Sultan Selim I

The Ottoman Empire was a hub of flourishing intellectual fervor, geopolitical power, and enlightened pluralistic rule. At the helm of its ascent was the omnipotent Sultan Selim I (1470-1520), who, with the aid of his extraordinarily gifted mother, Gülbahar, hugely expanded the empire, propelling it onto the world stage. Aware of centuries of European suppression of Islamic history, Alan Mikhail centers Selim's Ottoman Empire and Islam as the very pivots of global history, redefining such world-changing events as Christopher Columbus's voyages - which originated, in fact, as a Catholic jihad that would come to view Native Americans as somehow "Moorish" - the Protestant Reformation, the transatlantic slave trade, and the dramatic Ottoman seizure of the Middle East and North Africa. Drawing on previously unexamined sources and written in gripping detail, Mikhail's groundbreaking account vividly recaptures Selim's life and world. An historical masterwork, God's Shadow radically reshapes our understanding of a world we thought we knew.A leading historian of his generation, Alan Mikhail, Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at Yale University, has reforged our understandings of the past through his previous three prize-winning books on the history of Middle East.

An “arresting” (New York Times Book Review) revisionist history demonstrating how Islam and the Ottoman Empire made our modern world. The history of the Ottoman Empire—once the most powerful state on earth, ruling over more territory and people than any other world power—has for centuries been distorted, misrepresented, and suppressed in the West. With this “original and wide-ranging” (Wall Street Journal) global history, Alan Mikhail vitally recasts the Ottoman conquest of the world through the dramatic biography of Sultan Selim I (1470–1520). Drawing on previously unexamined sources, and upending prevailing shibboleths about Islamic history and jingoistic “rise of the West” theories, Mikhail’s game-changing account radically transforms our understanding of the importance of Selim’s Ottoman Empire in the annals of the modern world.

The father of the legendary Ottoman sultan Suleyman the Magnificent, Selim I ("The Grim") set the stage for centuries of Ottoman supremacy by doubling the size of the empire. Conquering Eastern Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt, Selim promoted a politicized Sunni Ottoman* identity against the Shiite Safavids of Iran, thus shaping the early modern Middle East. Analyzing a wide array of sources in Ottoman-Turkish, Persian, and Arabic, H. Erdem Cipa offers a fascinating revisionist reading of Selim's rise to power and the subsequent reworking and mythologizing of his persona in 16th- and 17th-century Ottoman historiography. In death, Selim continued to serve the empire, becoming represented in ways that reinforced an idealized image of Muslim sovereignty in the early modern Eurasian world.

Ottoman naval technology underwent a transformation under the rule of Sultan Selim III. New types of sailing warships such as two- and three-decked galleons, frigates and corvettes began to dominate the Ottoman fleet, rendering the galley-type oared ships obsolete. This period saw technological innovations such as the adoption of the systematic copper sheathing of the hulls and bottoms of Ottoman warships from 1792-93 onwards and the construction of the first dry dock in the Golden Horn. The changing face of the Ottoman Navy was facilitated by the influence of the British, Swedish and French in modernising both the shipbuilding sector and the conduct of naval warfare. Through such measures as training Ottoman shipbuilders, heavy reliance on help from foreign powers gave way to a new trajectory of modernization. Using this evidence Zorlu argues that although the Ottoman Empire was a major and modern independent power in this period, some technological dependence on Europe remained.

Sultan Selim I was an extraordinary sultan who virtually re-established the Ottoman state. This work relates his approach to developments in his time with an objective style and comparative analysis. It is an important reference for those who seek serious information about the period in which he lived. The book focuses on the life of Sultan Selim I: his childhood, princedom, struggle for power, sultanate, approaches to matters with the East, his struggle with Shah Ismail, his first and second campaigns to the East, and period of caliphate from many aspects. This notable work, which almost leaves no dark point about the period, is the fruit of a praiseworthy study.

A unique, richly illustrated study of Ottoman religious buildings standing today in Cairo With the conquest in 1517 CE of Egypt by the Ottomans, Cairo lost its position as the capital of the Islamic empire to Istanbul but it retained an eminent position as the second most important city, with Egypt still regarded as one of the wealthiest provinces of the new empire. Round minarets with pointed hoods, as symbols of the new rulers, began filling the landscape alongside the octagonal minarets with pavilion tops of the Mamluks, new mosques, zawiyas, and madrasas/takiyas were built to emphasize the continuation of Sunni Islamic rule, while the use of tiles imported from Turkey introduced new decorative styles to the city’s existing rich carvings and marble paneling. This book invites readers and students to revisit a long-overlooked era of Cairo’s architectural evolution, offering a unique, comprehensive study of Ottoman religious buildings still standing today. It provides detailed descriptions and walk-throughs of the buildings covered, visually, through its rich collection of plans, line drawings, and photographs, and through the narrative that infuses each image with life, shedding light on the continuous evolution of architecture in Cairo even after the city had ceased to be the capital of the Islamic empire.

In Selim III, Social Order and Policing in Istanbul at the End of the Eighteenth Century Betül Başaran examines Sultan Selim III’s social control and surveillance measures. Drawing mainly from a set of inspection registers and censuses from the 1790s, as well as court records she paints a colorful picture of the city’s residents and artisans. She argues that the period constitutes the beginnings of large-scale population control and crisis management and urges us to think about the Ottoman Empire as a polity that was increasingly becoming a “statistical” state, along with its contemporaries in Europe, and to go beyond mechanistic models of borrowing that focus primarily on military reform and European influence in our discussions of Ottoman reform and “modernity”.