Ottomans

   Turkish dynasty founded by Osman (q.v.), son of Ertoghrul. Osman established a small emirate ca. 1282 around Eskishehir (Byzantine Dorylaion [q.v.]), amid the crumbling Seljuk (q.v.) state. From there he raided into Bithynia (q.v.), defeating a Byzantine army at the battle of Bapheus (q.v.) in 1302. Orhan (q.v.) captured Prousa in 1326, Nicaea in 1331, and Nikomedeia (qq.v.) in 1337. It was Orhan, responding to requests from John VI Kantakouzenos (q.v.), who introduced Ottoman troops to European soil during the civil war of 1341-1347. In 1354 Orhan made Gallipoli (q.v.) a base of operations for expansion into Thrace (q.v.). Their subsequent ejection from Gallipoli in 1366 by Amadeo VI of Savoy (q.v.) proved only temporary. A decade later, Murad I (q.v.) possessed it again, this time for good. Adrianople (q.v.) fell in 1369 and became the Ottoman capital in 1377. Thessalonike (q.v.) surrendered in 1387, and after the battle of Kosovo Polje (q.v.) in 1389 the Ottomans made Serbia (q.v.) a vassal state. The defeat of the Crusader army by Bayezid I atNikopolis (qq.v.) in 1396 further demonstrated the weakness of western arms against Ottoman armies strengthened with janissaries (q.v.). In Asia Minor (q.v.) Bayezid's attack on Saruhan and other Turkish emirates (qq.v.) was reversed by his capture by Timur at the battle of Ankara (qq.v.) in 1402. From 1402-1413 the Ottoman state collapsed into civil war between the sons of Bayezid, Musa and Suleyman Celebi (qq.v.). Not until the reign of Murad II, son of Mehmed I (qq.v.), did Ottoman expansion resume. Thessalonike was captured for the second time in 1430, much of Serbia was annexed by 1439, and at Varna (q.v.) in 1444 another Crusader army was annihilated. It was left to Mehmed II to conquer Constantinople (qq.v.) in 1453 and transfer the Ottoman capital there from Adrianople. Mehmed II conquered the last Byzantine outposts of Mistra in 1460 and Trebizond (qq.v.) in 1461, by which time the Ottomans had established themselves as a powerful empire extending into eastern Europe.