Ottoman history has been rewritten for political and cultural advantage and speculative theories rife with inconsistent research, ahistorical assumptions and embedded biases.
The story describes a dream experienced by Osman while staying in the home of a religious figure, Sheikh Edebali, in which he sees a metaphorical vision predicting the growth and prosperity of an empire to be ruled by him and his descendants.
[3] Historians now generally reject the Ghaza Thesis, and consequently the idea that Ottoman expansion was primarily fueled by holy war, but are conflicted with regard to what to replace it with.
[4][5] In seeking new identities and ideological foundations for their states, Arabs and Turks invoked ancient history: the Pharaohs, Kings of Babylon, and the Hittites of pre-Ottoman Anatolia.
"[8] The 19th- and early 20th-century literature written by Westerners bent on "discovering" the Holy Land—that is, reclaiming it from what they believed was a stagnant and declining Ottoman Empire—provided the intellectual foundation for this shared image.