he Ottoman empire, among the greatest the world has seen, was founded by the eponymous Osman, a minor Turkish chieftain from northwestern Anatolia. His main rival was the declining and enfeebled Byzantine empire, which had once controlled all of Anatolia, though by the late 13th century encroaching Turks had driven it to the westward edges of the peninsula.
Still, at the turn of the 14th century, the Ottomans themselves remained a minor power, one of a number of Turkish petty states in western Asia Minor. Osman enters recorded history—recorded, that is, by contemporary Byzantine historian George Pachymeres—around 1301 when he led a party of 100 nomads on a night raid against a Byzantine force north of the city of Nicaea, which he had been harassing.
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