On the side of the south too, Bayazid II's dominions had been threatened. The Mamluk Sultan of Egypt, Sayf ad-Din (1468-95), had espoused the cause of Jem, to whose mother he had given an asylum; had interfered in the affairs of Sulkadr, a small Turcoman lordship in Cappadocia; and had asserted authority in the regions of Lesser Armenia,—even as in ancient days the Ptolemys had thrown out an arm to grasp Cilicia. Tarsus, Adana, and other places passed under Egyptian rule, and in 1485 war openly broke out between the Mamluk and the Ottoman Sultans. An important victory was won by the Egyptian in 1488; but a peace was patched up in 1491, and lasted during the rest of Bayazid II's reign.

The tremendous earthquake which sent a thrill through the world in 1509 laid Constantinople in ruins; the Sultan himself fled to Hadrianople. But an oriental autocrat in those days could rebuild quickly; and with a host of workmen, worthy of a Pharaoh or a Babylonian King, Bayazid II restored the city in a few months. The last days of the old Sultan were embittered by the rebellion and rivalry of his sons, Ahmad, Corcud, and Selim. He destined Ahmad as his successor, and thought of abdicating the throne in his favor; but Selim, a man of action and resolution, was determined that this should not be. From the province of Trebizond of which he was the governor, he marched to Europe at the head of an army, and appearing at the gates of Hadrianople, demanded to be assigned an European province. He wished to be near the scene of action when the moment came. He demanded too that his father should not abdicate in favor of Ahmad. Both demands were agreed to. But at this juncture news arrived that Corcud had revolted; and thereupon Selim seized Hadrianople. This was too much. His sire took the field and defeated him in a battle; and he fled for refuge to the Crimea, but the cause of Ahmad was not won. The Janissaries, whose hearts had been captivated by the bold stroke of Selim, broke out in mutiny and riot when Ahmad drew nigh to take possession of the throne, and were pacified only by a pledge from Bayazid II that this design should not be carried out. Ahmad thereupon sought to get Ask Minor into his power; Corcud intrigued at the same time for his own hand; and finally, in the spring of 1512, Selim advanced from the Crimea to the Danube, and, supported by the Janissaries who would brook no opposition, forced Bayazid II to abdicate (April 25). A month later the old Sultan died, poisoned, it can hardly be questioned, by order of his son. It was not to be expected that Ahmad would submit; he seized Brusa; but Selim crossed over to Asia, drove him eastward, and deprived him of the governorship of Amasia. Next year Ahmad made another attempt, but was defeated in battle at Yenishehr and executed. Corcud had not dared to take the field; but in consequence of his intrigues he was likewise put to death. The next victims were the Sultan's nephews, children of other brothers who had died in the lifetime of their father. Thus Selim put into practice a ruthless law which had been enacted by the policy of Mohammad II, that it was lawful for a Sultan, in the interests of the unity of the realm, which was the first condition of its prosperity, to do his brothers and their children to death.

The spirit of Selim I was very different from that of his father. He was resolved to resume the old paths of forward policy from which the studious temper of Bayazid II had digressed, and to follow in the way of Mohammad the Conqueror. Yet he was also unlike his grandfather. He reveled in war and death; all his deeds seem prompted rather by instinct than by policy. Mohammad seems almost genial beside this gloomy and restless soul. Selim the Grim delighted in cruelty, but he was extremely moderate in pleasure; like his father and uncle he was highly cultivated. He raised the pay of the Janissaries,—this was the need of their support; but he soon showed that he was resolved to be their master. The truth is that the Janissaries were an institution ill compatible with a peace policy; amenable to the discipline of war, they were a perpetual danger for a pacific ruler.

The collisions with Persia and Egypt, which menaced the reign of Bayazid II, actually came to pass after the accession of Selim. The Shah, Ismail, had given an asylum to the sons of Ahmad, and had made an incursion into the eastern districts of the Ottoman Empire(1518). But the fundamental cause of the Persian war was religious antagonism ; it was a struggle between the great Sunnite and the great Shiite power. It was stamped with this character by a sweeping act of persecution on the part of Selim, who, seizing 40,000 Shiites, killed some and imprisoned others; and the mutual attitude of the rival superstitions was shown in a high-flown letter which Selim, when he took the field (1514), indited (dictated) to his enemy. He marched into the dominions of Ismail, and the decisive battle was fought in the plain of Chaldiran, lying further east than the field which had seen the struggle of Mohammad with Uzun Hasan. The Ottomans were again successful; on this occasion too their superiority in artillery told; and Tabriz fell into the hands of Selim. In the following year Sulkadr was annexed; and in 1516 Northern Mesopotamia (including among other cities Amida, Nisibis, Dara, and Edessa) was conquered and became a province of the Ottoman Empire.

This conquest led to designs on Syria and Egypt, a sufficient pretext being found in the alliance between the old Mamluk Sultan Kansuh Ghuri and the Shah Ismail. The Mamluk army awaited the invader at Aleppo; and Selim, here again conspicuously superior in artillery, won a victory which decided the fate of Syria(1516). The old Sultan's successor Tumanbeg was defeated in an equally disastrous battle at Reydaniya near Cairo(January, 1517). Thus Syriaand Egyptwere brought once more under the authority of the lords of Constantinople, to remain so actually or formally till the present day. The conquest of Egyptwas followed by the submission of Arabiato the Sultan's sway.

The same year which saw the conquest of the Nilecountry witnessed an important exaltation of the dignity of the Ottoman ruler. The Ottoman princes had been originally Emirs under the Seljuk, and, even after they had become the strongest power of the Mohammedan world, though they might demean themselves as Caliphs, they had no legal claim to be considered its heads. It is one of the fundamental principles of Islam that all Muslims shall be governed by a single Imam, and that Imam must be a member of the Koreish, the tribe of the Prophet. At this time the Imamship was in the hands of a shadow, Mohammad Abu Jafar of the race of Hashim, who kept up the semblance of a court at Cairo. The last of the Caliphs of the Abbasid line, he resigned the caliphate to the Sultan Selim. This formal transference is the basis of the claims of the Sultans of Turkey to be the Imams or supreme rulers of Islam, though they have not a drop of Koreish blood in their veins. The translation of the Caliphate was confirmed by the recognition which Selim received at the same time from the Sherif of Mecca, who sent him the keys of the Kaaba, thus designating him as the protector of the Holy Places.

The Imam, according to the Ottoman code of Mohammedan law, has authority to watch over the maintenance of the laws and the execution of punishments; to defend the frontier and repress rebels; to raise armies and levy tribute; to celebrate public prayer on Fridays and in Bairam; to judge the people; to marry minors of both sexes who have no natural guardians; and to divide the spoils of war. He is thus supreme legislator and judge, the religious head of the State, the commander-in-chief, and he possesses absolute control of the finances. His ecumenical authority rests on a verse of the Koran: whoever dies without acknowledging the authority of the Imam of his day is dead in ignorance. The Imam must be visible to men; he cannot lurk in a cave like the Mahdi, for whose coming the heretical Shiites look. It is discreetly provided that the Imam need not be just or virtuous, or the most eminent man of his time; it is requisite only that he should be able to enforce the law, defend the frontiers, and sustain the oppressed. Moreover the wickedness and tyranny of an Imam would not necessitate or justify his deposition.

The brilliant conquests of Selim in the East alarmed the powers of the West; " returning powerful and proud," such a monarch as he was a terrible menace to Europe. Leo X had thrown himself with zeal into the project of a Crusade; for the experience of sixty years of futilities had not killed that idea. In 1517 he issued a bull imposing a truce of five years on Christendom, in order that the princes of Europe might march against the Infidels. His hopes rested chiefly on the young French King, Francis I, who, after the victory of Marignano, had met him at Bolognaand discussed with him the Eastern Question. A letter of Francis, written soon after that interview, breathes the spirit of a knight-errant dedicating his youth and strength to a holy war. But though Francis was in earnest, religious enthusiasm was not his moving inspiration or his guiding idea. His project was that the three great powers of Europe—the Empire, France, and Spain—should conquer the Turkish realm and divide it amongst them in three equal parts. Thus the Eastern Question began to enter upon its modern phase—assuming a political rather than a religious aspect; and the significance of the oriental policy of Francis I was that he definitely formulated the doctrine, now a commonplace of politics, that Turkey is a spoil to be parted among the great powers of Europe. The new conception of the French King was indeed more likely to lead to practical results than had been the arguments of Aeneas Sylvius and his successors; and the Emperor Maximilian composed a memoir of suggestions on the conduct of the proposed war. But his death in 1519 changed the situation, disconcerting the plan of the European powers; and the favorable hour for a common enterprise against the Turk had passed. Men were indeed still painfully afraid of the designs of the formidable Sultan. The logic of geography determined that after the acquisition of Egypt the next enterprise of Selim should be the conquest of Rhodes, which lay right in the track of communication between Egyptand Constantinople. He made preparations accordingly for the destruction of the "dogs" of Rhodes. But when his fleet and army were ready, he was smitten down by the plague (September 21, 1520), having in his short reign done as much as any of the Sultans for the extension and prestige of the Ottoman Empire.

The Cambridge Modern History planned by the Late Lord Acton LL.D. Regius Professor of Modern History, Edited by A. W. Ward LlTT.D. G. W. Prothero LlTT.D. Sttanley Leathes M.A. Volume I The Renaissance Cambridge at the Univsity Press 1902

On August 20,1516 Sultan Selim the Grim captured Antep for the Ottoman Empire.