by Alan Mikhail
Over the summer of 1511, Selim built up his coalition in the Balkans and collected provisions and matériel in preparation for the move on Istanbul: a fleet of approximately a hundred ships, a vast array of supplies and weapons, and three thousand soldiers. Now that his son was accompanying Selim, Mengli Giray Khan ramped up his support for him too, instructing Sa‘adet to assist Selim and contributing three hundred of his own soldiers, along with an additional one thousand Crimean Kazaks.
After their departure from Crimea and a few days at sea, Selim and his men, and Sa‘adet and his, arrived safely in Akkerman on June 1, 1511. The city had been conquered by the Ottomans in 1484, one of the last Black Sea ports to fall. From Akkerman—ever closer to Istanbul—Selim wrote to his father. “For such a long time,” he began, “I have been deprived of the sight of the happy, noble beauty of your face. Visiting one’s relations is one of the obligatory duties [of men]. It was with that hope that your humble servant set out in the direction of Kaffa, and he has now come to the environs of Aḳḳermān. It is hoped that, from among the exalted imperial favours, permission may be granted.” Via Ahmed’s emissary, Selim had previously demanded an audience with his father. Now Selim tried a softer tone, playing the dutiful son who longed to see his father to offer him the proper respect—an emotional ploy for political gain. A father himself, Selim understood the power of a father’s love for his son, and despite the obvious suspicions his message would elicit, he hoped to be able to pluck the right tune on the strings of his father’s heart. If the most expedient road from Akkerman to Istanbul was duplicitous emotion, Selim stood ready to tread that path.
As part of his strategy, Selim continued to send flattering letters to his father while he allowed time for his troops to assemble. He wrote that his sole desire in going to the Balkans was to kiss his father’s hand and accord him the respect he deserved. He again requested the governorship of the Danubian province of Silistra in order to, he said, be close to his father in his old age. Bayezit and his advisers easily saw through these declarations of filial piety, sending an emissary to inform Selim that he would never again be allowed to enter the sultan’s presence. Selim responded in a tone more legalistic than any he had tried before. “My lord,” he asked his father’s representative, “if one of God’s servants has not seen his noble father for ten or fifteen years, since visiting one’s relations is one of the obligatory duties, if that servant, in order to comply with the sublime Divine commandments, sets out to visit his father, is it permissible, according to the şerī‘at [holy law], to prevent him? I ask you for a fetvā [legal opinion].”
The emissary answered, “According to the şerī‘at, no-one may prevent him.”
Pleased with this response, Selim retorted, “Since this act is prescribed by the şerī‘at and, according to the şerī‘at, may not be prevented, why [then] have they sent you, and for what purpose have you come?” He sent the man back to his father.
THE YEAR 1511, in which Selim made his push toward Istanbul and the Şahkulu Rebellion continued to sow chaos across the empire, saw other political realignments and long-distance military expeditions that would forever reforge the world. In the decades around 1500, empires across the globe countered one another’s encroachments and expansions with their own wars and invasions, leading to a global race for territory and control of strategic sea-lanes and overland trade routes. In 1511 alone, the Portuguese captured Malacca in Southeast Asia, the Spanish invaded Cuba, the Taino revolted in Puerto Rico, and Henry VIII built his navy’s largest-ever warship, the Mary Rose, a reflection of England’s growing overseas ambitions.
Selim stood closer that summer than ever before to seizing the Ottoman throne. Not only was he within striking distance of the capital, but he also had a formidable fighting force and the backing of the Crimean khans, as well as some of the Janissary Corps. Yet, impressive as his support was, Selim’s army paled when compared with the quality and size of the imperial army and military resources his father could muster at a moment’s notice. Even more daunting than his deficit on the battlefield was the towering wall of precedent Selim sought to surmount. To become sultan, he would likely have to kill a sultan, his own father, an unprecedented act in the dynastic history of the Ottoman Empire. Selim knew that should he fail, he would surely die, one of the forgotten vanquished of the global political struggles of the early sixteenth century.
CHAPTER
15
BOUND FOR ISTANBUL
Selim battles his father
AS SELIM’S UNCERTAINTIES AND FEARS QUICKENED, SO DID THE drumbeat of war. By the end of July, Selim had begun his march southward, along the western shore of the Black Sea from Akkerman toward the outskirts of Edirne, the former imperial capital at the bend of the Meriç River. Further men and supplies accompanied him by boat. The time for letters and emissaries had passed.
Bayezit, informed by a cascade of messengers of Selim’s steady advance, dispatched one of his highest-ranking and most able confidants in an attempt to intimidate his rebellious son. Hasan Pasha, the governor of Rumelia—perhaps the most important province in the whole of the empire, as it included the former capital, Edirne, and much of the empire’s lucrative lands in the Balkans—rode toward Selim’s camp with a dozen or so soldiers. But Selim refused to meet him. He let the size of his own military force speak for itself, impressing upon Hasan the gravity of the threat to his father’s throne. Without pursuing the matter further, Hasan returned southward. This pusillanimous retreat only added to the defiant prince’s menacing reputation, both as a formidable military commander and as the son who would most readily resort to violence against his father.
Despite Selim’s earlier fawning missives, his forces on the outskirts of Edirne demonstrated—if any doubt remained—that he was not there to fulfill a filial duty. Bayezit now dispatched fifteen thousand of his own troops to intercept Selim. Only with their armies face to face did Selim and his father, through their representatives, begin talking. Instead of wasting lives in a chest-puffing battle, both hoped to save their soldiers for the ultimate confrontation that surely lay ahead. They negotiated a rapprochement whereby Bayezit would grant Selim a governorship in the Balkans in exchange for his withdrawal from Edirne. Selim was given his choice of three governorships: Bosnia, the Peloponnese, or Smederevo in what is today north-central Serbia. He chose Smederevo, the former Serbian capital conquered by the Ottomans in 1439.
More significantly, Bayezit swore he would not abdicate in favor of any of his sons. This promise represented a major victory for Selim; it bought him time and forestalled the threat of the imminent enthronement of Ahmed. When Bayezit died, Ahmed would be left to fend for himself. Self-confident, self-reliant, and well-armed, Selim was convinced that without their father’s support behind Ahmed, he would have the advantage in any all-out war among the three half-brothers, particularly since he had the most military experience and the most imposing fighting force.
FROM THE START OF the negotiations, both Bayezit and Selim knew that whatever agreement they reached would last about as long as the proverbial tea after baklava—and, indeed, both immediately broke it. Bayezit had offered a truce only as the most expedient means of keeping Selim away from Istanbul; he never had any intention of honoring his word. In fact, just after the agreement was finalized, Bayezit began mobilizing his forces to strike Selim—initiating the process of turning over the empire to Ahmed. Ungrateful and always fearful of his half-brother, Ahmed resented the fact that his father had even considered negotiating with Selim. He wrote an angry letter to his father complaining about the perils of granting Selim a Balkan governorship and asking mockingly why he did not just go ahead and have coins minted in Selim’s likeness and the Friday prayer said in his name.
For his part, Selim never had any intention of going to Smederevo to claim his governorship. His encampment north of Edirne was much closer to Istanbul, and he had no interest in ceding this position. Rumors of Bayezit’s mobilization efforts, moreover
, did not inspire trust. His troops’ return to Istanbul did, however, provide Selim with a useful opportunity to make inroads in Edirne, since the city was now exposed. So he lingered on its outskirts, dispatching troops on occasional raids for food and other supplies. He also persisted in his recruitment efforts across the empire and sent spies to Istanbul and beyond to monitor the moves of his father, his half-brothers, and the imperial army. Meanwhile, Selim’s continued encampment near Edirne angered his father, who sent progressively more threatening orders to Selim to go immediately to Smederevo. Selim procrastinated, citing, for example, the need to stay near Edirne to assist in the ongoing fight against the few Şahkulu rebels who remained in the area.
As both an exasperated father and an increasingly perturbed sultan, Bayezit decided personally to march a regiment back to Edirne to expel his stubborn son from the city. At first, Selim continued to stall; then he rode out of Edirne toward Smederevo with a contingent of soldiers. This was a charade—but Bayezit believed the flexing of his military might had succeeded in intimidating his son. Convinced of his temporary victory, he turned back to Istanbul. As soon as Selim was informed of this, he circled his forces back to Edirne. The only definitive moves he would make would be toward Istanbul, not away from it.
This time, Selim entered Edirne in earnest. He forcibly removed his father’s representatives, set free his supporters whom his father had imprisoned, and proclaimed himself ruler of Edirne. With the city and its environs securely in his hands, he chased after his father with thirty thousand soldiers, described in the Selimname as being “[fierce as] lion-hunters.” Quickly covering the flat terrain of Thrace, he caught up with his father ninety miles to the east, in the nondescript town of Çorlu, which is notable only for being a convenient halfway point between Edirne and Istanbul.
When the armies of father and son met in late July 1511 on the road between the empire’s current and former capitals, combat immediately ensued. Bayezit’s forty thousand troops, their war drums beating out a steady cadence, trounced Selim’s thirty thousand. The imperial army had more men, more organizational acumen, and more cannons than Selim’s composite force of decommissioned Janissaries, Karamanids, and armed pastoralists. After only a day of battle, it disintegrated. Most of his soldiers were captured or killed; others retreated to their homes, abandoning Selim’s cause altogether. Only about three thousand of his men stayed by his side. Selim himself was almost killed when, near the end of the day, he and the small contingent flanking him were surrounded, and then charged, by the sultan’s troops. In the melee, Selim’s soldiers sneaked him off the battlefield and whisked him quickly northward to the picturesque Black Sea town of Ahyolu (now Pomorie, Bulgaria). Were it not for the 10 percent of his soldiers who remained loyal, Selim would have died.
The prince and his cohort spent a few days recuperating in Ahyolu, with fresh fish and the region’s sweet peaches their main solace. About a week later, Selim boarded “such vessels as were ready at hand” and sailed back to Kefe to regroup and plot his next move. “The fish held that monarch in great esteem,” the Selimname declares, betraying some of its shortcomings as a historical source. “They [went] before him, showing the right way.” Some of Selim’s military commanders accompanied him, while the bulk of his men marched overland. In Kefe, although happy to be reunited with Suleyman, Selim wallowed in self-pity and doubt. A substantial portion of the fighting force he had been building up his whole adult life—a group whom he believed would provide a comparative advantage in the battle for the throne—had collapsed at Çorlu. The Giray khans promised support but it was nothing close to what he had lost, and he was wary of becoming too beholden to them.
The Battle of Çorlu represented the first time in Ottoman history that a prince warred against his father the sultan. The unprecedented nature of this conflict is why we know of its outcome but not the details of the fighting itself. Such a story necessitated suppression, an observation that prompts caution when relying on accounts such as the Selimname. Within Ottoman political culture, raising an army against a sultan, the divinely endowed leader of the Ottoman realm, was by definition inherently illegitimate, not to mention illegal and immoral. Even some of Selim’s own supporters, as much as they despised Bayezit, found it challenging to justify the war with his father. Prince fighting prince ensured the strongest successor, but prince fighting sultan struck at the majesty and sanctity of the sultanate. The sultan was to be unassailable, untouchable, and invincible, so violence against him had to be unthinkable. Thus, Ottoman historians, and the sultans who patronized them—both at the time and afterward—systematically attempted to prevent reports of the ferocious patrilineal wars between Selim and Bayezit from entering the historical record.
AFTER ÇORLU, BAYEZIT RETURNED to Istanbul, confident that his superior military capacities had restored order to the realm. He sent word for Ahmed—finally—to come to the capital as soon as possible. It was time to crown him sultan. Despite all that had transpired over the previous few years—Selim’s threats, Ahmed’s consternation, several armed confrontations—Ahmed, it seemed, was at last poised to don the mantle of Osman, and he dispatched one of his most trusted advisers to arrange the details of his entrance into Istanbul. As the ornate language of the Selimname described it, “the hope of acceding to the seat of the Sultanate became the adornment of his consciousness, and the expectation that the Caliphate-accustomed throne would be made attainable [to him] became the engraving on the signet-ring of his desire-catching mind.”
Selim, sequestered across the sea in Crimea, would not acquiesce so easily. Now, at the eleventh hour, the time had arrived for him to utilize his most potent weapon. Since his earliest days in Trabzon, he had been maneuvering for the support of the common soldiers of the Janissary Corps. Unlike the irregulars he had led to Çorlu, or for that matter the upper echelons of the military he had derided in his speech in Georgia, these troops would not dissolve in the fire of war. They were committed and ever eager for confrontation. They had access to weapons and could coordinate their military forces across the entire imperial domain. For over a decade, since the late 1490s, Selim had been giving these soldiers money, respect, and power in exchange for their support. The Janissaries, in turn, understood that their future would shine brightest with Selim as their sultan. He would put them at the center of his sultanate, advocate for their interests, and support them materially. Even though some Janissary factions remained loyal to Bayezit, Selim’s resolve stiffened with the knowledge that most were now behind him and would support him over Ahmed.
As a result of the Janissaries’ intelligence-gathering capabilities, Selim—even in Kefe—was able to keep close tabs on events throughout the empire. When news of Ahmed’s move on the capital reached him, he mobilized quickly. He sent men to shadow Ahmed as he snaked his way through Anatolia toward the capital, while finalizing his plans with the Janissaries. Publicly displaying this armed advantage in Istanbul, in plain view of Bayezit and the pro-Ahmed faction, became a key factor in Selim’s strategy to counteract his father’s plan to install Ahmed on the throne.
Thus, in late 1511, the Janissaries and Selim’s supporters flooded the streets of Istanbul, loudly proclaiming that they would accept no one other than Selim as their new sultan. Bayezit set pro-Ahmed thugs loose in response. The situation quickly deteriorated. Scuffles broke out in the market when soldiers started stealing food and other supplies. Pro-Ahmed and pro-Selim factions seized whole neighborhoods as their competing turf, and guerrilla warfare gripped the city. As tensions rose, a simple sideways glance could end in a raucous brawl with several dead bodies. At one point, a rumor spread that Ahmed’s men had referred to the pro-Selim Janissaries as treasonous dogs. This led to days of all-out street war, in which five thousand Janissaries attacked the homes and businesses of known Ahmed sympathizers. They killed some, burned their houses, and tried to expel every pro-Ahmed supporter they could find. The Selimname described it this way:
[This] vast comp
any and [these] troops whose grandeur was auspicious made the interior of Istanbul full of a happiness-purporting sound, with shouts of “Allah! Allah!” They split up into detachments, and each detachment raided the house of a [pro-Ahmed] pasha. They arrived like a dazzling flash of lightning and despoiled and ravaged both the inside and the outside [of the houses]. Whatever there was in the way of goods, furniture and wealth, of jewel-inlaid objects of silver and gold, they looted and plundered [them]. [The pashas] themselves fled by night from this attack, the marks of which were auspicious, into the inner part of the city, and hid.
When Selim’s faction threatened more destruction and rioting should preparations go forward to bring Ahmed into the city, Bayezit capitulated. Selim’s strategy, organized from across the Black Sea in Kefe, had succeeded. His spectacular mobilization of his own empire-within-the-empire begged the question of who really was in charge.
AHMED RECEIVED THE NEWS, in the sleepy coastal town of Maltepe, about fifteen miles east of the Bosphorus Strait, and seethed with rage. “His disposition, which, through hope of the Sultanate, had been a flower-garden, became full of thistles.” Already on the road to Istanbul to claim what he considered his birthright, he had been ignominiously halted by the actions of a group of rabble-rousing soldier-thugs. He killed the messenger who delivered the news on the spot, lending truth to the cliché about messengers.