The net result to the Turkish Empire of the thirty-one years of Bayezid’s reign was, on the one hand, the incorporation of Herzegovina, and the expulsion of the Venetians from the Morea; on the other, the loss of three fortresses in Asia Minor to the Mamelukes of Egypt and the withdrawal from the South of Italy.
An incident worth recording was the first appearance of Russia in the field of Turkish diplomacy. An ambassador was sent to Bayezid by Czar Ivan III. He was instructed to refuse to bow his knee to the Sultan or to concede precedence to any other ambassadors. Bayezid meekly gave way on these points of etiquette. This was a presage of the attitude of Russia which two centuries later threatened the existence of the Turkish Empire.
IX
SELIM I
1512-20
On the forced abdication of Bayezid, Selim was proclaimed Sultan at Constantinople, with the full support of the Janissaries. He reigned for only eight years, but he succeeded in this short time in more than doubling the extent of the Ottoman Empire. He made no additions to it in Europe, but he conquered and annexed the great provinces of Diarbekir and Khurdistan from Persia, and Egypt, Syria, and a great part of Arabia, including the holy cities, from the Mameluke government of Egypt. He commenced this career of war and conquest at the ripe age of forty-seven. He proved to be a ruler and general of indomitable will and vigour, the exact opposite to his father in his greed for expansion of his Empire. He was a most able administrator. He cared little for his harem or other pleasures of life. Sleeping but little, he spent his nights in literary studies. He delighted in theological discussions and in the society of learned men, and he appointed them to high offices in the State. They had no effect, however, in softening his evil nature. He had no regard for human life, whether in war or in peace. He was attended by men called mutes, who were ready at any moment to strangle or decapitate on the spot any person designated by him. His most trusted counsellors, his oldest friends and associates, were in constant danger of life. He met argument or protest against his schemes, or criticism of his past actions, by instant death, not unfrequently by his own hand. During his short reign seven of his Grand Viziers were decapitated by his orders. Numerous other officials and generals shared the same fate. They seldom enjoyed the sweets of office for more than a few months. One of them, in playful reminder of this to Selim, asked to be given a short notice of his doom, so that he might put his private affairs in order. The Sultan replied to him: “I have been thinking for some time of having thee killed, but I have at present no one to fill thy place, otherwise I would willingly oblige thee.” Judges convicted of corruption were dealt with in the same way. By a malicious irony they were compelled to pass sentence on themselves, before being handed over to the executioner. Janissaries who dared to ask for an increase of pay were also condemned to death. The first recorded act of Selim’s reign was to strike dead with his own sword a Janissary who was deputed by the corps to ask for the accustomed presents on his accession. It does not appear that these events cast gloom on Selim’s Court. They soon lost the sense of novelty. There were plenty of applicants for the vacant posts, willing and eager to run the risks of office. Selim was agreeable in his conversation and life was gay. He did not indulge in refinements of cruelty like his grandfather Mahomet. He acted from a sense of public duty. If he spilled much blood, he restored and maintained discipline in the army and stemmed the course of corruption. He was distinctly popular with his subjects, with whom, as in most Eastern countries, affection was in part inspired by terror.
As was to be expected, Selim’s two elder brothers, Khorkand and Ahmed, whose claims to the Sultanate had been set aside, and who were at the head of important governments in Asia Minor, took up arms against him. Selim, without loss of a moment, led an army to Brusa against them. Khorkand, taken unawares, was quickly defeated. He was allowed an hour’s respite before being bow-strung. During this short interval he wrote a poem deprecating his brother’s cruelty. Selim wept over the poem and ordered a State funeral for his brother. At Brusa a horrible scene of slaughter took place. Five nephews of Selim—possible claimants to the throne—were collected there. They were of varying ages, from five to twenty. They were all strangled by order of the Sultan—the eldest of them resisting with terrible struggles, the youngest with plaintive cries for mercy, while Selim from an adjoining room was a witness of the scene, and urged his mutes to hasten their task. Ahmed, the second and favourite son of Bayezid, made a longer resistance in the field, but a few months later he was defeated and put to death.
Selim, now safe on his throne, turned his attention to war with Persia. The principal cause of conflict arose out of a dispute on religion. From an early time the Mahommedan world had been divided into two hostile sects—the Sunnites and the Schiis. The point of difference was whether authority should be attributed to the writings of the four immediate descendants of the Prophet, as the Schiis contended, or whether the words of the Prophet alone should be conclusive on matters of dogma. It would seem that the smaller the difference in dogma between two sects of a religious body, the worse they hate one another; and just as the Christians of the Greek and Latin Churches hated one another more than they hated the followers of Mahomet, so the Sunnites and the Schiis hated one another to the point that they were each bent on exterminating the other—though the difference between them might seem to outsiders to be no greater than that between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
Persia was the headquarters of the Schiis. In the Ottoman Empire the Sunnites greatly prevailed. But of late years the Schiis had gained ground in Asia Minor. Selim, who was a bigoted follower of Mahomet, determined to extirpate this heresy throughout his Empire. With devilish zeal he employed an army of spies to ferret out the heretics, and on a given day seventy thousand of them were arrested. Forty thousand of them were put to death, and the remainder were condemned to terms of imprisonment. This violent action does not seem to have aroused any popular indignation against Selim. It earned for him in Turkey the title of ‘the Just,’ and diplomats of the day and historians wrote of it in laudatory terms. It was a proof of the possibility of extirpating a heresy if the means adopted were ruthlessly carried out. The Schii heresy was extinguished, once for all, in the Ottoman Empire. This exploit, however, added to the animosity already existing between the Persians and the Ottomans, and made war between them inevitable. The immediate clash was hastened by the Persians giving asylum to Murad, a son of Ahmed, who had not been included in the slaughter of his cousins at Brusa.