God's Shadow

by Alan Mikhail

  262 Ismail distributed wine to his soldiers: Akçe, Sultan Selim, 76.

  263 Ottoman gunners . . . easily picking off their enemies: Savory, Iran under the Safavids, 41–42; Abbas Amanat, Iran: A Modern History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 55–57. On the Ottomans’ drummers, see Akçe, Sultan Selim, 76.

  263 Ismail himself hacked to death: Wall text, “Şah İsmayıl,” exhibition, Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences.

  263 “The Persian horses”: Quoted in Savory, Iran under the Safavids, 43.

  263 Thousands of soldiers had died, along with: Savory, Iran under the Safavids, 42; Amanat, Iran, 57.

  263 they solemnly buried their dead: Akçe, Sultan Selim, 90.

  264 two small cannons and six arquebuses: Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 108.

  264 Preemptively they professed their loyalty: Crider, “Foreign Relations,” 22; Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “Ottoman–Persian Relations” (Özgüdenli).

  264 entered the surrendered city on September 5: Allouche, Origins and Development, 120.

  264 delivered in Selim’s name: Akçe, Sultan Selim, 93.

  264 Selim instructed his advisers to send letters: Crider, “Foreign Relations,” 22.

  264 Tabriz: Wall text, “Şah İsmayıl,” exhibition, Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences.

  265 Selim dispatched some of the city’s riches: Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill Online, 2012), s.v. “Selīm I” (Halil İnalcık).

  266 Ismail’s favorite wife, Tajli Khanum: Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 37; Allouche, Origins and Development, 120–21. Some sources claim a different wife was captured. See Peirce, Imperial Harem, 297, n. 42.

  266 cutting off the noses of the four men: Crider, “Foreign Relations,” 23.

  266 they nearly mutinied: Allouche, Origins and Development, 121; Savory, Iran under the Safavids, 42.

  266 one of the Ottomans’ primary ideological and military foes: On Ottoman–Safavid relations before and after 1514, see Allouche, Origins and Development; Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont, Les Ottomans, les Safavides et leurs voisins: contribution à l’histoire des relations internationales dans l’Orient islamique de 1514 à 1524 (Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 1987); İzzettin Çopur, Yavuz Sultan Selim’in Çaldıran Meydan Muharebesi ve Mısır Seferi (Ankara: Hipokrat Kitabevi, 2017).

  266 mangy Shiite dog: Giovan Maria Angiolello, “A Short Narrative of the Life and Acts of the King Ussun Cassano,” in A Narrative of Italian Travels in Persia in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, ed. and trans. Charles Grey (London: Hakluyt Society, 1873), 122.

  267 rural areas between the cities of Bayburt, Erzincan, and Erzurum: Allouche, Origins and Development, 121–23.

  267 an utterly devastating psychological blow: Savory, Iran under the Safavids, 45–47.

  267 “most of his time was spent in hunting”: Quoted in Savory, Iran under the Safavids, 46.

  267 “always drunk”: Quoted in Rudi Matthee, The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 77.

  268 Portuguese captured the strategic island of Hormuz: Allouche, Origins and Development, 122.

  CHAPTER 18: FRATERNAL EMPIRES

  270 religiously-tinged claims to universal sovereignty: Tijana Krstić, Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011).

  271 The increasingly bellicose Ottoman–Mamluk competition: This and the next paragraph come from Elias I. Muhanna, “The Sultan’s New Clothes: Ottoman–Mamluk Gift Exchange in the Fifteenth Century,” Muqarnas 27 (2010): 199–200.

  273 “We have sent to you personally”: Quoted in Muhanna, “The Sultan’s New Clothes,” 200.

  273 essentially divided up the eastern Mediterranean: On Ottoman–Mamluk relations, see Cihan Yüksel Muslu, The Ottomans and the Mamluks: Imperial Diplomacy and Warfare in the Islamic World (London: I. B. Tauris, 2014). See also Timothy Jude Fitzgerald, “Ottoman Methods of Conquest: Legal Imperialism and the City of Aleppo, 1480–1570” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2009), 172–76.

  273 two powers toggled back and forth between enmity and alliance: Muslu, Ottomans and Mamluks.

  274 Barsbay . . . married an Ottoman princess: Muslu, Ottomans and Mamluks, 100.

  275 a personal and political betrayal: On Ahmed’s son Suleyman in Egypt, see Hakkı Erdem Çipa, “The Centrality of the Periphery: The Rise to Power of Selīm I, 1487–1512” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2007), 235.

  275 days of festivities in Mamluk Cairo: Muslu, Ottomans and Mamluks, 110–17.

  275 buffer zone had begun to erode: Muslu, Ottomans and Mamluks, 124–29.

  276 Qaitbay seized an old Byzantine hilltop castle . . . near the town of Kayseri: Muslu, Ottomans and Mamluks, 128; “Zamantı Fortress, Turkiye Kayseri,” Heritage of the Great Seljuks, http://www.selcuklumirasi.com/architecture-detail/zamanti-fortress?lng=en (accessed February 13, 2019).

  276 Bayezit struck back: Muslu, Ottomans and Mamluks, 141–49.

  276 why he made Diyarbakir a focus of attention: Elizabeth Fortunato Crider, “The Foreign Relations of the Ottoman Empire under Selim I, 1512–1520” (M.A. thesis, Ohio State University, 1969), 23.

  277 Khayr Bey: Muslu, Ottomans and Mamluks, 160–62.

  277 Aleppo: On early modern Aleppo, see Abraham Marcus, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989); Fitzgerald, “Ottoman Methods of Conquest.”

  278 Khayr was tasked with journeying to the Ottoman capital: Muslu, Ottomans and Mamluks, 258.

  278 Bayezit received two high-ranking military men: Muslu, Ottomans and Mamluks, 160–61.

  279 began a secret correspondence with Bayezit’s court: Muslu, Ottomans and Mamluks, 161.

  279 Khain Bey instead of Khayr Bey: Adel Allouche, The Origins and Development of the Ottoman–Ṣafavid Conflict (906–962 / 1500–1555) (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1983), 124, n. 83.

  279 “extraordinary talent”: Quoted in Leslie Peirce, Empress of the East: How a European Slave Girl Became Queen of the Ottoman Empire (New York: Basic Books, 2017), 82.

  280 the weakness of the Ottoman fleet: Crider, “Foreign Relations,” 20.

  281 seized the territories . . . capturing ‘Ala’ al-Dawla: Allouche, Origins and Development, 124–25; Muslu, Ottomans and Mamluks, 177–78.

  281 the possibility . . . of a Mamluk–Safavid alliance against the Ottomans: Allouche, Origins and Development, 125–26.

  281 stalled his departure from Cairo: George William Frederick Stripling, The Ottoman Turks and the Arabs, 1511–1574 (Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1977), 40–51.

  CHAPTER 19: CONQUERING THE NAVEL

  283 fewer than six thousand souls: Amnon Cohen and Bernard Lewis, Population and Revenue in the Towns of Palestine in the Sixteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 94.

  284 he conquered Jerusalem: Ibn Iyās, An Account of the Ottoman Conquest of Egypt in the year A.H. 922 (A.D. 1516), Translated from the Third Volume of the Arabic Chronicle of Muḥammed ibn Aḥmed ibn Iyās, an Eye-Witness of the Scenes he Describes, trans. W. H. Salmon (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1921), 104. Ibn Iyās’s original Arabic text is titled Badā’i‘ al-Zuhūr fī Waqā’i‘ al-Duhūr.

  284 al-Ghawri led his army out of Cairo on May 17, 1516: George William Frederick Stripling, The Ottoman Turks and the Arabs, 1511–1574 (Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1977), 41.

  285 His next stop was Damascus: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 41; William Muir, The Mameluke or Slave Dynasty of Egypt, 1260–1517 A. D. (London: Smith, Elder, 1896), 197.

  285 its estimated ten thousand households: Cohen and Lewis, Population and Revenue, 20.

  285 almost toppling the Mamluk sultan from his horse: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Ara
bs, 41.

  285 On July 10: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 41.

  285 Mamluk soldiers ran amok: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 45.

  286 Aleppo felt more like an occupied city: Muir, Mameluke Dynasty, 198.

  286 Selim reached Elbistan: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 43.

  286 The people of Aleppo cursed and jeered: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 45.

  286 rumors began swirling among al-Ghawri’s advisers: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 44; Muir, Mameluke Dynasty, 198–99.

  286 a rousingly inspiring speech: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 45–46.

  288 On the evening of August 23, 1516: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 46.

  288 Although both sides brought approximately sixty thousand men: On relative troop levels, see Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 46; Fatih Akçe, Sultan Selim I: The Conqueror of the East (Clifton, NJ: Blue Dome Press, 2016), 145–46; Michael Winter, “The Ottoman Occupation,” in Islamic Egypt, 640–1517, vol. 1 of The Cambridge History of Egypt, ed. Carl F. Petry (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 498.

  289 spooked the Mamluks’ horses: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 47–48.

  289 treason best served Selim and his army: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 47.

  289 “This is the moment”: Quoted in Wikipedia, s.v. “Battle of Marj Dabiq,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Marj_Dabiq (accessed February 13, 2019).

  289–290 “was gripped by a sort of paralysis”: Quoted in Wikipedia, s.v. “Battle of Marj Dabiq.” Hernia is mentioned in Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 47. Most of what we know about the war comes from the chronicles of contemporary Mamluk historians writing from Cairo, such as Ibn Iyās.

  290 closed the city’s nine massive wooden gates: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 48.

  290 gates were thrown open: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 49.

  290 Selim received Khayr: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 49; Muir, Mameluke Dynasty, 200.

  290 the citadel was the city’s crown jewel: On the Aleppo Citadel, see Julia Gonnella, The Citadel of Aleppo: Description, History, Site Plan and Visitor Tour, 2nd ed. (Geneva: Aga Khan Trust for Culture; Damascus: Syrian Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums, 2008).

  291 Governors, judges, tribal chieftains, and notables: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 49.

  291 Selim also sent a military detachment to the Safavid border: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 49.

  292 On September 16, Selim left Aleppo: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 50.

  292 On October 9, Selim entered the city: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 50.

  293 praying in iconic religious sites: In this regard, see Leslie Peirce, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 47–48.

  294 a severe case of constipation: H. Erdem Çıpa, The Making of Selim: Succession, Legitimacy, and Memory in the Early Modern Ottoman World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 232.

  294 “When the sīn enters the shīn”: Ahmed Zildzic, “Friend and Foe: The Early Ottoman Reception of Ibn ‘Arabī” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2012), 92–93.

  295 Ibn ‘Arabi visited him in a dream: Akçe, Sultan Selim, 157–59.

  295 Osman . . . had studied under Ibn ‘Arabi: Akçe, Sultan Selim, 158.

  296 renewal of a peace treaty with Hungary: Akçe, Sultan Selim, 171–72.

  296 snow began to fall: Akçe, Sultan Selim, 164.

  296 met with representatives: Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, Kâmil Kepeci Tasnifi, Evâmir-i Maliye Kalemine Tabi Piskopos Mukataası Kalemi, no. 2539, sh. 2 (1517). My thanks to Server Koray Er for this reference.

  296 increased the stipend . . . and reduced the visa fees: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 51.

  298 Inside the mosque, Selim bowed his head: Akçe, Sultan Selim, 178–79.

  298 fleet to meet him in Egypt with new arms and additional troops: Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill Online, 2012), s.v. “Selīm I” (Halil İnalcık).

  298 enormous convoy of 106 ships: Akçe, Sultan Selim, 172.

  298 secured the fertile coastal plains of Gaza: Ibn Iyās, Ottoman Conquest, 106–07; Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Selīm I” (İnalcık).

  299 fifteen thousand camels carrying thirty thousand water bags: Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Selīm I” (İnalcık).

  299 Aided by winter rains that firmed up the sandy terrain: Akçe, Sultan Selim, 182.

  299 large, almond-shaped eyes: For images of Tuman Bey, see “Tuman bay II,” Getty Images, http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/tuman-bay-ii-last-mamluk-sultan-of-egypt-news-photo/526581572#tuman-bay-ii-last-mamluk-sultan-of-egypt-picture-id526581572 (accessed February 13, 2019); Wikipedia, s.v. “Tuman bay II,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuman_bay_II#/media/File:Tumanbay_II_(cropped).jpg (accessed February 13, 2019).

  300 Tuman had devoted himself exclusively: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 52–53.

  300 Tuman managed to assemble at Raidaniyya: Ibn Iyās, Ottoman Conquest, 105.

  300 three Indian elephants: Ibn Iyās, Ottoman Conquest, 105.

  300 a ditch embedded with vertical spears: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 53.

  300 Tuman himself carried heavy stones: Ibn Iyās, Ottoman Conquest, 107–08.

  300 transferring their goods to storehouses for safekeeping: Ibn Iyās, Ottoman Conquest, 106.

  301 Tuman wanted to rush forward: Ibn Iyās, Ottoman Conquest, 106, 108–09.

  301 each sultan tried to gauge: Ibn Iyās, Ottoman Conquest, 109–10; Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Selīm I” (İnalcık).

  CHAPTER 20: CONQUERING THE WORLD

  303 The battle for Cairo: Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill Online, 2012), s.v. “Selīm I” (Halil İnalcık); Ibn Iyās, An Account of the Ottoman Conquest of Egypt in the year A.H. 922 (A.D. 1516), Translated from the Third Volume of the Arabic Chronicle of Muḥammed ibn Aḥmed ibn Iyās, an Eye-Witness of the Scenes he Describes, trans. W. H. Salmon (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1921), 111–12.

  304 the Ottoman guns outperformed: George William Frederick Stripling, The Ottoman Turks and the Arabs, 1511–1574 (Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1977), 53.

  304 more than twenty-five thousand Mamluk soldiers: Stanford J. Shaw, Empire of the Gazis: The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1280–1808, vol. 1 of History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 84.

  304 The Mamluk capital now lay completely exposed: Fatih Akçe, Sultan Selim I: The Conqueror of the East (Clifton, NJ: Blue Dome Press, 2016), 195.

  304 victory at Raidaniyya changed the world: For studies of some of the consequences of this Ottoman victory, see Benjamin Lellouch and Nicolas Michel, eds., Conquête ottomane de l’Égypte (1517): Arrière-plan, impact, échos (Leiden: Brill, 2013).

  305 campaign of guerrilla warfare: Shaw, Empire of the Gazis, 84; Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Selīm I” (İnalcık); Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 55–56.

  305 allowed his soldiers to loot Cairo: Ibn Iyās, Ottoman Conquest, 112–14.

  305 more pivotal for the empire than the conquest of Constantinople: H. Erdem Çıpa, The Making of Selim: Succession, Legitimacy, and Memory in the Early Modern Ottoman World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 202–05.

  305 driving Tuman and his men into hiding: William Muir, The Mameluke or Slave Dynasty of Egypt, 1260–1517 A. D. (London: Smith, Elder, 1896), 206–07.

  306 His body was strung up: Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 55–56; Muir, Mameluke Dynasty, 209.

  306 Selim entered Cairo: Ibn Iyās, Ottoman Conquest, 114; Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Selīm I” (İnalcık).

  306 “Long live the victorious Sultan Selim!”: Ibn Iyās, Ottoman Conquest, 114.

  307 delivered their weekly sermons in Selim’s name: Ibn Iyās, Ottoman Conquest, 115.

&nb
sp; 308 Selim recognized the sitting governors: Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Selīm I” (İnalcık).

  308 The sharifs of Mecca: Shaw, Empire of the Gazis, 84.

  308 Khayr Bey . . . was made governor of Egypt: Michael Winter, “The Ottoman Occupation,” in Islamic Egypt, 640–1517, vol. 1 of The Cambridge History of Egypt, ed. Carl F. Petry (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 496–513.

  308 As the richest and most strategic of the provinces: Stanford J. Shaw, The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517–1798 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962).

  308 a quarter of all the food consumed: Alan Mikhail, Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 82–123.

  308 Khayr, however, proved as cruel: Winter, “Ottoman Occupation,” 507.

  309 The ceremony to invest Selim with the caliphate: Muir, Mameluke Dynasty, 205; Akçe, Sultan Selim, 223–25.

  309 “public service”: Muir, Mameluke Dynasty, 205.

  309 “servant of the two sacred cities”: Ibn Iyās, Ottoman Conquest, 115.

  309 caliph: There is some dispute about Selim’s adoption of the title caliph, with some historians claiming that he never used it during his lifetime and that his reputation as caliph was a later invention. See for example Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Selīm I” (İnalcık); Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923 (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 111; Stripling, Ottoman Turks and Arabs, 56. However, the evidence is clear: he used the title as early as 1518; see Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 30–31. Moreover, other political leaders, even his enemies the Safavids, recognized him as caliph. In letters, the Safavids called Selim “Shāh on the Throne of the Caliphate” and “Caliph of God and of the Prophet Muḥammad”; quoted in Çıpa, Making of Selim, 236.

  310 One night in the spring of 1517: Pınar Emiralioğlu, Geographical Knowledge and Imperial Culture in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014), 1–2; Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Pīrī Re’īs” (S. Soucek).