Selim I Turkish Sultan. During his short eight-year reign as the sultan of Turkey, Selim I greatly increased the size of the Ottoman Empire and destroyed the power of neighboring Persia. His conquest of Syria, Egypt, and all of Asia Minor gained him leadership of the Islamic world. S^Iim, showing mercy to neither his enemies nor his own coun¬trymen, earned the nickname “Yavuz,” or “the Grim,” for his tyrannical rule.
Born the son of Turkish sultan Bayezid II in about 1470, Selim served his father as an administrator in a Turkish Balkan province as part of his education. When the aging Bayezid, who had ruled fairly peacefully and displayed little aggression toward his neighbors, showed favoritism to his other son Ahmed, Selim feared, that his brother, not he, would succeed their father. Selim rebelled and raised a small army against Bayezid that his father easily defeated, forcing Selim to flee to the Crimea.
Worried that his son might ally with long-term enemy Persia, Bayezid reconsidered and abdicated in favor of Selim in 1512. The new sultan, soon to be nicknamed “the Grim,” repaid his father’s generosity by immediately executing all his relatives with any claim to the Turkish sultanate. Selim, as a devoted Sunni Muslim, then turned against the Shiite population of his empire and slaughtered forty thousand of them.
With his power secured within his own Country, Selim began plans to extend his kingdom. He first made peace agreements widi the powers along his western border and then turned his might eastward. His first objective was the same Persians whom his father had feared he might join. Selim now considered them enemies because they had supported his brother and because of the preponderance of Shiites within their borders.
In June 1515, Selim moved against Persia with an army of sixty thousand. The core of his force was the Janissaries, Christian captives who occupied a status somewhere between mercenary and slave-soldier. Selim divided his army into light and heavy cavalry supported by mobile artillery and foot soldiers armed with primitive firearms. Discipline was rigid in Selim’s army, maintained by execution of anyone who complained or protested.
On August 23, 1515, Selim attacked the main Persian army of fifty thousand men, under the command of Shah Ismail, on the eastern side of the Euphrates River. Selim won the resulting Batde of Chaldiran and occupied the Persian capital of Tabriz in Sep¬tember. Although victorious, Selim, with no means of supporting a lengthy occupation of Persia, retreated back to his homeland to improve his logistics systems.
In 1516, Selim was again prepared to move against Persia when he learned that Syria and Egypt had allied with the shah to invade his empire. Selim did not wait to be attacked; rather, he ad¬vanced into Syria and defeated the allied army decisively at the Batde of Merj-Dabik on August 24, 1516. After a brief occupation of Syria, Selim again moved east to capture Gaza in October and reach the edge of Cairo in January 1517.
At El Kankah, the Egyptians, along with Syrians who survived Merj-Dabik, prepared their defenses, stripping coastal batteries and ships in port of their cannons to add to their firepower. Selim advanced at night, with the force of his attack at a right angle along the length of the defenses rather than at the front. He placed his own artillery on high ground to fire on the opposing cavalry. By the end of the batde more than seven thousand of his enemy lay dead on the batdefield, with no further opposition standing in his way between him and Cairo, where he massacred the final resistors.
With all of its allies defeated, Persia yielded to Turkish control. Selim, now in power throughout Asia Minor, declared himself the sultan of Egypt and the caliph of Islam and journeyed to visit the holy places of Mecca and Medina. There, and throughout the Arab world, he received honors as the leader and protector of the Islamic world.
In a period of only eight years Selim had replaced the Persians with his Ottoman Empire as the dominant regional power. Except for brief religious rebellions in Syria and Antolia in 1518 and 1519, Which Selim quickly crushed, the Ottoman Empire remained unchallenged within Asia Minor. Selim now looked for expansion in the Mediterranean region. In 1520 he allied with the great Algerian pirate Barbarossa to garner a navy in preparation for an invasion of Spain. However, before he could execute his plans, Selim died at about age fifty, in September 1520, near Corlu.
The death of Selim did not halt the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. Selim had trained his son SULEIMAN I well, and he, along with Barbarossa, would further expand the empire. The stage had been set for Selim’s son’s conquest, which would gain him the moniker “the Magnificent.”
Selim greatly changed the balance of power in Asia Minor, re-placing Persia with the Ottoman Empire as the dominant force. In addition to more than doubling the size of his empire, Selim established a military organization that would continue to achieve victories under his son. While he certainly deserves the labels of tyrant and religious zealot, Selim was also an extremely effective military leader, integrating artillery support of infantry and cavalry operations and controlling a large, mixed army of slaves, mercenaries, regular forces, and militias to defeat the Persians and their allies. Only his son’s accomplishments and influence exceeded his own during their period of history.