Late Middle Ages · Middle East · Politics

1326

Orhan succeeds Osman as leader of the Ottoman beylik

1326

With his father's death, Orhan inherited a small but expanding frontier state in northwest Anatolia. He would professionalize the Ottoman military, mint the beylik's first coins, establish a system of land grants to warriors, and take Bursa and Nicaea from a retreating Byzantium. Under Orhan the Ottomans ceased to be raiders and became a state.