Produced by Turgut Dincer, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) THE FOUNDATION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE [Illustration: CONQUESTS OF MURAD & BAYEZID IN THE BALKAN PENINSULA & OF BAYEZID IN ASIA MINOR] THE FOUNDATION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE A HISTORY OF THE OSMANLIS UP TO THE DEATH OF BAYEZID I (1300-1403) BY HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS, PH.D. SOMETIME FELLOW OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1916 PREFACE Four years of residence in the Ottoman Empire, chiefly in Constantinople, during the most disastrous period of its decline, have led me to investigate its origin. This book is written because I feel that the result of my research brings a new point of view to the student of the twentieth-century problems of the Near East, as well as to those who are interested in fourteenth-century Europe. If we study the past, it is to understand the present and to prepare for the future. I plead guilty to many footnotes. Much of my text is controversial in character, and the subject-matter is so little known that the general reader would hardly be able to form judgements without a constant--but I trust not wearisome--reference to authorities. The risk that I run of incurring criticism from Oriental philologists on the ground of nomenclature is very great. I ask their indulgence. Will they not take into consideration the fact that there is no accepted standard among English-speaking scholars for the transliteration of Turkish and Slavic names? Wherever possible, I have adopted the spelling in general usage in the Near East, and in English standard lexicons and encyclopaedias. When a general usage cannot be determined, I have frequently been at a loss.