2. THAT OSMAN BEGAN HIS CAREER AS A VASSAL OF ALAEDDIN III, SULTAN OF ICONIUM, UPON WHOSE DEATH, IN OR ABOUT 1300, OSMAN AND NINE OTHER TURKISH PRINCES DIVIDED THE INHERITANCE OF THE SELJUCIDES; THAT OSMAN PROVED MORE POWERFUL THAN THE OTHER PRINCES, AND FOUNDED AN EMPIRE UPON THE RUINS OF THE SELJUCIDE EMPIRE. When I call this statement, in its entirety, a misconception, I realize that I am attacking the idea of the founding of the Ottoman Empire which has been voiced by the most eminent historians and has an accepted and unquestioned place in textbooks and encyclopaedias, and in general histories. In a French translation of Chalcocondylas, published in 1662, under the woodcut of Osman, we find these four lines: ‘De simple Capitaine en des Pays déserts, Près du grand Saladin la Fortune m’attire; Et là de ses débris je fonde cet Empire, Qui menace aujourd’huy d’engloutir l’Univers.’ I quote this verse because it seems to me to express concisely the commonly accepted idea of the foundation of the Ottoman Empire, as I find it written everywhere. Hammer, whose eighteen volumes contain a wealth of material upon the Ottoman Empire not elsewhere to be found, and who shows remarkable erudition as well as care and critical powers, perpetuates the tales about Ertogrul and Osman and the court of Konia. He makes the categorical statement, ‘The empire of the Seljuks broke up, and on its ruins arose that of Osman’.[682] Creasy has popularized the opinion of Hammer in the English-speaking world.[683] Lane-Poole, who has written the only general history of the Ottoman Empire in English in our generation, has tacitly accepted the common tradition.[684] Zinkeisen and Jorga, the only later historians whose names can be coupled for scholarly work with that of Hammer, are most unsatisfactory in their failure to take up critically the Ottoman traditions of the early days of the Empire.[685] Leunclavius, the sole writer in Western Europe before Hammer, whose work might be called ‘scientific’, discusses exhaustively and compares critically all authorities existing at his time (1590) on most minute points of early Ottoman history, but is almost silent on the grave inconsistencies and contradictions arising from the question of the relation between the Osmanlis and the Seljuks of Konia.[686] There is the same silence in Cantemir and his translators.[687] The latest Ottoman historian says: ‘Osman’s military and political career naturally divides itself into two parts, that in which he was vassal of Alaeddin, and that in which he became sultan.’[688] An Oriental whose work has enjoyed great vogue in France declares: ‘Osman pursued through every obstacle the realization of his plan, which consisted in founding upon the ruins of the Seljuk Empire a great, free, and independent state.’[689]