They had long ago embraced the religion of Mahomet, and by the time of the
Crusades there was a goodly portion of them sprinkled throughout the
Saracen dominions. In fact, it is asserted that most of the outrages in
Palestine which led to the Crusades were the work of Turkish Mahometans,
rather than the Saracens.

One day, about the year 1250 (during the last days of the Crusades), one
of these marauding bands of Turks under the leadership of a man named
Etrogruhl came unexpectedly within sight of a battle which was being
fought between two armies in Asia-Minor.

He did not know who were fighting, nor what they were fighting about. But
he led his 400 horsemen pell-mell into the thick of the fray, to help what
seemed the losing side.

This decided the fate of the battle; and it turned out that they had been
aiding the Sultan of Iconium, the great ruler of that land.

In gratitude for this service, the Sultan gave to Etrogruhl a large piece
of territory, and he became the chief of a clan in this beautiful tract of
land, which was all his own, bordering on the Byzantine Empire (as it was
then called), and almost within sight of the Bosphorus and the city of
Constantinople.

This was the beginning of the great Turkish Empire.

Othman, the son of this nameless adventurer, for whom the Ottoman Empire
was named, was the first of a line of thirty-five sovereigns reaching
down to our own time--where his descendant sits in Constantinople to-day