Why do you think Osman Gazi and Orhan Gazi were able to build such a large & successful empire?

By Naim Ibrahim

They had huge armies to help them.

True. But why did people come to join their army risking their lives? At every battle hundreds, if not thousands of foot soldiers were left dead.

No idea.

The Turk leaders raiding the borders of Byzantine empire styled themselves as Gazis - holy Muslim warriors. Once they developed a reputation as successful holy warriors they had no shortage of men wanting to join their armies. 

Imagine Constantine in the year 325 AD. He must have seriously thought long and hard before abandoning all the Roman gods in favour of the monotheistic Christian faith. He must have thought that was the best way to continue his position & strengthen the empire.

You mean he actually didn’t believe in Christianity?

No, that’s not what I meant. But he could’ve very well pretended he was a Christian & declared Christianity to be the official faith of the Roman Empire. Think about it this way. He could afford to lose many battles & get thousands of his men killed still keeping his chance of dying on the battlefield very low. So how do we know if he didn’t accept the faith seeing that the egalitarian message of Christianity was taking its root among slaves & lower-class Romans and that by accepting Christianity he could get a continuous supply of fighters willing to die to expand his empire. He needed followers in big numbers.

So why didn’t people realize that?

Millions of people died fighting wars to further the communist cause. Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong & Joseph Stalin knew very well how to use Marx & Engels’ ideas to get thousands of followers. Michael Jackson and Madonna knew they could use music to get millions of followers who would work hard to make them rich. Steve Jobs built Apple & convinced the whole world we should all buy ridiculously overpriced latest iPhones. What’s the name of that guy who does hand gestures on Tiktok? Khaby Lame, yeah? His 100 million followers are working to make him very rich every day. They don’t realize they are doing that. Throughout history it has always been about getting followers.