Selim the grim biography examples
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Selim I.
Yavuz Sultan Selim was born on 10th October His father was Sultan Bayezid II and his mother was Gulbahar Sultana from Dulkadirogulları State. Selim inom was a tall and a strong man. He was a very brave soldier and naturally tough. He was very well educated. Selim was very much interested in science and theology beside the governmental issues. He attended the lessons of famous scholar Mevlana Abdulhalim. During the sultanate of his father Bayezid II, Selim was appointed as the Governor of Trabizon (The Black Sea Region of Anatolia). He learnt the administrative regulations and the military struktur of the Empire there. He ruled the område very successfully. He improved the Ottoman relations with the neighbourhood states. He organised three campaigns to Georgia against their continuos anti-Ottoman propagandas. With these successful campaigns Selim invaded Kars, Erzurum, Artvin (). All the Georgians living in those reg
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In just eight years Selim I became ‘God’s Shadow on Earth’
Faber must take a rather dim view of British readers’ historical awareness these days. This is a biography of one of the greatest Ottoman sultans in the empire’s year history, yet the publishers cannot bring themselves to mention his name in the book’s title. Perhaps they thought Selim I was too obscure, and maybe they’re right, but their reticence is not shared by Alan Mikhail’s American publishers, who rightly give the sultan his due. Never mind. Mikhail, chair of Yale’s history department and a specialist in Ottoman history, makes it his mission to demonstrate how this utterly compelling leader helped define his age, bending the world to his will. And he succeeds with a flourish.
Selim’s reign may not have been long —he only ruled from to — but he managed to fit an awful lot of conquest in. So much so that by the time of his death the Ottoman empire had almost trebled in size.
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Caroline Finkel
When mainstream publishers commission monographs by Ottoman historians, it is cause for festivity in our ivory tower. It shows that someone has remembered that history is not bounded by today’s national borders but shared across time and space. The high production values of this volume, focusing on the ninth Ottoman sultan, Selim I (who reigned from to ), and his place in world history, are guaranteed to delight. It is replete with illustrations and maps, and is blurbed by Orhan Pamuk and Stephen Greenblatt. It tells, according to the latter, a story ‘worthy of Game of Thrones’. God’s Shadow is indeed a rollicking read. Therein lies the problem.
Alan Mikhail is recognised for his scholarship on the environmental history of Ottoman Egypt. Here, he sets out to revise what we think we know of Selim and his influence, characterising his book as ‘innovative, even revolutionary’ and announcing that it ‘overturns shibboleths that have held sway for a millennium’. Know