54 A Short History of the Middle East
their rule;1 and though his figures cannot be statistically verified,
the hundreds of archaeological sites, which are abundantly covered
with medieval Arab pottery but are now abandoned, bear material
testimony to the extent of the depopulation. An important factor
contributing to this depopulation in the later fourteenth century
was the Black Death and the famine which accompanied it in two
appalling visitations in successive generations. "In a young and
vigorous society the eifects of such a disaster soon disappear; but
where the social order is already reeling, many decades are required
before equilibrium can be regained. This respite was not granted to
the Islamic world/ 2
For already the political forces which were to fill the anarchic
vacuum of the Mamluk empire and of equally disorganized Iraq
and Persia were taking shape. The Seljuk unity of Asia Minor had
been shattered by the Mongol invasions of the mid-thirteenth
century, but without basically altering the Turkish character of the
dominant section of the population. About 1300 a small Turkish
principality founded by one Othman around Brusa in the north-
west of the peninsula was beginning to expand at the expense of its
Turkish neighbours and the moribund Byzantine Empire to the
north. In 1353 Othman's descendants invaded Europe and in 1361
established their European capital at Adrianople (Edirne), blocking
the route from Constantinople to the Balkan hinterland and so
isolating the capital of Orthodox Christianity from its potential
Orthodox allies, the Slavs. A powerful coalition led by the Serbs
was shattered by the Ottoman Turks in the battle of the Kossovo
Plain in 1389. By 1400 they had extended their northern frontier
to the Danube and incorporated the greater part of Asia Minor;
Constantinople 'itself was on the point of falling; but at this
moment the irresistible thunderbolt of Timur Leng struck them.
Crushingly defeated at Ankara in 1402, the Ottomans lost Asia
Minor, but their kingdom survived in the Balkans. From 1420
onwards they began to acquire from Western Europe the use of
firearms; in 1453 they gave the coup-de-grace to the Byzantine
Empire by taking Constantinople; and by 1468 they had com-
pleted the reconquest of Asia Minor, and so became neighbours
and rivals of the Mamluk empire on the borders of North Syria.
For a generation they were kept in check by Qait Bey (1468-95), a
aHitti, op. cit.,696.
2 H. A. R. Gibb, Ibn Battuta: Travels in Asia and Africa, 24 f.