The Making of Selim: Succession, Legitimacy, and Memory in the Early Modern Ottoman World

by H. Erdem Cipa

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253024350
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	02/28/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	301,993
File size:	4 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

H. Erdem Cipa is Assistant Professor of Ottoman History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is author of Yavuz'un Kavgası: I. Selim'in Saltanat Mücadelesi and editor (with Emine Fetvacı) of Writing History at the Ottoman Court: Editing the Past, Fashioning the Future.

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The Making of Selim

Succession, Legitimacy, and Memory in the Early Modern Ottoman World

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By H. Erdem Cipa

Indiana University Press

Copyright © 2017 H. Erdem Cipa
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-02435-0

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CHAPTER 1

Politics of Succession: Selim's Path to the Throne

Muradiye, sabrin aci meyvasi

Ottoman succession practices have been aptly labeled "succession of the fittest" The terms the Ottomans used to denote successor (halef), conflict (ihtilaf), and opposition (muhalefet) share a common Arabic root, indicating that they were certainly conscious of the inherent potential for crisis that all successions represent. The Darwinian nature of their succession practices was further accentuated by the fact that no ascriptive or routine principle regulated succession to the Ottoman throne on anything more than a temporary basis until the codification of primogeniture in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Hence, Anthony Dolphin Alderson's frank assessment is apt: "Far from there being any theory of primogeniture ... the law of succession may well be described as a 'free-for-all,' in which the strongest of the sons inherited the throne, while the others ... suffered death."

The absence of a predetermined system of imperial succession did not mean that the Ottoman practice of dynastic succession was haphazard. On the contrary, the Ottomans followed certain principles, some upheld by earlier Turco-Mongolian polities, in an exceptionally deliberate fashion. First, in accordance with the premodern Turco-Mongolian political tradition, the entire imperial territory was considered the patrimony of the dynastic family. Second, each and every male member of the House of Osman was considered the beneficiary of divine grace and therefore was theoretically eligible, and equally legitimate, to rule. This was why, as Halil inalcik notes, earlier Turkish rulers of tribal empires in Central Asia attributed their sovereignty to a sacred source of authority and their own personal fortune (kut). Within the Ottoman context, this notion of personal fortune, along with its connotations of innate charisma and divine mandate to rule, corresponded to the concept of devlet. The intricate correlation between possessing personal fortune and attaining the sultanate was signified semantically as well; the word "state" in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish evolved from the Arabic word dawla, the connotations of which include "change or turn of fortune." Third, that all male members of the House of Osman possessed innate charisma and personal fortune did not mean that they possessed them equally. Rather, the Ottoman practice of battling for succession was based on the assumption that at any given time only one male member of the dynasty was invested with the divine mandate to rule the entire imperial realm.

Within a political-theoretical framework restricted by these parameters, the Ottomans persistently pursued a competitive form of a succession practice that Cemal Kafadar has called "unigeniture." Competitive unigeniture was essentially a zero-sum game and entailed a contentious process by which one of the deceased sovereign's male relatives eliminated all other rival pretenders for the throne in order to assume control of the entire empire. Although the Ottomans practiced it consistently ab initio, unigeniture was systematized as a method of succession only when Mehmed II declared in his code of law (kanunname) that "it is appropriate for whichever of my sons attains the sultanate with divine assistance to kill his brothers for the sake of the world order (nizam-i 'alem)." The destructive nature of competitive unigeniture was experienced both before and after the codification of fratricide, as evidenced by the fatal competitions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries between the sons of Bayezid I, Mehmed II, Bayezid II, and Süleyman I. In 1574, when Murad III acceded to the throne, he executed all five of his younger brothers; in 1595, his son Mehmed III, on his own accession, executed nineteen.

The devastating effects of fratricidal wars notwithstanding, the practice of unigeniture in the form of "succession by combat" — by which the Ottoman monarch was principally defined as a conquerorfell perfectly in line with the fundamental ideology of an expansionist military polity. Despite the Ottomans' strict adherence to unigeniture, their succession practices were akin to those of other, earlier Turco-Mongolian polities of the steppes. As Joseph Fletcher argues, the Ottomans were also sedentary heirs to the Inner Asian tribal custom called "tanistry," which prescribed, usually via murder or war, the transition of supreme rule of the empire to the most competent member of the ruling family. To ensure the enthronement of the most suitable candidate, the Ottomans practiced both customs; in this context, unigeniture enabled them to successfully combine an overarching and time-honored Turco-Mongolian tribal principle with their aversion to a predetermined system of imperial succession and with a special emphasis on fortune (devlet). Thus, until the introduction in the seventeenth century of a preference for seniority, battles for succession were waged-both literally and figuratively-as battles of fortune.

In an effort to prove that he indeed possessed the exclusive divine mandate to rule, each claimant to the Ottoman throne had to demonstrate that his fortune was superior to the fortunes of his rivals. This competitive endeavor was such an integral part of Ottoman political culture that there existed an idiomatic expression to denote the mutual testing of fortune (devlet smasmak). The ultimate proof of an individual's fortune was embodied in his success on the battlefield. When it came to Ottoman successions, nothing succeeded like success, which was recognized as the ultimate expression of divine favor, emanating from the same sacred source as charismatic authority. That was why, per Halil inalcik, "when Bayezid II and Selim, Suleyman the Lawgiver and Mustafa confronted each other in battle, they believed that they were subject not to their own will, but to the will of an incorporeal power, the will of God and the state." It is for these reasons that, in large part, they accepted the outcome of dynastic struggles by entrusting their fates to God (tevekkü).

Bayezid II's fate was to die under suspicious circumstances on the way to his mandatory retirement in Dimetoka (Didymotichon, Greece); Selim's fate was to rule the Empire as its ninth sultan. One cannot help but wonder whether the deposed sultan indeed accepted this unfortunate turn of events as divine judgment. There is absolutely no doubt, however, that each of the claimants to Bayezid's throne worked diligently to manipulate God's will by securing the political and military assistance of various factions at the imperial capital and in the provinces of the Empire. There is also no doubt that among Bayezid's princes, Selim was the most successful at this manipulation.

Based on a wide array of (primarily Ottoman) archival and narrative sources, this chapter addresses the rise to power of Selim I. It traces the complicated trajectories of four dynastic protagonists and examines the shifting loyalties of the military and political factions that supported them, thus building a coherent story of — and a meaningful frame of reference for — the events that culminated in Selim's accession to the Ottoman throne on April 24, 1512. Bayezid II, the legitimate ruling sultan at the time, and his sons, Princes Ahmed, Korkud, and Selim, are the principal actors in this political drama.

Whereas the later chapters of this book focus on the historiography on Selim I and the posthumous construction of his image, the present discussion is strictly historical in nature. It draws from sources that include but are not limited to imperial decrees (hükm), letters (mektub, kagid), petitions ('arz), spy reports, copybooks of correspondence (münse'at), general histories of the Ottoman dynasty (tevarih-i al-i 'Osman) by known and anonymous authors, a corpus of literary-historical narratives commonly referred to as Selimnames (Vitas of Selim), and, last but not least, Venetian relazioni. The précis of events provided in the following pages is based on these textual sources, whose authors display a variety of attitudes and agendas.

Succession Politics: The Provincial Factor

Let us begin at the very beginning. Bayezid II had eight sons, five of whom preceded him to the grave. With the notion of unigeniture dictating Ottoman succession practices since the inception of the polity and with the competitive nature of that concept, which was explicitly revealed by Mehmed II's codification of fratricide in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, the stage for the struggle between Bayezid's remaining sons was set long before violence erupted in 1511. Because securing the imperial capital on the death of an Ottoman ruler was of paramount importance for contenders to the throne, the dissension between Bayezid's princes manifested initially as an incessant struggle over the provinces; each contender sought to outmaneuver his rivals by scoring a gubernatorial appointment to the province nearest to Istanbul. With gubernatorial seats in the Balkan provinces denied to Ottoman princes since the civil war following the Battle of Ankara in 1402, this struggle was initially confined to Anatolia.

Korkud's career as governor (sancak begi), for example, began with an appointment to the western province of Saruhan in 1491. After Bayezid II denied his request to be posted in the northwestern town of Bergama, in 1502 Korkud was appointed to the southwestern province of Teke, with the province of Hamid added to his domain in 1503. Although this appendage more than doubled Korkud's annual income, there was little doubt that the prince was being kept at arm's length from the seat of imperial power. A few years later, Korkud had a falling-out with grand vizier Hadim Ali Pasha (d. 1511), the most prominent supporter of his older brother Ahmed, over hunting grounds (sikdristan) and ports (iskele, liman) located within the borders of his province. This appears to have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back; on May 18, 1509, shortly after his disagreement with the grand vizier, Korkud sailed to Egypt. Having failed to secure the military support of the Mamluk ruler Qansuh al-Ghawri (r. 1501-1516) in his quest for the Ottoman throne, however, Korkud had no choice but request to be reinstated to his former governorate. Korkud's letters of apology, addressed to Bayezid II and Hadim Ali Pasha — as well as a treatise he composed to explain that he came to Egypt not to defy his father's orders but to go to Mecca to perform the pilgrimage — apparently had the desired effect. Once back in the Ottoman realm, however, Korkud resumed his bid for an appointment closer to Istanbul, petitioning to be transferred to the province of Aydin. Judging by the desperate tone of a letter he sent to his sister in 1511, Korkud's request fell on deaf ears. In this letter, he complains of being treated as an outcast, left to suffer in his current province. Moreover, inaccurate intelligence concerning his father's decision to grant Manisa to his rival brother Selim appears to have increased Korkud's desperation. Anxious to overtake his adversary, Korkud left his province and set out for Manisa. The consequences of Korkud's choice to leave his gubernatorial seat were more momentous than he could have anticipated; to no small extent, it sparked the Safavid-instigated Sahkulu rebellion the same year.

Conversely, Korkud's older brother Ahmed had been appointed to the prestigious province of Amasya in 1481, as soon as his father had ascended to the Ottoman throne. He was not, however, absolutely free of anxiety. Although his brothers governed distant provinces, Ahmed became increasingly concerned about keeping his path to the imperial capital clear as Bayezid Il's days were coming to a close. Thus, he kept a vigilant eye on Korkud's movements in western Anatolia and also observed Selim's activities closely, intervening immediately in 1509, when the latter requested for his son Suleyman the governorship of Sebinkarahisar (Sebhane Karahisari). Because Ahmed was unwilling to accept the appointment of his principal rival's son to a neighboring province, Bayezid II decided to appoint Suleyman to Bolu. When Ahmed reportedly stated that "the province of Bolu is [on] the path from Amasya to the capital" and refused to accept this appointment as well, Bayezid finally assigned Suleyman to Kefe (Theodosia, Ukraine) on August 6, 1509. Because the governorships of Bolu, Corum, and Osmancik were later assigned to Princes 'Ala'eddin (d. 1513), Suleyman (d. 1513), and Osman (d. 1513), respectively, Ahmed succeeded in gaining absolute control of the path to Istanbul through the appointments of his sons. What Ahmed could not foresee, however, was that Suleyman's appointment to Kefe would open the gates of Rumelia for Selim, an advantage he fully exploited during the final phase of the succession struggle.

Although it is impossible to ascertain the exact date when the rift between Bayezid II and his youngest son, Selim emerged, a clear indication of discord could be seen as early as 1487, when the latter was appointed to the farthest princely governorate — Trabzon, on the Black Sea coast. Despite being a distinct sign of Selim's unpopularity at Bayezid's court, this appointment proved to be a blessing in disguise. To begin with, the proximity of Selim's province to the realm of Shah Ismafil (r. 1501-1524) brought him into direct contact with the Safavids, who constituted a serious threat to the Ottoman polity. Although the danger posed by the Turcoman followers of the Shah in southern Anatolia was clearly demonstrated by the Sahkulu revolt in 1511, alarm bells had begun ringing earlier and had resulted in the exile of Shii sympathizers to the newly conquered Peloponnesian maritime stations of Moton and Koron. In fact, according to the sixteenth-century Ottoman historian Kemalpasazade, one of the factors leading to Korkud's assignment to Teke in 1502 was the need for a "majestic and strong commander" to control the unruly population of the region comprising Shah Ismafil's adherents. A more immediate threat emerged in 1507, when Shah Ismafil violated Ottoman sovereignty by invading the Dulkadir emirate, crossing over Ottoman lands and enrolling in his army Turcomans who were Ottoman subjects. Bayezid II did not trust Ismafil, whose letter of apology referred to the aging sultan as his "illustrious and noble father," and kept Anatolian soldiers on alert against a possible Safavid invasion, rounding up probable supporters of the Shah in the Anatolian provinces. Still, the Ottoman sultan chose a policy of nonconfrontation.

Unlike his father, Selim did not hesitate to antagonize Shah Ismafil. Safavid complaints concerning Selim's aggressive military policy reached Bayezid's court as early as 1505. Two years later, when Ismafil sent his brother with three thousand soldiers to pillage and plunder Selim's province, the latter retaliated by raiding Safavid territories, defeating the troops, and confiscating their arms and armaments. An envoy sent by Shah Ismafil to Bayezid II complained about Selim's attack and asked for the restitution of Safavid weapons captured by the prince. Although Bayezid ignored this request, he sent the Safavid ambassador back with precious gifts and messages of friendship. The uneasy relationship between the Ottomans and Safavids was tested again in 1510, when Shah Ismafil gathered his troops to attack Selim, who had taken the region of Erzincan. As with previous military contentions in eastern Anatolia, reconciliation was achieved through Bayezid II's nonconfrontational diplomatic strategy.

Given Bayezid's cautious policy of nonviolence toward the Safavids, it is not surprising that Selim's uncompromising attitude and belligerent actions during the first decade of the sixteenth century were construed by members of the pro-Ahmed faction at the Ottoman court as a form of insubordination. Despite being scolded by his father, Selim continued to maintain a strategy of aggression against the Ottomans' eastern neighbors. Of great significance in that respect were Selim's well-organized forays into Georgian territories in 1508; more than ten thousand Georgians reportedly fell captive (esir) to the forces of the prince during these raids. According to Kemalpasazade, Bayezid's response to his son's success against the "unbelievers" (kefere) conveyed mixed messages: the Ottoman sultan welcomed Selim's success by awarding him royal presents and regal favors but emphatically stated that the "multiplication of enemies was unacceptable."

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration
Introduction
Part One: The Making of a Sultan
1. Politics of Succession: Selim's Path to the Throne
2. Politics of Factions

Part Two: The Creation of Selim's Composite Image
Part Two Introduction: A Historiographical Survey
3. Selim, The Legitimate Ruler
4. Selim, The Idealized Ruler
5. Selim, The Divinely Ordained Ruler
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"H. Erdem Cipa's monograph provides a timely investigation of the reign of Sultan Selim I and its subsequent commemoration in Ottoman historiography, not least because this particular ruler remains an important figure in the still ongoing re-evaluation of Ottoman history in Turkey."—English Historical Review

From the Publisher

H. Erdem Cipa's monograph provides a timely investigation of the reign of Sultan Selim I and its subsequent commemoration in Ottoman historiography, not least because this particular ruler remains an important figure in the still ongoing re-evaluation of Ottoman history in Turkey.

English Historical Review