السلطان سليم شاه بن عثمان

Selim I, sultan of the Ottoman state, son of Bayezid II ³.

Jarmardi al-Nasiri, a student of al-Suyuti, described him as "the trial of the ninth century (AH)", because of his wars with his brothers and their sons, then his fight against the lord of the East, and his entry into Egypt after Marj Dabiq, where its sultan Qansuh al-Ghuri was killed. He said that Egypt had never been struck by the like of it since it became a land of Islam ¹.

He died on the ninth of Shawwal 926 AH, aged fifty-four. His reign lasted nine years and eight months ³.

Al-Salabi records that his father Bayezid II left him rule of the state on 18 Safar 918 / 25 April 1512 ⁴.

Al-Salabi adds that from the start of his reign Selim inclined to eliminating rivals, brothers and nephews included; that he loved Persian literature, poetry and history, and despite his severity kept scholars' company, taking historians and poets to the battlefield to record events and recite ⁵. The book argues the eastward turn was to save the holy places from the Spanish-Portuguese crusading drive and to halt Safavid expansion, not military 'satiation' in the west ⁶, and that Selim styled himself "God's caliph through the earth's length and breadth" from 920/1514 — before Syria and Egypt fell — on which ground the book dismisses the later tale of a caliphate surrendered by Cairo's last Abbasid ⁷.