In the late 1280s CE, a young Turkic frontier bey named Osman would ride from his small camp at Sogut, in the wooded hills of western Anatolia, up to a Sufi tekke on the pass above. The tekke belonged to Shaykh Edebali, an Ahi Sufi and a jurist of the Hanafi school. Osman would go there to pray, to eat with the dervishes, to listen to the recitation of the Quran, and to speak with the shaykh about the affairs of the frontier.
The Kayi Turks, of whom Osman was a chief, were a small tribe. They had been granted a modest territory in western Anatolia by the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, in reward for their service against the Mongols. The Seljuk Sultanate itself was in decay. The Byzantine Empire, whose territories bordered Osman's on the west, was also in decay. The frontier between the two dying powers was a place of small emirates, of Ghazi warriors and dervishes and refugees. It was chaotic. Whoever could bring order might get to keep it.
One night, in the tekke, Osman had a dream. Various versions of the dream have come down to us through the early Ottoman chronicles, but the core is the same.
He saw the moon rise out of the chest of Shaykh Edebali, cross the sky, and enter his own chest. From his chest a tree began to grow. It grew tall. Its branches spread wide. They covered the whole horizon. Its leaves rustled like sword-blades. Under the tree lay the great rivers of the world, the Tigris, the Nile, the Danube, the Euphrates. Under the tree were the great cities, Damascus, Cairo, Baghdad, Constantinople. Waters from the tree watered every land. Fruits fell from it. People of every race gathered under it.
Osman woke up. He walked out into the courtyard of the tekke and told the shaykh his dream.
Shaykh Edebali listened. He was a serious man. He was not given to easy prophecies. He looked at Osman for a long time. Then he said: Osman, my son, congratulations. Allah has given sovereignty to you and your descendants. My daughter Malhun shall be your wife.
Osman married Malhun bint Edebali. She became the mother of Orhan Gazi, the second Ottoman sultan.
From that point Osman expanded his territory with quiet, patient effort. He did not try to conquer everything at once. He took a Byzantine village here, a Byzantine fortress there. He recruited Sufi dervishes and Ahi guildsmen and Byzantine converts and Turkic nomads and made a mixed frontier polity, held together by the promise of good governance, low taxation, and open opportunity. Christians who wanted to keep their faith could keep it. Muslims who wanted to fight had a Ghazi cause. Turks who wanted grazing had land.
He captured Karacahisar in 1288 CE. He captured Yenisehir in 1299 CE. He built up a small treasury. He built up a small standing army. He began to press on the road to Bursa, one of the great Byzantine cities of Bithynia.
He did not live to see Bursa fall. His son Orhan captured it in 1326 CE, in the year Osman was dying. The story preserved by the Ottoman chroniclers is that Osman, on his deathbed in Sogut, heard the news of the capture and said: al-hamdulillah. Then he gave his last testament to Orhan. He said: my son, treat the ulema with respect. Keep justice at the center of your rule. Never let the Ghazi frontier become quiet. Then he died.
Orhan moved the capital to Bursa. He buried his father there, in the Silver Dome, and had the phrase engraved above the door: here lies Osman, son of Ertugrul, the founder of the Ottoman house.
Osman's descendants ruled for six hundred and twenty-six years. The last Ottoman sultan, Mehmed VI, was expelled from Constantinople in 1922 CE. In between, Osman's line ruled from Vienna to Baghdad, from Algiers to Yemen, from Buda to Basra, from Sarajevo to Mecca. The empire that grew out of Osman's dream was one of the longest-lived and largest empires in world history. When Ottoman soldiers, at the height of the empire in the 1520s under Suleiman the Magnificent, camped outside the walls of Vienna, they were still saying the name of the man who had had the dream at the tekke.
What the story teaches. A young man on a small frontier is given a vision, and the vision is not treated as fantasy. It is treated as instruction. Osman and Shaykh Edebali both took the dream seriously. Osman lived his life as if the dream were a promise Allah had made to him, and Osman had to live up to it. He did the small daily work of a Ghazi bey. He took villages. He made law. He built a treasury. He married the shaykh's daughter. He raised his son to expect what he had seen. Six centuries later, the tree had covered the horizon. What began as a frontier chieftain's dream in a Sufi tekke ended as one of the great world-empires. The lesson is that visions given to serious people, and taken up with patient work, can outlast every empire around them.