372 



OTTOMAN EMPIRE. 



sic soil of Athens, Sparta, Corinth, and Thebes, upon 

 which, 2500 years ago, was maintained the indepen 

 deney of Europe, where flourished civil freedom and 

 the refinement of polished life. We can here but 

 briefly relate how it happened that a band of rob- 

 bers from the steppes of Northern Asia should have 

 pitched their camps in the country of Homer, o; 

 Solon, and of Pericles ; and how this stronghold oi 

 despotism, erected by Asia hi Europe, has yet 

 refrained from adopting European policy. 



It is only since the middle of the sixth century 

 that history mentions the name of Turks. This 

 tribe of Scythian Tartars was theu settled on the 

 banks of the Irtisch, at the foot of the Altai moun- 

 tains, in the steppes of Northern Asia, on the con- 

 fines of China and Persia, now inhabited by the 

 Kirghises, Bucharians, Usbecs, and Turcomans. 

 They carried on war with the Sassanides and Byzan- 

 tine emperors, sometimes in alliance with one, some- 

 times with the other. About the middle of the 

 eighth century, the eastern territories of the Turks 

 became subject to China, and the western to Persia, 

 which the Saracens had conquered. They now em- 

 braced Mohammedanism, and the caliph of Bagdad 

 soon formed of them his body-guard. These mili- 

 tary slaves successively supplied to the Saracens 

 generals, to the caliphs emirs al Omrah (first minis- 

 ters, like the Prankish maires du palais), and finally 

 sovereign rulers. Thus the Turkish families of the 

 Tulunides and Akshidides reigned in Palestine, 

 Syria, and Egypt, during the ninth and tenth centu- 

 ries, and that of the Gasnevides in Persia and India 

 from the end of the tenth to the end of the twelfth 

 century. At the same time, a Turkish tribe in 

 Turkestan the ancient seat of the Scythian Massa- 

 getae, now that of the Tartars, upon the Jaxartes 

 (Sir) and Oxus (Jihon), between lake Aral and the 

 Caspian- threw oft' the Chinese yoke, and, under the 

 name of Seljooks (from their leader), subdued, in the 

 eleventh century, all Western Asia, where the war- 

 like Togrul Beg, the grandson of Seljook, Alp 

 Arslan,and Malek Shah rounded a powerful empire, 

 with which the crusaders contended for the posses- 

 sion of Palestine. In 1100, this was divided into 

 three parts Persia, Media, Chorasan, and the 

 country beyond the Oxus and there arose, during 

 the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Mongols, a 

 race differing entirely from the Tartars, to whom the 

 Turks belong, in language and in manners. In con- 

 nexion with other hordes, they destroyed the power 

 of the Seljooks in AsiaMinor; and several less power- 

 ful Mongol communities arose. But the leaders 

 (emirs) of the Seljooks and Turcomans, who had 

 been driven from their settlements by the Mongols, 

 soon sallied forth from the valleys of mount Taurus, 

 and divided Asia Minor among themselves. One of 

 these emirs was Osman (i. e. bone-breaker), of the 

 race of the Oguzian Turcomans. With his horde of 

 some hundred Tartar families from the Caucasus, he 

 forced (1239) the passes of Olympus, where about 

 800 Turcoman families still remain, and pitched his 

 camp in the plain of Bithynia, under the protection 

 of the Seljook sultan of Iconium. Reinforced by 

 robbers, runaway slaves, and prisoners, he plun- 

 dered the surrounding country, and took several 

 provinces of Asia Minor from the Eastern empire of 

 the Romans. After the death of his protector, in the 

 year 1300 (700 of the Hegira,) he proclaimed himself 

 sultan. He died in 1326. 



Thus a bold and successful captain of a band of 

 robbers, unobstructed by the weak and divided 

 Byzantines, founded upon the ruins of the Saracen, 

 Seljook, and Mongol power the empire of the Osman 

 or Ottoman Turks in Asia; and, after him, the 

 courage, policy, and enterprise of eight great 



princes, whom the dignity of caliph placed in pos- 

 session of the standard of the prophet, and who 

 were animated by religious fanaticism and a passion 

 for military glory, raised it to the rank of the first 

 military power in Europe (13001566.) The first 

 of them was Orchan, son of Osman. In the year 

 1328, he fixed his residence in Bursa, capital of 

 Bithynia, which he had conquered shortly before his 

 father's death. Concerning this bloody cradle of the 

 Ottoman power, and the monuments of Osman and 

 his successors to Amurath II., which are to be found 

 there, see Von Hammer's Journey from Constanti- 

 nople to Brussa (Bursa), and to the Olympus (Pest, 

 1818). He organized a valiant infantry, which he 

 kept in constant pay, formed, in part, of Christian 

 slaves brought up in the Mohammedan faith and the 

 practice of arms. He subdued all Asia Minor to 

 the Hellespont, and took the name of Padishah. 

 The gate of his palace, of which the proud ruins are 

 still to be seen, was called the Porte. He became 

 son-in-law to the Greek emperor Cantacuzenus. 

 This circumstance, and an alliance with the Gen- 

 oese, who, from rivalry with the commerce of the 

 Venetians, so powerful in the Levant, alternately 

 courted the emperors of Constantinople and the 

 powerful sultan of the Asiatic coast, and lent their 

 ships to the Turks for transportation, made known 

 to Orchan and his successors the weakness of the 

 Eastern empire and the divisions of the Western, 

 where religious schisms and the feudal system had 

 destroyed all civil order, and where the,re was no 

 authority or policy to hold together the whole. Asia 

 no longer feared a crusade. More wise and intelli- 

 gent than the padishahs of the eighteenth and nine- 

 teenth centuries, Orchan and his successors resolved 

 to reduce feeble and divided Europe under the law 

 of the prophet. Split into numerous governments, 

 it invited them, as Asia Minor had formerly done, 

 to victory and plunder. 



Orchan's son, the brave Soliman, first invaded 

 Europe in 1355. He fortified Gallipoli and Sestos, 

 and thereby held possession of the straits which 

 separate the two continents. The Ottoman armies 

 now spread at the same time over Europe and Asia. 

 In 1360, Orchan's second son and successor, Amu- 

 rath I., took Adrianople, which became the seat of 

 the empire in Europe, and conquered Macedonia, 

 Albania, and Servia with his janizaries, composed 

 of the children of Christians educated in the Moham- 

 medan faith, together with the Timariots and Zaims, 

 who, as vassals, were obliged to perform cavalry 

 service. While yet elated with his victory upon the 

 field of Caschau, the Servian Milosch Kobilowitsch, 

 who had fought in vain for the freedom of his 

 country, and lay severely wounded upon the ground, 

 called him towards him, and, collecting his strength, 

 plunged his dagger into his heart (1389). After 

 him, the ferocious Bajazet, surnamed the Lightning, 

 'nvaded Thessaly, and advanced to Constantinople. 

 September 28, 1396, he defeated the Western Chris- 

 tians under Sigismund, king of Bohemia and Hun- 

 gary, at Nicopolis, in Bulgaria, and slew 10,000 

 Christian prisoners; built a strong castle on the 

 Bosphorus, and imposed a tribute upon the Greek 

 mperor ; but the arms of the Mongol Timur (see 

 Tamerlane') called him back to Asia; and in the 

 jattle of Ancyra, in 1402, where more than a mil- 

 ion warriors contested the empire of the world, the 

 3roud Bajazet was conquered and taken prisoner. 

 I'imur divided the provinces between the sons of 

 Bajazet. Finally, in 1413, the fourth son of Baja- 

 zet, the wise and just Mohammed I., seated himself 

 upon the undivided throne of Osman. In 1415, while 

 ,he fathers of the council of Constance were burning 

 John Huss and deposing three popes, to restore peace 



