Subscriber Essay: Ottoman Origins

What we know, and don't know, about the early Ottoman principality.

This week we’re talking about the roots of the Ottoman Empire, and in one sense this is a very easy question to answer: we don’t know. We really don’t. Like the origins of the Roman Republic, the events that led to the rise of the Ottoman Empire happened in a fairly obscure place (western Anatolia in the late 13th century was a frontier zone) and involv…