1303–1308
Dimbos and the Sakarya, 1303–1308
According to the chronicles, the tekfurs of Bursa, Adranos, Kestel and Kete gather their men at Bursa in the spring of 1303 and march on Yenişehir. Osman meets them at the pass of Dimbos. His nephew Aydoğdu and the tekfur of Kestel fall, and a charge by Orhan’s horsemen drives the Byzantines back.
Osman catches the tekfur of Kete before he reaches Ulubat and has him put to death before its walls, and the fort surrenders, followed by Kestel. Dimbos is known only from the Ottoman chronicles, and historians hold that Aşıkpaşazade built part of his account from reports of Bapheus.
Lake Uluabat seen from GölyazıWikimedia Commons, Rmystutan, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Sonbaharda uluabat.jpg)
Osman also extends his land north along the Sakarya. Lefke, Mekece, Akhisar and Köprühisar pass to him, the first three through Köse Mihal, and his raiders reach the Black Sea coast. By 1308 Ottoman forts hold the roads into Nicaea from the east.
The Sangarius Bridge near Adapazarı, built under Justinian I in the 6th century to carry the road over the SakaryaWikimedia Commons, Acar54, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Sangarius Bridge, Justinyen Köprüsü-2.JPG)
Sources
- Aşıkpaşazade, Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân (late 15th century).
- Halil İnalcık, “Osman Ghazi’s Siege of Nicaea and the Battle of Bapheus”, in Elizabeth Zachariadou (ed.), The Ottoman Emirate (1300–1389) (1993).
- Klaus Belke, Tabula Imperii Byzantini 13: Bithynien und Hellespont (2020).
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