BURSA 1317–1326

 

Forces Engaged

Byzantine: Unknown. Commander: Unknown.

Turkish: Unknown. Commander: Osman I and then Orkhan.

Importance

The capture of Bursa established Osman I (Othman) and his successors as the major power in Asia Minor, beginning the Ottoman Empire.

Historical Setting

The peoples known as Turks originated not in the Turkey of today but in Turkestan in central Asia. In the middle of the sixth century a.d., they formed themselves into a large tribal confederation and then shortly thereafter split into eastern and western factions. The eastern Turkic tribes interacted strongly with the Chinese, most notably the T’ ang dynasty, and alternately aided or were defeated by the Chinese. The western Turkic tribes, however, were better known as conquerors for their occupation of territory stretching from the Oxus River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Their first major entry into western history came with their contact with Arabs spreading Islam past Persia and toward central Asia. The pastoral Turks became exposed to the civilizations of Persia and the Byzantine Empire and began a gradual conversion to western religions, mainly but not exclusively Islam. Soon Turkic soldiers served in Moslem armies, either as volunteers or as slave soldiers, forerunners of the Mamluks or the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire. They soon became ghazi, or border warriors, hired by Moslem governments to protect the northeastern frontier. At this point, the western Turks also split, the eastern faction becoming the Ghaznavids and the western becoming the Seljuks.

Most of the Turks embraced the more orthodox Sunni branch of Islam, and they spread the faith as well as practiced it. Based out of the city of Ghazna (some 90 miles southwest of modern Kabul, Afghanistan), the Ghaznavids in the tenth and eleventh centuries spread their power and religion eastward into India. Their most notable achievement was the introduction of Islam into India, though their use of forced conversions often made them more feared than welcomed. They were defeated not by Indian resistance but by the Seljuks.

Named for its first major leader, Seljuk or Selchuk, the western Turkic tribes also served Moslem governments. Their position on the Asian frontier attracted growing numbers of Islamicized Turkic tribes, and soon the land grants ceded by the Moslems proved inadequate for the needs of so many pastoral people. Their growth in numbers gave them an increased military strength as well as a growing need for grazing lands. As the Moslem Buyid dynasty grew weak and the Ghaznavids looked toward India, the Seljuks found conquest of the lands west of Persia relatively simple. They defeated the Ghaznavids in 1040 and then occupied Baghdad in 1055. They did not take the city to pillage it but to return it to Sunni control from the less orthodox Shi’ites. The marriage of the Seljuk chief to the sister of the caliph, and his resulting promotion to the position of sultan, established the Seljuks as the premiere military and political force in the Middle East.

Filled with religious zeal, the Seljuks conquered Armenia, the Levant, and into Asia Minor; Malik Shah, the most successful Seljuk military leader, scored a major victory over Byzantine forces at Manzikert in 1071. In spite of their desire to reestablish the Sunni sect of Islam, the Seljuks did not undertake the practice of forced conversions, which the Ghaznavids did in India. Though they made subjects of Christians and Jews, they did not persecute them; the Seljuks followed Mohammed’s teachings of religious tolerance. Once established in Asia Minor, they chose as their capital city Konia, a site occupied since the Hittites at the dawn of recorded history. It became a center for culture and learning. The orthodoxy of the Sunni Seljuks frightened Europeans, who rejected peaceful interaction in favor of militant Christianity and mounted the Crusades. Although the Crusades brought about no lasting European presence in the Middle East, and the Seljuks remained in power, they finally were doomed to destruction in the same manner that brought them to power: invasion from central Asia, the Mongols of the thirteenth century. Their occupation of Asia Minor ultimately weakened the Byzantine Empire to the point that it fell to the successors of the Seljuks, the Ottoman Empire.

The Campaign

The formation of the Ottoman Empire was very much a matter of timing and location. In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the power of the Mongols had waned, as had that of the Byzantine Empire. In the region in and around Asia Minor, a power vacuum formed. The people living in Asia Minor were basically still a steppe society, uncomfortable with a settled lifestyle and militarily aggressive. Such a combination had served to keep the Seljuks from ever establishing an extended dominion; attempts by political leaders to convince the people to settle down and pay taxes resulted in rebellion. The Turks followed strong leaders, no matter their birth, and, for a strong leader to maintain his following, he needed conquests to keep his people occupied and provide operating capital.

Osman I (or Othman) became the main prince of Asia Minor who attracted warriors. His land, awarded to him in 1290 for service to the Seljuks, was based on the town of Sorgut, supposedly established as a regional stronghold by Hannibal. Sorgut was located southeast of Constantinople, fairly near the Sea of Marmora. This meant that Osman’s lands abutted the frontiers of the Byzantine Empire. That location was the primary reason that warriors flocked to his banner; fighting Christians was more honorable and lucrative than fighting fellow Turks. Osman’s campaigns against the Byzantines were at times mere raids for loot and at other times intentional territorial acquisitions, and they both attracted the attention of Constantinople. Of all the Asia Minor princes, Osman was deemed the greatest threat.

Osman focused his attentions on three primary targets: Nicaea (modern Iznik), Nicomedia (modern Izmit), and Bursa (modern Bursa). He first laid siege to Nicaea in 1301. This action attracted the attention of the Byzantine emperor Andronicus II to him. The Byzantine government dispatched a force of 2,000 men to relieve the siege, but Osman ambushed and destroyed them at Baphaeon. The local population evacuated the country-side and fled to Nicomedia. The emperor hired some Alan mercenaries to deal with Osman, but they too were defeated (1302 and 1304). Osman was unable, however, to overcome either Nicaea or Nicomedia, so he returned to raiding.

Bursa had once been a town as important as Nicaea and Nicomedia, but after the invasion of the Goths in the third century only the latter two were restored under Byzantine rule. Just before Constantine established the empire and Nicaea was still the regional capital, Bursa had its walls restored. It was such a good job of reconstruction that, when Osman began his siege in 1317, the town held out for more than 9 years. As to the details of the siege of Bursa, almost nothing exists. It was a long siege, and that is about all that can be said, other than some sources say it may have been intermittent rather than continuous. When it fell on 6 April 1326, Osman lay dying, so he never saw the inside of the city. His son, Orkhan, became the second leader of the dynasty that became known as the Ottomans. Upon his occupation of the city, he named it the capital of the emerging Ottoman Empire. Whatever damage that had been inflicted during the siege was quickly repaired and the town’s former elegance was restored. It became “a great city with fine bazaars and broad streets, worthy of the greatest of the Turkmen kings” (Muller, The Loom of History, p. 301).

Results

Although Osman was the father of the ruling line, it was Orkhan who really established the power of the Ottomans. He succeeded in capturing Nicaea in 1331 after beating back a Byzantine relief force and then he took Nicomedia in 1337. All of this served to attract even more warriors to the Ottoman cause. Although there were occasional periods of peace (Orkhan married a Byzantine princess), for the most part the Moslem Ottomans and the Christian Byzantines were at odds. Orkhan’s son Suleiman led troops across the Dardanelles to conquer Thrace, and the empire’s capital was transferred from Bursa to Adrianople. In 1453, another of Osman’s descendants, Mehmet, captured Constantinople. He renamed the city Istanbul and it remained the capital of the Ottoman Empire until its demise in 1919.

The Ottomans succeeded where the Seljuks failed because they were able to overcome their nomadic heritage. “The astonishing achievement of the Ottomans was breaking the cycle of birth, short life, then dissolution that characterized the earlier nomadic empires” (McCarthy, The Ottoman Turks, p. 36). This was the result primarily of the uncanny abilities of the first nine Ottoman sultans, who put together a 200-year chain of able rulers. By maintaining war against the Byzantines, then the Christians of southeastern Europe, and then the Shi’ites of Persia, the Ottomans were able to harness the warlike nature of their people. However, by adopting Christian/European advisors, military advancements, and technology, they gradually introduced a more settled lifestyle. The sultan ruled from the capital, and the provinces pretty much ruled themselves, but a common culture, religion, and economic life held the population together. Osman’s life of warfare against the Byzantines and his legacy of wisdom and strength in leadership turned the city of Bursa into an imperial capital and then, when it was left behind for bigger and better power centers, a beautiful city: “The successors of Orkhan beautified and sanctified the city by building mosques and tombs, the earliest Ottoman shrines” (Muller, The Loom of History, p. 301).

References:

Koprulu, Mehmet. The Seljuks of Anatolia. Translated by Gary Leiser. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992; McCarthy, Justin. The Ottoman Turks. New York: Longman, 1997; Muller, Herbert. The Loom of History. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958; Parry, V. J. A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976

The Vandals as a Naval Power

Later Roman  Liburnian type galley

Geiseric (428–477) was certainly the most important of the Vandal kings, and indeed was among the most influential figures of the fifth century Mediterranean world. It was under his watch that the Vandals crossed into Africa, and secured the two imperial treaties of settlement in 435 and 442. He established the position of the Vandals as a major naval power by commandeering the Carthaginian merchant marine, and was able to spread Vandal authority into Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and the Balearic Islands.

Fall of Carthage to the Vandals aggrieved the western and eastern empire, as there was a large number of galleys and a great shipyards in Carthage, creating the Vandal fleet as the equal to the joint navy of the two empires. That the empire ever allowed for so many galleys to be left in Carthage's port while the Vandals were so close by, must be one of the most monumental blunders of its history. For the first time in nearly 6 centuries, Carthage became the greatest danger to Rome since the Punic Wars.

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AD 468 witnessed the most ambitious campaign ever launched against the Vandal state in Africa, which deserves admiration for its logistical brilliance, if not its eventual result. A massive naval operation, under the command of the emperor’s brother-in-law Basiliscus, lay at the heart of this offensive, which was intended to strike directly at the Vandal capital. The statistics for this campaign given by sixth- and seventh-century historians are clearly grotesquely exaggerated, but even if we can reject Theophanes’ assertion that the fleet numbered 100,000 ships or even John the Lydian’s more modest (but still unlikely) figure of 10,000 ships, it is clear that the logistical operation was massive. Marcian ordered the extensive requisition of merchant shipping in eastern ports, including considerable numbers of Carthaginian vessels. Simultaneously, western troops were mustered under Anthemius or Ricimer, and Sicily was again taken by Marcellinus and his barbarian federates.

The mobilization of this campaign startled the inhabitants of Carthage into action. The Suevic and Gothic envoys in the city fled, and Geiseric rapidly deployed his own legates in an attempt to make peace. Quite what happened next is unclear, but Geiseric’s overtures apparently had some effect. In the early stages of the campaign, the imperial forces enjoyed some success, and may even have defeated Vandal ships sent out to intercept them. Crucially, however, Basiliscus delayed the crucial landing operations and kept his ships anchored at Mercurium off the African coast for five days. Various explanations for this delay circulated among later historians. Some suggested that Basiliscus had simply been bought off by Geiseric, others that Aspar had promised him the eastern throne if he agreed to sacrifice his fleet to the Vandal allies of the magister militum. Whatever the cause, the delay proved to be fatal. After a long stand-off, a shift in the wind allowed Geiseric to launch a fire-ship raid on the becalmed fleet. The effects were devastating. Basiliscus’ vast armada was scattered and the opportunity for a crippling blow at Carthage was lost.

As Basiliscus led his fleet towards the cataclysm of Mercurium, and Marcellinus occupied Sicily, a third front was opened up on the southern frontier of the Vandal kingdom. Drawing his army from the Byzantine troops and federates of Egypt, Heracleius led an expedition by sea against the Vandal coastal stronghold of Tripolis. Heracleius occupied the city, and then followed an overland route towards Byzacena, with the intention of uniting with Basiliscus in the Proconsular province. This expedition would have represented a considerable threat to the Vandal kingdom, but it seems to have been halted by news of Basiliscus’ defeat. Apparently demoralized, Heracleius led his army back to the relative safety of Tripolis. Tripolis remained in Byzantine hands until 470 when military pressures on the Balkan frontier, and political infighting at court, required that the troops in Africa be withdrawn. A formal peace treaty was probably signed in the same year.

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Constantinople: Evolution of an Imperial Capital

 

Constantinople: evolution of an imperial capital.

Constantinople imperial district.

The establishment by the Emperor Constantine I on the site of the ancient city of Byzantion of a new imperial capital in the year 324, and its formal consecration in 330, had far-reaching consequences for the pattern of exchange and movement of goods in the Aegean and east Mediterranean basin, as well as for the politics of the late Roman world. With the imperial court, a senate, and all the social, economic and administrative consequences of a major city, Constantinople soon grew to be the dominant city of the eastern Mediterranean region, rivalling Alexandria and Antioch in wealth, prestige, population and cultural influence. But the foundation of the new capital was not the radical break with tradition it is sometimes suggested: Diocletian had some years previously established his own residence and court at Nicomedia, not far to the south; while the establishment of regional locations for the emperors was a reflection of the needs of the tetrarchy. Constantine’s choice was probably based on strategic considerations, since his new capital was located where two major land routes met, both of strategic value: the via Egnatia, which crossed via Thessalonica to the Adriatic coast, and the military road from Chalcedon, opposite Constantinople, via Nicomedia to the east.

That the founder of the new imperial city envisaged a substantial population is evident from the fact of his arranging an annual grain supply from Egypt amounting to some 80,000 rations. Rapid growth certainly followed, with greatly expanded water-supply and accompanying structures (aqueducts, cisterns and so forth), grain-storage facilities, and residential areas. The pipes, channels and aqueducts bringing the city’s water reached over 80 miles out into the Thracian hinterland, and have still not been fully traced. The imperial headquarters was established with the construction of a palace complex, placed in the south-eastern corner of the original city, accompanied by a substantial hippodrome and a new city wall encompassing an expanded urban area. The major thoroughfare began at the palace in a colonnaded route constructed under the Emperor Septimius Severus (who rebuilt parts of the city after the destruction which occurred in the civil war of 195–196) and led through the circular Forum of Constantine across the city to the Golden Gate, a triumphal entry to the city in the southern section of Constantine’s new land wall. Successive emperors then embellished the city with their own monuments, including, for example, stoas, colonnaded streets, baths and other public amenities. In the period from the fourth to the seventh centuries some 40 public bath-houses were built, supplied by a series of vast cisterns, mostly open air constructions. The cistern of Aetius was among the largest and could hold some 160,000 m3 of water. By the same token the number of imperial and private mansions increased, so that by the early fifth century there were at least five imperial palaces of varying size and function, while the great palace itself continued to be added to and grew into an immensely complex labyrinth of buildings.

In later years the city was famed for its churches, although it seems that Constantine built only three (St Irene, which functioned as the city’s cathedral church, and the two churches dedicated to local saints, of St Acacius and St Mocius). But by the 420s there were some 14 churches, and the numbers increased in the following century. Just as they added to the secular ornamentation of the city, later emperors added to this number, and the most famous was built by Justinian in the mid-sixth century, the church of the Holy Wisdom, or Hagia Sophia (on the site of an earlier church of the same name destroyed in rioting).

The defensive walls destroyed by Septimius Severus were rebuilt during the later third century. Constantine began a new circuit further to the west enclosing an area twice as big again as the original city. Completed under his successor Constantius II, the absence of any substantial threat from the sea meant that no sea defences were constructed. The Gothic threat in the 370s and afterwards, the increasing exposure of the city to raids from beyond Thrace, and the rapid expansion of the city population and the needs of the imperial government changed this situation, and during the reign of Theodosius II the prefect Anthemius enclosed more land within the city and built the land walls which can be seen today, a massive three-level system with a moat, stretching for some 6 km from the Sea of Marmara to the Golden Horn. While the land-walls were begun in 412– 413, the seaward defences were not begun until the late 430s, but proved their worth in subsequent centuries.

The rapid expansion of Constantinople ground to a halt in the period from the mid-seventh to late eighth century as the empire lived through its centuries of crisis. But from the early ninth century on it began once more to expand both in terms of population and in respect of building activity. In the 530s the total population may have been as many as 500,000 (some estimates are even higher); by the middle of the eighth century, following a major plague in the 540s and endemic pestilence throughout the period up to the 750s, culminating in another major plague in the later 740s, the population may have been reduced to a low of as few as 30,000–40,000 (although all these figures are contentious). Thereafter it gradually rose again, until in the later eleventh and twelfth centuries it may have reached the levels of the early sixth century. The city saw several sieges – successful resistance to the Avaro-Slav siege of 626, the Arab sieges of 674–678 and 717–718, the Bulgar attacks of the early tenth century and attacks from Russian sea-raiders in the tenth and eleventh centuries proved the effectiveness of its defences. In 1204 the city fell by treachery to the forces of the Fourth Crusade, ostensibly en route to attack Islamic Egypt; and the sack that followed witnessed the removal or destruction of great numbers of monuments, as well as the burning of buildings and other forms of destruction which accompany such events. Recovered by the Byzantines in 1261, it remained in imperial hands as the empire shrank to the city and its immediate hinterland in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, to fall in May 1453 to the Ottoman army under Mehmet II after a siege of over two months.

Styles and fashion in building affected Constantinople as they affected any other built environment, and given the length of the city’s imperial history it is not surprising that a number of shifts can be seen in this respect. Most obviously, the secular aspect of imperial building diminished as emperors and members of the imperial family and court invested their wealth in churches, palaces and philanthropic establishments, many supported by generous endowments in land and property. Basil I is supposed to have rebuilt or restored over 30 churches in the period 867–886. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries many members of the imperial élite donated funds for the construction of monasteries or philanthropic establishments in the city, some of them vast, such as the great Orphanage of St Paul built and endowed by the emperors and reportedly requiring a whole day to inspect. But as well as such buildings the city also contained residential quarters, mansions for the wealthy, a vast range of trades and crafts and the accommodation required to produce and sell their wares, covered and open-air marketplaces, as well as imperial armaments workshops, docks and harbours for both military and civil purposes. From its nadir in the eighth century, when only one commercial harbour seems to have functioned, in the twelfth century the city could boast some four harbours and a larger number of quays along the shores of the Golden Horn for the various merchant communities who had commercial rights in the city, and in its later years was credited with 365 churches, an exaggeration, certainly, but indicative of its image and reputation.

The city was the site of imperial ceremonial events throughout the year, and many were staged as city-wide events. The prefect of the city had the authority to order individual households along any ceremonial route to contribute by hanging out precious fabrics and tapestries, for example, and the streets would be perfumed and decorated to honour the emperors. Ceremonial processions were generally of a religious character and marked key festivals of the church; but military parades, triumphs and the processing of captives and booty were also common. There were several favoured routes, but the most important was that which led to or from the imperial palace and the church of the Holy Wisdom, along the Mese or a parallel major street, to the Golden Gate.