The Ottoman Empire ••• 141Osman's iqta at Sogut may have been tiny, but it was well situated on a
hill overlooking Byzantine lands. Osman I (r. ca. 1280-1326) was a warrior
chief who led a band of pastoral nomads and cavalry adventurers on raids
into Byzantium to win new territories for Islam and for other Turkic tribes
from the east, who constantly sought more grazing lands for their flocks.
Although other Turkish rulers occasionally made peace with the Byzantine
Empire, Osman never did. The chance for perpetual raiding attracted the
land-hungry nomads to move west and fight for Osman. More sedentary
Turks also came from the east, drawn by Osman's ties with the militant
trade guilds, and they set up his rudimentary government. For nine years
the Turks besieged the Byzantine stronghold at Bursa; as Osman lay dying,
they finally took the city. It became the first real capital of the Ottomans
(the name that Europeans would give to Osman's descendants).Expansion
Orhan (r. 1326-1360) was the first Ottoman to have coins minted in his
name and to assume the other attributes of Muslim sovereignty as he ex¬
panded his realm northwest to the Dardanelles and east to Ankara. Twice his
armies were invited to cross the Straits into Europe by Byzantine emperors
seeking Ottoman support against internal rivals and external foes. In 1354
Orhan's men crossed over a third time, took Gallipoli, and refused to go back
to Anatolia. Orhan's son, Murad I (r. 1360-1389), conquered many parts of
the Balkans, including Thrace, Macedonia, and Bulgaria. The Byzantine Em¬
pire became a mere enclave on the European side of the Bosporus, a shriv¬
eled husk that survived on Ottoman awe and protection. Southeastern
Europe's great Christian power was Serbia. Its king, Lazar, amassed a force
of Serbs, Albanians, Bosnians, Bulgars, and Wallachians (totaling possibly
100,000 men) to defend his bastion against the Ottoman menace. Murad,
leading perhaps 60,000 troops, defeated Lazar's coalition at Kosovo in 1389.
Both rulers lost their lives, but Serbia also lost its independence. The new
Ottoman ruler, Bayezid I (r. 1389-1402), started to besiege Constantinople
in 1395. The Europeans were alarmed at this new threat to Christendom,
and Hungary's king led English, French, German, and Balkan knights in a
crusade against the Turks. They were defeated at Nicopolis, though, and the
Ottoman Empire emerged as master of the Balkans. Symbolically, they
moved their capital from Bursa (in Anatolia) to Edirne (in Thrace) and
waited for nearby Constantinople to fall. It did not.
If Bayezid had maintained his father's policy of attacking mainly Chris¬
tians in Europe, the Ottomans might have taken Constantinople and ex¬
panded farther into the Balkans, but he craved the same prestige accorded