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Attila and his Huns, Arpad and his Magyars, Isperich and his Bulgars, Alp Arslan and his Seljuks, Ertogrul and his Ottomans, Jenghiz Khan and Tamerlane with their "inflexible" Mongol hordes, Baber in India, even Kubilai Khan and Nurhachu in far-off Cathay: the type is ever the same. The hoof-print of the Turanian "man on horseback" is stamped deep all over the palimpsest of history.
Here Ertogrul was to be a Warden of the Marches, to hold his territory for the Seljuk and extend it for himself at the expense of Nicaea if he could. If he won through, so much the better for Sultan Alaeddin; if he failed, vile damnum! Hardly were his tribesmen settled, however, among the Bithynians and Greeks of Yenishehr, before the Seljuk collapse became a fact.
If he was to preserve independence at all, he must rely on a society which was not yet Moslem and form a coalition with the 'Greeks', into whom the recent recovery of Constantinople from the Latins had put fresh heart. Osman, who had succeeded Ertogrul in 1288, recognized where his only possible chance of continued dominion and future aggrandizement lay.
Our land, the richest and finest on earth, is to-day an arid waste. When we were free, we conquered the world in a hundred years; we spread everywhere sciences, arts, and letters; for centuries we led world-civilization. But, since the spawn of Ertogrul usurped the caliphate of Islam, they have brutalized us so as to exploit us to such a degree that we have become the poorest people on earth."
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