奧斯曼似乎為了避免與更強大的突厥鄰居發生衝突,而決定實行以攻擊拜占庭人所控制的領土為擴張策略[13],奧斯曼首先將領地從原本掌握的埃斯基謝希爾一帶,貧瘠的北佛里幾亞地區擴張到更肥沃的比提尼亞平原;根據學者史丹佛·肖爾(英語:Stanford J. Shaw)的研究,奧斯曼特別針對當地拜占庭貴族所擁有的土地展開征服行動,「其中一些貴族在戰鬥中被擊敗,其他領主則經由以金錢購買城鎮以及政治聯姻等方式和平地被吸收到鄂圖曼人的國土中[16]。」
奧斯曼之劍是在鄂圖曼帝國歷任蘇丹於加冕儀式中所需使用的一把重要的國家之劍[23]。授劍的傳統源自奧斯曼的岳父謝赫·艾德巴利幫他佩帶上這把伊斯蘭之劍後,往後的蘇丹皆延續這項授劍的即位儀式[24]。佩戴奧斯曼之劍是極為重要的登基典禮,大多於新任蘇丹繼承皇位的兩週內舉行。新蘇丹首先會從首都伊斯坦堡的托普卡匹皇宮出發,並經由水路橫越金角灣抵達艾郁普蘇丹清真寺舉行加冕儀式。奧斯曼之劍也是蘇丹的信物,這把劍象徵着:新任的鄂圖曼帝國蘇丹亦是一名手持戰劍的戰士。奧斯曼之劍在登基典禮中由一名來自梅夫拉維教團的托缽僧 - 科尼亞的謝里夫(Sharif of Konya)負責佩戴在新蘇丹的身上,科尼亞的蘇菲派教徒保有這項幫新任蘇丹授劍的特權直至鄂圖曼帝國滅亡[25]。
Kermeli, Eugenia. Osman I. Ágoston, Gábor; Bruce Masters (編). Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. 2009: 444. Reliable information regarding Osman is scarce. His birth date is unknown and his symbolic significance as the father of the dynasty has encouraged the development of mythic tales regarding the ruler’s life and origins, however, historians agree that before 1300, Osman was simply one among a number of Turkoman tribal leaders operating in the Sakarya region.
Kafadar, Cemal. Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State. 1995: xii. There is still not one authentic written document known from the time of ʿOsmān, and there are not many from the fourteenth century altogether.
Finkel, Caroline. Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923. Basic Books. 2005: 6. ISBN 978-0-465-02396-7. Modern historians attempt to sift historical fact from the myths contained in the later stories in which the Ottoman chroniclers accounted for the origins of the dynasty
Imber, Colin. Elizabeth Zachariadou , 編. The Ottoman Emirate (1300-1389). Rethymnon: Crete University Press. 1991: 75. Almost all the traditional tales about Osman Gazi are fictitious. The best thing a modern historian can do is to admit frankly that the earliest history of the Ottomans is a black hole. Any attempt to fill this hole will result simply in more fables.
Kafadar, Cemal. Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State. 1995: 122. That they hailed from the Kayı branch of the Oğuz confederacy seems to be a creative "rediscovery" in the genealogical concoction of the fifteenth century. It is missing not only in Ahmedi but also, and more importantly, in the Yahşi Fakih-Aşıkpaşazade narrative, which gives its own version of an elaborate genealogical family tree going back to Noah. If there was a particularly significant claim to Kayı lineage, it is hard to imagine that Yahşi Fakih would not have heard of it.
Lowry, Heath. The Nature of the Early Ottoman State. SUNY Press. 2003: 78. ISBN 0-7914-5636-6. Based on these charters, all of which were drawn up between 1324 and 1360 (almost one hundred fifty years prior to the emergence of the Ottoman dynastic myth identifying them as members of the Kayı branch of the Oguz federation of Turkish tribes), we may posit that...
Lindner, Rudi Paul. Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia. Indiana University Press. 1983: 10. In fact, no matter how one were to try, the sources simply do not allow the recovery of a family tree linking the antecedents of Osman to the Kayı of the Oğuz tribe.
Finkel, Caroline. Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923. Basic Books. 2005: 12. Beyond the likelihood that the first Ottoman sultan was a historical figure, a Turcoman Muslim marcher-lord of the Byzantine frontier in north-west Anatolia whose father may have been called Ertuğrul, there is little other biographical information about Osman.
Murphey, Rhoads. Exploring Ottoman Sovereignty: Tradition, Image, and Practice in the Ottoman Imperial Household, 1400-1800. London: Continuum. 2008: 24. ISBN 978-1-84725-220-3.
Fleet, Kate. The rise of the Ottomans. Fierro, Maribel (編). The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 2: The Western Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2010: 313. ISBN 978-0-521-83957-0. The origins of the Ottomans are obscure. According to legend, largely invented later as part of the process of legitimising Ottoman rule and providing the Ottomans with a suitably august past, it was the Saljuq ruler ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn who bestowed rule on the Ottomans.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power 2. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2009: 8.
Kafadar, Cemal. Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State. 1995: 129. Of [military undertakings] we know nothing with certainty until the Battle of Bapheus, Osman's triumphant confrontation with a Byzantine force in 1301 (or 1302), which is the first datable incident in his life.
Kermeli, Eugenia. Osman I. Ágoston, Gábor; Bruce Masters (編). Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. 2009: 445. Apart from these chronicles, there are later sources that begin to establish Osman as a mythic figure. From the 16th century onward a number of dynastic myths are used by Ottoman and Western authors, endowing the founder of the dynasty with more exalted origins. Among these is recounted the famous 「dream of Osman」 which is supposed to have taken place while he was a guest in the house of a sheikh, Edebali. [...] This highly symbolic narrative should be understood, however, as an example of eschatological mythology required by the subsequent success of the Ottoman emirate to surround the founder of the dynasty with supernatural vision, providential success, and an illustrious genealogy.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Dynastic Myth. Turcica. 1987, 19: 7–27. The attraction of Aşıkpasazade's story was not only that it furnished an episode proving that God had bestowed rulership on the Ottomans, but also that it provided, side by side with the physical descent from Oguz Khan, a spiritual descent. [...] Hence the physical union of Osman with a saint's daughter gave the dynasty a spiritual legitimacy and became, after the 1480s, an integral feature of dynastic mythology.
Frederick William Hasluck, [First published 1929], "XLVI. The Girding of the Sultan", in Margaret Hasluck, Christianity and Islam Under the Sultans II, pp. 604–622. ISBN978-1-4067-5887-0
Fleet, Kate. The rise of the Ottomans. Maribel Fierro (編). The New Cambridge History of Islam 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2010: 313–331. ISBN 978-0-521-83957-0.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Dynastic Myth. Turcica. 1987, 19: 7–27.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power 2. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2009. ISBN 978-0-230-57451-9.
Lowry, Heath. The Nature of the Early Ottoman State. Albany: SUNY Press. 2003. ISBN 0-7914-5636-6.
Murphey, Rhoads. Exploring Ottoman Sovereignty: Tradition, Image, and Practice in the Ottoman Imperial Household, 1400-1800. London: Continuum. 2008. ISBN 978-1-84725-220-3.
Zachariadou, Elizabeth (編). The Ottoman Emirate (1300-1389). Rethymnon: Crete University Press. 1991.