This book is a major nuisance. This is not because it is about Selim I (1470 to 1520), the ninth Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, who is revered as Selim Yavuz, "the rigor", in Turkey to this day. Selim is indeed an important figure in global history, if only because he more than doubled the territory of his dynasty after defeating the Persian Empire of the Safavids and the Middle Eastern great power of the Egyptian Mamluks in two successive campaigns. By taking possession of the holy sites of Mecca and Medina after the destruction of the Mamluk army with the Arabian Peninsula, he also made the Ottoman Sultanate the spiritual head of the

umma

, the community of all believers under the sign of Sunni Islam.

After the death of the last caliph, whom Selim had brought from the conquered Cairo to Constantinople, the Ottoman rulers took over his title, including the sword and cloak of the prophet Mohammed.

Andreas Kilb

Feuilleton correspondent in Berlin.

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It was only through this gain in legitimacy that the Empire of the Sublime Porte finally made the leap from regional to world power.

From then on, mostly from the position of the superior aggressor, it waged a two-front war against the European states of the modern era and the resurgent Persia for two and a half centuries, until it was pushed back into the role of a regional greatness through the joint efforts of Russia and Austria-Hungary.

Mistakes for a thousand years?

No, this book is annoying because it presents its points of view alternately in a preacher's tone and in the style of a historical lore novel. Even the introduction proclaims full-bodied that on the following pages “a bold new world history will be visible”, which clears up errors that have existed “for a millennium” - although the Ottomans had not even entered history a thousand years ago. Later it is said that if you look at the period around 1500 from Selim's perspective (which Alan Mikhail can apparently easily empathize with), you can see the enormous role the Ottomans played in global development - “in complete contrast to culturally blind history of the European rise in the Renaissance and the so-called Age of Discovery ”.Almost all historical conclusions that the author tries to draw from his biographical sketch emerge with this zealous and presumptuous gesture.

All the friendlier, if not to say: this sketch is more flowery. For example, about Cem, the uncle of the title hero, who is courting Christian allies in the power struggle for the sultan's throne, “When he looked over the railing into the clear blue waters of the northern Mediterranean, he saw his own dark fate, which forced him again to put his trust in a foreign power. ”An admiral whom Selim sends to the Red Sea is a man“ with a magnificent long mustache and legs like a tree trunk ”. Are you crazy?