172 DESTINY DISRUPTED
and his little state an emirate. ''Amir" was an Islamic title that had once
meant "commander" but now meant something more like "prince."
With eastern Anatolia crystallizing into numerous little ghazi emirates,
Byzantine power shrank and the lawless frontier zone receded westward-
which posed an ironic contradiction: the frontier marches were mother's
milk to the ghazi states. As the disputed zone moved, so did the ghazi
knights; they leaked away from the established emirates and off into the
wild west, where a man could still prove himself in battle and incidentally
score some plunder.
At a certain point, however, the wild west stopped receding because the
frontier was close enough to Constantinople that the Byzantines could
make a stand. Ghazi knights draining from the east began to accumulate
in these frontline states situated nose to nose with Byzantine power.
Knights could find employment here for at least fifty years after fighting
had faded out in the rest of Anatolia. The frontline states accordingly grew
ever stronger while the eastern emirates grew ever weaker. It was here on
this militarized frontier, therefore, that a new world empire was born.s
In 1258 CE, the very year Hulagu destroyed Baghdad, a boy named
Othman was born to a leading ghazi family in Anatolia. Othman's descen-
dants were called the Othmanlis, or Ottomans, as people in the West pro-
nounced it, and they ended up building a mighty empire.
Not that Othman himself built an empire; he only managed to con-
struct the toughest little ghazi emirate in Anatolia. His recent ancestors
had been pastoral nomads out of Central Asia, a clan of about four hun-
dred fleeing the Mongols, and he had not moved far from his roots. His
palace was his horse, his throne his saddle, and his office his saddlebag. His
capital was wherever he camped for the night. All he really bequeathed to
his successors was a process. In the fighting season, he would lead his men
into the frontier provinces and accumulate booty by fighting Christians.
In the "off-season," he collected taxes from any productive settled folks he
found in areas he controlled.
As the Ottomans grew stronger, they began to absorb other ghazi states,
sometimes by conquering them, sometimes by out-and-out buying them.
Ghazi chieftains who had been sovereign emirs became feudal aristocrats,
still powerful in their own right but subservient to an even greater power,
the head of the Ottoman dynasty.