Among the most remarkable events of the late medieval period was the rise and growth of the Ottoman state in Anatolia and beyond.  George Finlay, in his seven-volume history of Greece, called the Ottoman Empire “one of the most singular creations of human genius.”  In the empire’s early centuries, at least, we cannot disagree with this verdict.  How was it that a tiny, obscure tribe of Asiatic migrants came to conquer the proud and ancient domains of the Byzantine Greeks with such rapidity?