The story of Soleiman Shah, prince of Mahan and leader of 50,000 families, living and ruling in the neighbourhood of Erzerum between 1224 and 1232, is very easy to disprove. The name of Mahan is often given to two cities, Dinewer and Nehawend.[673] It is rather the designation of a plain in which these two cities lay. In 1229, Sultan Djelaleddin, after his defeat by the Mongols at Mughan, passed the winter in the plain of Mahan. A certain Izzeddin was lord of the fortress there. He had been rebellious _some years before_, but was ‘now serving Djelaleddin devoutly’.[674] In the history of Djelaleddin, I find absolutely no mention of a Soleiman Shah in connexion with Mahan or any other place in that region. With 50,000 families, Soleiman Shah would have been a factor in Armenia between 1224 and 1232. For that is precisely the time when Djelaleddin, Sultan of Kharesm, his logical suzerain or his enemy, was struggling with the Seljuks of Konia in that very region! In 1229, Djelaleddin was at Erzindjian, and ravaged the whole country.[675] At the same time, a cousin of Alaeddin I, a very powerful ruler, Rokneddin, was lord of Erzerum, and was strong enough to be at enmity at the same time with Djelaleddin’s invading army and with Alaeddin of Konia.[676] Other Arabic historians, and the Seljuk historian of this period, confirm the history of Mohammed-en-Nesawi in its leading points, but they, no more than the historian of Djelaleddin, make any mention whatever of a Soleiman Shah, or of an Ertogrul.[677] Nor is Soleiman Shah and his family mentioned in any of the Arabic genealogies prior to the seventeenth century, although these exist in great numbers.[678] There is only one Ottoman genealogy prior to the tables of Hadji Khalfa.[679] The best authority on the western Turks, the late Léon Cahun, conservator of the Mazarine Library in Paris, declares that the Turkish tribes of the time of the purported Soleiman Shah and Ertogrul had no family ties. They knew no rank other than that of a man higher up in the army. In inheritance, the younger son got the land, and the older sons the movable possessions of the father. There were no family names; there are none to this day. The Turks who came into Asia Minor were without name or family. They wandered far and sold their services to get established family ties.[680] There is one more testimony concerning the humble origin of the Ottoman royal house. The different historians of the relations between Timur and Bayezid I all speak of the taunt flung by Timur at Bayezid concerning the Ottoman ruler’s lack of royal ancestors.[681] Bayezid never made any response to this taunt, and confined his boasting, which was by no means of a modest sort, to his own and his father’s achievements, and to his power as a European ruler. We cannot establish the ancestry of Osman. It is altogether probable that he had none of note, but was what Americans would call ‘a self-made man’.