Origins: Where Did the Turks Come From?
History usually begins after origins have vanished. Nobody knows where the Turks came from. Some scholars have guessed that they were a Finno-Uighur tribe of the Hunnic stock, and that their name meant "helmet", which in one Turkic dialect is "durku". Their language blended Mongol and Chinese elements, to which Persian and Arabic words were later added.
One Turkish clan, named for its chief Seljuk, grew in power through successive victories until, in the thirteenth century, it ruled Iran, Iraq, Syria and Asia Minor. In the same century another clan related to the Seljuks, led by Ertughrul, fled from Khorasan toward Asia Minor to avoid being drowned in the Mongol flood. This clan entered the military service of the Seljuk emir of Konya, and received a piece of land on which to graze its herds.
Osman and Orhan
When Ertughrul died in 1288, his thirty-year-old son Osman was chosen to succeed him, and the name "Ottoman" comes from him. Until the nineteenth century these people did not call themselves Turks. They applied that name to the half-wild tribes of Turkestan and Khorasan. In 1290 Osman, finding the Seljuks too weak to oppose him, proclaimed himself independent emir of a small province in northwestern Asia Minor, and in 1299 he led his troops west and settled in Yenisehir.
He was not a great general, but he persisted patiently toward his goal. His army was small and consisted of men who found the saddle more comfortable than the ground and were ready to risk their lives or limbs to win land, gold, women and power. Between his troops and the Sea of Marmara lay the sleepy cities of the Byzantine empire, poorly governed and weakly defended.
Osman besieged one of them, Bursa. He failed at first, so he renewed his attacks repeatedly. Bursa was finally taken by his son Orhan, while Osman lay on his deathbed at Yenisehir (1326). Orhan made Bursa, hallowed by his father's bones, the new capital of the Ottoman sultans.
Orhan's Conquests
An evident destiny, which is desire plus power, drew Orhan toward the Mediterranean, long the circle of trade, wealth and civilization. In the same year that Bursa fell he took Nicomedia, called Izmit in Turkish. In 1330 he took Nicaea, Turkish Iznik, and in 1336 Pergamum, which the Turks call Bergama. These ancient cities were important centers of crafts, industry and trade, but for food supplies and markets for their goods they depended entirely on the surrounding villages and towns, which by then were in Ottoman hands. In other words, they could survive only by coexisting and trading with the interior of Asia Minor.
The cities had long suffered under Byzantine rule. When they learned that Orhan kept taxes light and allowed freedom of religion to everyone, they did not resist much. Many of these Christian cities of the Near East were also exposed to heresies such as those of the Nestorians and the Monophysites. Soon large numbers of the inhabitants of the conquered regions accepted Islam. In this way, the book remarks, war settles religious and theological questions while reason hesitates helplessly. Orhan, now strong, called himself Sultan of the Ottomans.
The Byzantine emperors made peace with him, hired his soldiers when in need and even allowed his son Suleiman to build forts and military bases for the Ottoman state on European soil. Orhan died in 1359 at seventy-one, his name firmly fixed in the hearts of his people.
Murad I: Expansion and Harsh Rule
His successors created a dynasty unique in world history for its combination of military strength and skill, administrative ability, savage cruelty and cultivated taste for literature, science and art. Murad I was the least attractive of them. He could not read, and marked decrees and letters with an inked finger like an assassin. When his son Savci rebelled against him in a treacherous revolt and was defeated and captured, Murad had him blinded and executed, and then made the fathers of the other rebels carry out the same punishment on their sons. These details are given only in outline.
Murad formed an almost invincible army, conquered most of the Balkans and made obedience easier for his subjects by establishing a more efficient government than they had known under Christian rule.
Bayezid the Thunderbolt
Bayezid I inherited the crown from his father on the battlefield of Kosovo (1389). After leading the Ottoman army to victory, he ordered the execution of his brother Yaqub, who had fought bravely at his side all day. From then on fratricide became one of the normal conditions of an Ottoman sultan's accession, on the reasoning that a rebellion against the throne so disrupts the affairs of the state that it is better to eliminate rightful claimants at the outset.
Bayezid took the title Yildirim, "the Thunderbolt", because in war he was as quick and sudden as lightning. But he lacked his father's political wisdom and foresight, and wasted much of his wild energy on indulgence. Stefan Lazarevic, his vassal in Serbia, added his sister to Bayezid's household. This lady, named Despina, became his favorite wife and awakened in him a love of drinking and festivity, and perhaps without knowing it weakened his energy and drive. Still, Bayezid's pride grew until the day of his fall.
After crushing the European knights at Nicopolis, he released John, Count of Nevers, from captivity and wrote him a bold letter, as Froissart reports it, or perhaps revised it. In essence Bayezid told John that he knew he was a great noble in his own country, young and perhaps ashamed of the defeat in his first bold attempt. To recover his honor he would need to gather fresh men and come to fight again. Bayezid said he would not demand an oath that John or his companions would never take up arms against him. He wanted John to go home, rest from the journey, raise as large an army as he liked and then come back, for he would always be ready to receive him. He added that John could repeat this to anyone, because he was capable of fighting alone on the battlefield and was always seeking to take more of Christendom.
Bayezid in Timur's Hands
When Timur captured Bayezid at Ankara, he treated him with full respect, despite a year of abusive correspondence between them. Timur had Bayezid's chains removed, lodged him near himself, assured him that his life was safe and ordered three splendid tents for his retinue. But when Bayezid tried to escape, Timur recaptured him and confined him in a room with iron-barred windows, which legend exaggerates into an iron cage. Bayezid fell ill. Timur summoned the most skilled physicians to his bedside and had Despina nurse and comfort him. These attentions could not restore the strength of the broken sultan, and a year after his defeat Bayezid died in Timur's captivity.
Recovery Under Mehmed I and Murad II
His son Sultan Mehmed I reestablished Ottoman rule and restored its power. He blinded one rival claimant and killed another, but because of his courteous manner, his just government and the ten years of peace he gave Christendom, he was called "the Gentleman". His successor, Sultan Murad II, shared the same tastes and preferred poetry to war. But when Constantinople raised a rival to unseat him, and Hungary broke its treaty of peace, Murad II showed his skill as a soldier at the battle of Varna in 1444.