Selim the Grim, his times, and the Ottoman version of Islam
Review of God's Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World by Alan Mikhail
This is a very fun biography on the brief reign (1512-1520) of a political genius whose cultural impact was wide and deep, with resonances even today in Erdogan’s Turkey and Islamophobia. It is a quick read, with both an interesting narrative and an analysis that fleshes out how the people of his time saw the world. Even as a history enthusiast well acquainted with Ottoman history, I learned something new on every single page.
Selim started off as a typical Ottoman prince, born far back in the line and highly unlikely to become the sultan, usually going to the first born. These were brutal times: to avoid civil war, once succession was secured, the surviving brothers almost invariably faced execution. Typically, the sons were shunted off at a young age to gain experience as governors of a province, their concubine mothers in tow as their manager and champion. Proximity to Istanbul was key: whoever reached it first gained great advantage in the struggle for the crown, an opportunity to command the loyalty of the military. As a son fourth down in the line of succession, Selim was given a province far from the capital, Trabzon. Not only did he govern well, but he shrewdly cultivated an image of ferocity, of which the military elite took note: they knew they would be well treated and lavishly funded by him on conquests. When the time came, he easily won their allegiance and vanquished his brothers, which no other son so far down the line had yet done. This intrigue is elegantly explained at a riveting pace.
The book then shifts to an overview of world politics, which was moving into the age of discovery. With the Ottomans as the great superpower of its time, the fear of Islam motivated Ferdinand and Isabel as they kicked the Moors as well as the Jews out of Spain. The Ottomans took a great many of the Ladino Jews in, seeing advantages in the business and manufacturing skills, most particularly of weaponry. The Ottomans were, Mikhail argues, foremost in the mind of Columbus, who wished to find a route to India that 1) wasn’t dominated by the Ottomans and 2) could serve as a staging ground to attack them. This is the reason why many sites in Spanish America bear strangely anti-Islamic names, such as Mexico’s Matamoros (“kill the moors”). This added greatly to my understanding of the times.
Once in power, Selim set about modernizing his military forces and technologies. As a result, he more than doubled the size of the empire, in effect making it majority Muslim for the first time. Beyond his deep thrusts into central Europe, he easily added the Mamluk Empire, which was twice as large as the Ottomans’, both in territories and demographically. Becoming the Governor of the holy sites in Arabia, Selim added the title of supreme religious leader. Interestingly, he failed conquer all of Morocco, which Mikhail argues would have made the Ottomans an Atlantic sea power, perhaps even resulting in competition with Spain and Portugal in exploring the world, a very interesting what-if that I had never before conceived.
Another legacy of Selim was a war on the Shiites of his empire, which was a way to indirectly target Persia. Though I had thought the antagonism with the Sunnis dated back to the 9th century, Mikhail argues that Selim created the conditions of the conflict in modern times. Selim was characteristically bloodthirsty, practicing near-genocide against them. Nonetheless, he remained tolerant of Christians and Jews in the Empire, allowing them to practice their faiths and work so long as they paid a special tax as non-Muslims and accepted certain restrictions on their activities. This caste system to govern minorities is a fascinating aspect of Islamic tradition.
The book concludes with a look at Selim’s impact on everything that followed. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Islamist President of Turkey, is attempting to emulate Selim, setting him as an example of a future path for Turkey.
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