Söğüt

Can a state be founded on a dream? If the Ottoman chronicles are to be believed, the answer must be yes… Legend has it that one night, while young Osman was a guest in the house of Sheikh Edebali, he had a dream: a moon rose from the sheikh’s breast and came to sink into his own; then from his navel a tree sprang up, and grew, and grew, until its branches cast their shade over the whole world… In the morning, when Osman told of his dream, the sheikh said it heralded a sovereignty to be granted to him and his line. How much of the dream is true and how much later embellishment, we cannot know; but in all these centuries the story has never tired of being told.