Making of Selim

<p>The father of the legendary Ottoman sultan Suleyman the Magnificent Selim I (The Grim) set the stage for centuries of Ottoman supremacy by doubling the size of the empire. Conquering Eastern Anatolia Syria and Egypt Selim promoted a politicized Sunni Ottoman* identity against the Shiite Safavids of Iran thus shaping the early modern Middle East. Analyzing a wide array of sources in Ottoman-Turkish Persian and Arabic H. Erdem Cipa offers a fascinating revisionist reading of Selim's rise to power and the subsequent reworking and mythologizing of his persona in 16th- and 17th-century Ottoman historiography. In death Selim continued to serve the empire becoming represented in ways that reinforced an idealized image of Muslim sovereignty in the early modern Eurasian world.</p>