Orhan
Orhan Ghazi was the second sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1323/4 to 1362. He was born in Söğüt, as the son of Osman I.
In the early stages of his reign, Orhan focused his energies on conquering most of northwestern Anatolia. The majority of these areas were under Byzantine rule and he won his first battle at Pelekanon against the Byzantine Emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos. Orhan also occupied the lands of the Karasids of Balıkesir and the Ahis of Ankara.
A series of civil wars surrounding the ascension of the nine-year-old Byzantine emperor John V Palaiologos greatly benefited Orhan. In the Byzantine civil war of 1341–1347, the regent John VI Kantakouzenos married his daughter Theodora to Orhan and employed Ottoman warriors against the rival forces of the empress dowager, allowing them to loot Thrace. In the Byzantine civil war of 1352–1357, Kantakouzenos used Ottoman forces against John V, granting them the use of a European fortress at Çimpe around 1352. A major earthquake devastated Gallipoli two years later, after which Orhan's son, Süleyman Pasha, occupied the town, giving the Ottomans a strong bridgehead into mainland Europe.
According to Muslim scholar Ibn Battuta, Orhan was "the greatest of the Turcoman kings and the richest in wealth, lands, and military forces".
Passage of power
Osman Gazi died in either 1323 or 1324, and Orhan succeeded him. According to Ottoman tradition, when Orhan succeeded his father, he proposed to his brother, Alaeddin, that they should share the emerging empire. The latter refused on the grounds that their father had designated Orhan as sole successor, and that the empire should not be divided. He only accepted as his share the revenues of a single village near Bursa.Government
According to some authorities, it was in Alaeddin's time, and by his advice, that the Ottomans ceased acting like vassals to the Seljuk ruler: they no longer stamped money with his image or used his name in public prayers. These changes are attributed by others to Osman himself, but the vast majority of the oriental writers concur in attributing to Alaeddin the introduction of laws respecting the costume of the various subjects of the empire, and the creation and funding of a standing army of regular troops. It was by his advice and that of a contemporary Turkish statesman that the celebrated corps of Janissaries was formed, an institution which European writers erroneously fix at a later date, and ascribe to Murad I.Janissaries
Alaeddin, by his military legislation, may be truly said to have organized victory for the Ottoman dynasty. He organised for the Ottoman Beylik a standing army of regularly paid and disciplined infantry and horses, a full century before Charles VII of France established his fifteen permanent companies of men-at-arms, which are generally regarded as the first modern standing army.Orhan's predecessors, Ertuğrul and Osman I, had made war at the head of the armed vassals and volunteers. This army rode on horseback to their prince's banner when summoned for each expedition, and were disbanded as soon as the campaign was over. Alaeddin determined to ensure any future success by forming a corps of paid infantry, which was to be kept in constant readiness for service. These troops were called Yaya, or piyade. They were divided into tens, hundreds, and thousands with their commanders. Their pay was high, and their pride soon caused their sovereign some anxiety. Orhan wished to provide a check to them, and he took counsel for this purpose with his brother Alaeddin and Kara Khalil Çandarlı, who was connected with the royal house by marriage. Çandarlı laid before his master and the vizier a project. Out of this arose the renowned corps of Janissaries, which was considered the scourge of the Balkans and Central Europe for a long time, until it was abolished by Sultan Mahmud II in 1826.
Çandarlı proposed to Orhan to create the Janissary corps, an army entirely composed of the children of conquered places. Çandarlı argued that:
He also claimed that incorporating children of the conquered would induce other people to enlist: their friends and relations, who would come as volunteers to join the Ottoman ranks. Acting on this advice, Orhan selected a thousand of the finest boys from conquered Christian families. The recruits were trained according to their individual abilities, and employed in posts ranging from professional soldier to Grand Vizier. This practice continued for centuries, until the reign of Sultan Mehmed IV.
Politics
Initial expansion
Orhan invaded Byzantine territories in northwest Anatolia. First, in 1321, Orhan captured Mudanya, the port linking the city of Bursa to the Sea of Marmara coast. He then sent a column under Konur Alp towards the west Black Sea coast; another column under Akça Koca to capture Kocaeli, and finally a column under Abdurrahman Ghazi to capture the southeast coast of the Sea of Marmara. Then, he captured Bursa by persuading its Byzantine commander to defect. As Evrenos Bey, he became a commander of light cavalry, and he and his sons and grandsons led Ottoman troops in the Balkans. Once Bursa was captured, Orhan sent cavalry towards the Bosphorus, capturing Byzantine towns on the Marmara coast. There were even sightings of Ottoman light cavalry along the Bosphorus coast, and Ottoman forces laid siege to Nicaea.In 1329, Byzantine Emperor Andronikos III led a mercenary army to relieve Nicaea and regain Kocaeli. In the ensuing battle of Pelekanon, on 10 or 15 June, Orhan's disciplined troops routed the Byzantines. Thereafter Andronikos abandoned the idea of getting Kocaeli back and never again conducted a field battle against Ottoman forces.
Nicaea surrendered to Orhan after a three-year siege that concluded in 1331. Orhan captured Nicomedia in 1337. Orhan gave the command of Nicomedia to his eldest son, Suleyman Pasha, who had directed the operations of the siege.
In 1338, Orhan captured Scutari; most of northwest Anatolia was in Ottoman hands. The Byzantines still controlled the coastal strip from Şile on the Black Sea to Scutari and the city of Amastris in Paphlagonia, but these were so scattered and isolated as to be no threat to the Ottomans.
In 1345, there was a change of strategy. Instead of aiming to gain land from non-Muslims, Orhan took over a Turkish principality, Karesi. According to Islamic philosophy of war, the areas under Islamic rule were to be abodes of peace and the other areas abodes of war. Conducting a war in abodes of war was considered a good deed. Karesi principality was a state governed by a Turkish emir and its main inhabitants were Turkish so it was an abode of peace. The Ottomans had to have special justification for conquering fellow Muslim Turkish principalities.
In the case of Karesi, the ruler had died and had left two sons whose claims to the post of emir were equally valid. So there was a fight between the armed supporters of the two claimant princes. Orhan's pretext for invasion was that he was acting as a bringer of peace. In the end of the invasion by Ottoman troops the two brothers were pushed to the castle of their capital city of Pergamum. One was killed and the other was captured. The territories around Pergamum and Palaeocastro were annexed to Orhan's domains. This conquest was particularly important since it brought Orhan's territories to Çanakkale, the Anatolian side of the Dardanelles Straits.
With the conquest of Karesi, nearly the whole of northwestern Anatolia was included in the Ottoman Beylik, and the four cities of Bursa, Nicomedia, Nicaea, and Pergamum had become strongholds of its power. At this stage of his conquests, Orhan's Ottoman Principality had four provinces:
- Original land grant area of Söğüt and Eskişehir;
- Hüdavendigar area of Bursa and İznik;
- Koca Eli peninsular area around İzmit;
- former principality of Karesi around Balıkesir and Bergama.
Consolidation period
The general diffusion of Turkish populations over Anatolia, before Osman's time, was in main part a push from the Mongol conquest of Central Asia, Iran and then East Anatolia. Turkish peoples had founded a number of principalities after the demise of the Anatolian Sultanate of Rum, after its defeat by the Ilkhanate Mongols. Although they were all of Turkish stock, they were all rivals for dominant status in Anatolia.
After the Byzantine defeat of the Battle of Pelekanon, Orhan developed friendly relations with Andronicus III Palaeologus, and maintained them with some of his successors. Therefore, the Ottoman power experienced a twenty-year period of general repose.
However, as the Byzantine civil war of 1341–1347 dissipated the last resources of the Byzantine Empire, the auxiliary armies of the Emirs of Turkish principalities were frequently called over and employed in Europe. In 1346, Emperor John VI Cantacuzene recognised Orhan as the most powerful sovereign of the Turks. He aspired to attach the Ottoman forces permanently to his interests, and hoped to achieve this by giving his second daughter, Theodora, in marriage to their ruler, despite differences of creed and the disparity of age. However, in Byzantine and in Western European history, dynastic marriages were quite usual and there are many examples which were much more strange.
The splendour of the wedding between Orhan and Theodora at Selymbria is elaborately described by Byzantine writers. In the following year, Orhan and Theodora visited his imperial father-in-law at Üsküdar, the suburb of Constantinople on the Asiatic side of the Bosporus where there was a display of festive splendor. However, this close relationship soured when Byzantines suffered from marauding migrant Turcoman bands that had crossed the Marmara Sea and Dardanelles and pillaged several towns in Thrace. After a series of such raids, the Byzantines had to use superior forces to deal with them.
Ibn Battuta gave the following account of Orhan during his reign: