Orhan I Ottoman Period
Preceded by Osman I	Ottoman Sultan 1326–1359	Succeeded by Murad I

Orhan I (Ottoman: اورخان غازی, Turkish: Orhan Gazi or Orhan Bey) (1284–1359), was the second bey, or chief, of the nascent Ottoman Empire (then known as the Osmanli tribe). He reigned from 1326 to 1359.

Orhan conquered most of western Anatolia and took part in the political upheaval of the decaying Byzantine Empire by marrying Theodora, the daughter of John VI Cantacuzenus the alienated guardian of Emperor John V Palaeologus. As the price of this still prestigious marriage, Orhan helped Cantacuzenus overthrow John V and his regents.

In 1354 Orhan's son, Suleyman Pasha (Süleyman Paşa), occupied Gallipoli (evacuated by its Greek population in the wake of an earthquake) and gave the Ottoman state a bridgehead into mainland Europe.

Passage of power

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, in the Ottoman language, 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 of his race in person, but he occupied himself with the foundation and management of the civil and military institutions of his country.

Government

Tughra of Orhan I
Orhan I was the first Sultan to use a tughra

According to some authorities, it was in his time, and by his advice, that the practices of assemblance of vassalage to the ruler of Konya, stamping money with his effigy, and using his name in public prayers, was discontinued by the Ottomans.

These changes are more correctly referred by others to Osman himself, but the vast majority of the oriental writers concur in attributing to Alaeddin the introduction of laws, which endured for centuries, respecting the costume of the various subjects of the empire, and of laws which created a standing army of regular troops, and provided funds for its support. 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

Main article: Janissary

Alaeddin, by his military legislation, may be truly said to have organized victory for the Ottoman dynasty. He organised for the Ottoman Empire a standing army of regularly paid and disciplined infantry and horse, a full century before Charles VII. of France established his fifteen permanent companies of men-at-arms, which are generally regarded as the first standing army known in modern military.

Orhan's predecessors, Ertughrul and Osman, 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 and improve 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, under their respective decurions, centurions, and colonels. 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 Alaedelain and Kara Khalil Candarli (of House of Candar), who was connected with the royal house by marriage. Tschendereli laid before his master and the vizier a project. Out of this, arose the renowned corps in the Janissaries, which was considered the scourge of Christendom for a long time, as well as the terror of their own sovereigns—until it was abolished by sultan Mahmud II in 1826.

Candarli proposed to Orhan to create an army entirely composed of the children of conquered places. Candarli 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 alleged 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 out of the families of the Christians whom he had conquered, a thousand of the finest boys. In the next year a thousand more were taken, and this enrolment of a thousand Christian children was continued for centuries, until the reign of Sultan Mehmet IV., in 1648.

Some Ottoman historians eulogise with one accord the wisdom and piety of the founders of this institution. They boast that three hundred thousand children were delivered from the torments of hell by being made Janissaries. They reckon on the number of conquerors whom it gave to earth, and of heirs of paradise whom it gave to heaven, on the hypothesis that, during three centuries the stated number of a thousand children, enlisted.

Politics

Initial expansion

Orhan had captured the city of Bursa in the first year of his reign (1326); and with the new resources for warfare which the administrative genius of his brother placed at his command, he speedily signalized his reign by conquests still were important. He defeated the Byzantine emperor Andronicus III at the Battle of Pelekanon in 1329. The city of Nicaea (second only to Constantinople in the Greek Empire) surrendered to him after a three-year siege in 1331. The city of Nicomedia was also captured in 1337. Orhan gave the command of it to his eldest son, Suleyman Pacha, who had directed the operations of the siege. Numerous other advantages were gained over the Greeks and the Turkish prince of Karasi (the ancient Mysia), who had taken up arms against the Ottomans, was defeated. His capital city, Berghama (the ancient Pergamus) and his territory, annexed to Orhan's domains. On the conquest of Karasi, in the year 1336, nearly the whole of the North-West of Anatolia was included in the Ottoman Empire, and the four cities of Bursa, Nicemetha, Nice, and Pergamus had become strongholds of its power.

Consolidation period

A period of twenty peaceful years followed the acquisition of Karasi. 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, which still stand.

Orhan paused over each subdued province, until, by assimilation of civil and military institutions, it was fully blended into the general nationality of their empire. They thus gradually moulded, in Anatolia, a homogeneous and stable power. This policy is credited with securing the relatively long endurance of the Ottoman Empire, compared to other Oriental empires, both ancient and modern.

This policy was less carefully followed subsequently in European Turkey, Syria, and Egypt. The Ottomans never achieved the strength in their territories West of the Hellespont and South of Mount Taurus that they enjoyed in Anatolia.

Anatolia is regarded by the Turks as their stronghold in the event of further national disasters. They passionately call it "the last home of the faithful". The general diffusion of Turkish populations over Anatolia, before Osman's time, must unquestionably have greatly promoted the solidity as well as the extent of the dominion which he and his successor there established. But the far-sighted policy, with which they tempered their ambition, also caused permanent descendants, and their remote descendants still experience its advantageous operation.

The friendly relations which Orhan formed with the Andronicus III Palaeologus, and maintained (though not without interruption) with that prince and some of his successors, caused a long twenty year period of general repose to the Ottoman power.

But as the civil wars distracted the last ages and wasted the last resources of the Greek Empire, the auxiliary arms of the Turkish princes were frequently called over and employed in Europe. In 1346, The Emperor 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 daughter in marriage to their rule, despite differences of creed, and the disparity of age between the young princess and the Turk (who was at that time a sixty-year-old widower).

The splendour of the wedding between Orhan and Theodora is elaborately described by Byzantine writers. But in the following year, during which the Ottoman bride groom visited his imperial father-in-law at Scutari, the suburb of Constantinople on the Asiatic side of the Bosporus, scenes of less pleasing character to the Greeks ensued. Orhan's presence protected the Greek Emperor and his subjects during the display of festive splendour which Scutari exhibited at the meeting of the sovereigns. But when Orhan had returned to his Bithynian, some Ottoman bands crossed the Hellespont, and pillaged several towns in Thrace. After a series of encounters, they were all killed or taken by the superior forces sent against them.

Advances of Suleyman

Main article: Suleyman Pasha (son of Orhan)

Soon the hostilities between the troops of Orhan and those of his father-in-law led to a war between the two great maritime republics of Venice and Genoa along with almost every coast of the Mediterranean and its connected seas, and led to the settlement of the Ottomans in Europe.

The Genoese possessed Galata, the European suburb of Constantinople, and the Bosporus was one of scenes on which the most obstinate contests were held between their fleets and those of their rivals. Orhan hated the Venetians, whose fleets had insulted his seaward provinces, and who had met his diplomatic overtures with contempt, as if coming from an insignificant barbarous chieftain. The Venetians were allies of Cantacuzene, but Orhan sent an auxiliary force across the straits to Galata, which there co-operated with the Genoese. Orhan also aided the Emperor's other son-in-law, John Palmagus in the civil war between him and the Byzantine Emperor.

In the midst of the distress and confusion with which the Byzantine Empire was now oppressed, Orhan's eldest son, Suleyman Pasha, captured the Castle of Tzympe (Cinbi) in a bold move (1356), which gave the Turks a permanent foothold on the European side of the Hellespont. Orhan followed his son's act with the first Ottoman conquests in Europe.

This military victory over the Byzantines was strengthened by the opportunities provided in the perpetual dissensions that raged between Cantacuzene and his son-in-law Palaeologus –- each of whom was continually soliciting Orhan's aid against the other, and obtaining that aid according to what seemed best for the interests of the Turkish sovereign, who was the real enemy of them both.

Last years

Orhan only lived three years after the capture of Tzympe and Gallipoli and died in the year 1359 at the age of seventy-five, after a reign of thirty-three years. During his reign, some of the most important civil and military institutions of his nation were founded, and the Crescent was not only advanced over many of the fairest provinces of Asia, but was also planted on the European continent, where its enemies have since sought to dislodge it for five centuries.

References

• Incorporates text from "History of Ottoman Turks" (1878)

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