Download PDF | The Ottoman Turks To The Fall Of Constantinople, By Edwin Pears, Jovian Press
86 Pages
IT was in 1299 that Osman (Othmain, Uthman) declared himself Emir of the Turks, that is, of the tribe over which he ruled. The Seljuq Turks have been treated in a previous chapter; but there were many other Turkish tribes present in the middle and at the end of the thirteenth century in Asia Minor and Syria, and, in order to understand the conditions under which the Ottoman Turks advanced and became a nation, a short notice of the condition of Anatolia at that time is necessary.
The country appeared indeed to be everywhere overrun with Turks. A constant stream of Turkish immigrants had commenced to flow from the south-west of Central Asia during the eleventh century, and continued during the twelfth and indeed long after the capture of Constantinople. Some of these went westward to the north of the Black Sea, while those with whom we are concerned entered Asia Minor through the lands between the Persian Gulf and the Black Sea.
They were nomads, some travelling as horsemen, others on foot or with primitive ox-waggons. Though they seem to have left Persia in large bodies, yet, when they reached Anatolia, they separated into small isolated bands under chieftains. Once they had obtained passage through Georgia or Armenia or Persia into Asia Minor, they usually turned southwards, attracted by the fertile and populous plains of Mesopotamia, though they avoided Baghdad so long as that city was under a Caliph. Thence they spread through Syria into Cilicia, which was then largely occupied by
Armenians under their own princes, and into Egypt itself. Several of these tribes crossed the Taurus, usually through the pass known as the Cilician Gates, and thereupon entered the great tableland, three thousand feet above sea-level, which had been largely occupied by the Seljaqs. By 1150, the Turks had spread over all Asia Minor and Syria.
These early Turks were disturbed by the huge and well-organised hordes of mounted warriors and foot-soldiers under Jenghiz Khan, a Mongol belonging to the smallest of the four great divisions of the Tartar race, but whose followers were mainly Turks. The ruin of the Seljugs of Rum may be said to date from the great Mongol invasion in 1242, in which Armenia was conquered and Erzerum occupied. The invading chief exercised the privilege of the conqueror, and gave the Seljugq throne of Rum to the younger brother of the Sultan instead of to the elder.
The Emperor in Constantinople supported the latter, and fierce war was waged between the two brothers. A resident, somewhat after the Indian analogy, was appointed by the Khan of the Mongols to the court of the younger brother. The war contributed to the weakening of the Seljuqs, and facilitated the encroachment of the nomad Turkish bands, who owned no master, upon their territory. The Latin occupation of Constantinople (1204-1261) had the same effect, for the Latin freebooters showed absolutely no power of dealing with the Turks, their energies being engaged simply in making themselves secure in the capital and a portion of its European territory. Hulagu, the grandson of Jenghiz Khan, captured Baghdad in 1258 and destroyed the Empire of the Caliphs. He extended his rule over Mesopotamia and North Syria to the Mediterranean.
The dispersion of the new Turkish hordes not only greatly increased the number of nomads in Asia Minor, but led to the establishment of additional independent Turkish tribes under their own rulers, or emirs, and to an amount of confusion and disorder in Asia Minor such as had not previously been seen under the Greek Empire. The chieftain and his tribe usually seized a strong position, an old fortified town for example, held it as their headquarters, refused to own allegiance to the Emperor or any other than their immediate chieftain, and from it as their centre plundered the inhabitants of the towns and the neighbouring country.
The tribes showed little tendency to coalesce. Each emir fought on his own account, plundered on all the roads where travellers passed, or demanded toll or ransom for passage or release. In this want of cohesion is to be found one explanation of the fact that though the Turks were defeated one day, yet they emerge with apparently equal strength a short time after in another place.
They had to be fought in detail in their respective centres or as wandering tribes. During the thirteenth century many such groups of Turks occupied what a Greek writer calls “the eyes of the country.’ Even as far south as Aleppo there was such an occupation by a tribe with a regular Turkish dynasty. Some such chiefs, established on the western shores of the Aegean, not only occupied tracts of country, but built fleets and ravaged the islands of the Archipelago.
During the half century preceding the accession of Osman, Tenedos, Chios, Samos, and Rhodes fell at various times to these Turkish tribes. Some of them, who had occupied during the same period the southern and western portions of the central highland of Asia Minor, met with great success. Qaraman established his rule around the city of Qaraman, whose strongly fortified and interesting castle still stands, a noble ruin, on the plain about sixty-four miles south-east of Qonya. But the same Qaraman ruled over a district extending for a time to the north-west as far as, and including, Philadelphia.
Indeed, he and his successors were for perhaps half a century the most powerful Turks in Asia Minor. Other chiefs or emirs ruled in Germiyan, at Attalia, at Tralles, now called after its emir Aidin, and at Magnesia. The shores of the Aegean opposite Lesbos and large strips of country on the south of the Black Sea were during the same period under various Turkish emirs.
The boundaries of the territories over which they ruled often changed, as the tribes were constantly at war with each other or in search of new pasture. Needless to say, the effect of the establishment of so many wandering hordes of fighting men unused to agriculture was disastrous to the peaceful population of the country they had invaded. The rule of the Empire in such districts was feeble, the roads were unsafe, agriculture diminished, and the towns decayed. The nomad character of these isolated tribes makes it impossible to give a satisfactory estimate of their numbers on the accession of Osman. The statements of Greek and Turkish writers on the subject are always either vague or untrustworthy.
Three years before Osman assumed the title of emir, namely in 1296, Pachymer reports that the Turks had devastated the whole of the country between the Black Sea and the territory opposite Rhodes. Even two centuries earlier similar statements had been made. For example, William of Tyre after describing Godfrey of Bouillon’s siege of Nicaea in 1097 says the Turks lost 200,000 men. Anna Comnena tells of the slaughter of 24,000 around Philadelphia in 1108; four years later a great band of them were utterly destroyed. Matthew of Edessa in 1118 describes an “innumerable army of Turks” as marching towards that city. It would be easy to multiply these illustrations. The explanation is to be found in the nomadic habits of the invaders, and in the fact already noted that there was a constant stream of immigration from Asia.
The tribe over which Osman ruled was one which had entered Asia Minor previous to Jenghiz Khan’s invasion. His ancestors had been pushed by the invaders southward to Mesopotamia, but like so many others of the same race continued to be nomads. They were adventurers, desirous of finding pasturage for their sheep and cattle, and ready to sell their services to any other tribe.
The father of Osman, named Ertughril, had probably employed his tribe in the service of the Sultan Ala-ad-Din of Rum, who had met with much opposition from other Turkish tribes. According to Turkish historians, he had surprised Maurocastrum, now known as AfyonQara-Hisar, a veritable Gibraltar rising out of the central Phrygian plain about one hundred miles from Eski-Shehr. Ertughril’s deeds, however, as related in the Turkish annals, are to be read with caution. He became the first national hero of the Turks, was a Ghazi, and the victories gained by others are accredited to him. They relate that he captured Bilyik, Aq-Gyul (Philomelium), Yeni-Shehr, Lefke (Leucae), Aq-Hisar (Asprocastrum), and Give (Gaiucome).
Accession of Osman
A romantic story which is probably largely mythical 1s told of the early development of the tribe of the Ottoman Turks. It relates how Ertughril found himself by accident in the neighbourhood of a struggle going on to the west of Angora (Ancyra) between the Sultan of the Seljugs, Kai-Qubad, and a band of other Turks who had come in with the horde of Jenghiz Khan, neither of whom were known to him. Ertughril and his men at once accepted the offer of the Seljuqs, who were on the point of losing the battle. Their arrival turned the scale and after a three days’ struggle the Seljugs won. The victors were generous, and the newly arrived tribe received a grant from them of a tract of country around Eski-Shehr, a hundred and ninety miles distant from Constantinople, with the right to pasture their flocks in the valley of the Sangarius eastward towards Angora and westward towards Brasa.
Whatever be the truth in this story, it is certain that the followers of Ertughril obtained a position of great importance which greatly facilitated their further development. Three ranges of mountains which branch off from the great tableland of western Asia Minor converge near Eski-Shehr. The passes from Bithynia to this tableland meet there. It had witnessed a great struggle against the Turks during the First Crusade in 1097, in which the crusaders won, and again in 1175 in the Second Crusade. Its possession gave the Turks the key to an advance northwards. It commanded the fertile valley of the Sangarius, a rich pasture ground for nomads. Ertughril made Sugyut, about ten miles south-east of Bilyik, now on the line of the Baghdad railway, and about the same distance from Eski-Shehr, the headquarters of his camp.
Ertughril died at Sugyut in 1281, and there too his famous son Osman was born. The number of his subjects had been largely increased during the reign of his father by accessions from other bands of Turks, and especially from one which was in Paphlagonia. Osman from the first set himself to work to enlarge his territory. He had to struggle for this purpose both with the Empire and with neighbouring tribes. The Greek historians mention two notable victories in 1301 gained by the Greeks over the Turks, in the first of which the Trapezuntines captured the Turkish chief Kyuchuk Agha at Cerasus and killed many of his followers, and in the second the Byzantines defeated another division at Chena with the aid of mercenary Alans from the Danube.
Neither of these Turkish bands were Ottomans; the second belonged to a ruler whose headquarters were at Aidin (Tralles) and who had already given trouble to the Empire. One of the last acts of the Emperor Michael Palaeologus (1259 -1282) had been to send his son Andronicus, then a youth of eighteen, in 1282 to attack the Turks before Aidin, but the young man was unable to save the city for the Greek Empire. Andronicus II in his turn despatched his son and co-regent Michael [IX (1295-1320) with a force of Alans to Magnesia in 1302 to attack other Turks, but they were in such numbers that no attack was made, and Michael indeed took refuge in that city while the nomads plundered the neighbouring country.
To add to the Emperor’s difficulties, the Venetians had declared war against him. His mercenaries, the Alans, revolted at Gallipoli, and the Turkish pirates or freebooters, fighting for themselves, attacked and for a time held possession of Rhodes, Carpathos, Samos, Chios, Tenedos, and even penetrated the Marmora as far as the Princes Islands. The Emperor Andronicus found himself under the necessity of paying a ransom for the release of captives. Taking advantage of the preoccupation of the Empire in fighting these other Turks, Osman had made a notable advance into Bithynia. In 1301 he defeated the Greek General Muzalon near Baphaeum, now Qoyun-Hisar (the Sheep Castle), between Izmid and Nicaea, though 2000 Alans aided Muzalon. After this victory Osman established himself in a position to threaten Briisa, Nicaea, and Izmid, and then came to an important arrangement for the division of the imperial territories with other Turkish chieftains. He was now “lord of the lands near Nicaea.”
The Catalan Grand Company
It was at this time that Roger de Flor or Roger Blum, a German soldier of fortune of the worst sort, took service with the Emperor (after August 1302). The latter, was, indeed, hard pressed. Michael had made his way to Pergamus, but Osman and his allies pressed both that city and Ephesus, and overran the country all round. At the other extremity of what may be called the sphere of Osman’s operations, in the valley of the Sangarius, he ruled either directly or by a chieftain who owed allegiance to him. One of his allies was at Germiyan and claimed to rule all Phrygia; another at Calamus ruled over the coast of the Aegean from Lydia to Mysia.
It was with difficulty that Michael IX succeeded in making good his retreat from Pergamus to Cyzicus on the south side of the Marmora. That once populous city, with Brasa, Nicaea, and Izmid, were now the only strong places in Asia Minor which had not fallen into the possession of the Turks. It was at this apparently opportune moment, when the Emperor was beset by difficulties in Anatolia, that Roger de Flor arrived (autumn 1303) with a fleet, 8000 Catalans, and other Spaniards. Other western mercenaries, Germans and Sicilians, had come to the aid of the Empire both before and during the crusades. But great hopes were built on the advent of the well-known but unscrupulous Roger. His army bore the name of the Catalan Grand Company. Roger at once got into difficulties with the Genoese, from whom he had borrowed 20,000 bezants for transport and the hire of other mercenaries.
One of Roger’s first encounters in Anatolia was with Osman. The Turks were raiding on the old Roman road which is now followed by the railway from Eski-Shehr to Izmid, and kept up a running fight with the imperial troops, and Roger, defeating them near Lefke, in 1305 took possession of that city.
The Catalan Grand Company soon showed that they were dangerous auxiliaries. Roger at various times defeated detached bands of Turks, and made rapid marches with his band into several districts, but his men preyed upon Christians and Muslims with equal willingness.
The first thirty years of the fourteenth century were a period of chaotic disorder in the Empire, due partly to quarrels in the imperial family and partly to struggles with the Turks and other external foes. But of all the evils which fell upon the state the worst were those which were caused by the Catalan mercenaries. The imperial chest was empty. The Catalans and other mercenaries were without pay, and the result was that, when they had crossed the Dardanelles at the request of the Emperor and had driven back the enemy, they paid themselves by plundering the Greek villagers, a plunder which the Emperor was powerless to prevent.
Feebleness on the throne and in the councils of the Empire and the general break-up of the government opened the country to attack on every side. The so-called Empire of Nicaea, which had made during half a century a not inglorious struggle on behalf of the Greek race, had ceased to exist. The city itself, cut of from the resources of the neighbouring country and situated in an almost isolated valley ill-adapted for the purpose of commerce, became of comparatively little importance, though its ancient reputation and its wellbuilt walls still entitled it to respect. The progress of the Ottoman Turks met with no organised resistance.
First entry of Turks into Europe, 1308
In 1308 a band of Turks and of Turcopuli, or Turks who were in the regular employ of the Empire, was induced to cross into Europe and join with the Catalan Grand Company to attack the Emperor Andronicus. This entry of the Turks into Europe, though not of the Ottoman Turks, is itself an epoch-making event. But the leaders of the Catalans were soon quarrelling among themselves. Roger had killed the brother of the Alan leader at Cyzicus. He was himself assassinated by the surviving brother at Hadrianople in 1306.
The expedition captured Rodosto on the north shore of the Marmora, pillaged it, and killed a great number of the inhabitants, the Emperor himself being powerless to render any assistance. One of the Catalan leaders, Roccafort, however, shortly afterwards delivered it to the Emperor. In the same year Ganos, on the same shore, was besieged by the Turks, and though it was not captured the neighbouring country was pillaged, and again the Emperor was powerless to defend his subjects. In the year 1308 another band of Turks, this time allied with Osman, captured Ephesus. Brusa was compelled to pay tribute to the Ottoman Emir. The Turks who had joined the Catalans in Europe withdrew into Asia, while their allies continued to ravage Thrace.
Osman took possession of a small town, spoken of as Tricocca, in the neighbourhood of Nicaea. In 1310 the first attempt was made by him to capture Rhodes, an attempt which Clement V states to have been due to the instigation of the Genoese. The Knights had only been in possession of the island for two years. It was the first time that the famous defenders of Christendom, who were destined to make so gallant a struggle against Islam, met the Ottoman Turks.
An incident in 1311 shows the weakness of the Empire. Khalil, one of the allies of Osman, with 1800 Turks under him, had agreed with the Emperor that they should pass into Asia by way of Gallipoli. They were carrying off much booty which they had taken from the Christian towns in Thrace. The owners, wishing to recover their goods, opposed the passage until their property was restored. Khalil took possession of a castle near the Dardanelles, possibly at Sestos, and called other Turks to his aid from the Asiatic coast. The imperial army which had come to assist the Greeks was defeated, and Khalil in derision decked himself with the insignia of the Emperor.
Progress of Osman
The struggle went on between the Greeks and the Turks with varying success during the next three or four years, the Turks maintaining their position in Thrace and holding the Chersonese and Gallipoli. In 1315 the Catalan Grand Company, after having done great injury to the Empire, finally quitted the country.
The struggle between the young and the old Emperor Andronicus increased in violence and incidentally strengthened the position of Osman. Both Emperors, as well as Michael [IX who had died in 1320, employed Turkish troops in their dynastic struggles. The young Andronicus, when he was associated in 1321 with his grandfather, had the population on his side, the old Emperor having been compelled to levy new and heavy taxes in order to oppose the inroads of the Turks who had joined his grandson’s party. Shortly afterwards the partisans of the young Emperor attacked near Silivri1 a band of Turkish mercenaries and Greeks who were on his grandfather’s side. They disbanded on his approach and this caused terror in the capital. The mercenaries refused to defend it, and demanded to be sent into Asia. Chalcondyles states that Osman slew 8000 Turks who had crossed into the Chersonese. Thereupon the old Emperor sued for peace.
In addition to the dynastic struggles and those with the Turks, the Empire had now to meet the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Tartars. The Tartars made their appearance in Thrace, having worked their way from South Russia round by the Dobrudzha. Young Andronicus HI in 1324 is reported to have defeated 120,000 of them.
While in the last years of the reign of Osman the Empire was unable to offer a formidable resistance, Osman himself was making steady progress. He never lost sight of his main object, the conquest and occupation of all important places between his capital at Yeni-Shehr (which he had chosen instead of Eski-Shehr) and the Marmora with the straits that lead to it from north and south. Two points are noteworthy in his campaign of conquest:
first, that he trusted largely to the isolation of the towns which he desired to capture; secondly, that he made great use of cavalry. Every Turk under him was a fighter. They continued their nomad habits and many of them almost lived on horseback. The result was that they moved much more quickly than their enemies, and this mobility, combined with the simple habits of others who travelled readily on their simple ox-carts, which served them as dwellings, greatly favoured Osman’s method of isolating a town. By pitching their tents or unyoking their oxen in a neighbourhood from which cavalry had driven away the inhabitants, they reduced the town by starvation. Osman had now during nine or ten years applied this method to the capture of 13rasa. His son Orkhan (born 1288) was in command of his father’s army, and in 1326 the position of Brnsa was so desperate that, when the Emperor was unable to send an army to break the blockade, the inhabitants surrendered the city.
Capture of Brusa
The surrender of Brusa to Osman’s army in November 1326 marked an epoch in the advance of the Ottoman Turks. He had gained a most advantageous position for attacking the Empire from the Anatolian side. Once in the hands of the Turks, who already held the country between it and the passes concentrating near Eski-Shehr, its situation rendered it secure from the south. The Bithynian Olympus immediately in its rear made it inaccessible from that side, while its commanding natural position on the mountain slope rendered it strong against an army attacking it in front.
While itself occupying an exceptionally strong natural position, no other place was so good a centre for operations against an enemy on the Marmora. It dominated Cyzicus, and was not too distant to serve as a defensive base against an enemy attempting to cross from Gallipoli to Lampsacus. On the other side it threatened Nicaea and facilitated the capture of Izmid. Henceforth it became the centre of operations for the Ottoman Turks, and when immediately afterwards in November 1326 Osman died, his historian could truthfully note that while he had taken many strongly fortified places in Anatolia, and in particular nearly every seaport in the region on the Black Sea between Ineboli and the Bosphorus, his greatest success, the most important to the race which history was to call after him Osmanlis or Ottomans, was the surrender of Brusa.
Osman was at Sugyut, the capital chosen by his father, when the news was brought to him of the success of his son at Brusa. He was then near his end and died in November 1326 at the age of sixty-eight. The expression of his desire to be buried in Brasa marks the value which he attached to its possession. His wish was complied with; and the series of tombs of the early sultans of his race, which are still shown to visitors to the city, mark its importance during the following century and a half.
Osman rather than Ertughril is regarded as the founder of the Ottoman nation. His successors on the throne are still girt with his sword. The Turkish instinct in taking him as at once their founder and greatest national hero is right. While rejecting most of the stories regarding him, we may fairly conclude that he was a ruler who recognized that to obtain the reputation of a lover of justice was good policy. His merits as a warriorstatesman rest on a surer foundation. There is reason to believe that the advance of his people from the time he ascended the throne until the capture of Brusa was in accordance with a general plan.
While occasionally finding it necessary to carry on war to the south of the mountain ranges which on his accession formed the southern boundary of his territory, he never lost hope of an advance to the straits and the Marmora. In making an advance in that direction he increased the number of his own immediate subjects by allying himself with other Turks; and, by gaining the reputation of a ruler who might be safely followed, and under whose protection Christians might find security both from other Turks and from the exactions of their own Emperor, he drew even Christians to accept his rule.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق