140 • 9 FIREARMS, SLAVES, AND EMPIRESwestward from their ancestral lands in Khurasan to escape from Mongol
invaders in the thirteenth century. The Rum Seljuk sultan was fighting the
Byzantines in the late thirteenth century when one of the Kayi chieftains,
Ertogrul, happened upon the scene. Ertogrul's offer of his 444 horse sol¬
diers turned the tide of battle in favor of the Seljuks, who rewarded him
with an iqta (land grant) at Sogut. Upon Ertogrul's death, the leadership
passed on to his son, Osman, who was girded by a Sufi leader with a spe¬
cial sword and commanded to wage jihad against his Christian neighbors,
the Byzantines. He took the title of ghazi (frontier warrior for Islam).
From that time until the empire's end in 1923, Osman's descendants—the
Ottomans—would upon accession be girded with his sword and com¬
manded to fight for Islam against the Christian rulers of Europe.
Although we do not know whether Ertogrul actually existed, recent stud¬
ies suggest that Osman's ancestors had lived in Anatolia since 1071, when
the Seljuks defeated the Byzantines. But in history we care as much about
what people believe to have happened as we do about the literal truth. The
legend stresses the Ottoman opposition to both the Mongols and the Byzan¬
tines (neither of whom were Turkish or Muslim) as well as Ottoman loyalty
to the Seljuks and the tradition of militant Islam. If you keep these attitudes
in mind, you will understand the spirit of the Ottoman state. (The succes¬
sion of Ottoman sultans is diagrammed in Figure 9.1.)
Beginnings
In the late thirteenth century the Byzantine Empire was recovering from a
terrible blow it had sustained in 1204—not a Muslim raid as you might
think, but the Fourth Crusade, a Venetian occupation of Constantinople it¬
self. For almost sixty years the Venetians ruled this historic capital; only a
rump of the Byzantine Empire survived in western Anatolia with its main
city at Nicaea. Once the Byzantines had regained Constantinople in 1262,
their grip on Asia grew weaker. By this time, the Rum Seljuk sultanate was
an enfeebled kingdom that had been defeated by the Mongols in 1243. No
longer could it control the Turkish ghazis whose ancestors it had brought
into Anatolia. Soon there were many principalities that were virtually inde¬
pendent of the Seljuks in Konya. The highlands of western and northern
Anatolia were what historians call marches, border regions contested by
two or more groups. The local settled population was Greek-speaking and
Orthodox Christian. The hillside nomads were Turkish-speaking and Mus¬
lim, either Sunni or Shi'i but almost always Sufi. Raiding the settled peo¬
ples was their favorite occupation, and the traditions of jihad reinforced
their militancy.