The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire; a history of the Osmanlis up to the death of Bayezid I (1300-1403)

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

[120] Ibid., 22, p. 435.

[121] Ibid., 25, pp. 455-6.

[122] Cant. II., 29-30, pp. 480-4; Greg., XI. 2, p. 530.

[123] Hammer, quoting Ashikpashazadé, i. 150-1.

[124] Mordtmann, in ZDMG. (1911), lxv. 105, basing his statement, like Hammer, on Ashikpashazadé, Vatican MS., fol. 33, gives A.H. 735, 737, or 740. The earliest of these dates is precluded by the testimony of Ibn Batutah, who found these places still independent about A.H. 735. A.H. 737 might be possible, if we decide that Orkhan accomplished everything during the one expedition against Pergama. Mordtmann, still quoting Ashikpashazadé, says that these three cities were held by relatives of the Palaeologi. If this be true, it goes to prove that there must have existed all along in the reigns of Osman and Orkhan quasi-friendly relations between Moslem and Christian. There was certainly no religious fanaticism during this period of Ottoman history.

[125] ‘Les Osmanlis avaient étendu leur domination en Asie Mineure et absorbé les états dont l’indépendance avait jusqu’alors empêché l’unité politique de l’Empire musulman!’ Delaville-Leroulx, France en Orient au XIV^e siècle, i. 118. ‘Osmans Sohn Orkhan Kleinasien unterworfen hatte’: Wüstenfeld, Geschichte der Türken, p. 16. ‘Orkan s’impadroni di quasi tutta la Natolia’: Alberi, in preface (viii) to series III, vol. i, of Relazione Ven. Amb. One of the earliest western historians gives Orkhan’s ambition as ‘solus cupiens in minore Asia regnare’: Cervarius, p. 5. Even Hammer, i. 150, is considerably ahead of time in saying, in one of his chapters on Orkhan, ‘Les hordes ottomanes se précipitèrent du haut de l’Olympe comme une avalanche, franchissant montagnes et vallées, ajoutant à leurs possessions les neuf royaumes nés des débris de l’Empire seljukide, inondant Asie Mineure depuis l’Olympe jusqu’au Taurus.’ Hammer does not mean to give this wrong impression, but one has to read very closely not to get it. See discussion of this error in Appendix B.

[126] Cant., IV. 37, p. 284. Is it on the strength of this evident error of a Greek writer that Evliya effendi, ii. 229, says ‘Orkhan captured Angora from the Prince of Kutayia of the Kermian family’? Hussein Hezarfenn, following Chalcocondylas, is an example of an Ottoman historian basing his statements on a Greek authority.

[127] For the time of Ibn Batutah and Shehabeddin see Appendix B, p. 279. Mas-Latrie, Trésor de Chronologie, col. 1796, after careful collation of Shehabeddin and Ibn Batutah, comes to the conclusion that Orkhan added the emirates of Balikesri, Marmara, Akbara, Kaouïa, Keredek, Kul Hissar, and Thingizlu to his state between 1349 and 1360. This, too, is discussed in Appendix B.

[128] Marmara, for example, is given by the Ottoman historians as a conquest made by Osman. See Hammer, i. 89. But it is mentioned as an independent principality by Shehabeddin, in Notices et Extraits des MSS. de la Bibl. du roi, xiii. 358, 366.

[129] Ibn Batutah, ii. 321-2.