Selim I (; ; 10 October 1470 – 22 September 1520), also known as Selim the Grim or Selim the Resolute (), was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1512 to 1520. Despite lasting only eight years, his reign is notable for the enormous expansion of the Empire, particularly his conquest between 1516 and 1517 of the entire Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, which included all of the Levant, Hejaz, and Egypt itself. On the eve of his death in 1520, the Ottoman Empire spanned about , having grown by seventy percent during Selim's reign.
Selim's conquest of the Middle Eastern heartlands of the Muslim world, and particularly his assumption of the role of guardian of the pilgrimage routes to Mecca and Medina, established the Ottoman Empire as the pre-eminent Muslim state. His conquests dramatically shifted the empire's geographical and cultural center of gravity away from the Balkans and toward the Middle East. By the eighteenth century, Selim's conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate had come to be romanticized as the moment when the Ottomans seized leadership over the rest of the Muslim world, and consequently Selim is popularly remembered as the first legitimate Ottoman Caliph, although stories of an official transfer of the caliphal office from the last Mamluk Abbasid caliph to the Ottomans were a later invention.
Early life Selim was born in Amasya on 10 October 1470 as the son of Şehzade Bayezid (later Bayezid II) during the reign of his grandfather Mehmed II. His mother was Ayşe Gülbahar Hatun, who was either the daughter of Alaüddevle Bozkurt Bey, the eleventh ruler of the Dulkadirids or a concubine. In 1479 at the age of nine, he was sent by his grandfather to Istanbul to be circumcised along with his brothers. In 1481, his grandfather Mehmed II died and his father became Sultan Bayezid II. Six years later in 1487, he was sent by his father to Trabzon to serve there as governor.
Campaigns and Battles
Securing the Sultanate
Campaign of Trebizond (1505)
In 1505, Ebrahim Mirza, a Safavid prince and the younger brother of Shah Ismail I of Iran, marched on Trabzon with an army of 3,000.Ottoman-Safavid Relations under Bayezid II (1501–1512) , 2020. F. Papadimitriou. Hearing of this, Selim left the city with an expeditionary force consisting of 450 men, who, under his personal command, repelled the exponentially larger Safavid army, and chased Ebrahim Mirza to Erzincan. Selim's incursion into Erzincan resulted in Shah Ismail writing a letter of complaint to Sultan Bayezid II, but did not get any results.
Battle of Erzincan (1507)
In 1507, the Safavids under the command of Shah Ismail organized an expedition against Ala al-Dawla Bozkurt of Dulkadir. During this expedition, Shah Ismail, who had crossed into Ottoman territory without permission, also conscripted Turkmen warriors who were Ottoman subjects into his army.
These actions of Shah Ismail I were a violation of Ottoman sovereignty. Bayezid II did not respond to these violations, but Prince Selim, who was still governor of Trabzon at the time, attacked Erzincan and Bayburt, which belonged to the Safavids, and defeated the 10,000 strong Safavid army sent by Shah Ismail I at Erzincan.
Georgian Campaign (1508)
Following his victory over the Safavid Army at Erzincan in 1507, in the following year, Selim organized an attack against Georgia. He invaded through the west and captured the cities of Imereti and Guria, bringing western Georgia under Ottoman rule. During this campaign, Selim enslaved a large number of Georgian women, girls and boys, reportedly numbering more than 10,000.The Making of Selim: Succession, Legitimacy, and Memory in the Early Modern Ottoman World. H. Erdem Cipa. Indiana University Press.
Campaign of Trebizond (1510) In 1510, as a response to Selim's invasion of Georgia, Shah Ismail I sent another army to Trabzon. This army, under the command of Ebrahim Mirza, was once again defeated by Prince Selim, marking the fourth consecutive defeat that Selim had inflicted on the Safavids.
Battle of Tekirdag (1511)
In 1509, Şehzade Ahmet, Selim's elder brother, had defeated a Karamanid army, supported by the Safavids in Asia Minor, and following the victory, marched on Istanbul to exploit the glory he had won. The Şehzade was refused entry to the city, as Bayezid II feared that his son meant to overthrow him.
Meanwhile, Şehzade Selim, fearing for his own safety in the event that Ahmet became Sultan, staged a revolt in Thrace in 1511, and subsequently clashed with his father's army at the Battle of Tekirdag, where, for the first and last time, the Şehzade lost a battle, and consequently fled to Crimea.
Battle of Yenişehir (1513)
By 1512 Şehzade Ahmet was the favorite candidate to succeed his father. Bayezid, who was reluctant to continue his rule over the empire, announced Ahmet as heir apparent to the throne. Angered by this announcement, Selim rebelled for a second time, and while he lost the first battle against his father's forces, Selim ultimately dethroned his father with the help of the Janisarries.
After Sultan Bayezid II was dethroned, Selim ordered that his father be exiled to a far off sanjak, but before he could reach his destination, Bayezid passed away.
When Selim ascended to the throne, his first task was to suppress his brother Ahmet's rebellion in Asia Minor, where he had declared himself Sultan of Anatolia. The army under the command of Selim and the army under the command of Prince Ahmet met near Yenişehir. Ahmet was defeated at the Battle of Yenişehir.
Following the battle, Selim put his captured brothers (Şehzade Ahmet and Şehzade Korkut) and nephews to death upon his formal accession. However, his nephew Şehzade Murad, son of the legal heir to the throne Şehzade Ahmet, fled to the neighboring Safavid Empire after his expected support failed to materialize. This fratricidal policy was motivated by bouts of civil strife that had been sparked by the antagonism between Selim's father and his uncle, Cem Sultan, and between Selim himself and his brother Ahmet.
Shiite Unrest and Rebellions
After many centuries of calm, the Alevi population launched an open revolt against the Ottomans during Selim's reign, in which they seem to have been backed by the Qizilbash of Safavid Iran. This led to harsh reprisals against the Alevis by the Ottoman Army under Selim I, and major crackdowns on Alevi gatherings.
Conquest of the Middle East
The Safavid Empire
One of Selim's first challenges as sultan involved the growing tension between the Ottoman Empire and the Safavid Empire led by Shah Ismail, who had recently brought the Safavids to power and had switched the Persian state religion from Sunni Islam to adherence to the Twelver branch of Shia Islam.
By 1510 Ismail had conquered the whole of Iran and Azerbaijan,BBC, (LINK) southern Dagestan (with its important city of Derbent), Mesopotamia, Armenia, Khorasan, Eastern Anatolia, and had made the Georgian kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti his vassals.
He was a great threat to his Sunni Muslim neighbors to the west. In 1511 Ismail had supported a pro-Shia/Safavid uprising in Anatolia, the Şahkulu Rebellion. In response, Selim's mufti, ibn Kemal, issued a fatwa of takfir against Shah Ismail I and his followers, declaring his lands the abode of war.
Early in his reign, Selim created a list of all Shiites ages 7 to 70 in a number of central Anatolian cities including Tokat, Sivas and Amasya. As Selim marched through these cities, his forces rounded up and executed all the Shiites they could find. Most of them were beheaded. The massacre was the largest in Ottoman history until the end of the 19th century.
In 1514, Selim I attacked the Safavid Empire to stop the spread of Shiism into Ottoman dominions. Selim and Ismā'il had exchanged a series of belligerent letters prior to the attack. On his march to face Ismā'il, Selim had 50,000 Alevis massacred, seeing them as enemies of the Ottoman Empire.
Selim I defeated Ismā'il at the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514.Michael Axworthy Iran: Empire of the Mind (Penguin, 2008) p. 133 Ismā'il's army was more mobile and his soldiers better prepared, but the Ottomans prevailed due in large part to their efficient modern army, possession of artillery, black powder and muskets. Ismā'il was wounded and almost captured in battle, and Selim I entered the Iranian capital of Tabriz in triumph on 5 September, but did not linger. The Battle of Chaldiran was of historical significance: the reluctance of Shah Ismail to accept the advantages of modern firearms and the importance of artillery proved decisive. After the battle, Selim, referring to Ismail, stated that his adversary was: "Always drunk to the point of losing his mind and totally neglectful of the affairs of the state".
Following their victory, the Ottomans captured the Safavid capital city of Tabriz on 7 September, which they first pillaged and then evacuated. That week's Friday sermon in mosques throughout the city was delivered in Selim's name. Selim was however unable to press on after Tabriz due to the discontent amongst the janissaries. The Ottoman Empire successfully annexed Eastern Anatolia (encompassing Western Armenia) and Upper Mesopotamia from the Safavids. These areas changed hands several times over the following decades; however, the Ottoman hold would not be set until the 1555 Peace of Amasya following the Ottoman–Safavid War (1532–1555). Effective governmental rule and eyalets would not be established over these regions until the 1639 Treaty of Zuhab.
The Mamluks
Sultan Selim then conquered the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, defeating the Mamluk Egyptians first at the Battle of Marj Dabiq (24th of August 1516), and then at the Battle of Ridaniya (22nd of January 1517). This led to the Ottoman annexation of the entire sultanate, from Syria and Palestine in Sham, to Hejaz and Tihamah in the Arabian Peninsula, and ultimately Egypt itself. This permitted Selim to extend Ottoman power to the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, hitherto under Egyptian rule. Rather than style himself the Ḥākimü'l-Ḥaremeyn, or The Ruler of The Two Holy Cities, he accepted the more pious title Ḫādimü'l-Ḥaremeyn, or The Servant of The Two Holy Cities.The Classical Age, 1453–1600 Retrieved on 16 September 2007Yavuz Sultan Selim Government Retrieved on 16 September 2007
Battle of Marj Dabiq
Selim I launched an attack on the Mamluks in 1516. The Ottoman army and the Mamluk army met near Marj Dabiq. The Mamluk army advanced and on 20 August made camp at the plain of Marj Dabiq, a day's journey north of Aleppo. There, al-Ghawri and his men awaited the enemy's approach on this plain, where the sultanate's fate would soon be decided.
According to the History of Egypt composed by Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Iyas, the Mamluks arranged themselves with the Sultan occupying the center column. Sibay, the Governor of Damascus, commanded the right flank, and Khai'r Bey, governor of Aleppo, took the left.
The marshal Sûdûn Adjami was the first to enter combat, followed by Sibay, leading an experienced corps of veteran Mamluk warriors. They rushed into battle and managed to kill several thousand Ottoman soldiers in the first hours of fighting. This advantage forced the opposite Ottoman wing to begin a withdrawal, and the Mamluk forces under Sibay succeeded in taking several pieces of artillery and capturing some fusiliers. Selim considered retreat or requesting a truce.