sovereign power. Over these principalities, the keys respectively of Karamania and Syria, it had been for some time the object of each of the neighbouring empires to establish their ascendency; and their territories became, consequently, the theatre of war. At the commencement of hostilities, the Ottoman influence was in the ascendant, and Tarsus and Adana were garrisoned by the troops of the pasha of Karamania; but Ala-eddowlah, when on his march to join the Turks, was intercepted and overthrown by the Mamlukes of Syria; and this reverse was instantly followed by the march of the main SyroEgyptian army under Azbek, atabek of Egypt, and Temruz, Bey of Aleppo, who forced the defiles of Sis, and overrun Cilicia with such rapidity, that Adana and Tarsus were surprised and carried by assault before the Turkish commander could move forward to their relief. Ahmed-Pasha Herzek - Oghlu, one of the ablest lieutenants of the Sultan, whose sonin-law he had lately become, was now appointed serasker, or commander inchief, in Anatolia, and sent with fresh forces to the scene of action; but the provincial troops which he commanded were inadequate to sustain the impetuous shock of the Mamluke cavalry, and in a battle fought near the confines of Karamania, the Turks sustained a total defeat. HerzekOghlu himself, in a fruitless attempt to rally the fugitives, was unhorsed and taken, and sent as a trophy by the victors, with the horse-tails and banners which had fallen into their hands, to the feet of the Sultan at Cairo.

The captive general was honourably entertained by Kait-Bey, and dismissed, with a gift of a caftan of honour, as the bearer of propositions

of peace to Bayezid, who was exhorted by the Mamluke sovereign not to persist in shedding the blood of the orthodox believers, (the Turks and Mamlukes being alike Soonis,) but rather to co-operate with him in the deliverance of their Moslem brethren in Granada, where the last relics of Mohammedan empire were fast falling before the attacks of Ferdinand the Catholic. But these overtures, which were supported by a letter from the pontiff-caliph Motawakel, were rejected by the pride of the divan; and though hostilities were partially suspended during 1487,* the campaign of the following year was opened with extraordinary preparations on both sides. The timariots, or feudatory troops of Europe and Asia, led by their respective beglerbegs, were assembled under the command of the new serasker, Ali- Pasha, whose army was farther reinforced by 6000 of the élite of the janissaries and a formidable train of field artillery, in which the Mamlukes were entirely deficient; while a fleet of a hundred galleys, under the command of Herzek-Oghlu, cruised on the coasts of Cilicia, to watch the movements of the enemy. For the encounter of this formidable array, the bravest chiefs of the Syro-Egyptian empire were mustered under the orders of Azbek and Temruz, and the armies met in the wide plains between Adana and Tarsus, August 17, 1488. The battle was contested on both sides with the obstinacy of troops unaccustomed to defeat; but the level character of the ground was favourable to the evolutions of the Egyptian cavalry; and the Anatolian feudatories on the right wing of the Turkish army were at length broken and put to flight by the irresistible onset of Temruz, who had made a

wide circuit beyond the range of artillery, and fallen on their flank at the head of 4000 chosen horse. The European troops and janissaries still gallantly attempted to maintain the conflict; but they were enveloped and assailed on all sides by the victorious squadrons of the enemy, who pressed their retreat with repeated attacks till they reached the shelter of the mountain defiles. Such was the battle of Agadj-Tchair, (the Plain of Trees,) by far the severest reverse which the Ottomans had experienced since the overthrow of the first Bayezid by Timur. Their loss in the action exceeded 20,000 men, including four pashas and several other officers of rank; and their camp, with the whole of their artillery, baggage, and military treasure, became the prize of the conquerors.

The discomfiture of the Turks in the field was followed by the defection of their Turkman auxiliaries, who threw off their vassalage to the Porte, and tendered their voluntary submission to the suzerainté of the Sultan of Egypt: a brother of the Prince of Zulkadr, who was commissioned by Bayezid to supersede his rebellious kinsman in the sovereignty, was defeated and sent prisoner to Cairo; and Karamania was invaded by the united forces of Azbek and Ala-eddowlah, who laid waste the open country, and besieged Kaisanijah, the capital of the province. The Ottoman territory in Asia appeared to be on the point of dismemberment; and Bayezid, roused by the murmurs of the janissaries and the people, who loudly attributed the continued ill fortune of the Turkish arms to the want of the auspicious presence of the Sultan, at length announced his determination to take the field in person for the defence of his dominions. But he was spared the fulfilment of this tardy resolution by the arrival of an embassy from Muley-Zakaria, king of Tunis, who proffered his mediation, as the ally of both parties, to termiminate a quarrel in which the arms of true believers were turned against one

another. By the intercession of the mufti, the good offices of the Tunisian monarch were accepted; and after a protracted negotiation, a peace was concluded at the commencement of 1491, by which the Egyptians were left in possession of their Cilician conquests, though, in order to soothe the Ottoman pride, the revenues of the ceded districts were declared to be appropriated to the support of the pilgrim caravans, and the sacred establishments of Mekka and Medinah. The disasters of the war had demonstrated to the Turks that the Circassian chivalry of Egypt and Syria were far more redoubtable antagonists than any opponents whom they had yet encountered in Asia; and the pride of the Porte was sensibly wounded by the terms of the pacification; yet the treaty remained inviolate during the remainder of the reign of Bayezid, who, immersed alternately in debauchery and ascetic devotion, and harassed by the revolts and dissensions of his sons, had neither leisure nor inclination to engage in foreign wars, from which his genius and tempera. ment were moreover naturally averse. But the phenomenon of an unwarlike Sultan had been hitherto unheard of in the Ottoman annals; and the discontent of the janissaries, who had already more than once mauifested their dissatisfaction at the inactivity of their monarch, broke out with redoubled violence at the announcement that he had selected as his successor his second son Ahmed, a prince whose disposition resembled that of his father, and whose recent ill success against the Sheah rebels in Anatolia had given sufficient evidence of his want of military skill. Korkoud, the eldest of the three surviving sons of Bayezid, had likewise incurred the contempt of the troops by his addiction to literature and the fine arts; and it was to Selim, the youngest of the princes, whose ambition and fierce impatience of control had already twice led him into open revolt against his father, that the eyes and wishes of the janissaries were turned at this conjuncture.

At the news of the popular movement in his favour, he hastened from Kaffa, where he had resided in exile, since his second rebellion, at the court of his father-in-law, the Khan of the Tartars; and no sooner did he appear at Constantinople, than the unanimous voice of the people and the army proclaimed the abdication of Bayezid (April, 1512;) and the dethroned monarch died shortly afterwards, (whether from poison or natural causes appears uncertain,) on his way to Demotica, which had been assigned him as a residence. Such was the first instance of the deposition of a sultan, in which the janissaries, who in subsequent similar revolutions disposed of the empire nearly according to their own pleasure, appear only as instruments of the ambition of a prince of the imperial family; and Selim, whose actions earned for him the wellmerited epithet of Yavooz, or Ferocious, lost no time in securing the throne thus acquired through parricide, by the destruction of all the collateral branches. Korkoud was cut off by stratagem; Ahmed, who attempted to defend himself, was overpowered and put to death; all the nephews of the sultan, with the exception of a single youth who escaped into Egypt, shared the same fate, leaving Selim and his only son (afterwards illustrious as Soliman the Magnificent) the sole existing male descendants of Othman within the circuit of the empire ;-" and thus" (says the Turkish historian Solak-Zadah) "were the fundamental laws of the august Ottoman line (which may God strengthen and preserve!) duly enforced and executed, as is necessary for the maintenance of tranquillity and the security of the established order of succession."

The accession of a monarch of this

character inevitably implied the abandonment of the pacific policy pursued by Bayezid; and the changes which had taken place in the ever-fluctuating political aspect of Asia since the peace of 1491, presented a fresh and wide field for conquest and aggrandizement. During the century which had elapsed since the transient conquest of Persia by Timur, that country had been the prey of the marauding Turkman hordes, whose chieftains of various races contested in endless wars the possession of a city or a province :-a prince named Uzun-Hassan, of the Turkman family of Ak-Koinlu, or the white sheep, had indeed succeeded about 1470 in consolidating under his sway great part of the kingdom, but his power was shaken by a defeat which he sustained from Mohammed II., and, at his death, the old scene of anarchy was revived by the disputes of his descendants, none of whom inherited either his valour or his abilities. But, towards the close of the 15th century, the nationality of Persia was suddenly revived in full vigour by the impulse communicated to it by Shah-Ismail-Soofi, a young and gallant adventurer, whose ancestors (real or pretended descendants from the caliph Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet) had for several generations resided in the odour of sanctity at Ardebil, and who now started forth in the double character of the restorer of the Persian monarchy, and the apostle and defender of the Sheah doctrines in religion. His efforts were seconded by the popular enthusiasm in his favour, which rose to such a height, that the epithet of Kizil-bashler,* or Red-heads, originally applied as a sobriquet to his soldiers, from the red caps which they wore, was adopted as a proud and national designation by the Persians-his conquests and his tenets rapidly spread from province to

province: and the great victory which he gained near Hamadan in 1502 (only four years after his pretensions were first proclaimed) over Sultan Mourad, the last of the Ak-Koinlu who exercised sovereignty, is generally marked as the date of the establishment of the Soofi or Seffarean dynasty, which continued to rule Persia for more than 200 years.

But the effects of the extraordinary impetus thus given to the Sheah cause, and of the political character now assumed by its votaries, were not confined within the pale of the Persian territory. The flame of sectarian zeal spread into the Asiatic provinces subject to the Porte, and, in 1511, a general and furious revolt of the Sheahs broke out in Anatolia, headed by a leader whom the Turks termed Shaitan-Kouli* (servant of Satan!):-and it was not till after gaining repeated advantages over the Asiatic pashas, that these fanatic rebels were at length crushed by the presence of the grand-vizir, who, as well as Shaitan-Kouli, fell in the battle. The relics of the faction fled towards the Persian frontier; but Ismail, unwilling to embroil himself with the Porte, punished their leaders with death as traitors against their legitimate sovereign, at the same time dispatching an embassy to Constantinople in order to excuse himself for affording an asylum to their meaner followers: and peace was thus preserved during the life of Bayezid. The consolidation of Persia under a Sheah prince was not, however, regarded by the new Sultan with the same indifference which had been shown by his father, and both personal and political motives concurred to inflame the hostility of Selim against Shah Ismail, who, in the short civil war which followed the dethronement of Bayezid, had openly supported the cause of Ahmed, and given a hospitable reception in Persia to his exiled adherents; and subsequently, in the anticipation of an attack from the vengeance of Selim, had solicited by a splendid em

bassy, accompanied with costly offerings of slaves, treasures, and rare animals, the potent alliance of the Sultan of Egypt. But the throne of Cairo was no longer filled by the energetic Kait-Bey, whose reign of thirty years (a duration almost unexampled among the Mamluke rulers) had terminated in 1495:†-Kansuh-Ghauri, the reigning monarch, was too fully occupied in maintaining his precarious ascendency over the turbulent beys, to hazard the chance of an unsuccessful war:-aud the Persian envoys were dismissed with gifts and compliments. These indications, however, of a friendly intercourse between the courts of Cairo and Tabreez were intently watched by Selim, who was well aware that a cordial combination of these two powers, whose dominions covered the whole of the Ottoman frontier in Asia, might prove an effectual barrier to the Turkish arms in that quarter; and he accordingly resolved to crush the rising power of Ismail, before this for midable league should be matured.

The recent insurrection of ShaitanKouli had shown the dangerous pro.. gress which the Sheah faith was making in the Turkish provinces nearest the destined seat of war; and the precaution by which Selim sought to guard against the risk of co-operation between the sectaries in his own territories and their co-religionists in Persia, presents in its sanguinary cruelty an oriental parallel to the atrocities of the massacre of St Bartholomew. In pursuance of orders secretly issued to the different governors, 40,000 sheahs, of all ages and sexes, were slaughtered in one day; and after this dreadful extermination, (which is applauded by the Sooni historians as a meritorious act of justice against the heretics,) Selim addressed a manifesto to Shah-Ismail, in which the Persian prince is reproached as "a tyrant and usurper more accursed than Zohak, an enemy and persecutor of the orthodox faith, and a blasphemer of the companions of the prophet;"‡—and is commanded, on pain of annihilation

by the irresistible armies of the Osmanlis, either to abjure his errors and conform to the Sooni creed, or to descend from his usurped throne and resume the life of religious seclusion to which his forefathers had addicted themselves. This insulting missive was accompanied by the significant gifts of the khirkhah or torn robe, the scrip, and the staff, the insignia of the profession of a dervish; the onward movement of the Ottoman army, under the Sultan in person, immediately followed:-and thus commenced the war which laid the foundation of the inveterate religious and national hatred ever since subsisting between the Turks and Persians.

The

The event of the first campaign was decided, after the invaders had suffered severely from the wasted state of the country through which they advanced, by the battle fought at Tehalderun, on the confines of Armenia and Azerbijan, Aug. 22, 1514. victory was contested on both sides with all the fury of religious partizanship, and Ismail, who had never yet sustained a defeat, distinguished himself by feats of personal valour, which the Persian historians represent as almost superhuman; but his efforts were unavailing against the discipline and artillery of the Turks, and in attempting to retrieve the day by a last charge at the head of a select corps of cuirassiers, the king was wounded and unhorsed in the melée, and escaped with life only by the self devotion of an attendant. The Persians were completely routed, and Selim entered Tabreez, then the capital, in triumph; and though his retreat to winter-quarters was incessantly harassed by his indefatigable enemy, the next year saw the important provinces of Diarbekr and Koordistan (the inhabitants of which were mostly Soonis, and disaffected to Ismail) annexed, almost without a blow, to the Ottoman empire; while the aged Prince of Zulkadr, Ala-ed-dowlah, atoned for his tortuous policy by the loss of his life and dominions, which were erected into a pashalic. The communication betwen Persia and Syria, except through the southern desert, was almost cut off by these new conquests of the Turks, which extended like a wedge between the dominions of Ismail and those of Kansuh-Ghauri, who, at last awakened to a sense of the danger

which menaced his Syrian frontier, remonstrated through an ambassador against the seizure of the Zulkadr territory, which he claimed as a dependency of the Egyptian empire; at the same time assembling an army of observation in the vicinity of Aleppo. The only answer which Selim returned to the Egyptian envoy was to the effect that, his master, instead of asserting a right to the honours of the coinage and the khotbah in the late possessions of Ala-ed-dowlah, would do well to prepare to defend these prerogatives of royalty in the states under his immediate rule; a sufficiently unequivocal indication of approaching hostilities.

Herzek

The fierce ambition of Selim was unalterably bent on effacing, by a second Egyptian war, the memory of the repeated failures which had tarnished the lustre of the Ottoman arms during the reign of his father; and this resolution was fostered and encouraged by his ministers, who trembled for their own heads whenever the bloodthirsty and capricious temperament of their master should be deprived of occupation in war. Oglu especially, in whose breast old age had not extinguished the hope of avenging his former defeat and captivity, laboured still farther to inflame the Sultan by often relating the taunts which, during his detention at Cairo, he had heard thrown out by Kait-Bey and his enemies against the routed Ottomans, and their haughty confidence in their own numbers and prowess. But an unexpected obstacle arose in the religious prejudices of the people and the soldiery, among whom it was a popular opinion that not only the misfortunes of the previous war, but the calamities which overtook Bayezid in his last days, were a Divine visitation for his attack on a race equally zealous followers with himself of the Sooni sect of Islam; and the janissaries, who two years before had hailed with joyous acclamations the order to march for the extirpation of the Persian heretics, loudly murmured at the command to turn their swords against a monarch of unimpeachable orthodoxy, the patron and guardian of the caliph and the holy cities! All the menaces of Selim failed to overcome their reluctance; and it was not till the scrupulous consciences of these military theologians had been