Alexander Anatolios

## Alexander AnatoliosOsman of Nicaea

**Alexander Anatolios** (Greek: Αλέξανδρος Ανατόλιος, *Alexandros Anatolios*, born c. 1258, Nicaea), born as **Osman** (Greek: Ατουμάν, *Atouman*), was the Turkish Emir of Nicaea and self-proclaimed Sultan of Rum from 1280 to his conversion to Christianity in 1292, when he became a Byzantine general and nobleman in the service of Romanos VI Melissenos. He was one of the principal and most powerful Byzantine magnates in late thirteenth-century Anatolia and one of the empire's most senior generals and noblemen. Atouman-Alexander became the founder of the influential Anatolios family.

He currently serves as Domestic of the Eastern Schools and Catepan of Antioch.

## Biography

### Early life

Osman was born c. 1258 to Ertugrul, Emir of Nicaea. His mother was a Byzantine noblewoman who died during Osman's childhood, though her name is not recorded. Little is known of Osman's early years. If he had any siblings, they have faded into obscurity and left no lasting impression on his family. What is known from the records of the imperial chancery of Constantinople is that his father, Ertugrul, hired Constantinople-born Byzantine teachers to give his son a professional education based on the education usually reserved for Byzantine princes. Osman learned the classics, arithmetics, trigonometry, philosophy and natural philosophy under his Byzantine tutors. Ertugrul, however, also employed Turkish wise men to raise Osman as a Muslim. By the time he came into adulthood, Osman could speak four languages (Turkish, Greek, Arabic and Latin) and he was well versed in classical literature, natural philosophy and, of course, Islamic theology. Although Osman was educated, he was not a scholar in any sense of the word. Ertugrul had first and foremost given Osman a military education, and he was raised a soldier more than a scholar. At the time, it is known that Osman idolized the figure of Alexander the Great, who inspired him to become a great conqueror and ruler over several nations himself.

### Reign

Osman succeeded as Emir of Nicaea upon Ertugrul's death in 1280. Although the Byzantine Empire was living a succession crisis at the time, Osman maintained his father's uneasy alliance with Constantinople. The newly risen Emir refused to intervene for one side or the other as to not risk supporting the losing side and endangering the truce between Byzantines and Turks that had been in place for nearly thirty years. Instead, Osman adopted a policy of harassing the weaker Turkish emirates in Eastern and Central Anatolia, rather than challenging the much stronger Byzantine Empire to the west.
Like his father before him, Osman made ample use of the previous Byzantine administrative apparatus in Nicaea that Ertugrul had preserved. Although his army was dominated by Turkish mercenaries and retainers personally loyal to himself, his government retained much of the former Byzantine bureaucracy and Greek Christian workforce. The continuity between the Byzantine and Turkish administration allowed Osman effective taxation and control of his territory, which had also greatly benefited his predecessor. Under his Greek ministers, especially one David Tornikes, of a traditional Byzantine family connected to the Laskarids, Melissenids and the imperial bureaucracy at large, Nicaean finances thrived, allowing Osman to support his expanding and ever ambitious war machine.

#### Expansion

When the Great Latin War broke out between the Byzantines and the Latin Empire in 1282, records of the Nicaean chancery indicate that Osman was courted by Bohemond II to join him in his war against the Byzantines. Osman ultimately refused the Latin alliance and moved his war machine against Bohemond's allies the Purple Horde instead, sending missives to Skantarios Laskaris suggesting that the young Byzantine emperor was now indebted to him. Seeking to recreate the Sultanate of Rum and Alexander's empire after that, Osman moved his army across Anatolia to attack the Purple Horde. On the way, Osman campaigned against the Turkish Emirate of Konya, which occupied the former Seljuk capital. With the conquest of Konya in 1284, while the Byzantines were still embroiled in the Great Latin War, Osman had himself declared as the Sultan of Rum and took up temporary residence at Konya.
Moving on towards the east, the newly minted Sultan took the fight to Eastern Anatolia, seeking to conquer lands from the Mongols of the Purple Horde. With the swift conquest of Konya, Osman had shown that he had inherited his father's brilliant military mind, and double Ertugrul's ambition, though none of his caution. Drunk from glory and savoring his momentum, Osman put his army on a forced march from Konya to the Anatolian highlands. Most of the Purple Horde, which had been supporting Bohemond in his war against the Byzantines, disengaged from the conflict to move against the Ottoman threat. Despite the new Mongol reinforcements, Osman inflicted a heavy defeat on Tekuder Khan, taking much of is Anatolian territory in the truce that was negotiated shortly afterwards.

#### Decline

In the space of little over a year, Osman had more than doubled the territory of the Emirate of Nicaea, now re-fashioned as the Sultanate of Rum. Since the dissolution of the former Sultanate and the Mongol invasions of Anatolia, Central and Eastern Anatolia had not been beholden to a centralized administrative structure. Instead, the peninsula had been divided between several competing emirates and local rulers and potentates, who might have been nominally in the service of one emir or another, but were independent in all but name. When Osman conquered most of Anatolia throughout 1284, he attempted to enforce the centralized and bureaucratic administration he enjoyed in Nicaea over his new territories.
His centralizing efforts, based on his military superiority and the momentum of his conquest, were met with heavy resistance, however. Rebellions in Central and Eastern Anatolia broke out as soon as 1287. Osman's army shrunk in size as a consequence of desertion, as many of the Turkish mercenaries who had been granted lands throughout Anatolia now rallied with the rebels against taxation and central authority. To bolster his numbers again, Osman employed christianized Turkish and Cuman mercenaries hailing from the overpopulated Meander Valley in the Byzantine Empire, who had immigrated east seeking land and opportunity away from the land bubble that was forming at their homes. Armed with these new mercenaries, the Greek regular forces from Nicaea and the Turkish retainers personally loyal to him and his family that formed his elite guard, Osman marched out from his capital of Nicaea to put down the rebellions.

He might have succeeded, were it not for the intervention of a coalition composed of Mamluks, Latins and Mongols that came to the support of the Turkish rebels. At the Battle of the Arc in 1289 in the Eastern Anatolian mountains, both sides inflicted heavy casualties on each other. Osman had the advantage of his capable military skill and his knowledge of the terrain, but the rebel coalitions employed the same gunpowder weapons that had led to the death of Byzantine emperor Skantarios Laskaris four years earlier. Although Osman was able to shatter the coalition army and break apart the coalition, whose fatal casualties included the former Latin Emperor Bohemond of Acre, his own army had taken a battering and he was forced to retreat. By 1291, his authority had been reduced to Nicaea and its environs.

#### Conversion to Christianity

*See main article: Osman's conversion*

Throughout the rebellion, Osman had pleaded for help from the Byzantine emperor, but Romanos V Melissenos' advanced age and his own suspicions regarding Osman's long-term intentions meant that no help had come. In 1292, however, Romanos V passed away. He was replaced on the Byzantine throne by Romanos VI Melissenos, a veteran commander of the Great Latin War who had not forgotten the indirect allied role Osman had played in the conflict. The new emperor was more open to cooperation with Osman.
The agreement personally negotiated by Romanos VI and Osman at Nicomedia determined the conversion of Osman to Orthodox Christianity, his marriage to the emperor's sister Martha Melissene and his creation as a Byzantine *Sebastokrator*.

Upon his baptizing in the Hagia Sophia, Osman took the new Christian name of Alexander Anatolios, honoring his idol Alexander the Great and his Turkish Anatolian heritage. Osman's conversion was controversial among Byzantine circles. Many distrusted the newly christened Alexander Anatolios, and more envied the various honors the emperor had bestowed upon him. The controversial conversion of Anatolios would become a major platform to the Laskarid opposition to Romanos VI's rule and become one of the main inspirations of the Eusebian movement.

Osman's conversion was embraced by most of his remaining subjects at Nicaea. By the time of his conversion, most of the Ottoman army and government was composed by Christians. Neither had Islam taken deep root with the population of Nicaea, which had remained mostly Christian. Osman did face desertions among his ghazi corps, who either moved eastwards to pledge themselves to Muslim rulers or left the city to become bandits and raiders in the countryside, but a significant portion of those Turkish warriors personally loyal to Osman followed his steps and embraced Christianity alongside their master.

### Byzantine general and aristocrat

Shortly after his conversion, Alexander Anatolios led his former army bolstered by Byzantine professional troops and mercenaries to retake the fortress town of Ancyra. His campaign was successful and he settled at Ancyra as the military governor (*Doux*) of the Bucellarian theme. He was named *megas hetaireiarches* of the Byzantine Empire, i.e. the overall commander of the foreign mercenary troops, which at the time consisted mostly of Turkish and Cuman mercenaries. Anatolios participated in the Reconquest of Iconium in that role and as the commander of Romanos VI's vanguard, harassing the countryside around the city and routing the resistance put up by the local Turkish ruler against the Byzantine imperial troops. After the successful conclusion of the campaign, Alexander was appointed *Doux* of Anatolics, the senior-most and largest Anatolian theme of the Byzantine Empire, and took up residence at Iconium with his family.

Over the next fifteen years, Anatolios was instrumental in the Byzantine reconquest of Asia Minor undertaken by emperor Romanos VI Melissenos. In the Byzantine-Mamluk war, while Romanos VI commanded the imperial army at Antioch against the Mamluks led by Sultan Barakah, Anatolios was promoted to Domestic of the Eastern Schools and placed in charge of the Anatolian front. In that role, he avenged his former self and completed the reconquest of Anatolia, defeating the coalition of the minor Turkish rulers in a battle in the Anatolian mountains. Following his overwhelming victory, Anatolios negotiated a truce with the Turkish commander Mustafa Kemal, who had switched sides to support the Byzantines during the battle, and established the Emirate of Malatya as a Byzantine vassal and buffer state between the empire and the Purple Horde.

Throughout the many campaigns he participated in as a Byzantine general and his decade-and-a-half tenure as *Doux* of Anatolics, Alexander Anatolios accumulated a significant amount of land, wealth and power for himself and his faction of supporters (mostly composed of christianized Turks and Cumans). By 1315, he had become one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the Byzantine Empire, owning vast property across Central Anatolia and Cappadocia and serving as Domestic of the Eastern Schools, the commander of the empire's Eastern armies. Following his victory in the Anatolian mountains and the successful conclusion of the Byzantine-Mamluk war, Alexander was named Catepan of Antioch, one of the most influential and prestigious offices in the Empire.

## Family

By his wife Rabia Bala Hatun, Alexander had one son:

* Antiochos (1280–), born as Alaeddin, who succeeded him as *Doux* of Anatolics.

By his wife Malhun Hatun, Alexander also had one son:

* Hector (1281–), born as Orhan, who serves as *Doux* of Charsianon.

Upon his Christian marriage to Martha Melissene, Alexander set both of his previous wives aside in favor of the Byzantine princess. By Martha, Alexander was the father of:

* Alexios (1294–), an imperial page.
* Nicholas (1297–1300), who died young.
* Andronikos (1298–), who was simple-minded.
* Theochariste (1299), who was stillborn.
* Maria (1304–).
* Anatolios (1305–).
* Adrianos (1307–).
* Basileia (1310–).