Alan Mikhail On The Extraordinary Life Of Sultan Selim I | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra
"The way that the harem worked was that Sultans and princes produced their heirs, so their successors from their concubines, rather than their wives, their legal wives. Exactly why that's the case, we still don't really understand, but but historically, that's, that's the way it works. And after a concubine has borne a son, to the Sultan, sexual relations between Sultan and Prince, sexual relations cease. So the phrase that's usually used is, is, is, one woman, one son… once these sons of princes or sons of Sultans reaches certain, a certain age, quite young, often 10 to 15, they, they become governors in, in in various locales. So when these young sons are sent off there, sometimes with their mothers, and they are, you know, they're there, they're teenagers at best.
So it's really the mothers, people like Gulbahar, who are the administrators in these cities, and we can get into where Gulbahar and Selim, go later, but just in terms of understanding, Selim and his parents, it's interesting to note that every Sultan in the 600 year history of the Ottoman Empire is a Christian woman from outside of the cultural space of the Ottoman Empire, almost always, who is brought to the harem as a concubine, converted and raises there, raises their son. So so that's very interesting for understanding the way that the Empire brings in literally other cultures into the the the royal family itself, if we think that that every Sultan has a kind of non Turkish, non Muslim heritage as part of himself...
It does allow some upward mobility for these women, right? They become central administrators in one of the largest empires in the world. They hold real power in in the Ottoman Empire, you know, we might argue much more power than they would have had had they remained in their villages in Albania...
1516 1517, in which he defeats the Mamluk Empire, which is a massive moment in global history and really one of the centerpieces of Selim’s story. His defeat of the Mamluks, which is completed in 1517, basically, more than doubles the size of the Empire. The Mamluks were based in Cairo. Selim marches to Cairo, and includes now in his empire, basically all of the territory of what we think of as the Middle East. Up to that point, the Ottoman Empire is basically the Balkans and Anatolia. So sort of modern day Turkey, give or take, but Selim in 1517 adds all of the Arab world, much of North Africa, the western coast of what is today Saudi Arabia, so Mecca and Medina, parts of Iraq. And as I said, this is a massive moment in global history. It makes the empire for the first time in its history, a majority Muslim Empire. Up to that point, the bulk of the population was Christian...
Islam plays plays a role in the shaping of the Americas. So for example, John Smith, the first colonial governor of Virginia. Before he goes to Virginia he’s a slave in the Ottoman Empire for a couple years. And this is such a formative experience for him that his his personal seal contains three severed Turkish heads on it. Turbaned heads of Turks that he supposedly killed in battle. And this seal, interestingly enough, is on the first map of Virginia… In debates around the Constitution of the United States, there is a question, a sort of theoretical question about, could a Muslim be President of the United States? Right? This is in the same context of could a Catholic, could a Jew be President of the United States?... The first war that America fights as a as an independent nation is with Barbary pirates in North Africa, of course...
Erdogan, the president of Turkey today sees in Selim, a model for his rule, really more than any other sultan, I would say. And you see this, you know, quite dramatically in the fact that the third Bosphorus Bridge, the third bridge ever built over the Bosphorus strait connecting Asia and Europe. Erdogan chooses to name that bridge after Selim. Could have named it after any other historical figure, names it after Selim. So so what does he see in Selim? He sees in Selim, first a global figure, right? One that that more than doubled the size of the Empire, made the Ottomans a force that bestrided three continents, that put the Ottomans in the Indian Ocean, that made the Ottomans this huge global power. And that speaks to Erdogan’s ambitions for global power, whether economic or political.
He also sees in, in Selim, a strong Muslim leader, right? That as I said before, Selim was the first Ottoman sultan who could, who could correctly claim to be the Caliph. And so the kind of bringing of religion into the politics of his state, which Erdogan does in all kinds of complicated ways. I think he sees in Selim, that kind of model of, of a religious leader in the Muslim world. One that he aspires for himself, that kind of model. Selim is also as we as we spoke before, aggressive. He goes after, you know, he attacked his foreign enemies, the Mamluks and the Safavids.
Something we didn't mention, but it's very important is that he leads one of the largest massacres in Ottoman history of Shiites in Anatolia. So is his own subjects. About 40,000. This is one of the largest massacres until the end of the 19th century. Erdogan is similarly as aggressive in, in pushing out his authority, whether that is going after minority communities, Kurds, Alevis, going after journalists, going after Twitter, whoever, whoever it is. You know, something like this symbolic politics of the Hagia Sophia, that happened quite recently. That is, again, a kind of, symbol of the projection of, you know, Turkish Sunni religiosity into the world… early in the 20th century, Ataturk, the father of, modern, the Turkish Republic, turns [Hagia Sophia] into a museum. So a sign of Turkish secularism, a secular space of learning and education. And Erdogan now has just turned it into a into a mosque, again, you know, that, that politics domestically is very important.
So much of the history of the Turkish Republic after 1923, after the fall of the Empire, and the creation of the Turkish Republic, was about distancing the Ottoman Empire from the Turkish Republic, that there was a break, right? So that the Turkish Republic will be secular, whereas the Empire was religious. The alphabet will be Latin instead of Arabic Persian script, right? We will have a parliament rather than a sultan. All of that, all of that kind of stuff, you know, looking towards Europe rather than the East. Erdogan is really the first leader of the Republic, to embrace the Ottomans. He often speaks of himself as the grandson of the Ottomans, which is interesting in that he, he skips the father's generation, he skips the Republican generation to go back to to the Ottomans. And he’s supported all kinds of you know, construction projects, of refurbishing Ottoman sites, supporting you know, the study of Ottoman history and all kinds of ways. So, you know, the Ottomans and and Selim in particular are very live for Erdogan and serve in the present all kinds of political agendas for him."
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