Chapter XI: 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.