TURKOMANS BETWEEN TWO EMPIRES: THE ... - Bilkent University

legitimization tool on the one hand, and through the offering of generous booty to their
tribal comrades on the other. 239 Halil Đnalcık evaluates the Turkish expansion towards
Byzantine territories and the formation of Ottoman Principality in four stages:
1) it began with the seasonal movements of Turkoman nomadic groups in the
Byzantine coastal plains; 2) it was intensified by the organization of small
raiding groups under ghazi leaders, mostly of tribal origin, for booty raids or for
employment as mercenaries; 3) it continued with the emergence of successful
leaders capable of bringing together, under their clientship, local chiefs to
conquer and then establish beyliks (principalities) in conquered lands on the
model of the principalities founded in the old Seljukid frontier zone; and finally
4) with the involvement of these ghazi-beyliks, with their definite political and
economic aims, in the regional struggle for supremacy in the Aegean and in the
Balkans, the previously undirected thrusts of the war bands became focused on
new goals. 240
The emergence of Osman as a significant regional power, therefore, corresponds
to the third stage in Đnalcık’s scheme. As indicated above, for Osman and Orhan, the
capability of bringing together fragmented small tribal gāzi-warrior groups under his
clientship lied in the successful usage of gazā ideology and fruitful raids, which offered
ample booty to raiders. 241
1986, 151-161; Colin Imber, “What Does Ghazi Actually Mean”, The Balance of Truth; Essays in Honour
of Professor Geoffrey Lewis, eds., Çiğdem Balım-Harding and Colin Imber, Istanbul: ISIS, 2000, 165-
178; Rudi Paul Lindner, “What Was a Nomadic Tribe?”; “Stimulus and Justification in Early Ottoman
History”, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 27/2, 1987, 207-224; Lowry, The Nature of the Early
Ottoman State.
239 Pachymeres states that upon Osman waged violent raids on Byzantine territory Turkoman fighters or
gāzis started gathering under his banner. (Cited in Đnalcık, ”The Emergence of Ottomans”, p. 267; “Osman
I”, DIA, p. 449.) We learn from Cantacuzenus that when a beg embarked on a gazā expedition the gāzis
from neighboring principalities would join his troops; and the beg, on his own terms, would willingly
accept these gāzis in his troops. (Cited in P. Lemerle, L’émirat d’Aydın, Byzance et l’Occident.
Recherches sur la geste d’Umur Pacha, Paris, 1957, pp. 212-3.) After his victory against Byzantine
imperial army in Baphaeon in 1301, Osman’s fame even spread to distant Muslim countries, which
augmented the influx of gāzi-warriors into Osman’s territory. For the Battle of Bapheus and its
consequences, see Halil Đnalcık, “Osman Gazi’s Siege of Nicea and the Battle of Bapheus”, in The
Otoman Empire (1300-1389), ed. Elizabeth Zachariadou, Rethymnon: Crete University Pres, 1993, 77-98.
Also consider Đnalcık, “Osman I”, DIA, p. 446.
240 Đnalcık, "The Question of the Emergence of the Ottoman State", pp. 74-5.
241 For some recent assessments of the construction of the Ottoman state, see Kafadar, pp. 118-150;
Lowry, The Nature of the Early Ottoman State.
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