“Political Philosophy” and the Moralist Tradition^65
campaigns, both in the west (annexing Hercegovina and parts of Moldavia
by 1485) and the east (confronting the Mamluks, with little success, in south-
eastern Anatolia); after Cem’s death he felt more able to raid Hungary, Poland,
and Venetian territories in the Adriatic. Peace with Venice and Hungary in 1503
permitted the Ottomans to concentrate on their eastern borders: by then, the
Akkoyunlus had been replaced by a much more dangerous enemy, the Safavid
dynasty of Iran under Shah Ismail, who claimed the allegiance of Shi’a sym-
pathizers among the Turcoman tribes of Anatolia. Bayezid followed a rather
timid policy against Ismail; however, Shah Kulu’s rebellion in 1511 discredited
both the sultan’s power and his sons Korkud and Ahmed’s ineffective admin-
istration. The following year, Bayezid’s third son, Selim, headed an army rebel-
lion and forced his father to abdicate in his favor.
One must not consider Bayezid’s reign a period of stagnation and regres-
sion, as his external policy might imply. As well as the measures he took
towards tighter control of the army, Bayezid (rather than Mehmed, as is often
thought) initiated the codification of Ottoman laws in the kanunnames, the
“books of law” describing the landholding, taxation, penal system, and admin-
istrative hierarchy of the empire. In this respect, his period may be seen as
having laid the foundations for the spectacular military and administrative
successes of his early sixteenth-century successors. It was upon these foun-
dations that Selim I “the Grim” (1512–20) won his crushing victories over the
Safavids, expelling them from most of eastern Anatolia. Selim gained the
loyalty of the Kurdish chieftains of the region and also took tough measures
against the Kızılbaş tribes who were prone to follow Shah Ismail’s messianic
claims.7 Partly to avoid an alliance between the Safavids and the Mamluks
of Egypt, Selim also campaigned against the latter with outstanding suc-
cess. After the battle of Marj Dabik in 1516 the Ottomans annexed Syria and
Palestine, and one year later conquered Egypt. Apart from formidably expand-
ing the Ottoman Empire to almost double its territory, Selim’s triumph over
the Mamluks also made him the master of the three most holy cities of Islam,
namely Jerusalem, Mecca, and Medina, thus enhancing even more the ecu-
menical scope of the imperial project. In the intellectual sphere, the conquest
of Syria and Egypt further enhanced the continuum of scholarship between
the Arab world and the Ottomans; on the other hand, the emergence of the
Safavid state seems to have served as a barrier in communication with Central
7 It is reported that, in 1514, Selim ordered all Kızılbaş from seven to 70 years old to be regis-
tered and that accordingly up to 40,000 men were either slain or imprisoned. However, the
massacre is not recorded in any contemporary source and the number may be highly exag-
gerated: see Emecen 2010, 95–100.