Bektashi spiritual guides and won, proving his spiritual superiority. Gramatikova dates Otman Baba's earliest presence in Bulgarian lands from 1445 to 1451, where he propagated and interpreted Islamic mysticism. Beginning his propagandizing alone, Otman Baba recruited dervish followers—called Abdals—from the Balkan Muslim population. When Otman Baba defeated a lamia in the Ludogorie region, he achieved his first miracle in Bulgarian lands, an act that Gramatikova characterizes as "one of the greatest miracles of the Muslim saints". Otman Baba travelled through the eastern foothills of Stara Planina, following Sufi doctrine by surviving on leaves and wild fruit as he meditated on God. Gramatikova proposes that the local woodcutters who saw him and hosted him in their village were Sufi Muslims and nomads who had migrated from Turkey during the mid-15th century. In the Kazanlak area, Otman Baba garnered a following of Sufi craftsmen and built a bridge with hunters, whom Gramatikova associates with nomadic Yürüks and Turcomans. Near Plovdiv, a local saint named Hasan Baba called Otman Baba the dual embodiment of Muhammed and Ali after spotting him in the Maritsa River. By 1451, Otman Baba had proselytized throughout Anatolia—particularly in Ottoman-ruled Western Asia Minor—working miracles and proving his sainthood. The vilâyetname offers conflicting accounts of Otman Baba's activities between 1451 and 1453. One holds that Otman Baba propagandized in Azeri lands, departing with the claim: "I shall saddle a cloud, shall turn the lightning into a whip and shall go back to Rum." Another asserts that Otman Baba stayed in Tarnovo as the guest of the local kadi (judge) and that locals bestowed the mystic with gifts after Ottoman forces had captured Constantinople. Gramatikova dates Otman Baba's arrival in Constantinople to 1456, where he contributed to the charitable activities of every imaret and advocated the restoration of a fortress that he argued was the town of Hasan and Huseyn. After leaving Constantinople, Otman Baba spent time in Edirne with the Abdals and settled in the village of Tatar Köyü, which Gramatikova supposes is either the present-day village Radovets or Filipovo—both in the Topolovgrad municipality of Bulgaria. Death In Tatar Köyü, Otman Baba predicted to his followers that they would develop into two branches. Physically weakening, he relocated near Haskovo, where he urged his followers to build mills and grow vineyards and claimed to follow an incomparable mystical path: "First I was a secret and I shall again become a secret.