Turks Take Gallipoli

Today’s installment concludes The Turks Establish Foothold in Europe,
our selection from Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches by Joseph Von Hammer-Purgstall published in 1835.

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Previously in The Turks Establish Foothold in Europe.

Time: 1354
Place: Gallipoli

Gallipoli, the key of the Hellespont, the commercial entrepôt of the Black Sea and of the Mediterranean, is celebrated in history by the siege that it sustained against Philip of Macedon, and by the revolt of the Catalans or Mogabars * who, half a century before the disaster, braved with impunity the power of the Greek Emperor and made it the center of their piracies. The tombs of the two Ottoman chiefs are still seen to-day. These two mausoleums are much visited by Mussulman pilgrims, and the reason of this pious veneration is due to the fact that here in this sacred place lie the ashes of the two generations to whom the Ottoman empire owes the conquest of a town, the possession of which facilitated the passing of the Turks into Europe. For the same reason all the surrounding country, which, during the blockade of the town, Adjebeg and his lieutenant Ghazi-Fazil had put to fire and sword, received the name of Adje Owa. The two beys, taking advantage of the terror caused by so many disasters, penetrated into the deserted towns and established themselves.

[* Obviously written before the even more celebrated, or at least remembered, campaign in World War I – JL]

On the news of these conquests Suleiman, who then was at Bigha (Pegæ), refused to restore Tzympe, and, far from being contented with the peaceful possession of the territory invaded by his hordes, dreamed of extending the boundaries, and for this purpose sent over to Europe numerous colonies of Turks and Arabs. One of his first cares was to raise the walls of Gallipoli and other strong places devastated by the earthquake; among the number were Konour, whose commander, called Calaconia by the Ottoman historians, was hanged by order of Suleiman at the doors of the castle; the fort of Boulair, before which Suleiman received, as a presage of his future glory, the bonnet of a dervish Mewlewi; Malgara, renowned for its trade in honey; Ipsala (ancient Cypsella) on the Marizza; and lastly Rodosto, now Tekourtaghi, ancient residence of Besus, King of Thrace, and the place of exile where died in modern times the Hungarian Francis Rakoczy, Prince of Transylvania, and his partisans. All these towns and strong places fell into the power of the Ottomans in the course of the year 1357; they served them as starting-bases for their excursions, which they pushed as far as Hireboli (Chariupolis) and Tschorli (Tzurulum).

Cantacuzenus, too weak to stop the progress of the Turks, complained of this violation of the peace. Orkhan excused his son, saying that it was not force of arms which had opened the gates of the towns of the Greek empire, but the divine will manifested by the earthquake. The Emperor made representations that he was not agitating to know whether it was by the gates or by the breaches that Suleiman had penetrated into the places in question, but whether or not he possessed them legitimately. Orkhan then asked a delay for reflection, and subsequently promised that he would request his son to return the towns that he occupied, if Cantacuzenus, on his side, would engage to pay him a sum of forty thousand ducats. At the same time, he invited him to an interview to meet Suleiman on the Gulf of Nicomedia. But the Sultan pretending to be ill, the Emperor returned to Byzantium, without having obtained anything.

Orkhan now found himself in one of the happiest of political situations. The division of sovereign authority between Cantacuzenus and his pupil John Palæologus, and their continual wars, allowed him to address one or the other according as his interests and the circumstances demanded. It was thus that John Palæeologus, ally of the Genoese, undertook to deliver from captivity to Phoceus, the son of Orkhan, Khalil or Kasim, whom the governor Calothes surrendered for a ransom of one hundred thousand pieces of gold and the concession of the glorious title of Panhypersebastos (“very venerable”). The service that John had rendered did not prevent Orkhan from sending to Abydos a body of troops to rescue the son of Cantacuzenus, Mathias, then at war with the Bulgarians.

From the epoch when the Ottomans made durable conquests in the Greek empire, Asia each spring threw new hordes into Europe, until the time when the successors of Orkhan had extended their domination from the shores of the Sea of Marmora to those of the Danube.

The conquest of Gallipoli, which had opened the gate of the Greek empire and the whole of the European continent to the Ottomans, was announced by “letters of victory” to the neighboring princes of Orkhan, whose father had divided with Osman the heritage of the Seljukian sultans. The use of these “letters of victory” has been preserved to this day in Turkey, and their style, already so pompous in the days of Orkhan, has become so proudly emphatic that this kind of document to-day is not the least curious of those which belong to the annals of the Turkish nation.

Orkhan left to his son, Suleiman Pacha, and Hadji-Ilbeki the charge of preserving the conquests made in Europe; Suleiman established his residence at Gallipoli, and Ilbeki at Konour. The first overran the country as far as Demitoka; the second as far as Tschorli and Hireboli. Adjebeg received in fief the valley which still bears his name.

But Suleiman enjoyed for only a few years the fruits of his conquests. One day while hunting wild geese between Boulair and Sidi-Kawak, that is to say near the palatine of the Cid and following at a gallop the flight of his falcon, he fell so violently from his horse (1359) as to be instantly killed. His body was deposited, not in the mausoleum of the Osman family at Prusa, where he had caused a mosque to be erected in the quarter of the confectioners, but near the mosque of Boulair, also founded by him. Orkhan, to perpetuate the exploits of his son, caused a tomb to be built to his memory on the shore of the Hellespont, the only one which, during more than a century, was erected in memory of an Ottoman prince on Greek soil. Of all the sepulchres of Turkish heroes which the national historians mention with holy respect, that of the founder of the Ottoman power in Europe is the most venerated and the most frequented by pilgrims. It is still to be seen to the north of the embouchure of the Hellespont.

Tradition attributes yet another victory to Suleiman after his death. At the head of a troop of celestial heroes, mounted on white horses, encircled by a brilliant aureole, he is said to have vanquished an army of infidels. The love of the marvelous, so general among orientals, the leaning which all people have to make heaven intervene in the deeds relating to their origin, alone can explain this tradition, for it would be useless to seek any historic fact which could have given it birth. According to this tradition, thirty thousand Christians appeared in the Hellespont on a fleet of sixty-one vessels; one half disembarked at Touzla and the other at Sidi-Kawak; it was this latter body which was cut in pieces by the celestial troop led by Suleiman. The Ottoman historians who relate this miracle have evidently borrowed the apparition of these vessels from the First or the Second Crusade of the Europeans against the Turks and have transported them from the waters of Smyrna to those of Gallipoli, for the greater glory of Suleiman Pacha. Neither the history of Byzantium nor that of the crusades offers the slightest trace of this event.

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