“Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.”
–Marcus Aurelius
Osman Ghazi, son of Ertugrul, is believed to be the man who laid foundations of the Ottoman Empire.
Critics of Recep Erdogan started calling him a neo-Ottoman after he had won the last elections in Turkey. Many more believe that he wants to revive the Ottoman Empire. Whether people’s apprehensions and analyses stand true or not, it would not harm anyone to go back to the past to know who laid the foundations of the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman dynasty gets its name from the first ruler of the Ottoman polity, Osman I. Traditional sources suggest that he descended from a Turkic tribe, “Kai” that migrated out of Central Asia owing to Mongol conquest. Osman’s father Ertugrul is believed to be one of the sons of Sulaiman Shah who parted his ways with his brothers and settled on the frontiers of Byzantine Empire. Beyond this, not many details are available for historians about the origins of the Ottoman Empire.