Aydoğan | 37the Seljuks of Rum in another passage, in which the Seljukid sultan shortly before
he dies summons the beys under his command:
After me, stay quiet, live in harmony with one another, keep engaging in gaza
warfare with the infidels. I do not have a son to appoint as your ruler. Find
such a person to whom we grant the territory of Harcenevan so that he con-
fronts the infidels and wages war against them. Whatever he conquers shall
become his property. The beys unanimously mentioned Ertuğrul and the ga-
zas of his warrior son Osman, [Sarı Saltuk’s] guidance for him and his adop-
tion of Osman as his son, even making him his heir. They are the descendants
of Ays, the son of Prophet İshak, and Korkut Ata is his son. They are from the
Oğuz tribe and practice salb, they are loyal Turks.Soon after, Sarı Saltuk told Osman the good news:My son Osman! The Sultan requested you, go and see him. I received a letter
from him asking me to send you to his presence. He is probably giving you
Amasiyye also called Harcenevan, which is the gate of Rum. Hurry and go to
see him, luck has turned on your side and your descent [descendants].As in the Danişmendname, the conquest of Harcenevan is the starting point
for the conquest of Rum, and whoever owns it will dominate Rum. It is no coin-
cidence that the Saltukname takes this statement from the Danişmendname,in
which Harşana is Melik Danişmend’s final military base, and locates Osman’s
first conquests around Harcenevan by affiliating early Ottoman history with
the achievements of the earlier gazis as recounted in the Battalname and the
Danişmendname. From the conquest of Harcenevan will start the conquest of
Rum as well as the history of the Ottomans themselves.
The Term “Rumi” in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries
The geographical identification of Rum with the former Byzantine territory and
the association of its people (with a certain degree of confusion) with the an-
cient Greeks, the Byzantines, and some other Christian Melkites—Byzantine rite
churches and their members in the Middle East—can be found in Arabo-Persian
texts and in Turkish warrior epics. However, in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries new meanings were attached to the word “Rumi” (a person from the
land of Rum) and “it came to be adopted by, or used with respect to, some of the
Muslims of that geography, perhaps at first by outsiders but eventually also by
insiders.” The new meaning of Rumi created a certain degree of confusion, since
in some Ottoman texts it was juxtaposed with the old one:
There was a period of transition, and perhaps confusion, when some sources
written by Anatolian Muslims continued to use “Rumi” to refer to Byzantine