Süleyman Pasha (c. 1316-1357). Eldest known son and the intended heir who was the architect of the Ottoman expansion into Thrace. He died, shortly after his brother Khalil's capture by the Genoese pirates, as the result of a fall from his horse. His steed was buried next to him in Bolayir, north of Gallipoli, where their graves can still be seen.
Hatice Hatun, married Süleyman Bey, son of Savji Bey and through him grandson of Osman I.
In 1299 Orhan married (1359) Nilüfer Hatun, daughter of the Prince of Yarhisar or Byzantine Princess Helen (Nilüfer), who was of ethnic Greek descent,and had one son:
Orhan married Asporsha in 1316. Her parentage is unknown. The resting place of Asporsha is in the tomb of Orhan in Bursa, Turkey. They had at least two children:
Ibrahim, Governor of Eskişehir (1316-1362). Executed by order of his half-brother Murad I.
Halil (1347-1362). When still only a child he was captured by Genoese pirates for ransom. The Byzantine emperor and his future father-in-law John V Palaeologus was instrumental in his eventual release. Halil married Irene, who was a daughter of John V Palaeologus and Helena Kantakouzene.
In 1351, Orhan and Stefan Uroš IV Dušan of Serbia were negotiating about a potential alliance. There was a proposal to marry Dušan's daughter Theodora to Orhan, or one of his sons. However, the Serbian diplomats were attacked by Nikephoros Orsini, after which the negotiations broke down, the marriage didn't take place, and Serbia and the Ottoman state resumed hostilities.
Born in Söğüt around 1281, Orhan was the first son of Osman I.Orhan's grandfather, Ertuğrul Gazi, named his grandson after Orhan Alp. The early childhood and adulthood of Orhan are unknown, but he grew very close to his father. Some historical articles claim that when Orhan was 20 years old, his father sent him to the small Ottoman province of Nakihir, but Orhan returned to the Ottoman capital, Sogut, in 1309.
Passage of power
Map showing the area of the Ottoman Empire during the reign of Orhan I and his conquests (W)
Sultan 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.
Orhan then told him, "Since, my brother, thou will not take the flocks and the herds that I offer thee, be thou the shepherd of my people; be my Vizier.” The word vizier,vezir in the Ottoman language, from Arabic wazīr, meant the bearer of a burden. Alaeddin, in accepting the office, accepted his brother's burden of power, according to oriental historians. Alaeddin, like many of his successors in that office, did not often command the armies in person, but he occupied himself with the foundation and management of the civil and military institutions of the state.
Government
Orkhan (c1288-c1362) son of Osman Second Emperor of the Turks in the year 1326; from an original picture in the seraglio.
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 (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.
Çandarlı proposed to Orhan to create 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.”
He also claimed that the formation of Janissary out of conquered children would induce other people to adopt, not only out of the children of the conquered nations, but out of a crowd of 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 Mehmet IV.
Politics
Initial expansion
Orhan, with the help of gazi commanders at the head of his forces of light cavalry, started a series of conquests of Byzantine territories in northwest Anatolia. First, in 1321,Mudanya was captured on the Sea of Marmara, which was the port of Bursa. He then sent a column under Konur Alp towards West Black Sea coast; another column under Aqueda to capture Kocaeli, and finally a column to capture the southeast coast of the Sea of Marmara. Then, he captured the city of Bursa just with diplomatic negotiations. The Byzantine commander of the Bursa fort, called Evronos Bey, became a commander of a light cavalry force and even his sons and grandsons served Ottoman Beylik in this capacity to conquer and hold many areas in Balkans. Once the city of Bursa was captured, Orhan sent cavalry troops towards Bosphorus, capturing Byzantine coastal towns of Marmara. There were even sightings of Ottoman light cavalry along the Bosphoros coast.
Portrait of Orhan I (1281-1362) Sultan of the Ottoman Empire Early 19th century. (MeisterDrucke-727399). (L)
The Byzantine Emperor Andronicus IIIgathered together a mercenary army and set off towards Anatolia on the peninsular lands of Kocaeli. But at the present towns of Darica, at a site then called Pelekanon, not too far from Üsküdar, he met with Orhan's troops. In the ensuing battle of Pelekanon, the Byzantine forces were routed by Orhan's disciplined troops. Thereafter Andronicus abandoned the idea of getting the Kocaeli lands back and never again conducted a field battle against the Ottoman forces.
The city of Nicaea (second only to Constantinople in the Byzantine Empire) surrendered to him after a three-year siege that concluded in 1331. The city of Nicomedia (now Izmit)was also captured,in 1337. Orhan gave the command of it to his eldest son, Suleyman Pasha, who had directed the operations of the siege. In 1338 by capturing Scutari (now Üsküdar) most of Northwest Anatolia was in Ottoman hands. The Byzantines still controlled the coastal strip from Sile 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.
Then, there was a change of strategy in 1345. Instead of aiming to gain land from non-Muslims, Orhan took over a Turkish principality, Karesi (present Balıkesir and surrounds). According to Islamic philosophy of war, the areas under Islamic rule were to be abodes of peace and the other areas abodes of war. In abodes of war conducting a 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. 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 ofBursa, Nicomedia İzmit, Nicaea, İznik, and Pergamum (Bergama) 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 (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 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 1341-1347dissipated 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, The 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 (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.
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 Republic of Genoa possessed Galata, a separate Genoese city across the Golden Horn from Constantinople itself. The Genoese had fought the Byzantines earlier in 1348 when the Byzantines had decreased their customs tariffs in order to attract trade to the Byzantine side of the Golden Horn. In 1352 the rivalry for trade led to a war between Genoa and Venice. The Genoese, in trying to repel a Venetian fleet from destroying their ships in Golden Horn, bombarded the sea walls of Constantinople and pushed the Byzantines to ally with the Venetians. The Venetians assembled a large naval force, including hired fleets from Peter IV of Aragon and from the Byzantine Empire of John VI Cantacuzene. The sea battle between the Venetian fleet under the command of Niccolo Pisani and the Genoese fleet under Paganino Doria led to defeat of Venetians and their Byzantine allies. Orhan opposed the Venetians, whose fleets and piratical raids were disrupting his seaward provinces, and who had met his diplomatic overtures with contempt. The Venetians were allies of John VI, so Orhan sent an auxiliary force across the straits to Galata, which there co-operated with the Genoese.
In the midst of the distress and confusion that the Byzantine Empire now suffered, Orhan's eldest son, Suleyman Pasha, captured the Castle of Tzympe (Cinbi) in a bold move which gave the Turks a permanent foothold on the European side of the Dardanelles Straits. He also started to settle migrant Turcomans and town-dwelling Turks in the strategic city and castle of Gelibolu (Gallipoli), which had been devastated by a severe earthquake and was therefore evacuated by its inhabitants. Suleyman refused various financial inducements offered by John VI to empty the castle and the city. The emperor pleaded with his son-in-law Orhan to meet personally and discuss the matter, but the request was either rejected or could not be carried out due to Orhan's age and ill-health.
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 Tenedos; Cantacuzene's son Matthew was crowned as the co-emperor. But very soon John V returned from exile with Venetian help and conducted a coup, taking over the government of Constantinople. Although the two men came to an agreement to share power, John VI resigned from his imperial post and became a monk. Each of these two contestants for power was continually soliciting Orhan's aid against the other, and Orhan supported whichever side would benefit the Ottomans.
Last years
Theodora Kantakouzene, daughter of John VI and wife of Sultan Orhan (?).
Alphonse Mucha, “Byzantine Brunette,” 1897.
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, Khalil, 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.
The marriage took place in the summer of the same year. Her parents and sisters escorted her to Selymbria, where Orhan's representatives, including grandees of his court and a cavalry regiment, arrived on a fleet of 30 ships. A ceremony was held at Selymbria, where Orhan's envoys received her and escorted her to the Ottoman lands in Bithynia, across the Marmara Sea, where the actual wedding took place.
Theodora remained a Christian after her marriage, and was active in supporting the Christians living under Ottoman rule. In 1347 she gave birth to her only son, Şehzade Halil, who was captured by Genoese pirates for ransom while still only a child. The Byzantine emperor John V Palaiologos was instrumental in his eventual release. Later, Halil married Irene, a daughter of John V Palaiologos and Theodora's sister, Helena Kantakouzene.
Except for a three-day sojourn in Constantinople in February 1347, in the aftermath of her father's victory in the civil war, Theodora remained at the Ottoman court until Orhan’s death in 1362. After that, she apparently returned to Constantinople, where she lived with her sister, the Empress Helena, in the palace. She is last known to have been held imprisoned at Galata during the brief reign of Andronikos IV Palaiologos there in 1379-81.
In the mid-14th century, piracy along the Aegean Sea and the Marmara Sea coasts was widespread. The pirates usually kidnapped people for ransom. In 1357 they kidnapped Halil near İzmit (ancient Nikomedia) on the Marmara coast. It is not known whether they knew the identity of their prey beforehand, but upon learning it, they escaped to Phocaea (modern Foça) on the Aegean coast. Phocaea was a Byzantine fort recently captured from Republic of Genoa and commanded by Leo Kalothetos. Orhan appealed to the Byzantine emperor Andronikos IV Palaiologos to rescue his son. He offered to cancel Byzantine debts and promised not to support the Kantakouzenos family's claims on the Byzantine throne. Andronikos agreed and tried to rescue Halil, but Leo was reluctant and in 1358 Andronikos had to lay siege to Phocaea with a small fleet of three vessels (the expenses of which were paid by Orhan). He also called Ilyas Bey, the ruler of Saruhan (a small Turkmen beylik in west Anatolia formed after the disintegration of the Sultanate of Rum), for a joint operation against Phocaea. However Ilyas was playing both sides and planning to kidnap Andronikos during a hunting party. Nevertheless Andronikos was able to forestall his plans by arresting him. Without Saruhan collaboration, he lifted the siege. After the failure of the 1358 operations, Orhan came to Scutari (modern Üsküdar) on the Asiatic shore of the Bosporus for talks and agreed to pay 30,000 ducats as a ransom. In 1359, Halil was released.
Aftermath
As a part of the agreement, Halil was engaged to his first cousin, Irene Palaiologina, the 10-year-old daughter of John V Palaiologos. The Ottoman prince and Byzantine princess later married and had two sons. Since Halil's elder brother Şehzade Süleyman had already died, the Palaiologos family hoped to see him as the new ruler of the Ottoman beylik. But to their dismay, after Orhan’s death, Halil's brother Murad I was enthroned as the new bey. Although Halil tried to fight for the throne, he was executed in 1362 by his brother.
The Fall of Gallipoli (Turkish:Gelibolu'nun Fethi, lit. 'Conquest of Gelibolu') was the siege and capture of the Gallipoli fortress and peninsula, until then under Byzantine rule, by the Ottoman Turks in March 1354. After suffering a half-century of defeats at the hands of the Ottomans, the Byzantine Empire had lost nearly all of their possessions in Anatolia, except Alaşehir. Access to the Aegean and Marmara seas meant that the Ottomans could now implement the conquest of the southern Balkans, and could advance further north into Serbian Empire and Hungary.
Conquest
During the Byzantine civil war of 1352–57, Turkish mercenaries allied with the emperor John VI Kantakouzenos plundered most of Byzantine Thrace and, around 1352, were granted the small fortress of Tzympe near Gallipoli. On 2 March 1354, the area was struck by an earthquake that destroyed hundreds of villages and towns in the area. Nearly every building in Gallipoli was destroyed, causing the Greek inhabitants to evacuate the city. Within a month, Süleyman Pasha seized the site, quickly fortifying it and populating it with Turkish families brought over from Anatolia.
Aftermath
John VI offered cash payments to the Ottoman sultanOrhan to vacate the city, but was refused. The sultan reportedly said he had not taken the city by force and could not give up something which had been "granted to him by Allah". Panic spread throughout Constantinople as many believed that the Turks would soon be coming for the city itself. Because of this, Kantakouzenos's position became unstable, and he was overthrown in November 1354.
Gallipoli was to become the major bridgehead into Europe through which the Ottomans would facilitate further expansion into Europe. In less than ten years, nearly all of Byzantine Thrace had fallen to the Turks, including Adrianople.
The Byzantine {!} civil war of 1352-1357 marks the continuation and conclusion of a previous conflict that lasted from 1341 to 1347. It involved John V Palaiologos against the two Kantakouzenoi,John VI Kantakouzenos and his eldest son Matthew Kantakouzenos. John V emerged victorious as the sole emperor of the Byzantine Empire, but the resumption of civil war completed the destruction of the previous conflict, leaving the Byzantine state in ruins.
Background
In the aftermath of the 1341–1347 conflict, John VI Kantakouzenos had established himself as senior emperor and tutor over the young John V Palaiologos. This state of affairs however was not destined to last; supporters of the Palaiologoi still distrusted him, while his own partisans would have preferred to depose the Palaiologoi outright and install the Kantakouzenoi as the reigning dynasty. Kantakouzenos' eldest son, Matthew, also resented being passed over in favour of John V, and had to be placated with the creation of a semi-autonomous appanage covering much of western Thrace, which doubled as a march against the new Serbian Empire of Stephen Dushan.
Steadily deteriorating relations between Matthew Kantakouzenos, who now ruled eastern Thrace, and John V Palaiologos, who resided in western Thrace, sowed the seeds for the resumption of the civil war.
The War
Open warfare broke out in 1352, when John V, supported by Venetian and Serbian troops, launched an attack on Matthew Kantakouzenos. John Kantakouzenos came to his son’s aid with 10,000 Ottoman troops who retook the cities of Thrace, liberally plundering them in the process. In October 1352, at Demotika, the Ottoman force met and defeated 4,000 Serbs provided to John V by Dushan. This was the Ottomans’ first victory in Europe and an ominous portent.{?} Two years later their capture of Gallipoli marked the beginning of the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans, culminating a century later in the Fall of Constantinople. Meanwhile, John V fled to the island of Tenedos, from where he made an unsuccessful attempt to seize Constantinople in March 1353.
John VI Kantakouzenos responded by having Matthew crowned as co-emperor, but John V Palaiologos, enlisting Genoese support and relying on the declining popularity of Kantakouzenos, succeeded in entering the capital in November 1354. John VI Kantakouzenos abdicated and retired to a monastery. Matthew held out in Thrace making war upon the Serbs in 1356. Then Matthew gathered an army of 5,000 Turks and marched on Serres the Serbian held capital of John Ugleisha. Stephen Urosh V whose mother also ruled at Serres decided to raise an army to defend his mother and in 1357 when Matthew and his Turks attacked, The Serbian army under Vojin The Count of Drama (a major fortress in that vicinity) came to the rescue and the Turks were defeated and Matthew captured and held hostage until his ransom was paid by the Emperor John V Palaiologos who was now the sole master of a rump state. Matthew was allowed to go to the Morea and reign there with his brother Manuel.
Map showing the area of the Ottoman Empire during the reign of Orhan I and his conquests (W)
The Battle of Pelekanon, also known by its Latinised form Battle of Pelecanum, occurred on June 10-11, 1329 between an expeditionary force by the Byzantines led by Andronicus III and an Ottoman army led byOrhan I. The Byzantine army was defeated, with no further attempt made at relieving the cities in Anatolia under Ottoman siege.
~4,000 or less:
~2,000 soldiers from Constantinople, and something less than this number from Thrace.
~ 8,000
Clash and outcome
By the accession of Andronicus in 1328, the Imperial territories in Anatolia had dramatically shrunk from almost all of the west of modern Turkey forty years earlier to a few scattered outposts along the Aegean Sea and a small core province around Nicomedia within about 150 km of the capital city Constantinople. Recently the Turks had captured the important city of Prusa (Bursa) in Bithynia. Andronicus decided to relieve the important besieged cities of Nicomedia and Nicaea, and hoped to restore the frontier to a stable position. Together with the Grand DomesticJohn Cantacuzene, Andronicus led an army of about 4,000 men,which was the greatest he could muster. They marched along the Sea of Marmara towards Nicomedia. At Pelekanon, a Turkish army led by Orhan I had encamped on the hills to gain a strategic advantage and blocked the road to Nicomedia. On 10 June, Orhan sent 300 cavalry archers downhill to lure the Byzantines unto the hills, but these were driven off by the Byzantines, who were unwilling to advance further. The belligerent armies engaged in indecisive clashes until nightfall. The Byzantine army prepared to retreat, but the Turks gave them no chance.Both Andronicus and Cantacuzene were lightly wounded, while rumors spread that the Emperor had either been killed or mortally wounded, resulting in panic.Eventually the retreat turned into a rout with heavy casualties on the Byzantine side.Cantacuzene led the remaining Byzantine soldiers back to Constantinople by sea.
Consequences
The Battle of Pelekanon was the first engagement in which a Byzantine {!} emperor encountered an OttomanBey. The battle's effect on morale was more important than the battle itself as the heavily-armed and disciplined Byzantines had fled before the lightly-armed and irregular Turks. A campaign of restoration was aborted. Never again did a Byzantine army attempt to regain territory in Asia. The former imperial capitals of Nicomedia and Nicaea were not relieved and the maintenance of Imperial control across the Bosphorus was no longer tenable. The Ottomans conquered Nicaea in 1331 and Nicomedia in 1337, thus building up a strong base from which they eventually swept away the Byzantine Empire as a whole. The inhabitants of Nicaea and Nicomedia were quickly incorporated into the growing Ottoman nation, and many of them had already embraced Islam by 1340. With the capture of these cities and the annexation of the Beylik of Karasi in 1336, the Ottomans had completed their conquest of Bithynia and the north-western corner of Anatolia.
 son of Osman Second Emperor of the Turks in the year 1326 from an original picture in the seraglio.jpg)
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