n. a low, cushioned seat without a back or arms
—Webster’s New Universal
Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition
It is truly a shame that a man once seated at a throne
atop the entire world should be reduced to a lowly stuffed footstool, but such
is the unfortunate legacy of Osman I.
In the late thirteenth century, a shift in the balance of
world power was taking place. Following the death of Genghis Khan, hordes of
Mongols were pillaging their way west toward Europe at the same time that the
Christian Byzantine Empire began losing its stronghold over mostly Muslim Asia
Minor. From the middle of this cultural sandwich rose the Ottoman Empire, which
would rule for more than six hundred years.
Born in 1259, Osman I was the sultan of Anatolia
(modern-day Turkey) in the early fourteenth century. He managed to band his
Turkish countrymen together with the mercenaries and refugees fleeing the
Mongolian raiders and successfully established his people as the Islamic
successors to the Byzantine Empire (the eastern version of the Holy Roman one
next door). Building upon his legacy, within two hundred years the Ottoman
Empire sprawled across most of western Asia, southeastern Europe, and northern
Africa. Its capital, Constantinople, was the crossroads for the eastern and
western worlds for most of the prior millennium. Osman himself was celebrated
in poem and song for centuries after for his bravery, beauty, and, strangely, for
his “wondrous length and strength of arm.” Turkish delight on a moonlit night,
indeed.
How Osman became a glorified hassock is a bit more of a
mystery. The Oxford English Dictionary places the first
written usage of ottoman as furniture in 1789, from no
less than jaunty trendsetter Thomas Jefferson. Europeans in the eighteenth
century simply could not get enough of the marvels of the Near East and
provided an eager market for the pillows, carpets, and low-slung furnishings
that satisfied the fantasies of an exotic Arabian night. The rich textiles
imported from the Ottoman Empire were variously called ottomane
(French), ottomana (Italian), otomana (Spanish),
and Ottomane (German). Following the lead of the
French, the English word morphed from the textured fabrics to divans and then
from chairs to footstools.
Osman died in 1326, but the Ottoman Empire was not
dissolved and succeeded by the Republic of Turkey until 1923. Despite his
namesake being well represented as a home furnishing by that point, Osman and
the Turkish wards of his empire did ultimately have their etymological revenge
against the Western infidels. Though it had been called Byzantium, New Rome,
and Stamboul at various points in history, in 1930 Constantinople was
officially renamed Istanbul—the Turkish name for the city since the tenth
century. The Four Lads immortalized the cartographical coup in their swing hit
“Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” in 1953, as did a revival of the song in 1990
by alt-pop darlings They Might Be Giants.
