by Alan Mikhail
1475
Ottomans capture Genoese colony of Kefe (Crimea)
1476
Columbus first sails from Mediterranean into North Atlantic
1477
First printing of The Travels of Marco Polo
1478
Crimean Tatars accept Ottoman suzerainty
1479
Selim’s circumcision ceremony in Istanbul (his first time in the city); Treaty of Constantinople between Ottoman Empire and Venice; Columbus marries Filipa Moniz in Lisbon
1480
Ottoman capture of Otranto (southern Italy)
1481
Sultan Mehmet II, grandfather of Selim, dies; Bayezit II, father of Selim, becomes sultan and moves his family to Topkapı Palace in Istanbul
1481
Ottoman retreat from Otranto; Cem, half-uncle of Selim, flees Anatolia for Mamluk Cairo; Cem makes Islamic pilgrimage (Hajj), the only Ottoman sultan or prince ever to do so
1482
Columbus sails to São Jorge da Mina (West Africa)
1485–91
Ottoman war with Mamluk Empire
1486
Queen Isabella I of Castile meets Columbus in Córdoba
GOVERNORSHIP (1487–1512)
1487
Selim becomes governor of Trabzon, in eastern Anatolia; birth of Ismail, future head of Safavid dynasty, in Ardabil (Iran)
1487ff
Ottoman ships appear in Corsica, Pisa, Balearic Islands, Almería, Málaga
1487 or 1488
Ottoman privateer (and then admiral) Kemal Reis sent to western Mediterranean
1488
Sultan Bayezit II attacks Malta
1490
Death of Ya‘kub, leader of the Ak Koyunlu Confederacy, sparks succession crisis
1490–95
Kemal Reis conducts raids along North African coast
1492
Spanish take Granada, ending seven centuries of Muslim rule on Iberian peninsula, and expel all Jews; Bayezit II welcomes Spanish Jews to Ottoman Empire
1492
Columbus lands on Bahamian island of Guanahani; two weeks later, he reaches north coast of Cuba
1493
Columbus returns to Europe, minus one ship; eight months later, he crosses Atlantic again
1493
Hebrew printing press established in Istanbul
1494
Suleyman, son of Selim, born in Trabzon: November 6, 1494
1495
Cem dies in Naples
1497
Vasco da Gama rounds Cape of Good Hope, reaches Calicut in 1498
1498
Columbus begins third transatlantic voyage
1499–1501
Muslim uprisings (Alpujarra revolts) in and around Granada
1499–1503
Second Ottoman war with Venice
1501
Safavids capture Tabriz, establish Safavid Empire with Ismail as its first shah; Ottomans disperse their domestic Shiite populations
1501
Kemal Reis conducts raids off coast of Valencia, likely capturing a sailor in possession of maps from Columbus’s earlier transatlantic voyages; Spanish take first West African slaves to New World
1502
Columbus departs on fourth and final transatlantic voyage
1503
Spanish register fears that African slaves are preaching Islam to Indians on Hispaniola
1504
Queen Isabella dies; Portuguese blockade mouth of Red Sea
1505
Selim rebuffs Safavid raids in and around Trabzon
1506
Columbus dies in Valladolid, Spain
1508
Selim invades Georgia
1509
Major earthquake in Istanbul; Bayezit II Mosque, built in 1506, badly damaged
1510
Selim defends Erzincan from attempted Safavid raid
1511
Şahkulu Rebellion; Suleyman becomes governor of Kefe
1512
Selim marches from Crimea toward Istanbul
SULTANATE (1512–20)
1512
Sultan Selim I ascends Ottoman throne after abdication of Sultan Bayezit II, who dies a month later en route to Dimetoka
1513
Selim kills half-brothers Ahmed and Korkud
Spring 1514
Selim massacres 40,000 Ottoman Shiites in eastern Anatolia
Aug. 1514
Selim wins decisive Battle of Chaldiran against Safavids and seizes Tabriz
1515
Selim returns to Istanbul; Portuguese capture Hormuz
1516
King Ferdinand II of Aragon dies
Spring 1516
Barbarossa brothers capture Algiers for the Ottoman Empire
Jul. 1516
Selim arrives in Elbistan (southern Anatolia)
Aug. 1516
Selim enters Aleppo in triumph
Dec. 1516
Selim enters Jerusalem
1517
First official European diplomatic mission to China
Feb. 1517
Selim enters Cairo, effectively ending Mamluk Empire; Francisco Hernández de Córdoba becomes first European in Mexico, dubbing Maya city El Gran Cairo (later Cape Catoche)
Spring 1517
Selim proclaimed caliph, receives world map from Piri Reis, and in September begins ten-month return march to Istanbul
Oct. 1517
Martin Luther writes 95 Theses
Late 1517
First Ottoman raids from Tlemcen (Algeria) west into Morocco
Jul. 1518
Selim arrives in Istanbul after long march from Cairo
Fall 1518
Selim prepares for war against Safavids and their Ottoman Shiite supporters; orders construction of fifty ships in Red Sea to counter Portuguese influence
Late 1518
Fleeing plague, Selim leaves Istanbul for Edirne
Feb. 1519
Selim dispatches thirty ships to fight Portuguese on India’s western coast and orders 60,000 Ottoman troops to Nicopolis (western Greece) in preparation for sailing to North Africa
1519
Battle of Otumba in Mexico: Spanish defeat Aztecs
1519
Selim renews peace treaty with Poland
Jul. 1519
Selim signs new peace treaty with Hungary
May 1520
Selim receives new world map
1520
Selim dies in Çorlu, near Edirne (eastern Thrace): September 22, 1520
AFTER SELIM (POST-1520)
1520
Suleyman, Selim’s only son, becomes tenth Ottoman sultan
1521
Christmas Day Wolof Rebellion in Hispaniola: first slave insurrection in the Americas
1522
Ottoman conquest of Rhodes
1528
Selim’s body transferred from Istanbul’s Fatih Mosque to Selim I Mosque (Yavuz Selim Mosque), commissioned by Suleyman
1529
First Ottoman siege of Vienna
1534
Hafsa, former concubine of Selim and mother of Suleyman, dies and is buried next to Selim: March 19, 1534
1535
Ottomans establish administrative control in Yemen
1540s
First coffeehouses open in Istanbul
1546
Incorporation of Basra (Iraq) into Ottoman Empire
1553–55
War with Safavids, concluding with Treaty of Amasya
1565
Ottoman siege of Malta
1566
Unexpected death of Sultan Suleyman in Hungary: September 6, 1566
NOTES
. . .
To allow as many readers as possible to follow the sources used in this book, I have, when available, cited primary sources in English translation and referenced English-language secondary materials.
INTRODUCTION
5 Gibb
on’s once canonical eighteenth-century account: Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 6 vols. (London: J. Murray, 1846).
5 Matamoros, a remnant symbol of Christian Spain’s brutal wars against Islam: Abbas Hamdani, “Ottoman Response to the Discovery of America and the New Route to India,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 101 (1981): 330.
5 The people who would eventually become the Ottomans: See, for example, Carter Vaughn Findley, The Turks in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 21–92.
7 stormed through the walls of the Byzantine capital, Constantinople: Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time, trans. Ralph Manheim, ed. William C. Hickman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 85–98.
7 plucked out one of the eyes of Christianity: The phrase belongs to Pope Pius II, whose birth name was Enea Silvio Piccolomini. Kate Fleet, “Italian Perceptions of the Turks in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 5 (1995): 161.
10 Selim: The standard accounts of Selim’s life in Turkish and English include Feridun M. Emecen, Zamanın İskenderi, Şarkın Fatihi: Yavuz Sultan Selim (Istanbul: Yitik Hazine Yayınları, 2010); Selâhattin Tansel, Yavuz Sultan Selim (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2016); Yılmaz Öztuna, Yavuz Sultan Selim (Istanbul: Babıali Kültür Yayıncılığı, 2006); Çağatay Uluçay, “Yavuz Sultan Selim Nasıl Padişah Oldu?,” Tarih Dergisi 6 (1954): 53–90; Çağatay Uluçay, “Yavuz Sultan Selim Nasıl Padişah Oldu?,” Tarih Dergisi 7 (1954): 117–42; Çağatay Uluçay, “Yavuz Sultan Selim Nasıl Padişah Oldu?,” Tarih Dergisi 8 (1956): 185–200; Fuad Gücüyener, Yavuz Sultan Selim (Istanbul: Anadolu Türk Kitap Deposu, 1945); Ahmet Uğur, Yavuz Sultan Selim (Kayseri: Erciyes Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Müdürlüğü Yayınları, 1989); Ahmet Uğur, The Reign of Sultan Selīm I in the Light of the Selīm-nāme Literature (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1985); H. Erdem Çıpa, The Making of Selim: Succession, Legitimacy, and Memory in the Early Modern Ottoman World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017); Fatih Akçe, Sultan Selim I: The Conqueror of the East (Clifton, NJ: Blue Dome Press, 2016).
11 one of the first non-firstborn sons to become sultan: The only previous occurrence came during the period of civil war between 1402 and 1413 known as the Ottoman Interregnum, when the sons of Bayezit I fought one another to the death, with Bayezit’s fourth son, Mehmet, surviving to take the throne. This exception, however, was always interpreted as a cautionary tale about the dangers inherent in imperial succession and the need, therefore, to recognize the eldest son as the legitimate successor. Even after becoming sultan, Mehmet, tellingly, was known as the “young lord.” Dimitris J. Kastritsis, The Sons of Bayezid: Empire Building and Representation in the Ottoman Civil War of 1402–1413 (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923 (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 22–47; Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill Online, 2012), s.v. “Meḥemmed I” (Halil İnalcık).
11 “sanguinary tyrant”: Stanley Lane-Poole, assisted by E. J. W. Gibb and Arthur Gilman, The Story of Turkey (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1893), 152. Also cited in Çıpa, Making of Selim, 132.
11 kicked the decapitated heads: Çıpa, Making of Selim, 2.
11 “His eyes betray . . . a warmonger”: Andrea Gritti, Relazione a Bajezid II, serie 3, vol. 3 of Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti al Senato, ed. Eugenio Albèri, 1–43 (Florence: Società Editrice Fiorentina, 1855), 23–24, cited in Çıpa, Making of Selim, 62–63.
12 the Selimname: Celia J. Kerslake, “A Critical Edition and Translation of the Introductory Sections and the First Thirteen Chapters of the ‘Selīmnāme’ of Celālzāde Muṣṭafā Çelebi” (D. Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1975).
12 to paint the sultan in as flattering a light as possible: Çıpa, Making of Selim, 140–52.
CHAPTER 1: PERFUME OF THE WORLD
16 “Today, at this court”: Celia J. Kerslake, “A Critical Edition and Translation of the Introductory Sections and the First Thirteen Chapters of the ‘Selīmnāme’ of Celālzāde Muṣṭafā Çelebi” (D. Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1975), 31a.
21 “There are no ties”: Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time, trans. Ralph Manheim, ed. William C. Hickman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 405.
22 governor of Amasya for sixteen years: Gábor Ágoston and Bruce Masters, eds., Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire (New York: Facts on File, 2009), s.v. “Bayezid II” (Gábor Ágoston).
23 Amasya: For a study of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Amasya, see Hasan Karatas, “The City as a Historical Actor: The Urbanization and Ottomanization of the Halvetiye Sufi Order by the City of Amasya in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2011).
24 Topkapı Palace: In these early years, the palace was known simply as “the new palace,” to distinguish it from an older structure that Mehmet II first used as his residence when he entered the city. Gülru Necipoğlu, Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power: The Topkapı Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (New York: Architectural History Foundation; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 4–13.
25 They did not send anybody: John Freely, Jem Sultan: The Adventures of a Captive Turkish Prince in Renaissance Europe (London: Harper Perennial, 2005), 25.
27 Bayezit seems to have tapped Ahmed: Andrea Gritti, Relazione a Bajezid II, serie 3, vol. 3 of Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti al Senato, ed. Eugenio Albèri, 1–43 (Florence: Società Editrice Fiorentina, 1855), 23–24, cited in H. Erdem Çıpa, The Making of Selim: Succession, Legitimacy, and Memory in the Early Modern Ottoman World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 62–63.
27 “only cared for eating”: Quoted in Çıpa, Making of Selim, 285, n. 7.
28 a man he deeply respected and loved: Fatih Akçe, Sultan Selim I: The Conqueror of the East (Clifton, NJ: Blue Dome Press, 2016), 8.
28 drew his last breath: On Mehmet’s death, see Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror, 403–04.
29 “This second Lucifer”: Quoted in Freely, Jem Sultan, 37–38.
29 “It was fortunate”: Quoted in Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror, 408.
CHAPTER 2: EMPIRE BOYS
33 “very melancholic”: Quoted in Encyclopædia Britannica, s.v. “Bayezid II, Ottoman Sultan” (V.J. Parry), https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bayezid-II (accessed February 23, 2019).
33 a bon vivant: John Freely, Jem Sultan: The Adventures of a Captive Turkish Prince in Renaissance Europe (London: Harper Perennial, 2005), 27.
33 Konya: Wikipedia, s.v. “Konya,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konya (accessed February 8, 2019).
34 Ottomans were in the ascendancy in the Mediterranean: Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 17–19, 81–82.
35 killing the grand vizier: Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923 (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 82.
36 the empire’s elite bestowed upon Bayezit the sword: Freely, Jem Sultan, 43.
36 struck coins in his own image: Freely, Jem Sultan, 46.
38 Pope Sixtus IV wrote to Christian leaders: Freely, Jem Sultan, 53–56.
39 When Cem first reached the city: Freely, Jem Sultan, 58.
39 dined as part of the sovereign’s entourage: Freely, Jem Sultan, 60.
39 long beard and spiky eyebrows: For a picture of Qaitbay, see Wikipedia, s.v. “Qaitbay,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qaitbay (accessed February 8, 2019).
39 [Cem’s] Hajj: Freely, Jem Sultan, 61–62.
40 “While you lie . . . your chief aim”: This exchange is recounted in Freely, Jem Sultan, 62.
41 to honor the peace treaty with the Ottomans: Freely, Jem Sultan, 25, 63.
CHAPTER 3: AN OTTOMAN ABROAD
44 Cem’s first letter was to Venice: Nicolas Vatin, Sultan Djem, Un prince ottoman dans l’Europe du XVe siècle d’après d
eux sources contemporaines: Vâḳı‘ât-ı Sulṭân Cem, Œuvres de Guillaume Caoursin (Ankara: Imprimerie de la Société Turque d’Histoire, 1997), 18.
44 his request . . . was refused: John Freely, Jem Sultan: The Adventures of a Captive Turkish Prince in Renaissance Europe (London: Harper Perennial, 2005), 67–68.
44 Firenk Suleyman Bey reached the island: Vatin, Sultan Djem, 142.
45 knew Cem personally from the truce negotiations in 1479: Freely, Jem Sultan, 25.
45 It took over a week: Freely, Jem Sultan, 72.
46 “most beautiful horse”: Quoted in Freely, Jem Sultan, 76.
47 “an Armada,” “a great many cannons”: Quoted in Freely, Jem Sultan, 30–32.
48 comfortable on Rhodes . . . remained worried about his precarious position: Vatin, Sultan Djem, 144, 146; Freely, Jem Sultan, 81.
48 “observes those around him . . . everybody”: These quotes are from the English translation of Caoursin’s account found in Freely, Jem Sultan, 81.
48 Alméida, a slave woman: Freely, Jem Sultan, 82. Alméida is not mentioned by name in Caoursin’s text.
48 Cem set sail: Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill Online, 2012), s.v. “Djem” (Halil İnalcık).
