How the great sultans built a dynasty to challenge the powers of Europe
The 1290s were a time of chaos in the Middle East, where there were two rival empires vying for power. To the south, with their capital in Cairo, were the Mamelukes, and to the north and east, the Mongol Empire. The decade saw the collapse of the Crusader states and the Byzantine Empire, which once again rose from the ashes of the Fourth Crusade, was a pale imitation of its glorious past.
What has any of this got to do with the Ottoman Empire? Enter Osman, a Seljuk Turk, the man who is seen as the founder of the empire. (His name is sometimes spelt Ottman or Othman, hence the term ‘Ottoman’.) The Seljuks had arrived from the Asiatic steppes to the east but had been in Anatolia for generations. Had Osman tried to establish his powerbase 50 years earlier or later, the political landscape would likely have been quite stable, so any attempt at building his own independent realm would have been quickly extinguished. More than anything else Osman was the right man, in the right place, at the right time.
Nature abhors a vacuum and it’s the same with power. Söğüt is a small town in western Anatolia; it wouldn’t even be worth a footnote in history if it wasn’t for the fact that it was here that Osman consolidated his power. Söğüt, then, was the first capital of the Ottoman Empire, but it’s quite telling that in the first 150 (or so) years of the empire, there were four different capitals. As the empire grew and controlled ever larger and more impressive cities, the old capital was easily forgotten, and Söğüt was dropped as the capital as quickly as possible. Osman greatly expanded the lands under his control, almost exclusively to the detriment of the ever-weakening Byzantine Empire. He must have calculated that he wasn’t yet powerful enough to challenge the larger powers to the east, so he nibbled away at the Byzantine hinterland – and there wasn’t much the Byzantine rulers could do about it, although they did try. In 1302, the Byzantines sent a small army in an attempt to curb Osman’s advances. The two sides met at the Battle of Bapheus, near the Byzantine city of Nicomedia. Osman’s cavalry made short work of the smaller Byzantine force (bolstered by Alan mercenaries, who knew a lost cause when they saw one and didn’t join in with
