Chapter II: Orkhan (1)

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

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 self-government 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_ (water-carriers).[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 advance-guard, 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]