Osman I

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Image:Osman I.jpg Osman I (1258–1326) (Ottoman: عثمان بن أرطغل) was born in 1258 and inherited the title bey (chief) from his father, Ertuğrul, as the ruler of the village of Söğüt in 1281. The birth of the empire originated with the conquest of the Turkish tribe of Eskenderum and the city of Eskişehir (Turkish for 'Old City') in 1301–1303, although Osman had already in 1299 declared the independence from the Seljuk Empire of his own small kingdom, the Ottoman Principality.

Osman is regarded as the founder of the Ottoman Empire, and it is from him that its inhabitants, the Turks, called themselves Osmanli until the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the only national appellation they recognized. Ertoghrul, Osman's predecessor, had previously maintained himself as the vassal and lieutenant of the Sultan of Icomium, but Osman, after the death of the last Alaeddin in 1307, waged wars and accumulated dominions as an independent ruler. He had become the Bey, or chief, of his tribe twelve years earlier, after Erturul’s death in 1288.

Osman was twenty-four years of age at his accession, and he had already both proven his skill as a leader, and his prowess as a combatant. His early fortunes and exploits are favorite subjects with Oriental writers, especially in love stories of his wooing and winning the fair Mal Hatun. These legends have probably been romanticized by the poetical pens which recorded them in later years.

Ottoman historians often dwell on the prophetic significance of his name, which means "bone-breaker", signifying the powerful energy with which he and his appeared to show in the following centuries of conquest. “Osman” means the “Bone-breaker.” It is also the name given to a large species of vulture, commonly called the royal vulture, which is considered the emblem of sovereignty and warlike power in the East, comparable to the eagle in the nations of the West.

Osman is celebrated by Oriental writers for his personal beauty, and for “his wondrous length and strength of arm.” Like Artaxences Longimanus of the old dynasty of Persian kings, Liu Bei in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and the Highland chieftain of whom Wordsworth sang, Osman is said to have been able to touch his knees with his hands when standing upright. He was claimed to be unsurpassed in his skill and graceful carriage as a horseman; and the jet black colour of his hair, his beard, and eyebrows, gained him in youth the title of “Kara,” meaning “Black”, Othman. The epithet “Kara,” which is often found in Turkish history is considered to imply the highest degree of manly beauty when applied to a person. He dressed simply, in the tradition of the first warriors of Islam, and like them he wore a turban of ample white linen, wreathed round a red centre. His loose flowing kaftan was of one colour, and had long open sleeves.

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Story of Foundation

This text is from "History of Ottoman Turks(1878)" based on Von Hammers.

The Sheik Edebali (1206 - 1326), celebrated for his piety and learning, had come, while Osman was very young, to Itbourouni, a village in Eskişehir. Osman used often to visit the holy man, out of respect for his purity and learning; and the young prince’s visits became still more frequent, after he had one evening accidentally obtained a view of the Sheiks fair daughter, Mal Hatun name which means “Treasure of a Woman.” Osman confessed his love; but the old man thought that the disparity of position made a marriage imprudent, and refused his consent.

Osman sought consolation for his disappointment in the society of his friends and neighbors, to whom he described with a lover’s Inspiration, the beauty of Mal Hatun. He discoursed so eloquently on this theme to the young chief of Eskişehir, that the listener fell in love with Mal Hatun upon word of mouth; and, going to her father, demanded her hand for himself. Edebali refused him also fearing his vengeance more than that of Osman, the old man removed from the neighborhood of Eskişehir to a dwelling close to that of Ertoghrul. The chief of Eskişehir now hated Osman as his rival. One day when Osman and his brother Goundonroulp were at the castle of their neighbor, the lord of Ineani, an armed force suddenly appeared at the gate, led by the chieftain of Eskişehir and his ally, Michael of the Peaked Beard, the Greek lord of Khirenkia, a fortified city at the foot of Phrygian Olympus. They demanded that Osman should be given up to them; but the lord of Inaeni refused to commit such a breach of hospitality. While the enemy lingered irresolutely pound the castle wall, Osman and his brother seized an adventegous moment for a sudden sally at the head of a few companions. They chased the chief of Eskişehir off the field in disgrace, and took Michael of the Peaked Beard prisoner. The captive and the captors became staunch friends; and in after times, when Osman reigned as an independent prince, Michael sided with him against the Greeks, and was thenceforth one of the strongest supporters of the Ottoman power.

Osman had by this encounter at Ineani, triumphed over his rival, and acquired a valuable friend; but he could not yet gain the maiden of his heart. For two more years the course of his trite love ran through refusal and anxiety, until at length, old Edebali was touched by the young prince’s constancy, and he interpreted a dream as a declaration of Heaven in favour of the long-sought marriage. One night, when Osman was resting at Edebali’s house (for the shelter of hospitality could never be denied even to the suite whose addresses were rejected), the young prince, after long and melancholy musing on her whom he loved, composed his soul in that patient resignation to sorrow, which, according to the Arabs is the hey to all happiness. In this mood he fell asleep, and he dreamed a dream.

Osman saw himself and his host reposing near each other. From the bosom of Edebali rose the full moon (emblem of the Malkhatoon), and inclining towards the bosom of Osman it san upon it, and was lost to sight. Thence sprang forth a goodly tree, which grew in beauty and in strength ever greater and greater. Still did the embracing verdure of its boughs and branches east an ampler and an ampler shade, until they canopied the extreme horizon of the three parts of the world. Under the tree stood four mountains, which he knew to be Caucasus, Atlas, Taurus, and Haemus. These mountains were the four coloums that seemed to support the dome of the foliage of the sacred tree with which the earth was now pavilioned. From the roots of the tree gushed forth four rivers, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Danube, and the Nile. Tall ships and barks innumerable were on the waters. The fields were heavy with harvest. The mountain sides were clothed with forests. Thence in exulting and fertilising abundance sprang fountains and rivulets that gurgled through thickets of the cypress and the rose. In the valleys glittered stately cities, with domes and cupolas, with pyramid and obelisks, with minarets and towers. The Crescent shone on their summits: from their galleries sounded the Muezzin’s call to player. That sound was mingled with the sweet voices of a thousand nightingales, and with the prattling of countless parrots of every hue. Every kind of singing bird was there. The winged multitude warbled and flitted round beneath the fresh living roof of the interlacing branches of the all-overarching tree; and every leaf of that tree was in shape like unto a scimetar. Suddenly there arose a mighty wind, and turned the points of the sword-leaves towards the various cities of the world, but specially towards Constantinople. That city, placed at the juncion of two seas and two continents, seemed like a diamond set between two sapphires and two emeralds, to form the most precious stone in a ring of universal empire. Osman thought that he was in the act of placing that visioned ring on his finger, when he awoke.

Osman related this dream to his host; and the vision seemed to Edebali so clearly to presage honour, and power, and glory, to the posterity of Osman and Mal Hatun, that the old Sheick no longer opposed their union. They were married by the saintly Dervise Touroud, a disciple of Edebali. Osman promised to give the officiating minister a dwelling-place near a mosque, and on the bank of a river. When Othman became an independent prince, he built for the dervis a convent, which he endowed richly with villages and lands, and which remained for centuries in the obssession of the family of Touroud.

The Ottoman writers attach great importance to this dream of the founder of their empire. The same dream is also referred by Von Hammer.

Istanbul, fell into the hands of Osman Bey’s descendant, Sultan Mohammed II., and the Turkish Empire was constituted. It is, indeed, an aggregation of many nations, and the prophetic allegory of multitudes of foreign birds gathering under the Ottoman tent has been fully realised.

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Politics

The last prince of the family of Aleaddin, to which that of Othman had been in depted for its first foundation in Asia Minor, was now dead. There was no other among the various Emirs of that country who could compete with Osman for the headship of the whole Turkish population, and dominion over the whole peninsula, save only the Emir of Karamanogullari A long and fierce struggle between the Osman and Karamanogullari princes for the ascendency, commenced in Osman’s lifetime, and was protracted during the reigns of many of his successors. Osman himself had gained some advantages over his Karamanli rival; but the weak and wealthy possessions of the Byzantine Emperor in the north-east of Asia Minor were more tempting marks for his ambition than the Karamanoglu plains: and it was over Greek cities and armies that the triumphs of the last twenty-six years of Osman’s life were achieved.

Not all of Osman’s counselors agreed with Osman's path of conquest; but Osman silenced all remonstrance, and quelled all risk of dissension and mutiny by an act of prompt ferocity, which shows that the great ancestor of the Ottoman Sultans had, a full share of the ruthless cruelty, that has been the dark characteristic the Turkish Royal House. Osman’s uncle, the aged Dundar, who had marched with Ertoghrul from the Euphrates, seventy years before, was still alive, when Osman, in 1299, summoned a council of his principal followers, and announced to them his intention to attack the lord of the important Greek fortress of Keaprihissar. The old uncle opposed the enterprise; and urged the danger of provoking by such ambitious aggrandizement all the neighboring princes, Turkish as well as Greek, to league against them for the destruction of their tribe. Enraged at the chilling caution of the grey-headed man, and, observing probably that others were beginning to share it. He spoke not a word in reply, but he killed his old uncle upon the spot—a bloodly lesson to all who should harbour thoughts of contradiction to the fixed will of so stern a lord. The modern German historian, recounts this scene, well observes that “This uncle’s murder remarks with terror the commencement of the Ottoman dominion, as brother’s the brothers murder that of Rome"; only the former rests on bet historical evidence. Edris, justly esteemed the most valuable historian of the Turks, who, at the beginning of his work, openly declares that, passing over in silence all that is reprehensible will only hand down to posterity the glorious deeds of the royal race of Osman, relates among the latter the murder of Dundar with all the circumstances detailed above. If then such murderous slaughter of their kindred be reckoned by the panegyrists of Osmanis among their praiseworthy acts, what are we to think of those which cannot be praised, and of which their history is therefore silent.

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