Page:Islam, Turkey, and Armenia, and How They Happened.djvu/120

114 revolt of his youngest son Selim a success, not only in forcing Bayazit to abdicate and leave the capital, but hastening his death while yet on the road to his place of exile. The military spirit and ability of the new Sultan made him a favorite with the janissaries, while his religious frenzy and severity rendered him acceptable to the more bigoted Moslems.

2. Possession of the Islamic Caliphate. Soon after getting to the throne Sultan Selim, surnamed Cruel, turned his armies eastward, and after reducing Armenia and Mesopotamia conducted a successful war in Persia against Shah Ismael, another Mohametan ruler in the east. Persians and Turks, both of the same faith, had a severe religious dispute among themselves in regard to the legitimacy of the first three caliphs, the successors of the Prophet Mohamet. The Persian Moslem rejected them as usurpers, and began to count the true succession with the fourth caliph, Ali, the son-in-law of the prophet. On entering upon his eastern campaign Sultan Selim proclaimed it to be a religious war, and the legal decree of the Turkish mufties "that there was more religious merit in killing one Persian than in shedding the blood of seventy Christians," strengthened the Turkish fanaticism against their co-religionists.

The fiery Sultan, at the head of a victorious army, next invaded Syria and Egypt, and added those vast and valuable territories to his possessions. The conqueror showed his bloody disposition the day after the surrender of Cairo by causing the Egyptian governor to be executed at one of its gates and the