The poet sultan whose modern army cost him his throne
Selim III wrote poetry, composed music, corresponded with Louis XVI and spoke Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Old Bulgarian. He also built the Ottomans a European-style army of about 23,000 men. The Janissaries, the empire's old elite infantry, saw that army as a threat, removed him from power and saw to it that he was killed.
Selim was the son of Sultan Mustafa III, a reformer who opened naval and artillery academies out of fear of Russia, and who threw a seven-day feast after an oracle predicted his son would conquer the world. When Mustafa died in 1774, Selim's uncle Abdul Hamid I took the throne and oversaw the boy's education. Selim finally became sultan on 7 April 1789, aged 27, amid hopes that this energetic, Europe-aware prince would modernise the state.
He inherited a shrinking empire. Russia had gained a foothold on the Black Sea in 1774 and annexed Crimea in 1783, and wars with Austria and Russia left little room for reform until peace in 1792. Selim then pushed for permanent embassies in the great European capitals, setting them up in Britain, France, Prussia and Austria despite religious prejudice. When Napoleon landed in Egypt in 1798, Selim declared war on France and fought alongside Russia and Britain. He even wrote to Tipu Sultan of Mysore, urging him to make peace with the British.
His boldest project was the Nizam-i Cedid, or New Order, founded in 1797: Anatolian peasant recruits, trained by European officers, armed with modern weapons and dressed in French-style uniforms. It performed well in smaller actions. But Selim never merged it with the regular forces and hesitated to use it against enemies at home.
Opposition built from several sides. The Janissaries refused to fight beside the newcomers, provincial lords resented losing the land revenues diverted to pay them, and religious scholars objected to copying European models. The coalition deposed Selim, accusing him of disrespecting Islam and Ottoman tradition, and installed his cousin as Mustafa IV. The embassies were dismantled, the new troops dispersed, and in 1808 assassins murdered the former sultan.
Source: Selim III
