It’s an English transliteration of the Turkish given name Othman, which in turn is the Turkish version of the Arabic given name Uthman ( عُثْمَان). ‘Othman’ is an archaic spelling, and we now spell this name ‘Osman’.
Osman I, as we now call him, was the founder of the Ottoman dynasty and the Ottoman Empire. He was born around 1255, the son of Ertuğrul, leader of the Turkic Kayı tribe. Ertuğrul led his people west from Central Asia into Anatolia, fleeing the Mongol expansion, and settled in the region around the town of Söğüt, in the wild borderlands between the Byzantine empire and the Sultanate of Rhum, last bastion of the once-great Seljuk Empire.
Osman became chief (bey, in Turkic), upon his father’s death sometime around 1280, and he almost immediately began a policy of expanding his lands at the expense of the Byzantine border lords, while avoiding conflict with his Turkic neighbours. He was able to occupy the fortresses of Eskişehir and Kulucahisar and capture the city of Yenişehir, a significant settlement.
The Seljuk Sultans of Rhum were Mongol vassals by this point but still maintained a nominal authority over the fractious Turkish beyliks. When the last Sultan was murdered in 1308 the Sultanate collapsed completely- Osman, as the most powerful of the Turkish Beys, declared himself Sultan, and while he was roundly ignored at the time as having no right to the title his descendants used that it to establish their authority over the other Beys.
By the time of his death in 1324 he had expanded the Ottoman Beylik to about five times the size it was when he became Bey.
The dark red area is (roughly) that ruled by Ertuğrul at the time of his death; the bright red ruled by Osman I at the time of his death.
His descendants built on this, expanding ever further westward into the crumbling Byzantine Empire and eventually uniting the Turkic tribes of Anatolia (usually by force of arms). After that they really went on the rampage.
From the founding of the Empire in 1299 to it’s collapse in 1922, the Ottoman Sultans could trace their lineage directly back to Osman I- and as such, the dynasty continued to be named after him.
0 Comments