After 1308 the energies of the Osmanlis seem to have been directed against Nicaea and Brusa. The fall of Brusa is the only other event recorded during the lifetime of Osman. Just when and how Brusa fell cannot be stated with precision. We shall find the same difficulty later in connexion with the fall of Nicaea and Nicomedia. The Turkish traditions, as Seadeddin gathered them, state that Osman besieged Brusa with a great army in 1317. He erected a fortress near Kaplidja, and put his nephew, Ak Timur, in charge of it. A second fortress, either erected by Osman or captured by him, was put in care of Balaban, ‘his most faithful follower.’ Kaplidja, now known as Tchekirdje, celebrated for its hot baths,[82] is on a ridge not more than a mile from the citadel of Brusa. It commands the approach from the port of Brusa, not far from where the road must cross the river. Traditional remains of the second fortress are still to be seen on a foothill of Mount Olympus, about two miles south-east of the citadel. Of the actual fall of Brusa there is no definite statement in Seadeddin except that the city surrendered to Orkhan, who brought the news to his dying father. As Osman died in 1326, there is a gap of nine years to be accounted for between the investment of the city and its capture. To one who has studied the contour of this country and the nearness of the two fortresses to the citadel of Brusa it is clear either that Brusa was surrounded or fell very soon after the Osmanlis settled garrisons at the gates of the city, or that some _modus vivendi_ was arranged between the Osmanlis and the local garrison during those years. A decade has been the conventional period for legendary sieges since Homer sang of Troy.