Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium, Episode 325, The Rise of the Ottomans, part one.

Last time, we watched on as the Roman Emperor was reduced to the role of travelling ambassador.

John Paliologos journeyed to Hungary and then to Rome to beg for Western assistance.

A crusade must be formed to stop the Turks, he said.

Muslim forces had conquered Thrace in just 15 years, and after

crushing a Serb army who tried to stop them, the rest of the Balkans now lay open. There seemed no

doubt that the Christians of Southeast Europe were going to go the way of their Anatolian cousins

unless someone intervened.

But how had this come to pass? How had a Turkish Balik gone from being a small tribal

confederation on the borders of the Roman world to being a force capable of conquering it entirely?

And not just the Romans, Ottoman forces were

destined to destroy all the principalities of the Balkans. The Serbs, Albanians and Bulgarians

will all go the way of Byzantium, finding themselves vassals and then subjects of the Ottoman

Empire.

So who are the Ottomans?

And why were they so incredibly successful?

In today's episode, I will give you a narrative of the past century from an Ottoman point of view.

And then in part two, we'll get into some deeper analysis of how this

fascinating empire was born. Before we begin, though, a word on our sources. The first histories

of the Ottomans were commissioned in the 15th century, by which time the Ottoman state was already

a very successful empire.

And they bear the unmistakable stamp of attempts to justify and legitimize the dominance of the reigning dynasty.

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