Ertuğrul

Ertuğrul Ghazi was leader of the Kayı tribe of Oghuz Turks and father of Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire. Operating on the Seljuk-Byzantine frontier in thirteenth-century Anatolia, his modest gains at Söğüt laid the groundwork for an enduring Islamic empire.

Osman I (c. 1258-c. 1324) was the Turkoman frontier leader from whom the Ottoman dynasty takes its name. No written source survives from his lifetime, and almost everything recorded about him was set down more than a century later, which makes his reign the least documented of the dynasty.