Orhan Ghazi

Orhan Gazi was born in 1281. Osman Ghazi had established the Ottoman Empire. However, they organized it and that makes a big state is Orhan Gazi.Orhan Gazi yellow beard, was tall, had blue eyes.From a young age with a full discipline and orderliness has grown to be the lord of the future.He is gentle and compassionate.Upon the death of his father, Osman Gazi was 1324 Bey.Orhan Gazi, which means the hero of religion was nicknamed Şücaeddin.From his youth fought the Byzantines.Commander and state administration knowledge  experience gained.1324 due to his father's old age from the beginning of the state administration has passed.The first task was very surprised when his father said.Orhan ghazi would win the bursa.Ottoman Empire's second sultan was enthroned as the center and the state Yenisehir from Bursa or transported.Thereafter the rate of movement of conquest and gas that Orhan Gazi, 1329 in the Byzantine forces Pelakano 'has a heavy defeat.State 's interim zoning was transformed into a center of the city of Iznik, was decorated with Islamic structures.That he receives from his father as 16,000 square km of land went from 95,000 square km.General task is left to his second son Murad.


Passage Of Power

When Orhan succeeded his father, he proposed to his brother, Alaeddin, that they should share the emerging empire. The latter refused on the grounds that their father had designated Orhan as sole successor, and that the empire should not be divided. He only accepted as his share the revenues of a single village near Bursa.

Orhan then told him, "Since, my brother, thou will not take the flocks and the herds that I offer thee, be thou the shepherd of my people; be my Vizier." The word vizier, vezir in the Ottoman language, from Arabic wazīr, meant the bearer of a burden. Alaeddin, in accepting the office, accepted his brother's burden of power, according to oriental historians. Alaeddin, like many of his successors in that office, did not often command the armies in person, but he occupied himself with the foundation and management of the civil and military institutions of the state.

Map of the conquests of Orhan

Politics

Orhan, with the help of Jihad commanders at the head of his forces of light cavalry, started a series of conquests of Byzantine territories in northwest Anatolia. First, in 1321, Mudanya was captured on the Sea of Marmara, which was the port of Bursa. He then sent a column under Konur Alp towards West Black Sea coast; another column under Aqueda to capture Kocaeli, and finally a column to capture the southeast coast of the Sea of Marmara. Then, he captured the city of Bursa just with diplomatic negotiations. The Byzantine commander of the Bursa fort, called Evronos Bey, became a commander of a light cavalry force and even his sons and grandsons served Ottoman Empire in this capacity to conquer and hold many areas in Balkans. Once the city of Bursa was captured, Orhan sent cavalry troops towards Bosphorus, capturing Byzantine coastal towns of Marmara. There were even sightings of Ottoman light cavalry along the Bosphoros coast.

The Byzantine Emperor Andronicus III gathered together a mercenary army and set of towards Anatolia on the peninsular lands of Kocaeli. But at the present towns of Darica, at a site then called Pelekanon, not too far from Üsküdar, he met with Orhan's troops. The Byzantine forces were routed by Orhan's disciplined troops. Thus, in 1329 after this Battle of Pelekanon the Byzantines gave up the idea of getting the Kocaeli lands back and never tried conducting a field battle against the Ottoman forces.

The city of Nicaea (second only to Constantinople in the Byzantine Empire) surrendered to him after a three-year siege in 1331. The city of İzmit or Nicomedia was also captured in 1337. Orhan gave the command of it to his eldest son, Suleyman Pasha, who had directed the operations of the siege. In 1338 by capturing Üsküdar most of Northwest Anatolia was in Ottoman hands. The Byzantines still controlled the coastal strip from Sile on the Black Sea to Üsküdar and the city of Amasra (Amastris) in Paphlagonia, but these were so scattered and isolated as to be no threat to the Ottomans.

Then, there was a change of strategy in 1345. Instead of aiming to gain land from non-Muslims, Orhan took over a Turkish principality, Karesi (present Balıkesir and surrounds). According to Islamic philosophy of war, the areas under Islamic rule were to be abodes of peace and the other areas abodes of war. In abodes of war conducting a war was considered a good deed. Karesi principality was a state governed by a Turkish Emir and its main inhabitants were Turkish; so it was an abode of peace. Ottomans had to have special justification for conquering fellow Muslim Turkish principalities.

In the case of Karesi, the ruler had died and had left two sons whose claims to the post of Emir were equally valid. So there was a fight between the armed supporters of the two claimant princes. Orhan's pretext for invasion was that he was acting as a bringer of peace. In the end of the invasion by Ottoman troops the two brothers were pushed to the castle of their capital city of Bergama(Pergamum). One was killed and the other was captured. The territories around Bergama and Balıkesir (Palaeocastro) were annexed to Orhan's domains. This conquest was particularly important since it brought Orhan's territories to Çanakkale, the Anatolian side of the Dardanelles Straits.

Innovation and regulations

Orhan Gazi Ottoman principality thanks to a new state has laws and regulations.vizier for the first time the organization was founded.The first woman superintendent assignments were made during this period.Women were sent to starboard.Court Organization was established.Foundation system, the judiciary has been established.The first regular Ottoman army was established.The first studies were conducted navy and has added to the strength of the Ottoman Empire.

Last Years

Orhan was the longest living and one of the longest reigning of the future Ottoman Sultans.^[10] In his last years he had left most of the powers of state in the hands of his second son Murad and lived a secluded life in Bursa.

In 1356 a very unusual event occurred. Khalil, the son of Orhan and Theodora, was abducted somewhere on the Bay of Izmit. A Genoese commercial boat captain, which was conducting acts of piracy alongside commercial activity, was able to capture the young prince and take him over to Phocaeaon the Aegean Sea, which was under Genoese rule. Orhan was very much upset by this kidnapping and conducted talks with his brother-in-law and now sole Byzantine Emperor John V Palaeologos. As to the agreement, John V with a Byzantine naval fleet went to Phocaea, paid the ransom demanded of 100,000 hyperpyra, and brought Khalil back to Ottoman territory.

In 1357 Orhan's eldest and most experienced son and likely heir, Suleyman Pasha, died after injuries sustained from a fall from a horse near Bolayir on the coast of the sea of Marmara. The horse that Suleyman fell from was buried alongside him and their tombs can still be seen today. Orhan was said to have been greatly affected by the death of his son.

Orhan died soon after, in 1362, in Bursa, at the age of seventy-nine, after a reign of thirty-seven years. He is buried in the türbe (tomb) with his wife and children, called Gümüşlü Kumbet in Bursa.

During his reign, some of the most important civil and military institutions of his state were founded in the western provinces of Anatolia, but were also planted on the European continent.