94 ISLAM AT WAR
farther toward the ultimate goal of Constantinople. Sultan Orhan meddled
in the Byzantine infighting and recruited some Byzantine renegades who
would become major leaders of his army.
With the death of Emperor Andronicus III (1341), Orhan could push
into Europe. The Byzantine fight for succession was such that John VI
Cantacuzene hired Turkish and Serbian mercenaries to support his claim.
This force ravaged Macedonia and opened the Ottomans’ eyes to what
stood to the west.
In 1346 Orhan led 5,500 soldiers into Thrace and conquered the coastal
region of the Black Sea north of Constantinople. By 1349 the Ottomans
began a process of permanent conquests. The Emperor Cantacuzene pro-
tested these conquests by Suleiman, Orhan’s son, but to no avail. Canta-
cuzene enlisted support of the Serbs against his rebellious Ottoman allies,
but this effort allowed his rivals to throw him out of power, raising John
V Palaeologus to the throne.
In 1349 the Byzantines again asked for Ottoman assistance against the
Serbian Stefan Duscan (1331–55), who had taken Salonika from the crum-
bling empire. The struggles between Cantacuzene and John V continued
with Orhan routing the combined force of Bulgarians and Serbians or-
ganized by John at the battle of Dimotica. In return, Cantacuzene gave
Orhan control of the fort of Cimpe (Tzympe) on the Dardanelles to serve
as a base for such future expeditions. In 1353, from this fort, Suleiman
Pasha advanced north to raid Thrace and establish Ottoman rule as far as
Rodosto. In 1354 Orhan was assisted by the Genoese, who sought to use
the Ottomans to break the dominance of the Venetians in commerce with
the Byzantine Empire.
Cantacuzene again protested Orhan’s conquests, but Orhan refused to
abandon his new territories. An Ottoman tradition relates that the Byz-
antine forces in Gallipoli, including Cimpe, were destroyed by an earth-
quake on March 2, 1354. Suleiman then told the emperor that he could
not abandon those territories because the earthquake was a sign of God’s
will that the Turks should remain. Gallipoli became a permanent Ottoman
foothold in Europe.
Originally all the soldiers in the Ottoman army were Turkoman light
horsemen. They were organized by clans and tribes under the command
of tribal chiefs and religious leaders and were almost entirely horse arch-
ers. Those assigned to border areas or deployed in raids against Christian
areas were paid by being allowed to pillage, but this discouraged the
formation of the disciplined troops necessary for siege operations against
fortresses and walled cities. Although such irregular cavalry, formed
mostly of nomads, were useful in overwhelming enemy field armies and