The Early Ottoman Succession
-Jason
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The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest, and longest-lasting, states in human history. Founded circa 1299 and surviving until 1921 CE, the Ottomans controlled a multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire the Middle East, the Balkans, Crimea and southern Ukraine, the Caucasus region, and North Africa. The Ottomans started out a small group of Central Asian refugees thrust along the border between Christian and Muslim territory in Anatolia. However, creating a state and then passing it peacefully to a successor had not been worked out effectively in the first two centuries of the Empire.
Osman Gazi, or Osman I, is the father of the Ottoman state. He did not start out as an independent power, rather he was a frontier lord for the Seljuk Caliphate. Osman’s people, the Kayi Tribe of the Oghuz Turks, had fled before Genghis Khan’s Mongol Horde. His grandfather, Suleyman Shah, and father, Ertugrul, were Uc Beys, or lords, for the Seljuk Turks. Osman inherited the small territory around the town of Sogut in 1280 and this served as his basecamp for the expansion of his beylik, or territory. This was a perfect region for the new Bey to act as a Marcher Lord, a frontier fighter pushing into Byzantine lands. Osman was far enough away to not be worried about the fighting between the Seljuks, Mongols, and Mamluks to his east, he could concentrate on defeating his Christian enemies in relative peace.
Osman used many different tactics to achieve the expansion of his territory. Sometimes he conducted warfare against the Byzantines, and other times he acted as an ally for one side in their frequent civil wars. Osman was astute in his avoidance of warfare against fellow Muslims, even if neighboring Turkish non-Oghuz tribes raided his territory. He also used political marriages to gain power. In some cases, the Byzantines would sell bordering regions to Osman to avoid warfare altogether. His reign saw the expansion, and eventual independence, of the Ottoman lands. Osman also presented himself as a pious Muslim whose actions were for the growth and protection of the community. He reached out to many Muslim organizations and networked with them to enhance the reputation of the Ottomans.
By 1300, the Seljuk Turks were a shadow of their former strength and Osman declared himself Emir, or leader, of the House of the Ottomans. This was a major step for both himself and his people: he was no longer a subject of another power, but a ruler of his own making. Osman’s last major campaign was the capture of the city of Bursa in 1324. Bursa was located near the Byzantine capital of Constantinople and could allow Ottoman soldiers to cross the Sea of Marmara to raid in Europe and get them into position to seize more territory from the Greeks. Osman moved the Ottoman capital from Sogut to Bursa as this was a much larger and more defensible city. According to later chronicles, Osman lived only long enough to hear that the city had fallen to his forces. His son, and successor, Orhan, would have the first Emir buried within a new mosque specifically built in Bursa.
Unlike later transfers of power, there was no problem of succession from Osman to Orhan. Orhan and his brother Alaeddin agreed that Orhan was the rightful heir to the throne and no fighting took place between them. Alaeddin served as vizier, or advisor, for his brother and helped to change the nomadic organization of the Ottomans towards a functional, sedentary administration. Alaeddin also was instrumental in the creation of the Janissary Corps which gave the Sultan a highly trained (and mostly) obedient military force. Orhan and Alaeddin neglected to create a system by which power passed from one sultan to the next.
Usually, the Ottoman line of succession was inherited by the son who could get to his father’s body first. Orhan had no trouble doing this because he was on campaign with Osman. Orhan had only one surviving legitimate son, Murad I, and so civil war was avoided. Murad fought against the Byzantines, Serbians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, and Croatians. By 1380, Murad had expanded the empire considerably into Eastern Europe, but he had many enemies among his Turkish neighbors in Anatolia. Murad was killed either during, or immediately after, the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. Both of his oldest sons, Bayezid I and Yakub Bey, were also at the battle. Upon hearing word of their father’s death, Bayezid sent a message to Yakub asking to see him. When the younger brother arrived at the tent, Bayezid ordered his attendants to strangle him. Thus civil war was again avoided among Ottoman heirs by fratricide.
Like his predecessors, Bayezid I did not lay down the groundwork for succession during his reign; this would be an extremely costly mistake. Bayezid continued his father’s expansion into Eastern Europe and launched a series of limited wars against his Muslim neighbors. He conducted these wars in such a way as to appear that he was replacing unworthy rulers, rather than the simple territorial acquisitions they were. Bayezid had four sons and had sent them to different parts of the empire to learn how to govern. This was intended to give them a chance to gain skill in governing before their succession, but this caused jealousy among the brothers. Previously, the chosen heir ruled the territory closest to Bursa. This meant that he would be the first to arrive at the capital on news of his predecessor’s death, claiming the throne with the support of the viziers and Janissaries.
Bayezid made a grave mistake in creating tension with a neighboring king Timur, or Tamerlane as he is known in the West. Timur was of Turkish-Mongol descent and had carved a large empire between Afghanistan in the east and Anatolia in the west. Bayezid and Timur had been passing increasingly insulting letters back and forth to each other between the 1390s and 1401. This hostility turned into full-scale war when the Timurids invaded Bayezid’s territory. The Ottoman Sultan assembled his army and marched to Ankara. There his forces were defeated, and he was captured. Timur kept Bayezid as a prisoner and named Mehmed Celebi, the eldest son of Bayezid, as the new Ottoman Sultan. This led to the Ottoman Interregnum, a ten-year civil war between Mehmed and his three younger brothers. Despite his own experience of civil war, the new Sultan did not change Ottoman traditions around succession. It was not until 1595 that a true system of succession was designed, and enforced, ending Ottoman civil wars over who would be the next ruler.