Orhan
This article needs additional citations for verification. (February 2024) |
Orhan | |
---|---|
Halil Bey | |
Dynasty | Ottoman |
Father | Osman I |
Mother | Malhun Hatun (possibly)[1] |
Religion | Islam |
Tughra |
Orhan Ghazi (
.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
According to Muslim scholar Ibn Battuta, Orhan was "the greatest of the Turcoman kings and the richest in wealth, lands, and military forces".[4]
Passage of power
Osman Gazi died in either 1323 or 1324,
Government
According to some authorities, it was in Alaeddin's time, and by his advice, that the Ottomans ceased acting like vassals to the
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.[7]
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.[8] They were divided into tens, hundreds, and thousands with their commanders. Their pay was high,[6] 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 (of House of Candar), 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.[9]
Çandarlı proposed to Orhan to create the Janissary corps, an army entirely composed of the children of conquered places. Çandarlı argued that:
The conquered are the responsibility of the conqueror, who is the lawful ruler of them, of their lands, of their goods, of their wives, and of their children. We have a right to do, same as what we do with our own; and the treatment which I propose is not only lawful, but benevolent. By enforcing the enrolling them in the ranks of the army, we consult both their temporal and eternal interests, as they will be educated and given better life conditions.[citation needed]
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
Politics
Initial expansion
Orhan invaded
In 1329, Byzantine Emperor
In 1333, 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 (now Amasra) 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 (present Balıkesir and surroundings). 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 (now Bergama). One was killed and the other was captured. The territories around Pergamum and Palaeocastro (Balıkesir) 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:[10]
- Original land grant area of Söğüt and Eskişehir;
- Hüdavendigar (Domain of the Sultan) area of Bursa and İznik;
- Koca Eli peninsular area around İzmit;
- former principality of Karesi around Balıkesir and Bergama.
Consolidation period
A twenty-year period of peace followed the acquisition of Karesi. During this time, the Ottoman sovereign was actively occupied in perfecting the civil and military institutions which his brother had introduced, in securing internal order, in founding and endowing mosques and schools, and in the construction of vast public edifices, many of which still stand. Orhan did not continue with any other conquests in Anatolia except taking over Ankara from the commercial-religious fraternity guild of Ahis.
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
However, as the
The splendour of the wedding between Orhan and Theodora at Selymbria (Silivri) is elaborately described by Byzantine writers. In the following year, Orhan and Theodora visited his imperial father-in-law at Üsküdar, (then Chrysopolis) 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:
The greatest of the kings of the Turcomans and the richest in wealth, lands and military forces. Of fortresses he possesses nearly a hundred, and for most of his time he is continually engaged in making a round of them, staying in each fortress for some days to put it in good order and examine its condition. It is said that he has never stayed for a whole month in any one town. He also fights with the infidels continually and keeps them under siege.[12]
— Ibn Battuta
Decline of Byzantine Empire
During Orhan's reign as the Ottoman emir, the Byzantine Empire declined – partly due to the ambitions of Italian maritime states and to the aggression of the Turcomans and other city Turks, but also due to civil wars within the empire.
During these years the Byzantine Empire became so weak that commercial supremacy in the surrounding seas around it became a bone of contention for the Italian maritime commercial city states. The
In the midst of the distress and confusion that the Byzantine Empire now suffered, Orhan's eldest son, Suleyman Pasha, captured the Castle of
This military situation remained unresolved, in part because of the eruption of hostilities between John VI and his co-emperor and son-in-law John V Palaeologus. John V was dismissed from his imperial post and exiled to
Last years
Orhan was the longest living and one of the longest reigning of the future Ottoman Sultans. In his last years he had left most of the powers of state in the hands of his second son Murad and lived a secluded life in Bursa.
In 1356 Orhan and Theodora's son, Halil, was abducted somewhere on the Bay of Izmit. A Genoese commercial boat captain, which was conducting acts of piracy alongside commercial activity, was able to capture the young prince and take him over to Phocaea on the Aegean Sea, which was under Genoese rule. Orhan was very much upset by this kidnapping and conducted talks with his brother-in-law and now sole Byzantine Emperor John V Palaeologos. As to the agreement, John V with a Byzantine naval fleet went to Phocaea, paid the ransom demanded of 100,000 hyperpyra, and brought Khalil back to Ottoman territory.
In 1357 Orhan's eldest and most experienced son and likely heir, Suleyman Pasha, died after injuries sustained from a fall from a horse near Bolayir on the coast of the sea of Marmara. The horse that Suleyman fell from was buried alongside him and their tombs can still be seen today. Orhan was said to have been greatly affected by the death of his son.
Orhan died soon after, likely from natural causes. It seems rather likely that the death of his son was taxing on his health, however. Orhan died in 1362, in Bursa, at the age of eighty, after a reign of thirty-six years. He is buried in the türbe (tomb) with his wife and children, called Gümüşlü Kumbet in Bursa.
Family
Consorts
Orhan had at least seven consorts:[16][17][18]
- Nilüfer Hatun. Christian slave of Greek descent, mother of Orhan's successor Murad I.
- Asporça Hatun. Noblewoman of Byzantine-Greek origins, Orhan's first legal wife and mother of two sons and two daughters. Osman I granted her ownership of several villages.
- Melek Hatun. Mother of Sultan Hatun.
- Efendize Hatun. Also called Efendi Hatun, was the daughter of Mahmud Alp or the daughter of Günduz Bey, Osman I's brother, and so Orhan's cousin.
- Theodora Kantakouzene. Daughter of John VI Kantakouzenos and Orhan's second legal wife. Remained a Christian after her marriage. Mother of Halil Bey.
- Theodora Uroš. Stefan IV Dušan's daughter. She married Orhan when she was twelve while Orhan was seventy.
Sons
Orhan had at least six sons:[16][17][18]
- Süleyman Pasha (1316-1357) - with Nilüfer Hatun. Eldest son, he was at the head of the expansion campaigns in Thrace. He died of wounds sustained after a fall from his horse.
- Ibrahim Bey (1316-1362) - with Asporça Hatun. Governor of Eskişehir, was executed by the order of his half-brother Murad I.
- Şerefullah Bey (?-died after 1324) - with Asporça Hatun.
- Kasım Bey (?-1346) - with Nilüfer Hatun.[19]
- Murad I (1326-1389) - with Nilüfer Hatun. Sultan of the Ottoman Empire after his father.
- John V Palaeologus, her mother's brother-in-law. Subsequently, Halil married John's daughter, Irene, by he had two sons. At his father's death, he was executed by his half-brother, the new Sultan Murad I.
Daughters
Orhan had at least four daughters:[16][17][18]
- Hatice Hatun. She married her cousin Süleyman Bey, son of Saru Batu Savci Bey and nephew of Osman I. They had two sons, Hamza Bey (who had a son, Mehmed Bey) and Mustafa Bey (who had a son, Osman Bey), and two daughters, Ilaldi Hatun and Fatma Hatun.
- Selçuk Hatun - with Asporça Hatun.
- Fatma Hatun - with Asporça Hatun.
- Sultan Hatun - with Melek Hatun.
References
- Incorporates text from "History of Ottoman Turks" (1878)
- TDV Encyclopedia of Islam (44+2 vols.) (in Turkish). Istanbul: Turkiye Diyanet Foundation, Centre for Islamic Studies.
- ^ Nicolle, David and Hook, Adam. Ottoman Fortifications 1300–1710. Osprey Publishing, 2010. page 8 Retrieved 3 Sep 2011.
- ^ Goffman, Daniel. The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2002. page 42 Retrieved 3 September 2011.
- ^ Henry Glassie (1991). Turkish Traditional Art Today. p. 370.
- ^ Kafadar, Cemal (1995). Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State. p. 16.
- ^ ISBN 978-90-04-02104-4.
- ^ Edward S. Creasy, History of the Ottoman Turks. (Beirut: Khayats, 1961), 13
- ISBN 978-1-85109-526-1.
- ISSN 0020-7438. Retrieved 29 February 2024.
- ^ Shaw, Stanford J. (1976) History of the Empire and Modern Turkey. Vol. 1: Empire of Ghazis. Cambridge University Press. pp. 15–16
- ^ J.J.Norwich (1996) Byzantium: the Decline and Fall, Penguin, London Chp.18
- ^
Ebru Boyar; Kate Fleet (15 April 2010). ISBN 9781139484442.
- ^ Norwich, J. J. (1996) Byzantium: the Decline and Fall. Penguin, London. Chp.19
- ^ Norwich, p.320
- ^ Norwich, pp. 321–322
- ^ OCLC 854893416.
- ^ OCLC 8115229.
- ^ )
- ISBN 978-9944-118-31-6.