the emirate of
Karasi, which added west central Asia Minor almost as far south as the
Hermus, the Osmanli ruled in 1338 a dominion of greater area than that of
the Greek emperor, whose capital and coasts now looked across to Ottoman
shores all the way from the Bosphorus to the Hellespont.

2

_Expansion of the Osmanli Kingdom_

If the new state was to expand by conquest, its line of advance was
already foreshadowed. For the present, it could hardly break back into
Asia Minor, occupied as this was by Moslem principalities sanctioned by
the same tradition as itself, namely, the prestige of the Seljuks. To
attack these would be to sin against Islam. But in front lay a rich but
weak Christian state, the centre of the civilization to which the popular
element in the Osmanli society belonged. As inevitably as the state of
Nicaea had desired, won, and transferred itself to, Constantinople, so did
the Osmanli state of Brusa yearn towards the same goal; and it needed no
invitation from a Greek to dispose an Ottoman sultan to push over to the
European shore.

Such an invitation, however, did in fact precede the first Osmanli
crossing in force. In 1345 John Cantacuzene solicited help of Orkhan
against the menace of Dushan, the Serb. Twelve years later came a second
invitation. Orkhan's son, Suleiman, this time ferried a large army over
the Hellespont, and, by taking and holding Gallipoli and Rodosto, secured
a passage from continent to continent, which the Ottomans would never
again let go.

Such invitations, though they neither prompted the extension of the
Osmanli realm into Europe nor sensibly precipitated it, did nevertheless
divert the course of the Ottoman arms and reprieve the Greek empire till
Timur and his Tartars could come on the scene and, all unconsciously,
secure it a further respite. But for these diversions there is little
doubt Constantinople would have passed into Ottoman hands nearly a century
earlier than the historic date of its fall. The Osmanli armies, thus led
aside to make the Serbs and not the Greeks of Europe their first
objective, became involved at once in a tangle of Balkan affairs from
which they only extricated themselves after forty years of incessant
fighting in almost every part of the peninsula except the domain of the
Greek emperor. This warfare, which in no way advanced the proper aims of
the lords of Brusa and Nicaea, not only profited the Greek emperor by
relieving him of concern