Imperial Ottoman

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Osman I: Founder of the Ottoman Dynasty

Osman I, founder of the Ottoman dynasty, ruled a small Turkic principality on the Byzantine frontier in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.

Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman dynasty, ruled a small Turkic principality on the Byzantine frontier in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. He is the eponym of the empire that would, over the next six centuries, stretch from the gates of Vienna to the Indian Ocean. Yet the details of his life are unusually hard to recover, and the most familiar stories about him are best understood as dynastic myth. A broader survey of the dynasty he founded is given in the history of the Ottoman Empire, and the expansion that began under his son Orhan is treated in the rise of the Ottoman Empire.

The historical record

The principal sources for Osman’s life are late and partly legendary. The most important are the chronicles of the early Ottoman period, including the works of Aşıkpaşazade, Oruç Bey, and the anonymous Ottoman Anonymous, also known as the Gazi’s Chronicle. These works were written at least a century after the events they describe, and they blend oral tradition, genealogical claim, and political assertion in ways that are difficult to disentangle.

The chronology of Osman’s life is also uncertain. The conventional dates of his reign, c. 1299 to 1326, are derived from later sources and have been debated by historians for generations. What can be said with reasonable confidence is that he ruled a small principality based around Söğüt, in what is now Bilecik province, in the closing decades of the thirteenth and the first quarter of the fourteenth century.

Family and inheritance

Osman was the son of Ertuğrul, the leader of the Kayı clan of the Oghuz Turks. The family belonged to the gazi tradition, the frontier warriors who fought in the name of Islam against the Christian Byzantine Empire. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, which had dominated Anatolia for two centuries, was in the late thirteenth century in a state of fragmentation. The Mongol Ilkhanate, which had defeated the Seljuks at the Battle of Köse Dağ in 1243, was itself weakening, and the way was open for the gazi warrior bands to consolidate small principalities. The eventual fall of Constantinople under his great-great-great-grandson Mehmed II was the moment when the small principality of Söğüt became the nucleus of a world empire.

The legend of the dream, in which a moon entered Osman’s breast and a holy man foretold a great empire, is recorded in the chronicles and became a foundational myth of the dynasty. The story is best read as a charter myth, a way of explaining to later generations why the small Kayı clan had been singled out for greatness. The fact that it is recorded in the chronicles is more important than the fact that it is fictional.

The founding of the principality

Osman expanded his principality in three directions. Against the Byzantines, he raided the rich agricultural lands of Bithynia. Against the neighboring Turkish beyliks, he formed alliances and fought wars. Among the Turkmen nomads migrating into western Anatolia, he recruited followers. The gazi ethos of his state allowed him to draw on a population that was otherwise largely outside the official Seljuk order.

The economic base of the early Ottoman state was largely a war economy. Plunder from Byzantine territory, supplemented by the agricultural surplus of the newly settled lands, financed the state and rewarded followers. The grants of land to warriors, the basis of the later timar system, were already a feature of Osman’s reign, although the system would not be formalized until later. The institutions that emerged in this period, including the devshirme and the timar, would be central to the Ottoman golden age and would shape the empire down to its dissolution.

The role of Osman in founding the empire

The conventional date of 1299 for the founding of the Ottoman Empire is derived from later chronicles. The choice of this date has been debated by historians for generations, with some arguing for a later date, around 1302, on the basis of the famous Bapheus, or Koyunhisar, victory. The debate is in part a question of historical fact, but it is also a question of historical meaning: when does a small principality become a state?

What is clear is that the empire that would carry his name was built over the next century by his son Orhan and his grandsons. Orhan captured Bursa in 1326, the year traditionally given for Osman’s death, and made it the first major Ottoman capital. Within a generation, the Ottomans had crossed into Europe and would soon establish themselves as the dominant power of the southern Balkans. The eventual fall of Constantinople in 1453 was the moment when the small principality of Söğüt became the nucleus of a world empire, and the long arc from Söğüt to Karlowitz is the subject of the history of the Ottoman Empire.

Legacy

Osman died, according to tradition, in 1326. His tomb at Bursa, in the same town that his son had just captured, has been a site of dynastic veneration ever since. The Ottoman sultans, down to the end of the empire, traced their descent from him and from Ertuğrul, and the lineage was the foundation of their legitimacy.

Osman I is a figure at the intersection of history and myth. The historical record is thin, but the importance of the events in which he participated is not in doubt. The small principality he led would, in the space of six centuries, become one of the longest-lived and most consequential empires in world history. The wider narrative is set out in the history of the Ottoman Empire, and the period of expansion that followed his death is treated in the rise of the Ottoman Empire. That is the reason his name is remembered.