The Balkans: A History of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—TurkeyHogarth, D. G. (David George)
History
The Balkans: A History of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey
Hogarth, D. G. (David George)
Balkan Peninsula -- History; Eastern question (Balkan)
Hardly were his tribesmen settled, however, among the Bithynians and
Greeks of Yenishehr, before the Seljuk collapse became a fact. The
Tartar storm, ridden by Jenghis Khan, which had overwhelmed Central
Asia, spent its last force on the kingdom of Konia, and, withdrawing,
left the Seljuks bankrupt of force and prestige and Anatolia without an
overlord. The feudatories were free everywhere to make or mar
themselves, and they spent the last half of the thirteenth century in
fighting for whatever might be saved from the Seljuk wreck before it
foundered for ever about 1300 A.D. In the south, the centre, and the
east of the peninsula, where Islam had long rooted itself as the
popular social system, various Turki emirates established themselves on
a purely Moslem basis—certain of these, like the Danishmand emirate of
Cappadocia, being restorations of tribal jurisdictions which had
existed before the imposition of Seljuk overlordship.
In the extreme north-west, however, where the mass of society was still
Christian and held itself Greek, no Turkish, potentate could either
revive a pre-Seljukian status or simply carry on a Seljukian system in
miniature. If he was to preserve independence at all, he must rely on a
society which was not yet Moslem and form a coalition with the
‘Greeks’, into whom the recent recovery of Constantinople from the
Latins had put fresh heart. Osman, who had succeeded Ertogrul in 1288,
recognized where his only possible chance of continued dominion and
future aggrandizement lay. He turned to the Greeks, as an element of
vitality and numerical strength to be absorbed into his nascent state,
and applied himself unremittingly to winning over and identifying with
himself the Greek feudal seigneurs in his territory or about its
frontiers. Some of these, like Michael, lord of Harmankaya, readily
enough stood in with the vigorous Turk and became Moslems. Others, as
the new state gained momentum, found themselves obliged to accept it or
be crushed. There are to this day Greek communities in the Brusa
district jealously guarding privileges which date from compacts made
with their seigneurs by Osman and his son Orkhan.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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