At a glance
Era 8- Dates
- 1470-1520 CE; ruled 1512-1520 CE
- Who
- Ottoman sultan who defeated the Safavids and the Mamluks and took the holy cities into Ottoman care
- Era
- The Ottomans
ProfileSelim I, Yavuz
Selim was born in Amasya in 1470, a son of Sultan Bayezid II. As a prince he governed Trabzon on the Black Sea for more than twenty years. From there he watched with alarm as Shah Ismail built the Safavid state in Iran and won followers among the Turkmen tribes of eastern Anatolia. In 1512, with the backing of the Janissaries, he forced his father to give up the throne.
In 1514 he marched east and met Ismail at Chaldiran. His muskets and cannon broke the Safavid cavalry in a single day, and he entered Tabriz. Eastern Anatolia became Ottoman for good.
He then turned south, against the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt. In August 1516 he defeated the Mamluk sultan, Qansuh al-Ghawri, at Marj Dabiq north of Aleppo, where al-Ghawri died. In January 1517 he beat the last Mamluk sultan, Tumanbay, outside Cairo. Syria, Egypt and the Hijaz passed to the Ottomans, and the sharif of Makkah sent word of his loyalty. Selim took the title Servant of the Two Holy Sanctuaries, and from then on the sultans sent the yearly pilgrim caravans and gifts to Makkah and Madinah. The Abbasid caliph who had lived in Cairo under the Mamluks was taken to Istanbul. Later Ottoman tradition said the caliphate passed to Selim at this time, though historians date the formal claim later.
His people called him Yavuz, the Stern, and he was quick to punish, yet he also wrote poetry in Persian. He died in 1520 near Corlu, in Thrace, having enlarged the empire by more than half in eight years. His son Suleiman succeeded him.
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