Orhan I was the second ruler of the Ottoman Empire (B. 1281 or
1288 Söğüt – D. April 1362, Bursa). Among other Ottoman Sultans, Orhan Ghazi
was the only sultan whose name was of a Turkic origin. He was also known as Gazi, Şücaüddin, Seyfüddin.
His father was Osman Ghazi, the founder of the Ottoman dynasty and his mother
was Mal Hatun, who was the first wife of Osman Bey and the daughter of the
Seljuk Vizier Ömer Abdülaziz Bey. He was the first one to earn and use title
like “sultan”, “khan”, “seyfüddin” and şücâuddin”. Orhan Ghazi, also known as
Sultan Orhan, got married to Nilüfer Hatun (also known as Holofira), who was
kidnapped by his father Osman Bey during her wedding at Kaldırakdere and the
daughter of the Byzantine ruler (Tekfur) of Bilecik. In the Ottoman dynasty,
Orhan Ghazi was the first sultan to marry a foreign woman.
In 1324, when he was 36 or 43 years old, Orhan Ghazi succeeded
Osman Ghazi and became the margrave of the Ottoman Principality. Orhan Bey, who
was a military genius, made a name for himself in a very short time. He was
counseled by Alaâddin Pasha who was a member of the ulama (T.N. a scholar
class) and the son of vizier Hacı Kemâlüddin and by Alâaddin Pasha, who was his
brother and vizier, by vizier Lala Şahin Pasha and by Çandarlı Kara Halil who
was kadi (T.N. Muslim judge) of Bileck and then of Bursa. He owed his fame to
utilizing their experiences in life. Ottoman Principality was organized during
the Orhan Bey reign.
With the help of Köse Mihal, Turgut Alp, Şeyh Mahmut, Ghazi Mihal
Bey and Ahi Hasan, on April 6th, 1326 he captured Bursa which he had
blockaded for years and gave it to his son Murat under the name of Bey Sanjak. Thus, the capital of Ottoman Principality was Bursa, not
Yenişehir. Later, upon the advices of vizier Alâadin and kadi of Bursa
Cendereli (Çandarlı) Kara Halil, he was considered to have stamped Ottoman’s
first coin in 1327 and it was the most important symbol for the sovereignty.
However, since a coin with the image of Osman Bey was found, this judgment is
no longer valid. The first mint was established in Bursa during the reign of
Orhan Bey.
When the Byzantine realized that the Ottoman borders expanded
through Black Sea and Istanbul, they met with Orhan's troops at the present
towns of Darıca and Eskihisar, at a site then called Pelekanon. The Byzantine
Emperor was wounded in the battle and the Ottomans captured İznik (T.N. then
Nicaea) in 1329 or 1331. İznik was a holy city for the Byzantine and since
Orhan Bey knew it, he turned a church there called Haghia Sophia into a mosque
and founded Ottoman’s first university there. He assigned Scholar Kayserili
Molla Davut as the principal. The Byzantine tried to re-take the city but Orhan
Bey forced the Byzatine Emperor to flee. Upon this victory, Orhan Bey was
called the Sultan in the Europe and Islamic worlds. Later he tried to make
peace with the Byzantine. Meanwhile, he married Theodaro, daughter of the
Byzantine Emperor.
After making peace with the Byzantine, Sultan Orhan headed toward
Anatolia and took over a Turkish principality, the Karesids, centered in
Balıkesir in 1345. He marched towards Ankara in Anatolia in 1354 and captured
the city. Üsküdar was captured by the Ottomans, who expanded the borders till
Çandarlı in the south when they took over the last lands of the Byzantine in
the Southern Marmara Region. Uluğ Beyoğulları of Çandaroğulları joined the
Ottomans, too.
When the Byzantine Emperor, the father-in-law of Orhan Bey, asked
the Ottomans’ assistance against the Slavs and Bulgarians, Ottoman forces
entered Istanbul on February 3rd, 1347 and left the city then. In
1347 Süleyman Pasha (T.N. his eldest son) wanted to invade Imbros but he was
repelled. In 1349, Orhan Bey crossed to Rumelia for help, went until
Thessaloniki and took the town back from Slavs, then turned back again. In
return for his helps, the Byzantine Emperor gifted the Çimpe Castle (T.N.
Tzympe or Cinbi) on the European shores of
the Gallipoli peninsula to Süleyman Pasha, the commander of auxiliary forces,
in order to make their cross to Europe easier. This gift meant that Ottomans
then had a permanent foothold on the Rumelia legally, different from the
previous transitions. The important figure in the establishment of Rumelia,
Süleyman Pasha, died of an accidental fall from his horse in 1357 after he took
Lüleburgaz and Çorlu. Şehzade Murat continued the conquest of Rumelia after the
death of his brother, but Sultan Orhan couldn’t stand his son’s death and he
died in April, 1362 at the age of eighty-one.
Orhan Bey’s state depended on second class military forces, yaya
(T.N. infantry) and müsellem (T.N. cavalry) units, which were vanguards. The
main reason for the formation of these forces was that those units were not
always able to arrive in the campaigns in time or their success was limited for
they could not maintain sieges for a long time. Instead of cavalry force of
sipahis, a permanent and strong army composed of young Turkish people was
needed. Another reform by Orhan Bey was Janissary and Devshirmeh system for the
military forces. Murat I developed the Janissary organization and put the
devshirmeh system into practice.
Even though the military system was developed through the
end of Orhan’s reign and military units were built in the form of various
branches of a great community, it did not last for a long time. Since the
beginning of 1336, Orhan Bey had mosques, madrasahs, taverns and workhouses
built and established important foundations in Bursa. Orhan Bey decupled the
number of soldiers and population as well as the borders he succeeded from
Osman Bey. It was accounted that there were a population of approximately 3
million and more than thirty-two thousands soldiers in the state when he passed
away.
According
to some fundamental sources, Orhan Bey married four different women. However,
he didn’t have them as his wives all at the same time. Those wives and their
children were chronically: 1) Nilüfer Hâtun
(Holofira); daughter of the Prince of Yarhisar. She was converted to
Islam and changed her name as Nilüfer. She was the mother of Süleyman Pasha,
Murat I and Prince Kasım. 2) Asporça Hâtun,
the daughter of Emperor Andronikos III of Byzantium. She was converted to
Islam. She was the mother of Prince İbrahim and Fatma Sultan. 3) Theodora Hâtun; She wasn’t converted to Islam and
that marriage didn’t last for a long time. She was the mother of Prince Halil.
4) Eftandise Hâtun; the daughter of Mahmut Alp.
The
important scholars and scientist in the Ottoman during the reign of Sultan
Orhan were; Davud-i Kayserî, a teacher at the first university in İznik, and
then Alâaddin Esved (or Kara Hodja) the successor of Davudi-i Kayserî and
mastermind of yaya and müsellem, Çandarlı Kara Halil, first Kadi of Bursa and
Kazasker (T.N. judge of the army), Hasan-ı Kayserî and the important scholars
were Seyyid Ahmed-i Kebîr-i Rufâî, Karaca Ahmet, Ahi Evran and Musa Abdal.