Chapter 7
THE RISE OF THE OTTOMAN
EMPIRE
The Ottomans descended from the nomadic tribes originating in the region
of the Altai Mountains in Outer Mongolia, a region east of the Eurasian
Steppes and south of the Yenisei River and Lake Baikal. Like most steppe
nomads, they lived as herdsmen and raiders, taking what they could from
their weaker neighbors. Sometime around the second century they began
moving to the west, and those that moved toward the Middle East called
themselves Oguz; those they attacked called them Turkomans or Turks.
Blocked by the mountain ranges of the Hindu Kush, they moved into the
lands between the Hindu Kush and the Aral Sea, known as Transoxania.
Here a natural road leads from the steppes into Iran and the Middle East.
These Turks established the Gokturk Empire, which lasted fromA.D.
552 to 744 and stretched between the Black Sea along the northern borders
of Mongolia and China almost to the Pacific Ocean. Though called an
empire, it was really a confederation of nomadic tribes with no significant
level of civilization, no capitals or cities, and leaving little mark of its
existence. When the Gokturk Empire collapsed, its peoples continued their
pressures on the borders of modern Iran, eventually penetrating into that
land. The Seljuq dynasty rose from those migrants, formed around a group
of mercenary Oguz warriors that had been organized for the service of the
Karahanids of Persia. In 1055 Tugrul Bey, leader of the Islamicized Sel-
juqs and founder of the Seljuq Empire, forced the Abbasid caliph of Bagh-
dad to make him the protector of orthodox Islam and to recognize him as
the sultan, or temporal ruler of northern Iran. With the Seljuq leader as