The historian Laonikos Chalkokondyles lived in the time of Orhan son of Osman I, and wrote in his series 'Histories in ten books', which appeared after the death of Osman.
The story goes that Orhan, while he and his father lay on the deathbed, lured many soldiers with money, gathered what soldiery he could gather, and set off for Mount Uludağ.. and there he decided to fight his brothers Bazarlı Bey, Çoban Bey, Hamid Bey, Malik Bey, Savcı Bey and Alaeddin Pasha.
Alaeddin Pasha was the best of them and the most entitled to the throne.. and the notables of the state and its great men asked him to rule in fact and assume the throne of the sultanate.. but he had no desire for it.. he was already famous for religious piety, seclusion and asceticism.. closer to a man of worship than to a man of state.. but his gaze turned towards the throne, full of anxiety about what might happen after the death of Osman.. and his anxiety was justified.
Orhan began to win over the commanders of the Ottoman frontier marches to his side, and obtained the allegiance of most of them.. and then he set off to fight his brothers.. and he indeed got rid of Bazarlı Bey, Çoban Bey, Hamid Bey, Malik Bey and Savcı Bey.. and none remained but Alaeddin.
Orhan was told then by his advisers.. that Alaeddin posed no danger because he was ascetic where power was concerned.. moreover, killing him might provoke the anger of the common people.. because they looked upon him with reverence as a pious man.. diligent in obeying God.. so Orhan backed away from the idea of getting rid of him.. and decided to benefit from his popularity.. so he brought him and appointed him minister of the Ottoman state.. and Alaeddin became the first 'Grand Vizier' in history.. and that is the title borne by the prime minister in this state.
The truth is that Ala Pasha's post was an honorary one and nothing more, because he remained inclined to worship and seclusion.. while all the powers remained in the hands of Orhan.
And in Egypt, al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qalawun had triumphed over the sedition and extinguished it.. and arrested the emir Salar.. and Salar admitted that all that had happened was engineered by Baybars al-Jashankir.. so al-Nasir Muhammad sent him a force to arrest him.. he never resisted it at all.. and he stood before him and confronted him with what had happened.. and Baybars admitted his crimes, saying: 'My lord the sultan.. everything you said.. I did it, and nothing remains for me but the mercies of the sultan.'.. And here.. Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad decided to indeed relieve him of the troubles of life.. and ordered his execution.. while Salar died in prison.
The churches were reopened and the waters cleared once again.. but he was suddenly confronted with a new preacher from the Levant.. whom we know by the title 'Ibn Taymiyyah'.. coming to him with fatwas that would ignite the fire of sedition anew.. so he sent the jurists of Egypt to him to debate him.. so they debated him and overcame him.. and a council of judges, according to the four imams' schools of law, ruled to bar him from issuing fatwas.
But Ibn Taymiyyah left the council determined to issue fatwas! So Muhammad ibn Qalawun threw him into prison.
All these events are happening while Crusader campaigns come and go against Egypt.. never calming for a moment and never catching its breath for a moment.. yet it was a strong state that still stood and was victorious in all these campaigns.. and Orhan was ambitious to annex it and the Levant.. and he knew that he could not at present, nor with his existing forces.. so he decided to establish a new army.
The Janissary army.. the ones wearing the clothes of circus clowns in this picture.
And these Janissaries were small children.. the Ottomans would snatch them from the bosoms of their families in the cities they conquered.. or from poor families in Anatolia.. they would take their children by force.. and attach them to a special school.. training them in the arts of combat and war from their earliest years.
And when a Janissary soldier reached adolescence he would be the equivalent of a whole brigade of any ordinary army.. a fighting machine that knows no mercy.. they were taught from childhood that their father was the Ottoman sultan.. so this special forces unit began to emerge into the light.. and it fought without conscience or creed, sparing neither sheikh nor child.. and understanding nothing except carrying out the sultan's orders and protecting him.
Anyone who saw the film 'Dracula Untold'.. will find at the beginning of the film the Ottomans going to the cities they had occupied to take the tax and a proportion of their children by force.. this actually happened.. and it was called the 'law of the fifth'.. a law enacted by Orhan.. taking a fifth of the children of these lands as a due tax in addition to the financial tax.. and also taking by force all orphans and vagrants.. and attaching them to the Janissary school by coercion.
The Janissaries were forbidden to marry, to mix with society or to form friendships.. but they were taught a strict, extreme religious education.. and they looked upon the sultan as their father.. and were obliged to obey him whatever his orders and to protect him whatever the cost.
And in order to distinguish these troops from the rest of his army, Orhan thought of the vision attributed to his father, of 'the crescent that fell from the sky onto his chest' and so on.. so he made for them a red banner with a crescent in its centre.
And in Egypt.. after many mediations.. Muhammad ibn Qalawun released the prisoner Ibn Taymiyyah.. on condition that he leave the country.. so he departed for the Levant.. and decided to issue fatwas there.. so they imprisoned him too.
But the fatwas that had been unleashed had created discord and religious tension.. and left this prisoner with followers who began issuing fatwas in their turn.. and for the first time the disagreement turned into schism.. which would have a horrifying result.. that would last for about five centuries.. as we shall see later.
And in Anatolia, Orhan married the daughter of the Byzantine emperor.. and after her he married the daughter of the Roman emperor John VI.. and these two empires were constantly gnawing at each other.. with corruption and civil wars eating into them.. so it was a golden opportunity for Orhan to put his hands in the middle of them.. and through these two marriages... many emirates submitted to him.. and he besieged Nicaea to the point that its people began to die of hunger.
And then the Byzantine emperor, the father of Orhan's wife, changed, and a new emperor came.. who decided to save Nicaea.. so he went to it with a force of 4,000 soldiers.. Orhan withdrew from before it.. and the Roman forces of the father of his second wife advanced.. and the Byzantines almost indeed defeated the Romans.. had the Ottomans not spread the rumour that the Byzantine emperor had died in the battle.. so the Byzantine soldiers scattered and were seized with panic.. and the emperor withdrew to Constantinople.. and at that point Nicaea realised that there was no hope.. and its people were dying of hunger.. so it opened its gates and surrendered to the Ottomans.
And while the Ottomans were encamped on the borders of Gallipoli.. a violent earthquake struck the region.. demolishing its houses and its walls.. so the Ottomans entered it by a stroke of luck in March of the year 1354 AD.. and they were at the outskirts of Constantinople.
And in the last days of his life.. he was afflicted with gout like his father.. so Orhan withdrew from political life.. and charged his son Murad with administering the state 'administratively'.. and enjoined that rule after him should go to his eldest son and the commander of his armies.. Suleiman Pasha.. and after him Khalil Pasha.. and after them Murad Bey.
But after this injunction something strange happened.
Suddenly an unknown party paid one of the pirates.. in the Aegean Sea, so he kidnapped Khalil Pasha.. and Orhan was enraged at this with great fury.. and sent the Ottoman forces to free his son.. but the pirates in the Aegean Sea defeated them.. so he thought of sending the Janissaries.. but he feared to leave himself without a guard.. so Orhan found no solution but to seek the help of his father-in-law John V.. and they agreed that the Byzantine fleet would besiege the pirates' island.. and they would pay Khalil's ransom.. and bring him back.. and indeed this was done.. but Khalil returned wounded, ill and incapacitated.. unfit to rule.
Thus none remained but Suleiman Pasha.. who suddenly one day.. was found killed among the trees with his horse grazing near his corpse.. and the cause of death was a fatal blow with a blunt object to the head.. like a stone or a tree trunk.. and Suleiman was not easy prey for a stranger to approach and kill him, because he was a fighting horseman.. so they concluded that his horse had disobeyed his orders.. and bolted with him in a frenzy.. so his head struck a tree and he died.. or that the horse's hoof slipped.. so Suleiman fell and his head hit a stone.
Thus — by happy coincidence — none remained but Murad.. he was the only one of the three who escaped killing, death and assassination.. and in the year 1360, Orhan died.. and with a wide, triumphant smile.. Murad stepped forward and sat on the throne.. and assumed the rule of the Ottoman state in the year 1360.. and called himself:
'The Just King and the Ghazi Sultan, Father of Conquest, Ghiyath al-Dunya wa al-Din Murad Khan'...!
This is the one we know as 'Murad I'.
And Murad's ambition was to break Egypt so that he could occupy it.. but the Mamluk state was too strong for him.. after its affairs had settled in the era of al-Nasir Muhammad.. even amid the problems and internal conflicts that occurred after his death in the year 1341 AD.
So here Murad decided to play a new game.. exploiting the internal problems and the struggle of Egypt's authorities against one another.. which had occurred previously and in the era of King al-Ashraf Salah al-Din Khalil, son of King Sayf al-Din Qalawun.
And this game was malicious, cruel and violent.. causing the collapse of Egypt's most important port.. the burning of Alexandria.. and the weakening of the whole state economically.
And this game takes long to talk about.. so we will continue our talk about it later.
And there remains more of the talk.. to come.
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