according to Lacabane, Bibl. de l’École des Chartes, ii. 62.
[596] Foglieta and Stella, in Muralt, ii. 778, No. 61.
[597] Sanudo, in Muratori, xxii. pp. 794-8.
[598] Chalc., II, pp. 83-4; Ducas, 14, pp. 54-6. For Rhodes and the Pope in the Morea, Phr., I. 16,
p. 63; Bosio, ii. 154.
[599] September 10, 1400, in Misti, xlv. 33.
[600] Livre des faicts, fol. 53 r°-55 r°, and Wylie, pp. 159-65. Wylie has collated admirably the
sources on Manuel’s visit.
[601] Text is published in Theiner, ii. 170-2.
[602] Epp., v. 300-2; vi. 92.
[603] ‘Cum Dom. summus Pontifex advertens quod perfidus ille Baysetus Princeps Turchorum,
manu potenti et brachio extento in Christianum Populum maxima feritate extitit debachatus ad
Exterminium Civitatis Constantinopolitanae et universitatis Populi Christiani nisi eius nephanda
propositio resistatur, omnes et singulos qui, pro Liberatione et Subsidione Manuelis Imp. Cpni et
dictae Civitatis suae, Manus adiutrices porrexerint ...’ etc.: Rymer, vol. iii, part 4, pp. 195-6.
[604] Clavijo, who visited Constantinople the following year, reports this, fol. 7 v°.
[605] Miklositch-Müller, Acta, DCXXVI.
[606] Strikingly shown in letter of April 20, 1402: Canc. Secr., i. 58.
[607] Misti, xlv. 19-23, 25-6, 29-30, 35, 87; xlvi. 37. Several of these are published in Ljubić, iv.
579, 590.
[608] Knoelle, in Journal R. A. S. (1822), xiv. 125; Nöldeke, in ZDMG. (1859), xiii. 185, n. 6.
[609] ‘Toutesfoiz il a la main senestre et pié senestre comme impotent et ne s’en puet aidier, car il
a les nerfs coppez’: Dominican Friar, p. 463. ‘Infirmus, ut dicitur, a cingulo infra’: Stella, in Muratori,
vol. xvii. col. 1194. Cf. Sherefeddin, i. 55, 381. The English corruption Tamerlane is from Timurlenk,
the latter syllable signifying lameness.
[610] Sherefeddin, ii. 222.
[611] There is an excellent account of the dynasties of the Black and White Sheep, with list,
following Mirkhand, in Teixera, ii. 24-39, 69-70. For the later activities of Kara-Yussuf, Teixera, ii.
355; de Guignes, iii. 302.
[612] Langlès translation, p. 260.
[613] Ibid., pp. 258-62; Sherefeddin, iii. 255-62; Clavijo de Gonzáles, fol. 25 r°-26 v°.
[614] Chalcocondylas and Raynaldus are wrong in calling him Ertogrul, and in stating that he
was killed in the subsequent siege. Sherefeddin, iii. 267, calls him Mustafa, and Schiltberger, p. 18,
Mohammed. That it was Soleiman is proved by the agreement of the Ottoman historians with
Arabshah, p. 124, and with Clavijo, fol. 26 r°, whose ‘Musulman Tchelebi’ is Soleiman.
[615] Hadji Khalfa, Djihannuma, vol. ii, fol. 1776.
[616] Clavijo, fol. 26 r°; Arabshah, p. 125.
[617] Clavijo, fol. 26 v°-27 r°; Arabshah, p. 125; Sherefeddin, iii. 267-9; Dominican Friar, p.
264; Schiltberger, p. 18. Schiltberger says 21 days, and 5,000 horsemen buried, and 9,000 virgins
carried off by the Tartars.
[618] It is impossible to understand why Muralt, with all the authorities he had at hand, places the
taking of Sivas in 1395: Chronographie Byzantine, ii. 753, No. 26. The contemporary authorities
cited above establish the date. Cf. also letter from Crete, in Jorga, Notes à servir, &c., i. 106, n. 3.
There is a full discussion of the proper dating of the Ottoman aggression against Sivas, Caesarea, and
Erzindjian, and the probability of two Ottoman campaigns, one before and one after Nicopolis, in
Bruun’s note to the Hakluyt edition of Schiltberger, pp. 121-2.
[619] The letters exchanged between Charles VI and Timur are preserved in the French archives.
The Turkish text of these letters, with Latin translation, is published by Charrière, introd., i. 118-19.
[620] Stella, in Muratori, xvii. 1194.
[621] ‘En la qual batalla se acaescieron Payo de Soto Mayor e Hernan Sanchez de Palaçuelos
Embaxadores’: Clavijo, fol. 1 r°, col. 2.
[622] Letters of Timur and Bayezid in Arabic and Persian in Feridun collection, MS. Bibl. Nat.,
Paris, ancien fonds turc, pp. 65-91. Cf. Langlès, in Notices et Extraits, iv. 674, for list and dates of
these. Sherefeddin, iii. 396-416.
[623] Sherefeddin, iv. 1-6. For description of route from Sivas to Angora, Hadji Khalfa,
Djihannuma, ii. fols. 1803-4. Timur’s own account of his march and the battle of Angora is very
brief: ‘Je pris moi-même le chemin d’Ancouriah. Bayezid, suivi de 400,000 hommes, tant cavaliers
que fantassins, vint à ma rencontre; on livra la bataille, et je la gagnai. Ce Prince vaincu fut pris par
mes troupes, et amené en ma présence. Enfin ... je retournai victorieux à Samarcande’: Langlès trans.,
p. 264.
[624] A great deal has been written about the date of Angora, but all authorities agree in putting it
between July 20 and July 28, 1402. Cf. Art de vérifier les Dates, i. 193; Silvestre de Sacy, in
Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions, vi. 488-95; Moranvillé, in Bibl. de l’École des Chartes, lv.
437-8. A few early western writers have given 1397 and 1403, while Petits de la Croix, in his French
translation of Sherefeddin, is a decade too late in all his dates. The latter part of July 1402 is fixed by
all contemporary authorities on this battle. Abu’l-Mahasin, in his history of the reign of the Egyptian
sultan Barkok, states that the greater part of Bayezid’s army perished by thirst before his capture.
[625] On the nationality of the Tartars who betrayed Bayezid at Angora, see the latter part of the
note of Bruun on the ‘White Tartars’ in the Hakluyt ed. of Schiltberger, pp. 114-17.
[626] From the account of the Dominican Friar, pp. 458-9, it seems clear that Bayezid was the
aggressor until after Soleiman’s command had been cut to pieces.
[627] Sherefeddin, iv. 8-12; Dominican Friar, p. 458.
[628] Afterwards Mohammed I. Many western writers have confused him with his nickname of
Kiritchelebi (Girigilibi in Rabbi Joseph, i. 257, and a variety of spellings in other early writers), and
made him thus his own father, to account for the later Sultan Mohammed.
[629] In this battle I have used Sherefeddin, Arabshah, Dominican Friar, in Bibl. de l’École des
Chartes, lv. 437-68, Schiltberger, Clavijo, and the invaluable letters in Marino Sanuto, Muratori, xxii.
794-7. The authorities for Angora and Timur are classified in the bibliography below.
[630] Sherefeddin, iv. 15, says the carnage in this battle was seven times greater than in any of
Timur’s previous victories. The Dominican Friar, p. 459, puts the Ottoman losses at 40,000.
[631] Schiltberger, p. 21, says that he retreated to this hill with 1,000 horsemen. Hammer is in
error in saying that Bayezid ‘resisted like a hero at the head of his ten thousand janissaries with
whom he had occupied the slope of a hill’: ii. 91. There were never as many as ten thousand
janissaries enrolled in the Ottoman army until a century after Bayezid’s death. See above, p. 119. In
oriental historians numbers are almost invariably exaggerated at least tenfold.
[632] Solak-zadé, p. 63. Sherefeddin and Arabshah bear witness to Bayezid’s personal courage.
[633] The Ottoman historians explain the capture of Bayezid by the fact that he was unhorsed.
Some say that he was mounted on an inexperienced horse. A great deal was written about the battle of
Angora at a much later date, but, as in describing the battles of Kossova and Nicopolis, I have limited
myself to contemporary sources.
[634] Mustafa’s fate was never cleared up. Mohammed and Isa fled naked, according to the
Dominican Friar, p. 450.
[635] I am unable to agree with Alberi, Rel. Ven. Ambasc., 3rd ser., vol. i, preface viii., ‘Secondo
migliori testimonianze deve rigettarsi per falsa la tradizione’, and Bruun, Notes to Hakluyt ed. of
Schiltberger, p. 21 n., ‘We are forced to conclude, after Hammer’s searching inquiries, that there is no
truth whatever in the story of Bayezid having been confined by Timur in an iron cage’. Hammer’s
arguments, ii. 96-101, do not seem to me at all convincing. From the philological point of view, they
have been refuted by Weil, Gesch. der Chalifen, ii. 92. From the historical point of view, there is just
as strong evidence for as against the litter with bars, which could hardly have been any different from
a cage. If one argues that Timur did not subject his prisoner to this indignity, and advances that the
cage was really nothing more than a closed litter, such as was used for ladies of the imperial harem,
he is merely substituting one indignity for another. From the character of Bayezid, one would infer
that the humiliation of being shut up like a lion in a cage would have been less than that of being put
into a harem litter like a woman, for whom the conqueror had contempt rather than fear. There is no
mention of the iron cage in Schiltberger, Clavijo, and the Dominican Friar. But their silence signifies
nothing. They are excellent witnesses for the battle of Angora itself, but knew little or nothing of
what happened in Asia Minor after Angora. One might just as well argue from Schiltberger’s silence
that Timur did not capture Smyrna! Nor does Sherefeddin mention the humiliation of Bayezid, and
the iron cage. But the story is given in Arabshah, p. 210, who must be reckoned with as a
contemporary source. If, as de Salaberry, iv. 200-1, claims, the iron cage story was inserted in
Arabshah by his Ottoman editor and translator, Nazmi-zadé, it only goes to show that the careful
Ottoman students of his time believed the story. The Ottoman historians, who are without exception
too late to be regarded as sources, and who had reasons for making the degradation of the Ottoman
sovereign as slight as possible, show their knowledge of the early and contemporary character of this
record by trying to controvert it, and prove that Bayezid was carried on a litter rather than in a cage,
e. g. Seaddedin, i. 230. That the common tradition among the Osmanlis, outside of the court
chroniclers who were compelled to uphold at all costs the dignity of the house of Osman, was in
favour of the cage story is proved conclusively by Ali Muhieddin, Migne ed., col. 597, who is earlier
than Seadeddin, and by Evliya effendi, i. 29-30; ii. 21-22, who gives the story just as we find it in
Arabshah and the western writers. Sagredo, who follows Spandugino, vigorously defends the cage
story as opposed to the litter of the Ottoman court chroniclers, and says that Bayezid died from
striking his head against the bars of his cage, pp. 25-6. In Lonicerus, fol. 12 vº, is a picture of the
cage. It is mentioned by Guazzo, fol. 275 vº; Donato da Lezze, p. 10; Paolo Giovio; Geuffry, p. 283;
Campana, fol. 8 vº; Egnatius, p. 30; Rabbi Joseph, i. 256; Sanuto, in Muratori, xxii. 791;
Bonincontrius, col. 88; Formanti; and Timur’s early western biographer, Perondino, p. 31, who, fifty
years before Seadeddin, wrote that Timur compelled Bayezid’s wife Despina to wait nude upon him
and his guests at table. The story is also found in Ducas, chapter 26.
[636] Perondino, p. 31; Sagredo, p. 26; Campana, fol. 8 vº; Raynaldus and Spandugino; Lettres
d’un Solitaire turc, i. 106-7. Exposure of women was a common symbol of conquest among the
Mongols. It was a formal ceremony at the sack of Pekin and Djenghiz Khan’s sack of Samarkand.
[637] Many authorities declare that Bayezid committed suicide by striking his head against the
bars of his cage, being unable to support the sight of his wife’s disgrace. The humiliation to which
Despina was subjected was often given in later times by the Osmanlis themselves as a reason why the
house of Osman does not contract marriages. See above, p. 183, and note.
[638] Sherefeddin, iv. 65-7; Chalc., III, pp. 162-5; Duc., 17, pp. 77-8; Phr., 1. 26, p. 85; and the
Ottoman historians.
[639] The Dominican Friar says that the Jews of Brusa sent a delegation of rabbis to inform
Mohammed-Sultan that their religion was the same as his. He answered that their law was a good
one, and that they should assemble all their people in the chief synagogue. He promised that no harm
would come to them. When the Tartars entered the city, they sealed fast the doors of this synagogue,
and set fire to it.
[640] Sherefeddin, iv. 37-48; Duc., 16, pp. 66-7.
[641] Seadeddin, i. 235.
[642] Sherefeddin, iv. 47, 52.
[643] Accounts of the capture of Smyrna: Sherefeddin, iv. 47-53; Chalc., III, p. 161; Duc., 18, p.
78; Hadji Khalfa, Djihannuma, fol. 1949; Arabshah, ii. 24. For date, see M. de Ste. Croix, in Acad.
des Inscriptions, 2e série, ii. 566, 569.
[644] Ali Muhieddin, Leuncl. trans., in Migne, Patr. Graec., clix., 596. Schiltberger, p. 27, relates
a similar massacre of children after the capture of Ispahan.
[645] Ducas, 18, p. 79.
[646] ‘Would that the day might dawn in which your Highness would profess the religion of
Christ, and stand up in power as the champion of the Christian Church against the enemies of the
cross.’ In the London archives, however, this passage, while legible, is cancelled. So it may not have
gone in the copy of the letter sent to Timur. Cf. Wylie’s Henry IV, i. 316 and n. 4.
[647] Misti, xlvi. 47.
[648] Ducas, 18, p. 78; Phr., I, 15, p. 62.
[649] Phr., loc. cit.; Innocent VII, Epp., i. 212-13.
[650] Wylie, i. 321, says Timur died February 19, 1405, on authority of Schiltberger. But this date
is in Brunn’s note, p. 133, and not in Schiltberger’s narrative. According to Clavijo, fol. 57 rº, Timur
died November 18, 1404, while Arabshah, p. 248, says ‘17 Saghan, 807’, which would be in
February 1405. For his abandonment of Asia Minor, Chalc., III, p. 182; Duc., 17, p. 76; Sherefeddin,
iv. 88-95.
[651] Stella, in Muratori, xvii. 1195.
[652] Sanuto, in Muratori, xxii. 791, quoting an eye-witness.
[653] Gerardo Sagredo, quoted by Sanuto, ibid., p. 796. He admits that this action was foolish
and ruinous.
[654] ‘El Emperador de Constantinopola e los Genoueses de la ciudad do Pera, en lugar do tener
lo que con el Tamurbec auian puesto, dexaron passar los Turcos de la Grecia en la Turquia e desque
fuera vencido aqueste Turco passauan ellos mismos a los Turcos con sus fustes de la Turquia en la
Grecia de los que venian fuyendo, e por esta ocasion tenia mala voluntad el Tamurbec a los
Christianos de que se fallaron mal los de sa tierra.’ Clavijo, fols. 26 vº-27 rº.
[655] ‘Qui s’ensuivra Dieu le sache. Témir Bey tout seul scet son propos et non aultre qui vive’:
Dominican Friar, p. 459.
[656] Epp., vii. 144-60.
[657] The dates given under the Latin columns in Chalcocondylas are almost invariably wrong
and are responsible for much of the confusion of European historians in the matter of chronology.
Chalcocondylas himself is full of mistakes, and knew very little about the history of Byzantium and
the Osmanlis in the fourteenth century. But he is not as bad as his Latin translator, whom the
historians have followed. In order to trace some of the errors, I collated the Greek text of
Chalcocondylas with the Latin translation through the first two books of his history, which cover the
period 1300-1403. The glosses and the inexact translations are many. For example of glosses, in I. c.
4 B, ‘quos Tartaros nominant’ after Scythis; I. c. 7 C, ‘Orthogulus adhibitus in colloquium’, at
beginning of third sentence; I. c. 10 C, ‘ex tribus, Orchanes nomine’, after ‘filius eius natu minimus’;
I. c. 12 C, ‘circiter viginti duo’ in the sentence ‘Orchanes cum regnasset annos mortem obiit’. For a
very unfaithful translation compare Latin with Greek original in I. c. 27, the end of A and beginning
of B. In I. c. 28 C ἓξ καὶ τριάκοντα is translated ‘triginta septem’! The letters cited refer to column
position in Migne edition.
[658] Chalcocondylas (in Migne), I. 6, p. 22.
[659] Trans. Petits de la Croix, ii. 287-9.
[660] Annales Turcici, in Migne, Patr. Graec., clix. 579.
[661] Bratutti trans., i. 4.
[662] Chronological Tables, Italian trans. of Carli Rinaldo.
[663] Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, xiii. 188-9.
[664] For editions, translators and dates of publication, see Bibliography.
[665] Egnatius, cited by Cuspianus, 12, says: ‘Ottomannus obscuro loco et parentibus agrariis
natus’. Nicolaus Euboicus, Saguntinus Episcopus, Sylvius Aeneas, and Andreas a Lacuna say that
Osman, of obscure beginnings, arose through oppressing neighbours, Moslem as well as Christian.
Ab. Ortellius says, ‘Tam Graecis quam Turcis repugnantibus cited by Leunclavius, Pandectes, 99.
Bosio, ii. 37, declares, ‘Osman first came out of Persia’. Similar vagueness in Haeniger; Geuffroi,
266; Sagredo; Manutio, 3; Cuspianus, 11, 42; Barletius, in Lonicerus, iii. folios 231-2; Vanell, 356;
Cervarius; Richer, 11.
[666] De Sacy, in Notices et Extraits, xi. 56, foot-note 1, in his discussion of the text of a treaty
between Genoese of Kaffa and Janko, Lord of Solkat, where this word also occurs, suggests that it is
an altered form of ‘sheik’.
[667] Formanti: Donado da Lezze, 4; Paulo Giovio, Ven. ed. of 1541, 3; Vertot, ii. 97; Rabbi
Joseph, ii. 503; Guazzo, 257 vº; Ortellius in Leunclavius, Pandectes, 99; Lonicerus, 10 Spandugino,
182-4. Also Evliya effendi, i. 27.
[668] ‘Il Pazzo Delis, pecoraio’, Spandugino, 184. Leunclavius, Pandectes, 103, says that
Alaeddin poisoned Delis.
[669] Formanti; Donado da Lezze, 4; Cuspianus, 48; ibid., Ant. ed., 6; Spandugino, in Sansovino
(ed. 1654), 243; Egnatius, 28. Also travels of Busbecq, Eng. ed., i. 137, and the Ottoman Evliya, ii.
95.
[670] This story in full in Formanti, 2-3; Vertot, ii. 97-8; Spandugino, 183. Leunclavius, in
Pandectes, 103, says that Nicetas Choniates mentions such a renegade Comnenus, but calls him
Isaac.
[671] The author of Tractatus de rilibus, who was a slave captured by Murad II, for example.
Also Spandugino, a native of Constantinople, and relative of the Cantacuzenos and Notaras families.
Also Donado da Lezze. See the prefaces of editions of Charles Schéfer, of Spandugino; and of
Professor Ursu, of Donado da Lezze.
[672] Evliya effendi, a learned member of the Moslem Ulema of Constantinople, who travelled
widely in the seventeenth century in the Ottoman Empire, is continually making statements which
show that he had a very hazy notion of early Ottoman history. This is true also of Hadji Khalfa, the
famous bibliographer, in his Djihannuma, a work which I have tested and found incomplete and
unreliable both in its geographical and historical information about the region which gave birth to
Osman and his tribe.
[673] Houdas, p. 374, foot-note 1.
[674] Mohammed en Nesawi, p. 374.
[675] Ibid., 394.
[676] Ibid., 209, 328.
[677] Shehabeddin, 230-9, 263-72, 289-91, in describing Khorussan, Armenia, and the strife
between Djelaleddin and Alaeddin, makes no mention of Soleiman Shah or Ertogrul, or of a
formidable invasion such as 50,000 families, under one ruler, would certainly have been regarded.
Nor is there mention of the 50,000 and their leader in Ibn-Bibi, Seljuk chronicler of this period.
[678] Hadji Khalfa, in index of his Bibliography, iii. folios 133-5, speaks of more than sixty
Arabic genealogies known to him, but in his chronological tables he cites none of them for early
Ottoman genealogy.
[679] Dourar-al-Othman, ‘the precious pearls touching the original source of the Ottoman
house’, by Ibn Ali Mohammed-al-Biwy. No date or indication of contents. Hadji Khalfa in
Dictionnaire bibliographique, Paris MS., i. folio 867.
[680] Introduction à l’histoire d’Asie: Turcs et Mongols, passim.
[681] There is a letter of this sort to Bayezid, quoted in Timur’s Institutes. Also a letter, given by
Sherefeddin, iii. 259-63, near the beginning of which he says: ‘But you whose true origin ends in a
Turcoman sailor, as all the world knows.’
[682] ‘L’empire des Seljucides s’écroula, et sur ses ruines surgit celui d’Osman,’ Hammer, i. 83.
[683] i. 7-13.
[684] In the Story of the Nations Series. This book does not do credit to the name of the great
scholar whom Orientalists and numismatists universally honour.
[685] In the Allgemeine Staatengeschichte, Werk 15 (1840-63) and Werk 37 (1908-13).
[686] Leunclavius, Pandectes. This work will be found in all large libraries, because it is
reprinted in volume 159 of Migne’s Patrologia Graeca Latine, 715-922.
[687] For translations of Cantemir, see Bibliography. The Rumanian translator, Dr. Hodosiu, has
reprinted the notes of the various editors of Cantemir, which makes his edition the most valuable.
[688] Youssouf Fehmi, Histoire de la Turquie, Paris, 1908, p. 11.
[689] Halil Ganem, Les Sultans ottomans, Paris, 1901, i. 24.
[690] ‘Osman verband sich mit der Leibwache in Bagdad, eroberte die Stadt, setzte sich auf den
Thron, wodurch er der Beherrscher aller Muhammedaner wurde, und liess dem Chalifen nur die
nichts bedeutende geistliche Oberhoheit in Bagdad; er nannte sich Sultan, d. h. Herrscher, und starb
729 (1328 n. Chr.).’ Prof. F. Wüstenfeld, Geschichte der Türken, &c., Leipzig, 1899, pp. 15-16.
[691] Reineccius thought that this name must be common to all the Sultans of Konia. It does not
appear for others than Kaï Kobad II in the Arabic genealogies. Leunclavius is so confused by the
discrepancy here that he concludes that the Ottoman historians must have given the name
indiscriminately to all the Sultans! (Pandectes, 106). Hadji Khalfa, Djihannuma, folio 1790, speaking
of Amassia, says that its fortress was repaired by ‘Sultan Alaeddin the Seljucide’. It is typically
Ottoman to be vague about names as well as about dates. Hadji Khalfa frequently speaks of an
Ottoman Sultan, whose name is duplicated, without any following ordinal. There is often no clue in
the context to identify the Sultan to whom he refers.
[692] As the year of the Hegira began in June in 1240, there is the alternative of reckoning the
Christian era a year later during the middle period of this century. But I have not thought necessary to
indicate this alternative each time.
[693] Villani, book VI, c. 32, in Muratori, xiii, col. 175, describes this battle; also Vie de Saint
Louis, by Le Nain de Tillemont (ed. Gaulle), iii. 4.
[694] Abulfeda; Howorth, iii. 47.
[695] This is the opinion of two of the ablest modern scholars, Heyd, i. 534, and Sarre, p. 41.
[696] I can find no record of coins to controvert this statement. Lane-Poole, Mohammedan Coins
in the Bodleian Library, 41, gives only one coin of the Bodleian collection after 641 of the Hegira,
and to this he assigns the date A.H. 663 with a question mark.
[697] MS. Bib. Nat., Paris, fonds arabe, 583, folio 144 rº and vº.
[698] The lists of coins in I. Ghalib Edhem’s Monnaies turcomanes also bear eloquent testimony
to the disappearance of Seljuk vassal dynasties during this period.
[699] I have not heard of such a coin existing to-day, but make the statement on the strength of
Abulfaradj, Chronicon Syr., 527-8.
[700] Abulfaradj, ibid., 542-3; Howorth, iii. 69.
[701] Abulfeda, v. 15-16, under date of A.H. 662. Villani (in Muratori, xiii), VII. c. 40, column
261-2, describes how Abaka Khan chased the Saracens (sic) from ‘Turchia’, and also the ‘Re
d’Erminia’, who ‘lasciò a’ Tartari la Turchia’.
[702] Huart, Souvenirs de voyage, 164, speaks of the battle, but does not mention occupation of
Konia.
[703] Abulfaradj, Chronicon Arab., 365-7; d’Ohsson, Histoire des Mongols, ii. 570-80; Howorth,
iii. 295.
[704] Howorth, iii. 315.
[705] Konia, Ville des Derviches tourneurs, 177.
[706] ‘Ils sont souspost an Tartar de Levant, qui y met sa seigneurie.’ Edition of Pauthier, 37. For
status of this country at the beginning of the thirteenth century, see Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard
le Trésorier (ed. Mas-Latrie, Paris, 1871), pp. 377, 381.
[707] Hadji Khalfa naïvely solves this doubt by rolling Masud and Kaï Kobad into one and the
same person. Djihannuma, folio 1752 bis.
[708] There is no way of reaching certainty on this point. Rasmussen, Annales Islamici, pp. 34-8,
reflects the confusion which attended the scholar of the early nineteenth century who wanted to make
a chronological table of the later Seljuk Sultans. The two best modern tables are to be found in Sarre
and Huart, scholars who became interested in the Seljuk problem through their archaeological travels
in Asia Minor. The best account of the Seljuks is that of Houtsma in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It
is to be regretted that Professor Houtsma has not published the French translation of Ibn Bibi, which
he promised in his introduction to the 4th volume of the Leyden series of Seljuk texts. Three years
ago, Professor Sir William Ramsay, who knows Konia better than any European scholar, told me that
he felt there was rich reward for the research student in the Seljuk period. The history of the Seljuks
of Konia has yet to be written.
[709] Osman was the sole heir according to Boecler: also Donado da Lezze, 4.
[710] ‘Osman, Karaman, and Assam. Karaman retired to Syria and Assam to Persia. The house
of Osman always persecuted the descendants of these two latter.’ Geuffroi, 267. Also Cuspianus, 11,
and Haeniger.
[711] Spandugino, Lonicerus, and Egnatius.
[712] Mignot, 33.
[713] Tractatus de moribus; Vanell, i. 351-2; Sagredo; Cervarius; Cuspianus, 46.
[714] The historian must use the Bonn editions with caution. There are frequent glosses in the
Latin translations of Byzantine texts. See foot-note on p. 263.
[715] Pachymeres, ii. 589.
[716] See Appendix B, which is really a continuation of this argument.
[717] Vie de Timour, iii. 255.
[718] ‘Osman possessed all Anatolia, which he called Osmania: he came to be called Lord of
Asia Minor,’ Formanti, 4; ‘Osman made himself master of all Anatolia without any difficulty,’
Spandugino; ‘Osman seized Cappadocia, Galatia, and Bithynia,’ Cuspianus, 10; ‘master of Syria as
well as of Asia Minor,’ Donado da Lezze, 5.
[719] Formanti; Geuffroy; Donado; Cuspianus; Giovio Paulo; Richer; Guazzo, 257 vº.
[720] Rabbi Joseph, ii. 505.
[721] Mignot, 33.
[722] Chronique de Saint-Denis (Ed. Soc. Hist. de France), i. 319, 709.
[723] Richer, whom I have already quoted in Chapter I.
[724] ‘Cette nation nombreuse, pleine de confiance dans ses forces, et brûlant du désir de
soumettre à sa domination toute la chrétienté, avait quitté les confins de Perse.’ Chronique de Saint-
Denys, i. 709.
[725] ‘Quod cum ante complures annos florens illud Orientis imperium everterit et in Occidentis
non exigua spacia invaserit, atque oppresserit quod reliquum nobis factum est, omni vi suo
intolerabile iugum ditionemque redigere studet.’ Domini de la Vuo, Disputatio de bello turcico,
bound in with Camerarius, p. 94, in Bibl. Nat., Paris, Imprimés, no. J 860.
[726] Col. Djevad bey, 192-3.
[727] H. Saladin, Manuel de l’architecture musulmane, 437-40.
[728] Ibid., 437. On p. 479, Saladin makes another curious statement to the effect that in 1300 the
Osmanlis employed architects who had fortified the Seljuk strongholds. I have never been able to
find in my reading or from observation of Ottoman constructions any authority for such an assertion.
[729] i. 50. The medressé is, as Seadeddin says, to the right after you enter the Yeni Sheïr gate.
The imaret is near the Yeshil Djami, which is the oldest Ottoman mosque extant, dating from 1378.
The imam of the Yeshil Djami told me that the imaret was built by Osman’s wife, Malkhatun.
According to Seadeddin, however, Malkhatun died before Osman!
[730] Parvillée, p. 6, says that the Oulou-Djami, which is attributed to Murad I in Brusa by
popular consent, was not finished until the reign of Mahomet I.
[731] Cf. preface of Parvillée; and Hammer, i. 83.
[732] W. Lübeke, Geschichte der Architektur (6te Auflage), i. 425; Franz-Pasha, Die Baukunst
des Islams (third volume of part 2 of Handbücher der Architektur), 52, 67.
[733] Mas-Latrie, Trésor de Chronologie, and papers on commercial relationship between Cyprus
and Asia Minor in Bibl. de École des Chartes; Lane-Poole, ‘Successors of the Seljuks in Asia Minor,’
Journ. Royal Asiatic Soc., 1882, new series, xiv. 773-80 (Lane-Poole did not avail himself of the
precious indications in Ibn Batutah and Shehabeddin, but trusted altogether to Gibb’s translation of
Seadeddin’s unreliable chronology. Seadeddin did not have access to as good source-material as
Lane-Poole himself!); Clément Huart, ‘Épigraphie arabe d’Asie Mineure,’ Revue sémitique, 1894-5.
[734] Muralt, in the bibliography of his Chronographie Byzantine, puts Ibn Batutah at 1320.
There can be no doubt about this being an error, for when Ibn Batutah visited the Ottoman domains,
Orkhan was ruling, and Nicaea had been captured. I put 1340 as latter limit, because Ibn Batutah
speaks of some places captured by Orkhan before 1340 as being still independent.
[735] Quatremère, in Notices et Extraits, xiii. 152-3, cannot reach a definite conclusion as to
whether Shehabeddin is from Damascus, Marash, or Morocco. But I find that Hadji Khalfa, Dict.
Bibl., Paris MS., fol. 1832, under no. 10874, records him as a ‘writer of Damascus’.
[736] Bibl. Nat., Paris, fonds arabe 2325. For Quatremère trans. see Bibliography.
[737] Ibid., fol. 123 vº.
[738] Notices et Extraits, xiv, partie 2, to face p. 77.
[739] See discussion of source-material in Bibliography.
[740] If one asks why Adana and Marash are included in this résumé, it must be remembered that
these are regions which might legitimately be included in Asia Minor as a portion of the latter Konia
Seljuk dominions which we are discussing. In the division of the Roman Empire in the fifth century,
Cilicia is given under Diocesis Oriens rather than under Diocesis Asiana with the rest of Asia Minor.
To regard Cilicia as belonging to Syria was common up to the days of Mehemet Ali. Ibn Khaldun,
Notices et Extraits, xix. 1ère partie, p. 143, speaks of Adana as being ‘at the extremity of Syria’, while
Cilicia is included in Syria in Abdul Ali Bakri’s description of Africa, Bibl. Nat., Paris, fonds arabe
no. 2218, p. 103. Both the Latin and Orthodox Churches made Cilicia depend ecclesiastically upon
Antioch: cf. Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, ii. col. 869, iii. col. 1181. But, in modern times, we have
come to regard this region as a portion of Asia Minor.
[741] Shehabeddin, 339, 369; Ibn Batutah, ii. 295-310; Cant. ii. 28, pp. 470-3; 25, p. 455, iii. 192;
Greg. xvi. 6, p. 834; Ducas, 7, pp. 29-30; 18, p. 79; Schlumberger, Numismatique de l’Orient latin,
481-5; for Venice’s share in crusade against Smyrna, Romanin, iii. 147; for complete list of princes,
Karabeck, in Numismatische Zeitschrift, Vienna, 1877, ix. 207.
[742] Shehabeddin, 365.
[743] Ibn Batutah, ii. 267. Shehabeddin, 360, gives Akridur under Hamid.
[744] Ibn Batutah, ii. 285.
[745] Leunclavius, Ann., v. 40; Hadji Khalfa, Djihannuma, fol. 1769; Sarre, 21. Cf. struggles
between Murad and Bayezid and the Karamanlis, pp. 165-7, 187-90 above.
[746] Bosio, ii. 221-2, 237-8; Mas-Latrie, Hist. de Chypre, iii. 175, 335. Cf. authorities for
Karamania, Tekke, and Satalia, and Bibl. de l’École des Chartes, 2e série, i. 326, 328, 498, 505; ii.
138-41.
[747] Not in 1354 by Soleiman, as Cant. iv. 37, p. 284, infers. Hadji Khalfa, Djihannuma, fol.
1852-6.
[748] Pachymeres, vii. 13, p. 589.
[749] How does Schlumberger reconcile the continuance of Ayasoluk, or Ephesus, as capital of
Aïdin with the Rhodian conquest? Cf. Wood. Discoveries at Ephesus, pp. 12, 183, for coins which
prove that the chevaliers held the city in 1365. Cf. Palatchia, for treaty made by Venice with an
independent prince here in 1403. Ibn Batutah states expressly that Guzel Hissar, or Birgui, was the
capital of Aïdin.
[750] Ibn Batutah, ii. 317. Evliya effendi, ii. 19, distinguishes between Balikesri and Karasi in his
enumeration of the conquests of Orkhan.
[751] Ibn Batutah, ii. 340.
[752] Sherefeddin, iii. 256; Howorth, iii. 749.
[753] Shehabeddin, 338, 358, 366; Ibn Batutah, ii. 275, 277; Reclus, Géog. univ., ix. 633, 645;
Baedeker, Kleinasien, 2. Aufl., 390. Mas-Latrie, Trésor de Chronologie, makes an error in extending
the northern boundary of Denizli, which he calls Thingizlu, to the emirate of Marmora.
[754] Panaretos, 13.
[755] Lane-Poole, Mohammedan Coins in British Museum, 21-4, 35; ibid., Mohammedan Coins
in Bodleian Library, 12.
[756] Hadji Khalfa, Djihannuma, fol. 1119; Sherefeddin, iii. 257.
[757] Ibn Batutah, ii. 279; Shehabeddin, 370; Bosio, ii. 4.
[758] Ibn Batutah, ii. 270.
[759] Ibn Batutah, ii. 267; Hammer, xvii. 98; Sarre, 21. See also under Akridur, and Nazlu.
[760] Shehabeddin, 339.
[761] Shehabeddin, 363; Ibn Batutah, ii. 326-9; Hammer, xvii. 99.
[762] ‘Ledit Karaman haioit fort le Grant Turc, dont il eust la soeur.’ Bertrandon de la Broquière,
Schéfer ed., 120. Bertrandon visited the court of the emir of Konia in 1443 with a Cypriote
ambassador.
[763] In time of Osman and Orkhan, Nicolay, 148-9; Howorth, iii. 428; Byzantine historians in
Stritter, iii. 1092; Anon., Hist. de Géorgie, i. 642; Shehabeddin, 346, 375; Ibn Batutah, ii. 284 (calls
them emirs of Larenda); Hammer, i. 262 fol.; Rasmussen, 116; Feridun letters, Bibl. Nat., fonds turc,
no. 79, p. 1. In time of Murad and Bayezid, Feridun letters, ibid., pp. 18-20, 30, 33-4, and references
in text of this book. For fifteenth century, from re-establishment by Timur, Sherefeddin, iv. 33;
Bertrandon de la Broquière, 118-20; Mas-Latrie, Hist. de Chypre, iii. 3; Bibl. de l’École des Chartes,
2e série, i. 326, 510; ii. 138; Sanuto, in Muratori, xxii. 962. For coins, Lane-Poole, Bodleian
Collection, 12; British Museum, 21-6. The power of Karamania in the fifteenth century will be
discussed in a later volume.
[764] Shehabeddin, 350, 357, 372. Cf. Hertzberg, 471.
[765] Shehabeddin, 361; Ibn Batutah, ii. 343-7; Bibl. de l’École des Chartes, 2e série, i. 325;
Hammer, i. 90, 309-11; Clavijo, 20 vº.
[766] Ibn Batutah, ii. 339.
[767] Ashikpashazadé, Vatican MS., 33.
[768] Hadji Khalfa, Djihannuma, 617, 1807-9. It is curious that Hadji Khalfa does not mention
the famous potteries of Kutayia.
[769] Persian letter in collection of Feridun, Bibl. Nat., fonds turc no. 79, p. 18.
[770] Shehabeddin, Paris MS., fonds arabe no. 583, fol. 144 rº-vº; Ibn Batutah, ii. 270-1;
Hammer, ii. 133, xvii. 98; Schéfer, preface to his edition of Bertrandon de la Broquière, lxi. For
expedition of Bayezid against, Phr. i. 26, p. 82; Ducas, 18-19; Chalc. ii, pp. 64-6.
[771] Panaretos, 49, 52.
[772] Hammer, v. 28.
[773] Shehabeddin, 358, 366. In speaking of the propinquity of Denizli and Marmora, one
wonders if Mas-Latrie has not confused the Scamander and Maeander rivers. Both of these rivers are
called Menderes in Turkish.
[774] Its last emir died without issue in 1425. M. de Ste. Croix, in Acad. des Inscriptions, nouv.
série, ii. 569-75; Hammer, i. 300-1, xvii. 98; Ducas, 18, p. 79; Lane-Poole, Coins in British Museum,
33-4.
[775] Mordtmann, in Zeitschrift d. m. G., lxv (1911), p. 105.
[776] See above, p. 225.
[777] Shehabeddin, 360.
[778] Shehabeddin, 367.
[779] Clavijo, fol. 6 vº, 60 vº.
[780] Mas-Latrie, in Bibl. de l’École des Chartes, 5e série, v. 219-31, quoting Pacta, vi. 129 vº,
and Commem., ii. 231, iii. 374.
[781] Cf. St. Pierre de Thomas, in Bollandist Coll.
[782] The currency of Byzantine money among the maritime emirates of Asia Minor
demonstrates this. See Makrisi, 7, and Stickel, in Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen
Gesellschaft, viii. 837-9.
[783] Shehabeddin, 339, 360, 368-9; Ibn Batutah, ii. 313; Commemor., ii. 231; Greg. xi. 2, p. 530;
xv. 5, p. 763; Cant. ii. 29-30, pp. 480-4; iii. 96, pp. 591-6; Ducas, 18, p. 79; Hadji Khalfa,
Djihannuma, fol. 1820; for relations of Genoese and Byzantines with, Sauli, i. 256-7; for coins,
Schlumberger, 479-81; Lane-Poole, Bodleian, 12; British Museum, 31-2.
[784] ‘Aussi y est Satalie, située en rivages maritimes de Cilicie: d’où a prins son nom le
Goulphe de Satalie, anciennement appelé Issa: et a présent la Iasse et en cest endroit Alexandre
vainquit Daire ...’ Nicolay, 148. This passage, which shows Adalia confused with Adana, would have
helped Bruun in his note on p. 123 of the Hakluyt edition of Schiltberger.
[785] In Bibl. Nat., Paris, MS. fonds turc no. 62, there is a marginal note in Armand’s
handwriting which terminates thus: ‘La dynastie des Seljuks de Rum finit en la personne de Kaï
Kobad, fils de Feramorg, fils de Kaï Kaous le 14e qui aye regné qui fut exterminé lui et toute sa race
par Gazankhan.’ This view was taken by several Orientalists of Armand’s day, but there is good
authority for Ghazi Tchelebi’s ancestry.
[786] Fallmerayer, Originalberichte, ii. 15, 319; Stella, cited by Muralt, ii. 533; Ibn Batutah, ii.
343.
[787] Matteo Villani, in Muratori, xiv. 663.
[788] Shehabeddin, 359; Ibn Batutah, ii. 277.
[789] Shehabeddin, 371; Ibn Batutah, 258-9, 265; Bustron, Chronique de Chypre, 296; Mas-
Latrie, Trésor, col. 1802; Matteo Villani, in Muratori, xiv, col. 662; Urban V, Epp. secr., i. 161;
Rasmussen, 45; Schiltberger, 19. (I cannot agree with Bruun that Adana is meant, for there is no
reason to believe that the Osmanlis crossed the Taurus into Cilicia for more than one hundred years
after the events Schiltberger was describing. See above, p. 296, n. 3.)
[790] See note for Mikhalitch.
[791] Weil, iv. 504-624; Heyd, passim under Tarsus, Lajazzo, Adana, and Alexandretta; Mas-
Latrie, Bibl. de l’École des Chartes, vi. 310-11; Le Nain de Tillemont (éd. Gaulle), iii. 9; iv. 459;
Abulfaradj, Chron. Syr., 572; Bertrandon de la Broquière (éd. Schéfer), introd., lv. 90-1.
[792] Finlay, iv. 386-92; Panaretos, passim.
[793] Ibn Batutah, ii. 314; Cant. ii. 13, pp. 388-90; Phr. i. 8, p. 37; Greg. xi. 9, p. 554; Sauli, i.
256-7. See also in text of this book under Orkhan.
[794] Matteo Villani, in Muratori, xiv. 650, under spring of 1360, says: ‘E per tante guerre e
divisioni de’ Turchi gli paesi loro erano rotti e in grande tribulazione. E per questa cagione i Greci
havieno minore persecuzione da loro. E più ciò fu materia al Re di Cipro di fare l’impresa sopra loro
con honore e vittoria grande.’ Mas-Latrie, in Bibl. de l’École des Chartes, 2e série, ii. 122-3, says that
the Karamanian army was defeated before Gorhigos in 1361, and that Cyprus, then at the height of its
power, was able to impose tribute on the emirs of Asia Minor.
[795] Ibn Batutah, ii. 288-95.
[796] See above under Smyrna, Aïdin, Menteshe, Fukeh, and Tawas. Also in text of book, p. 44.
[797] Cf. Weil, iv. passim.
[798] See above, p. 123.
[799] The ordinals following the names of Byzantine emperors are a cause of confusion, as there
is no universal agreement as to the method of numbering. Some historians count by sovereigns of the
same family bearing a particular name (i. e. John I Palaeologos and John II Palaeologos), while others
number by the imperial line as a whole (i. e. John V Palaeologos, John VI Cantacuzenos, John VII
Palaeologos). I have used the second system.
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