My acknowledgements to kind friends are many. I am grateful for the year-in and year-out patience and willingness of the officials of the Bibliothèque Nationale during long periods of constant demand upon their time and attention. Professors John De Witt, D.D., LL.D., of Princeton Theological Seminary, Duncan B. Macdonald, Ph.D., of Hartford Theological Seminary, and Edward P. Cheyney, Ph.D., LL.D., of the University of Pennsylvania, have read portions of the manuscript, and have made important and helpful suggestions. The whole manuscript has been read by Professors Talcott Williams, LL.D., of Columbia University, and R. M. McElroy, Ph.D., of Princeton University, who have not hesitated to give many hours to discussion and criticism of the theory that the book presents.
Above all, I am indebted for practical aid and encouragement in research and in writing, from the inception of the idea of the book until the manuscript went to press, to my wife, with her Bryn Mawr insistence upon accuracy of detail and care for form of narrative, and to Alexander Souter, D.Litt., Regius Professor of Humanity in Aberdeen University, my two comrades in research through a succession of happy years in the rue de Richelieu, rue Servandoni, and rue du Montparnasse of the queen city of the world.
ORKHAN: A NEW NATION IS FORMED AND COMES INTO CONTACT WITH THE WESTERN WORLD 54
MURAD: THE OSMANLIS LAY THE FOUNDATIONS OF AN EMPIRE IN EUROPE 110
BAYEZID: THE OSMANLIS INHERIT THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE 180
TRADITIONAL MISCONCEPTIONS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE OSMANLIS AND THEIR EMPIRE 263
THE EMIRATES OF ASIA MINOR DURING THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 277
1. CONQUESTS OF MURAD AND BAYEZID IN THE BALKAN PENINSULA AND OF BAYEZID IN ASIA MINOR _Frontispiece_
6. THE EMIRATES OF ASIA MINOR IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 278
The traveller who desires to penetrate Asia Minor by railway may start either from Smyrna or from Constantinople. The Constantinople terminus of the Anatolian Railway is at Haïdar Pasha, on the Asiatic shore, where the Bosphorus opens into the Sea of Marmora. Three hours along the Gulf of Ismidt, past the Princes’ Islands, brings one to Ismidt, the ancient Nicomedia, eastern capital of the Roman Empire under Diocletian. It is at the very end of the gulf. From Ismidt, the railway crosses a fertile plain, coasts the western shore of Lake Sabandja, and enters the valley of the Sangarius as far as Lefké. Here it turns southward, and mounts rapidly the course of the Kara Su, a tributary of the Sangarius, through the picturesque town of Biledjik, to a plateau, at the north-western end of which is Eski Sheïr, seven hours distant from Ismidt. Eski Sheïr is the ancient Dorylaeum. It was here that Godfrey de Bouillon in 1097 won from the Turks the victory that opened for his Crusaders the way through Asia Minor.