Selim I (; ; 10 October 1470 – 22 September 1520), known as Selim the Grim or Selim the Resolute (), was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1512 to 1520. Despite lasting only eight years, his reign is notable for the enormous expansion of the Empire, particularly his conquest between 1516 and 1517 of the entire Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, which included all of the Levant, Hejaz, Tihamah and Egypt itself. On the eve of his death in 1520, the Ottoman Empire spanned about , having grown by seventy percent during Selim's reign.
Selim's conquest of the Middle Eastern heartlands of the Muslim world, and particularly his assumption of the role of guardian of the pilgrimage routes to Mecca and Medina, established the Ottoman Empire as the pre-eminent Muslim state. His conquests dramatically shifted the empire's geographical and cultural center of gravity away from the Balkans and toward the Middle East. By the eighteenth century, Selim's conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate had come to be romanticized as the moment when the Ottomans seized leadership over the rest of the Muslim world, and consequently Selim is popularly remembered as the first legitimate Ottoman Caliph, although stories of an official transfer of the caliphal office from the Mamluk Abbasid dynasty to the Ottomans were a later invention.
Early life
Born in Amasya on 10 October 1470, Selim was son of Şehzade Bayezid (later Bayezid II). His mother was Ayşe Gülbahar Hatun, a Greek concubine, formerly confused with Ayşe Hatun, another consort of Bayezid and daughter of Alaüddevle Bozkurt Bey, the eleventh ruler of the Dulkadirids.
Reign
Governor of Trabzon
During his reign as governor of Trabzon Selim had earned a great reputation among his military men for his confrontations with the Safavids, slave raids and a campaign in the Caucasus against Georgia. Selim defeated a Safavid army in 1505, when Shah Ismail's brother led a 3,000-strong Safavid army against Selim, Selim routed the army, massacred many and seized their arms and munitions. In 1507 he defeated the Safavids again in the Battle of Erzincan, after Shah Ismail marched through Ottoman lands to attack the Dulkadirids Selim attacked Erzincan and defeated a Safavid army sent against him by Shah Ismail. The following year he invaded the Caucasus, he subdued western Georgia, brought Imereti and Guria under Ottoman domination and seized a large number of slaves. In 1510 he defeated the Safavids again in the Campaign of Trabzon.
Accession
By 1512 Şehzade Ahmed was the favorite candidate to succeed his father. Bayezid, who was reluctant to continue his rule over the empire, announced Ahmed as heir apparent to the throne. Angered by this announcement, Selim rebelled, and while he lost the first battle against his father's forces, Selim ultimately dethroned his father. Selim commanded 30,000 men, whereas his father led 40,000. Selim only escaped with 3,000 men. This marked the first time that an Ottoman prince openly rebelled against his father with an army of his own. Selim ordered the exile of Bayezid to a distant "sanjak", Dimetoka (in the north-east of present-day Greece). Bayezid died immediately thereafter. Selim put his brothers (Şehzade Ahmet and Şehzade Korkut) and nephews to death upon his accession. His nephew Şehzade Murad, son of the legal heir to the throne Şehzade Ahmed, fled to the neighboring Safavid Empire after his expected support failed to materialize. This fratricidal policy was motivated by bouts of civil strife that had been sparked by the antagonism between Selim's father and his uncle, Cem Sultan, and between Selim himself and his brother Ahmet.
Alevi unrest
After many centuries of calm, the Alevi population was active while Selim I was the sultan, and they seem to have been backed by the Qizilbash of Iran.
Conquest of the Middle East
Safavid Empire
One of Selim's first challenges as sultan involved the growing tension between the Ottoman Empire and the Safavid Empire led by Shah Ismail, who had recently brought the Safavids to power and had switched the Persian state religion from Sunni Islam to adherence to the Twelver branch of Shia Islam. By 1510 Ismail had conquered the whole of Iran and Azerbaijan, southern Dagestan (with its important city of Derbent), Mesopotamia, Armenia, Khorasan, Eastern Anatolia, and had made the Georgian kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti his vassals. He was a great threat to his Sunni Muslim neighbors to the west. In 1511 Ismail had supported a pro-Shia/Safavid uprising in Anatolia, the Şahkulu Rebellion.