Most of the bands, after settling for some years in the mountains of Armenia and in the upper valley of the Euphrates, were tempted by the death of Djenghiz Khan to return home. The steep mountains and narrow valleys of Rum had dissuaded them from trying for better luck farther west. It was too much up hill and down dale for their cattle.[3] The resolute and adventurous pushed on into Asia Minor, although in doing so they must have lost or have left behind most of their women and children and flocks. For they were small warrior bands, bent upon enlisting in the army of Alaeddin Kaï Kobad, the last illustrious sultan of the Konia Seljuk line--illustrious because he had not yet met the Mongols and was looked upon by the fugitives as a possible saviour and avenger. Even if they had not the intention of putting themselves under the protection of Alaeddin when they set their faces westward, they must needs have come into contact with him. For of the two roads into Asia Minor from Armenia, the upper one lay through Sivas and Angora, and the lower through Caesarea, Akseraï, and Konia. Whichever route they took would lead them through the Seljuk dominions. It is doubtful if Alaeddin viewed the appearance of these fighting bands with any other emotion than that of alarm. In spite of their undoubted skill as fighters, the Seljuk Sultan did not dare to enroll many of them in his army. If he were defeated in battle, or if he should die, he knew well that such vigorous mercenaries might upset his line. He could rely upon their fidelity neither against the Kharesmians with whom he was at that time fighting (many of them were from that Sultan’s country), nor against the Mongols with whom he must soon measure his strength. So he followed the policy dictated by prudence. Resisting the temptation of using them in his own army, he granted to their leaders as fiefs districts on the frontiers of his rapidly diminishing empire which were hardly his own to give, where they would have to work out their own salvation by mastering local anarchy in their respective ‘grants’, or, like the Israelites of Canaan, fight for what had been allotted to them, against the Byzantine Emperors of Nicaea. Under these circumstances, the tribe of destiny would be that which occupied the grant nearest Constantinople and the remnant of the Byzantine Empire. The Turkish tribe which settled on the borders of Bithynia, either by the direction and with the permission of Alaeddin Kaï Kobad,[4] or independently of the Seljuks of Konia,[5] was that whose first historic chief was Osman, the father of the Osmanlis. With the other Turkish tribes, which succeeded in establishing independent emirates, the Osmanlis did not come into contact until the reign of Orkhan. So it is unnecessary to trace their fortunes here.[6] III