From this moment for the next seventeen years Europe had some respite from the Eastern Question. There was incessant fear of what the Turk might do next, incessant talk of resisting him, incessant negotiations against him; but there was no actual war; almost no Christian territory was won for Islam, and no Christian territory won back for Europe. The attention of the Sultan was drawn eastward; where he had to reckon with a new power; for the lordship of Persia had once more changed hands. The decline of the Turcomans of the White Sheep was clearly shown in the circumstance that on the death of Uzun Hasan nine dynasts (not to speak of rival claimants) succeeded in twenty-four years. Murad, the last of these, succumbed to the power of Ismail, a sheikh of Ardabil, who traced his descent to the Prophet. The decisive battle was fought at Shurur in 1502; and, from his new-won capital at Tavriz, Ismail advanced to the conquest of Persia and Khorasan. The history of modern Persia begins with Ismail, the first Shah—the first of the Safavid dynasty which endured till the middle of the eighteenth century (1736). He called himself a Safavi, from Safi, an ancestor illustrious for piety; and hence to contemporary Europe he was known as the Sofi.
A collision between the new Persian power and the Turks was rendered inevitable by religious fanaticism. To orthodox Sunnites like the Ottomans, the heresy of the Shiites is more obnoxious than the infidelity of the Giaours, who are altogether outside the pale; and, when Bayazid discovered that the Shiite doctrines were being propagated and taking root in certain parts of his Asiatic dominion, he took steps to check the evil by transporting suspected persons to Greece. The Shah Ismail then came forward as the protector of the Shiites, and called upon the Turkish Sultan to allow adherents of that belief to leave his realm. But, though the Shah is said to have insulted the Sultan by giving the name of Bayazid to a fattened swine, war did not break out in Bayazid’s days. The Persian monarch showed his anticipation of trouble by entering into negotiations with the western powers, as Uzun Hasan had done before; and a Persian embassy was welcomed at Venice though the Signory openly declared that there was no intention of breaking the peace: two years before they had given up Alessio in Albania, in order to avoid a breach.
On the side of the south too, Bayazid’s dominions had been threatened. The Mamluk Sultan of Egypt, Sayf ad-Din (1468-95), had espoused the cause of Jem, to whose mother he had given an asylum; had interfered in the affairs of Sulkadr, a small Turcoman lordship in Cappadocia; and had asserted authority in the regions of Lesser Armenia,—even as in ancient days the Ptolemies had thrown out an arm to grasp Cilicia. Tarsus, Adana, and other places passed under Egyptian rule, and in 1485 war openly broke out between the Mamluk and the Ottoman Sultans. An important victory was won by the Egyptian in 1488; but a peace was patched up in 1491, and lasted during the rest of Bayazid’s reign.
The tremendous earthquake which sent a thrill through the world in 1509 laid Constantinople in ruins; the Sultan himself fled to Hadrianople. But an oriental autocrat in those days could rebuild quickly; and with a host of workmen, worthy of a Pharaoh or a Babylonian King, Bayazid restored the city in a few months. The last days of the old Sultan were embittered by the rebellion and rivalry of his sons, Ahmad, Corcud, and Selim. He destined Ahmad as his successor, and thought of abdicating the throne in his favour; but Selim, a man of action and resolution, was determined that this should not be. From the province of Trebizond of which he was the governor, he marched to Europe at the head of an army, and appearing at the gates of Hadrianople, demanded to be assigned an European province. He wished to be near the scene of action when the moment came. He demanded too that his father should not abdicate in favour of Ahmad. Both demands were agreed to. But at this juncture news arrived that Corcud had revolted; and thereupon Selim seized Hadrianople. This was too much. His sire took the field and defeated him in a battle; and he fled for refuge to the Crimea. But the cause of Ahmad was not won. The Janissaries, whose hearts had been captivated by the bold stroke of Selim, broke out in mutiny and riot when Ahmad drew nigh to take possession of the throne, and were pacified only by a pledge from Bayazid that this design should not be carried out. Ahmad thereupon sought to get Asia Minor into his power; Corcud intrigued at the same time for his own hand; and finally, in the spring of 1512, Selim advanced from the Crimea to the Danube, and, supported by the Janissaries who would brook no opposition, forced Bayazid to abdicate (April 25). A month later the old Sultan died, poisoned, it can hardly be questioned, by order of his son. It was not to be expected that Ahmad would submit; he seized Brusa; but Selim crossed over to Asia, drove him eastward, and deprived him of the governorship of Amasia. Next year Ahmad made another attempt, but was defeated in battle at Yenishehr and executed. Corcud had not dared to take the field; but in consequence of his intrigues he was likewise put to death. The next victims were the Sultan’s nephews, children of other brothers who had died in the lifetime of their father. Thus Selim put into practice a ruthless law which had been enacted by the policy of Mohammad II, that it was lawful for a Sultan, in the interests of the unity of the realm, which was the first condition of its prosperity, to do his brothers and their children to death.
The spirit of Selim I was very different from that of his father. He was resolved to resume the old paths of forward policy from which the studious temper of Bayazid had digressed, and to follow in the way of Mohammad the Conqueror. Yet he was also unlike his grandfather. He revelled in war and death; all his deeds seem prompted rather by instinct than by policy. Mohammad seems almost genial beside this gloomy and restless soul. Selim the Grim delighted in cruelty, but he was extremely moderate in pleasure; like his father and uncle he was highly cultivated. He raised the pay of the Janissaries,—this was the meed of their support; but he soon showed that he was resolved to be their master. The truth is that the Janissaries were an institution ill compatible with a peace policy; amenable to the discipline of war, they were a perpetual danger for a pacific ruler.
The collisions with Persia and Egypt, which menaced the reign of Bayazid, actually came to pass after the accession of Selim. The Shah, Ismail, had given an asylum to the sons of Ahmad, and had made an incursion into the eastern districts of the Ottoman Empire (1513). But the fundamental cause of the Persian war was religious antagonism; it was a struggle between the great Sunnite and the great Shiite power. It was stamped with this character by a sweeping act of persecution on the part of Selim, who, seizing 40,000 Shiites, killed some and imprisoned others; and the mutual attitude of the rival superstitions was shown in a high-flown letter which Selim, when he took the field (1514), indited to his enemy. He marched into the dominions of Ismail, and the decisive