Selim I

The Grim Conqueror who expanded the Ottoman Empire by seventy percent.

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Selim I (10 October 1470 – 22 September 1520), also known as Selim the Grim or Selim the Resolute, was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1512 to 1520. 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, and Egypt itself. On the eve of his death in 1520, the Ottoman Empire spanned about 3.4 e6km2, having grown by seventy percent during Selim's reign.

Quick Facts

Reign: 24 April 1512 – 22 September 1520
Predecessor: Bayezid II
Successor: Suleiman I
Born: 10 October 1470
Birthplace: Amasya, Ottoman Empire
Died: 22 September 1520
Place of death: Çorlu, Ottoman Empire
Burial place: Yavuz Selim Mosque, Fatih, Istanbul, Turkey

Lore & Background

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.

Reader's Guide

Selim was born in Amasya on 10 October 1470 as the son of Şehzade Bayezid (later Bayezid II) during the reign of his grandfather Mehmed II. His mother was Ayşe Gülbahar Hatun, who was either the daughter of Alaüddevle Bozkurt Bey, the eleventh ruler of the Dulkadirids or a concubine. In 1479 at the age of nine, he was sent by his grandfather to Istanbul to be circumcised along with his brothers. In 1481, his grandfather Mehmed II died and his father became Sultan Bayezid II.

Six years later in 1487, he was sent by his father to Trabzon to serve there as governor. In 1505, he repelled a Safavid army under Ebrahim Mirza. In 1507, he defeated a 10,000-strong Safavid army at Erzincan. In 1508, he invaded Georgia, capturing Imereti and Guria and enslaving many Georgians.

In 1510, he again defeated Ebrahim Mirza. In 1511, he staged a revolt against his father and lost the Battle of Tekirdag. In 1513, he defeated his brother Ahmet at the Battle of Yenişehir and executed his brothers and nephews. He massacred Alevis and Shiites, including 50,000 Alevis before the Battle of Chaldiran. He defeated Shah Ismail I at the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514 and captured Tabriz.