1333–1337
Nicomedia and Kocaeli, 1333–1337
After the fall of Nicaea, Andronikos III tries to keep Nicomedia and the other Byzantine towns in Bithynia by paying for them. In 1333 he meets Orhan and agrees to pay him a yearly tribute, but the blockade of Nicomedia goes on. In 1337, while the emperor campaigns in Albania, the starving garrison surrenders to Orhan’s son Süleyman, who has directed the siege, and the inhabitants are free to leave for Constantinople.
In the same years Orhan’s frontier commanders take the country north of the Gulf of Nicomedia, later called Kocaeli, the land of Akça Koca. By Ottoman tradition Akça Koca takes the peninsula to the Black Sea, Konur Alp the lands east of the Sakarya toward Konuralp, which is named after him, and Abdurrahman Gazi Aydos and the forts toward the Bosporus. The chronicles date their raids from the 1320s on.
Ruins of the ancient city of Prusias ad Hypium at Konuralp, which takes its name from Konur AlpWikimedia Commons, Ingeborg Simon, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Prusias ad Hypium 03.jpg)
Ottoman horsemen reach the Asian shore of the Bosporus opposite Constantinople. Byzantium keeps Şile on the Black Sea, and Amastris further east is a Genoese colony. Apart from Şile, Philadelphia and a few ports, the empire has lost Asia Minor.
The castle of Şile on its island off the Black Sea coastWikimedia Commons, Dosseman, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Şile Castle 2007 7055.jpg)
Sources
- Aşıkpaşazade, Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân (late 15th century).
- Donald M. Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453 (2nd ed., 1993).
- Halil İnalcık, “Orhan”, in TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 33 (2007).
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