by Alan Mikhail
SELIM NEXT TURNED HIS attention to the far more exigent threat of his half-brothers. Although he had outfought and outwitted them to gain the throne, Selim would never feel completely safe in the palace with Ahmed and Korkud lingering somewhere beyond the city walls. In an empire that determined succession by pitting half-brothers against one another, fratricide made eminent sense. Once the fittest won the throne, he killed his rivals to ensure that no bitter also-ran would seek revenge and thereby disrupt the stability of the state. Of Selim’s two enemy siblings, Ahmed was by far the more potent militarily and hence the more worrisome. In the summer of 1512, marauding across Anatolia in an attempt to carve out an independent state, he posed an abiding threat to the empire.
The funeral of Bayezit
Selim decided to start with Korkud, the easier target. Before setting out for Anatolia, however, Selim summoned Suleyman from Crimea to manage the empire’s administrative affairs while he was away doing battle. Several months into his reign, Selim had only a few seasoned and trusted advisers, so he still relied mainly on those who had helped him gain the throne—none more so than Suleyman, who was now almost eighteen. Moreover, having his son watch over imperial affairs in the palace would serve as useful training for the time when Suleyman followed him as sultan. And, in the worst-case scenario, if Selim fell in battle, his only son and successor would already be in the palace to accede to the sultanate.
With ten thousand troops behind him, Selim set out for Manisa, southwest of Istanbul. Korkud had resided in Manisa since his arrival there at the time of the Şahkulu Rebellion the previous year. One of the wealthiest towns in western Anatolia, Manisa excelled in olive oil production and also exported leather goods and cotton. Korkud had made repeated requests to Bayezit, as he did now to Selim, for the governorships of Lesbos or Alanya instead of Teke, a post he had lost thanks to Şahkulu’s rebels. Both were refused, mostly for fear that he sought direct access to the Mediterranean in order to flee the empire, as Bayezit’s half-brother Cem had done before him, with the goal of pursuing an alliance with a foreign power. (Indeed, a few years earlier, Korkud had briefly absconded to Egypt to seek help from the Mamluks to gain the throne, just as Cem had done.) So Korkud was stuck in landlocked Manisa, close to the sea but not itself a port city. When Selim reached the city’s modest palace after a ten-day march, his troops overwhelmed Korkud’s guards and quickly secured the complex. Somehow, Korkud managed to escape. Before Selim set off in pursuit, he took the opportunity to himself kill Korkud’s son in his palace bedroom.
Selim and his forces fanned out into the forested foothills of the Taurus Mountains south of the city. It was rough, rocky terrain, studded with ravines—perfect for hiding, difficult for surviving. After about half a day of searching, one of the soldiers yelled that he had found Korkud squirreled away in a dank cave. Selim ran to the cave to find his half-brother secured by a sword on his neck, exhausted from his flight, well aware of his impending fate. Selim insulted Korkud, calling him a traitor and a dog. Korkud begged for his life. Selim said nothing, stepped out of the cave, and ordered his men to seize Korkud. They would strangle him a few months later, at the age of forty-six, on March 13, 1513.
ELIMINATING AHMED WOULD PROVE far more difficult than chasing down Korkud. He had built a strong power base around Konya, the seat of his own veritable mini-empire. Across large swaths of ostensibly imperial territory, he—not the Ottoman bureaucracy—collected taxes and raised troops. He cut deals with local power brokers and the leaders of pastoral confederations to provide him with soldiers, support, and safety. Still, when news of the death of Bayezit and then the capture of Korkud spread eastward, many of Ahmed’s backers grew nervous and flipped their allegiance to the new sultan. Selim was master of the empire and its resources, and Ahmed had been deemed a rebel against the state. Most recognized the fate awaiting the prince at the hands of his equally ruthless but far more competent half-brother. Others chafed under the heavy hand of Ahmed’s rule (and that of his sons who served as governors), so they were more than ready to reject his frantic calls for support.
Selim and Ahmed clash
In mid-June 1512, Ahmed had sent his second son, Alaeddin, to seize the former Ottoman capital of Bursa, and in November 1512, Ahmed captured his, Selim’s, and Korkud’s birthplace: Amasya, northeast of Konya. For his part, after seizing and imprisoning Korkud, Selim had secured Manisa. In December, he moved north again toward Bursa, overwhelming Ahmed’s forces in the city, capturing Alaeddin, and executing him along with the sons of some of his other half-brothers who had taken refuge in the city. Selim’s men then pushed east, driving Ahmed and his diminished forces farther and farther away from the Ottoman capital.
In these months in early 1513, the rebel prince and his followers grew so desperate that they discussed the possibility of an alliance with the Ottomans’ sworn enemy, the Safavids. An alliance never materialized, but some of Ahmed’s men—as his son Murad had done during the Şahkulu Rebellion—did indeed flee over the border to seek protection at the Safavid court. Selim, of course, loathed the Safavids, having spent so much time in Trabzon warring against them and their allies. For Selim, Ahmed’s treachery in even considering an alliance with the Safavids further established his obvious unfitness for any leadership role in the Ottoman Empire.
While in Bursa, Selim devised a plan to trap Ahmed, who still had some small pockets of support in the city. Masquerading as one of Ahmed’s still-loyal Bursa followers, Selim wrote a series of letters flattering him, showering him with praise, and assuring him that he still enjoyed widespread support throughout the city. Bursa’s “allies of Ahmed” encouraged him to return to the city, guaranteeing that they would aid him in retaking it. The letters promised troops and supplies and even listed some of the city’s most vulnerable entry points. Fantasies of recapturing Bursa proved too much for Ahmed to resist, and he took the bait. In the early spring of 1513, Ahmed started moving westward from Amasya with his small number of remaining troops. When, in April, they reached Yenişehir, an agriculturally rich town about thirty-five miles east of Bursa, Selim and his forces were lying in wait. Unprepared for battle, Ahmed’s men were slaughtered. Ahmed was captured alive after falling from his horse.
Cowering in shame and dread, Bayezit’s favored son faced a pitiful end. Selim took the opportunity to confront his half-brother one last time. Four years apart in age, they had been pitted against each other as long as either could remember, despite their days of Persian lessons and chess games together in the Amasya harem. Their lifelong war was nearly over. In this victory—one that a fourth son never should have enjoyed—Selim gloated. Entering his half-brother’s prison cell, he insulted Ahmed and chastised him for his rebellious actions, for his ties with the Safavids, for undermining the glorious Ottoman state. Ahmed, silent, fixed his eyes on the cold ground on which he languished. Selim left the cell in disgust. At the end of April 1513, a little more than a month after having finally ordered Korkud’s execution, Selim had Ahmed strangled too.
FOR SEVERAL WEEKS AFTER Ahmed’s death, Selim stayed in the east. His forces streamed into eastern Anatolia, killing Ahmed’s supporters, pursuing his sons and some of Selim’s other nephews, and retaking territory for the empire. All of Ahmed’s sons who were captured were killed. Two who managed to flee into the arms of the Safavids—and were rumored to have converted to Shiism—were the only ones who survived.
By the summer of 1513, Selim had returned from the plains of Yenişehir back to Istanbul, having eliminated his rivals and secured the empire for himself. His mother had died in 1505—how joyful she would have been to see her one son gain the throne; and now his father was gone too. For the first time in his forty-two years, he stood as the undisputed head of his family and its possessions. Despite his disadvantages, Selim had triumphed.
Selim spent most of that summer in the luxurious calm of Topkapı Palace, tackling the intricacies of his new mandate—making appointments to key posts, organizing his palace adm
inistration, ensuring the proper provisioning of the army, and restoring safety and tranquility after the violent chaos of the succession crisis. He brought his consorts and daughters to the palace harem and dispatched Suleyman to a new and more prominent post, as governor of Manisa. During the long summer days, Selim strategized with his military advisers while they meandered among the roses and lilies of the palace gardens. He liked to trace the patterns formed by the blue and white tiles that lined the harem and his throne room. Above all, he reveled in the opulence of the palace—the many fireplaces and pavilions, the immense library, the kitchen’s endless variety of foods, the gratification of his every whim. In his quiet moments alone—a far cry from the mayhem of the many battles that had delivered him to this point—he pensively looked out over the Bosphorus from the perfect perch of the palace, almost the same view that had enraptured him as a boy.
In an accident of history, Niccolò Machiavelli, who admired and feared the Ottoman Empire, completed his famous treatise of political philosophy, The Prince, the same year—1513—in which Selim defeated his half-brothers to secure the sultanate that he had gained in 1512. Selim was the archetypal Machiavellian politician, and, indeed, Machiavelli esteemed Selim over the two other Ottoman sultans he witnessed, Mehmet and Bayezit. Provided no advantages in his quest for power, from birth order to the location of his governorship, Selim had strategized and fought ruthlessly, eventually to prevail over daunting odds. Now, as sultan, he finally had the resources to strike with overwhelming force one of the chief foes of his life so far, the enemy that had troubled him over the past decade of his governorship of Trabzon: the Safavid Empire.
PART FIVE
SELIM’S WORLD WARS
(1512–18)
IMAGE ON PREVIOUS PAGE:
Selim at war
CHAPTER
17
“THEIR ABODE IS HELL”
Ismail receives intelligence from an Ottoman captive
THE WARS SELIM WITNESSED AND WAGED DURING HIS LIFETIME remain with us today. The legacies of the Spanish voyages to the Americas help to explain the demographics of the modern Western Hemisphere, our ideas about bondage and freedom, current geopolitics, and the history of capitalism. The eventual American eclipse of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia began during Selim’s age. In the first two decades of the sixteenth century, Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire—the most significant empire in South Asia before the British—began the wars that would win him northern India, even as the Portuguese, who had rounded Africa in 1497, seized several ports in southern India. Like those of European rulers, Babur’s actions were taken in response to Ottoman power. He had reached out to Selim to help him in his wars in Central Asia, but Selim refused to come to his aid, backing his enemies instead. In part or in whole, all of these global military ventures occurred in reaction to the Ottomans. Selim, likewise, personally led a series of wars in the Middle East that have left a lasting mark on the world. Today’s competition between Sunni and Shiite powers over regional hegemony in the Middle East began during Selim’s day, with his wars against the Safavids.
More than Catholic Spain, Portugal, Venice, or other European Christian powers, more than Jews, the Mamluks, Moroccans, the abject Taino, the Mali Empire, the rising Mughals, or any other Muslims, the Safavids represented the greatest military and ideological threat both to Selim personally and to the future of the Ottoman Empire. Thus, after vanquishing his half-brothers and eliminating his domestic troubles, Selim turned eastward for the first major war of his sultanate, in hopes of dealing a death blow to his suspect Shiite subjects in eastern Anatolia and their conniving Safavid patrons.
WHEN SELIM ACCEDED TO the Ottoman throne, the Safavid shah Ismail was in his twenties, with his empire on solid footing in and around the major cities of the Caucasus. Ismail was, according to an Italian visitor to his court, “fair, handsome, and very pleasing; not very tall, but of a light and well-framed figure; rather stout than slight, with broad shoulders. His hair is reddish; he only wears moustachios.” His mustache indeed proved one of his hallmark features, prominent in every depiction of him. As with the presumably apocryphal tale of his having unearthed a ram while at full gallop, nearly all accounts of Ismail describe his impressive strength and inspiring courage. As the same Italian account continues, he was “as brave as a game cock, and stronger than any of his lords; in the archery contests, out of the ten apples that are knocked down, he knocks down seven.” In addition to his military acumen, Ismail also enjoyed poetry, song, and dance and even composed his own divan (anthology) of Persian and Turkish poetry. In short, he was hardly a boor.
Selim and Ismail, of course, had a history of bloody antagonism. With no clear or natural border between the states in eastern Anatolia, the two empires conducted constant tit-for-tat strikes as each tried to establish regional hegemony. The adoption of Shiism as the Safavids’ state religion had raised the stakes by infusing an ideological current into the conflict, and the Şahkulu Rebellion had stunned the Ottomans by making clear the immense threat of Safavid-sponsored Shiism within their empire. Şahkulu was the tip of a long spear wielded from Iran; to forever end the Shiite threat, the Ottomans would have to wrench the weapon from the Safavids’ hands and shatter it into a thousand pieces.
In the succession battle for Bayezit’s throne, the Safavids had thrown in their lot with Ahmed, because he had seemed to them, as to nearly everyone, the likely winner, as well as the most sympathetic, if not pliable, of the three half-brothers. Like his father, Ahmed strove to avoid military action whenever possible (at least, before his rampage through Anatolia), which suggested that he might be less antagonistic toward the Safavids and the Ottoman Empire’s Shiites than Selim. The Safavids had sheltered Ahmed’s sons during the succession battle and, at strategic moments, had even dispatched some of their forces to aid Ahmed.
Despite the setback of Ahmed’s demise, the Safavids continued their support of Ottoman Shiites during the early years of Selim’s reign in an attempt to weaken the new sultan. Furthermore, they refused to observe the standard early sixteenth-century diplomatic protocol—even for one’s enemies—of sending an embassy to recognize the ascension of a new sovereign, busy as they were making plans for Ahmed’s son Murad to overthrow Selim. Murad had fled to Iran from Sivas, but the Safavids’ plans for him ultimately failed to galvanize support among Ottoman Shiites and would eventually dwindle away. Yet Murad was still enough of a threat in the winter of 1513–14 that Selim sent a delegation to the handsome seasonal residence of the Safavid court in Isfahan, an oasis town in central Iran, demanding he be sent to Istanbul. Shah Ismail mocked Selim’s envoys, deriding their clothing and their faulty Persian and declaring that Murad was a favored guest of the Safavids and would remain such.
Selim’s envoys also demanded that Ismail return the city of Diyarbakir and its surrounding province in southeastern Anatolia to the Ottomans. Selim claimed it as part of the hereditary lands of the House of Osman, although there was no historical precedent for Ottoman control of the city or province. Diyarbakir, a mostly Kurdish city on the banks of the Tigris River, was of the utmost strategic importance as a gateway to Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian peninsula, and stood at the intersection of several overland trade routes to the East. The Ottomans and the Safavids had waged a tug-of-war over the province during the previous decade, yanking it back and forth several times. Selim calculated that the Safavids would rebuff him, thus providing a further casus belli. As expected, Ismail obliged, goading Selim by stating that if the Ottoman sultan wanted the territory, he would have to take it by force. At the end of 1513, Selim’s envoys departed Isfahan, insulted and empty-handed.
After a momentous year, Selim spent that winter of 1513–14 in the palace at Edirne, where he and his men enjoyed daily hunts and relaxed by warming fires in the evening. When his emissaries returned from Isfahan, Selim was unsurprised by their news. The Safavid refusal to surrender Murad and to retreat from Diyarbakir added a few more logs to the fi
re that had simmered inside Selim for years, a blaze now burning hotter than any in the Edirne palace. He considered that he now had sufficient political justification to declare war. He had wanted to move against the Safavids from the moment he seized the throne, but convention dictated an official declaration of intention. According to the rules of early modern diplomacy, Selim had acted correctly: he had offered Shah Ismail a means of avoiding war, and it was rejected.
In addition to the political niceties, and to further strengthen his sanction, Selim sought religious backing for his impending military venture. Although the Safavids were Shiites—equivalent to heretics, in the eyes of most Sunnis—they were still Muslims. A Muslim declaring war on another Muslim was not a simple proposition. According to Islamic law, Muslims could wage war against non-Muslims at any time, for almost any reason, but the legal threshold for initiating a confrontation against a fellow Muslim was vastly higher. Over centuries of Islamic history, Muslims had regularly fought other Muslims with little concern for the technicalities of religious law, but Selim, in his endeavor to become the world’s most powerful Muslim, strove to follow the Islamic rules of war to the letter in his first major military operation as sultan. He portrayed himself consistently as a pious Muslim; he did not want to be accused of disobedience to holy law. And, since he had gained the sultanate by questionable means, Selim felt an added imperative to broadcast his piety and adherence to the laws of state and religion.
