Selim I: Campaigns to the East and Egypt

24 April 1512

The prince who unseated his father

Under heavy pressure from his son Selim, Bayezid II was forced to give up the throne; Selim became the ninth Ottoman ruler on 24 April 1512. His first task was to secure his throne: his elder brother Prince Ahmed was defeated and killed on the plain of Yenişehir on 15 April 1513. The next target was the Safavid Shah Ismail, seen as the greatest threat because of his propaganda in Anatolia and the revolts of his followers. On the map, the Safavids lie to the east and the Mamluk Sultanate to the south.

20 March – 23 August 1514

Chaldiran

Selim left Edirne on 20 March 1514 and reached the Safavid border by way of Konya, Kayseri and Sivas. The Safavids had laid waste to the roads; food ran short, and on 14 August the Janissaries mutinied. At last the two armies met on the plain of Chaldiran. In the battle of 23 August, as the cavalry on the Ottoman wings began to give way, the guns and Janissary musketeers that the sultan brought into action scattered Shah Ismail's horsemen, and the shah had to withdraw.

Event page →

September 1514 – September 1515

Tabriz, Kemah and Diyarbekir

Selim entered Tabriz on 6 September and had the Friday sermon read in his name; he sent as many as 1,000 scholars and craftsmen to Istanbul. Because of the food shortage he did not winter there but returned to Amasya. In spring 1515 he took Kemah from the Safavids (19 May); on 12 June the Dulkadirid ruler Alaüddevle Bey was defeated and killed by the forces of Hadım Sinan Pasha. In September Bıyıklı Mehmed Bey captured Amid (Diyarbakır). Tabriz was not held; only the gains in Anatolia light up on the map.

24 August 1516

Marj Dabiq

The new campaign was first aimed at the Safavids. But the Mamluk sultan Qansuh al-Ghawri came to Aleppo with his army and refused the Ottoman troops passage through his lands. On 30 July Selim declared his target to be the Mamluk sultan and Aleppo. In the battle on the plain of Marj Dabiq on 24 August the Mamluk army broke up, firearms playing their part; Qansuh's body was found and buried in Aleppo. Selim entered Aleppo on 28 August and showed great respect to the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil, who had been with the Mamluk sultan.

Event page →

September 1516 – January 1517

From Damascus into the desert

Selim reached Damascus on 27 September. The Mamluks had chosen Tumanbay as sultan and were regrouping; some of the viziers, above all because of the desert road, were strongly against marching on Cairo. Selim first offered Tumanbay terms of submission by letter, then sent Sinan Pasha ahead to Gaza; the pasha scattered the forces of Janbirdi al-Ghazali at Khan Yunis. Leaving Damascus on 15 December, the sultan visited Jerusalem on 30 December and entered Gaza on 2 January 1517. On 9 January the crossing of the desert began, along halting places scouted in advance by guides.

22 January – 13 April 1517

Ridaniya and Cairo

Before Cairo, Tumanbay had dug a trench from the Muqattam hills to the Nile and placed guns along it. The Ottoman army did not attack this line head-on but went round the side of the Muqattam, making the Mamluk guns useless. In the battle of Ridaniya on 22 January the Mamluk forces broke up; Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha was killed. On the night of 27–28 January Tumanbay entered the city, and with the people joining in there were three days of fighting. Captured on 30 March, Tumanbay was executed at Bab Zuwayla on 13 April; the Mamluk Sultanate was at an end.

Event page →

6 July 1517

Servant of the Two Holy Cities

On the island of Rawda in the middle of the Nile, Selim received Abu Numayy, son of the Sharif of Mecca, and formally took Mecca and Medina, the Two Holy Cities, under his protection; Mecca was to keep the status it had had under the Mamluks. In official documents he was styled “khadim al-Haramayn” (servant of the Two Holy Cities). According to the TDV encyclopedia, the story that he took over the caliphate from the Abbasid caliph at a ceremony in Hagia Sophia has no historical value. The caliph al-Mutawakkil was sent to Istanbul by sea together with scholars and craftsmen.

1518 – 22 September 1520

Return, Algiers and death

Selim returned to Istanbul on 25 July 1518, worn out by a campaign that had lasted two years and a month. In October 1519 a letter of allegiance arrived from the people of Algiers; Selim recognised Hızır Reis as ruler of Algiers, and it was decided to send him an auxiliary force of 2,000 men. Hızır was now called Hayreddin Pasha. In summer 1520, on his way to Edirne, a growth on his back stopped Selim at Çorlu, where he died in the night of 21–22 September 1520. His reign of just over eight years was a turning point in Ottoman history.