Selim I

Selim I
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques
16th century miniature of Selim I by Nakkaş Osman
Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (Padishah)
Reign24 April 1512 – 22 September 1520
PredecessorBayezid II
SuccessorSuleiman I
Ottoman caliph (Amir al-Mu'minin)
Reign22 January 1517 – 22 September 1520
PredecessorAl-Mutawakkil III
(Abbasid caliph)
SuccessorSuleiman I
Prince-Governor of Trebizond Sanjak
Reign1487–1510[1]
Born(1470-10-10)10 October 1470
Amasya, Ottoman Empire
Died22 September 1520(1520-09-22) (aged 49)
Çorlu, Ottoman Empire
Burial
Consorts
Issue
Among others
Names
سليم شاه بن بايزيد خان
Selīm şāh bin Bāyezīd Ḫān[2]
DynastyOttoman
FatherBayezid II
MotherGülbahar Hatun
ReligionSunni Islam
TughraSelim I's signature
Military career
Battles/warsOttoman-Persian Wars

Georgian campaign (1508)

Ottoman Civil War (1509–1513)

Ottoman–Mamluk War (1516–1517)

Battle of Turnadağ

Selim I (Ottoman Turkish: سليم اول; Turkish: I. Selim; 10 October 1470 – 22 September 1520), known as Selim the Grim or Selim the Resolute[3] (Turkish: Yavuz Sultan Selim), was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1512 to 1520.[4] 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, Tihamah and Egypt itself. On the eve of his death in 1520, the Ottoman Empire spanned about 3.4 million km2 (1.3 million sq mi), having grown by seventy percent during Selim's reign.[4]

Selim I with a mace

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 Mamluk Abbasid dynasty to the Ottomans were a later invention.[5]

  1. ^ Hanefi Bostan, XV–XVI. Asırlarda Trabzon Sancağında Sosyal ve İktisadi Hayat, p. 67
  2. ^ Ölçer, Cüneyt (1989). "Ottoman coinage during the reign of Yavuz Sultan Selim I, son of Bayezıd II".
  3. ^ Mansel, Philip (2011). Constantinople: City of the World's Desire, 1453–1924. John Murray Press. p. PT42. ISBN 978-1848546479.
  4. ^ a b Ágoston, Gábor (2009). "Selim I". In Ágoston, Gábor; Bruce Masters (eds.). Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. Facts On File. pp. 511–513. ISBN 978-0816062591.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference finkel111 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).