Video narration
How can one person’s name become the identity of a family? That is what happened with Osman Gazi. In late-thirteenth-century northwestern Anatolia, he led a small frontier principality, a border state. He was not ruling an empire. But his territory became the foundation of the Ottoman dynasty. Then the story turned: his name became the dynasty’s name. Later rulers expanded far beyond his lands, creating the Ottoman Empire. Osman Gazi was the founder; his state grew into an empire.