[30] The improbable connexion between Ertogrul and Osman and the Seljuk sovereigns of Konia has been accepted without question by European historians, on the strength of the assertions of the Ottoman historians. This is curious, because the evidence against this connexion is overwhelming. The Seljuk Empire of Rum lost its independence at the battle of Erzindjian, 1244 (cf. Heyd, Histoire du commerce dans le Levant, i. 534). Neshri himself confesses that after this date ‘now remained only the bare name of the Seljuk Kings’: ZDMG., xiii. 195. In view of the established facts of history, it is astonishing that European historians should have up to this time perpetuated, and given their sanction to, a fiction which was invented for the purpose of helping Mohammed II to incorporate Karamania in his empire! The limits of a footnote forbidding the adequate discussion of this question and the citation of the authorities, I must refer my readers to Appendix A.
[31] Neshri, ZDMG., xiii. 196, says seventy years. But in his reckoning he constantly contradicts himself. Sheïr means city, eski old, and yeni new.
[32] All the Ottoman historians agree upon this number.
[33] ‘The unbelievers and believers of that land honoured Ertogrul and his son’: Neshri, p. 197. That Christians lived everywhere without molestation in the midst of non-converted Turkish tribes is asserted by Heyd, ii. 65.
[34] It is altogether likely that Osman received his name at the time of his conversion. Is it not significant that his father, his brothers, his son even, as well as most of his warriors, had purely pagan Turkish names?
[35] Tableau de l’Empire ottoman, iv. 373.
[36] See Appendix B.
[37] During the late war with the Balkan allies, the newspapers of the world spoke of ‘driving the Turks back to Asia, where they belong’, and of the re-establishment of the Ottoman capital at Brusa or Konia!
[38] See Armain’s translation of the Djihannuma (Mirror of the World), a universal geography by Hadji Khalfa, in the Bibl. Nat., Paris, MS., fonds français, nouv. ac., nos. 888-9. The section on Asia Minor, although written in some detail, does not contain many of the names which we find in the Ottoman historians. I wish to register a protest against inflicting on students and readers of history lists of names that can have no possible meaning to them. I have omitted from this work the names of places and persons upon which I can get no light.
[39] Hadji Khalfa, op. cit., fol. 1917, makes an error in giving the distance from Brusa to Yeni Sheïr as two days. I have driven from Brusa to Nicaea in one day of not fast going. Yeni Sheïr is on the main road between these cities, six hours from Brusa and four hours from Nicaea.