1308–1324
The ring around Bursa, 1308–1324
From about 1317 Osman blockades Prusa from two forts he has built near the city, one by the hot springs to the west under his nephew Aktimur and one to the east under Balabancık. The Ottomans have no siege engines, and the blockade lasts six to nine years by different accounts. In his last years Osman suffers from gout and stays at his seat, and his son Orhan takes command.
In 1321 Orhan takes Mudanya, the port of Prusa on the Sea of Marmara, and cuts the city off from the sea. Karamürsel Bey takes Praenetos on the Gulf of Nicomedia, which is named Karamürsel after him. Adranos, in the hills south of Prusa, falls to Orhan and later takes his name as Orhaneli.
Mudanya, the port of Bursa on the Sea of MarmaraWikimedia Commons, Darwinek, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Mudanya panorama.jpg)
At Easter 1321 Andronikos III rises against his grandfather Andronikos II at Adrianople, and the civil war that follows lasts, with pauses, until 1328. The emperors keep their troops in Thrace, and Prusa is left to its own garrison. Osman dies in 1323 or 1324, and Orhan, who issues an endowment deed as ruler in 1324, succeeds him. The Ottoman chronicles give dates from 1320 to 1327, and the best-known tradition places his death just after the fall of Bursa in 1326.
A silver basilikon of Andronikos II and his grandson Andronikos III, struck in the 1320sWikimedia Commons, Classical Numismatic Group, CC BY-SA 2.5 (Basilikon of Andronikos II & Andronikos III.jpg)
Sources
- Aşıkpaşazade, Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân (late 15th century).
- Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1481 (1990).
- Donald M. Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453 (2nd ed., 1993).
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