Watch me with Thine eyes, and show me the way of Thy holy will.
Make me a true observer of the laws of Mohammed, and sustain me in the shock of battle.
Osman was a fanatic, if by fanatic is meant one who is stirred with religious zeal and makes his religion the first and prime object in his life. But he was not intolerant, nor were his immediate successors. Had he started to persecute Christians, the Greek Church would have taken a new lease of life, and Osman could not have gained the converts who made possible the Ottoman race.
Attila, Djenghiz Khan, Timur, the greatest conquerors of the stock from which Osman came, utilized a race already made. They were leaders of a united people. In spite of their dazzling exploits, they were mere raiders, and their empires were the territories of an unassimilated path of conquest. Osman’s work was more enduring than theirs, more far-reaching in its results. For he was building in silence while they were destroying with a blast of trumpets. We may place him with them, perhaps above them, for which of them gave his name to a people?
CHAPTER II
ORKHAN
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.