Selim III

• 1. Introduction

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  Selim III died on the 28th of July 1808, not on a battlefield but inside his own palace, cut down by swords in the hands of his cousin's hired assassins. His last words were "Allahu Akbar" - God is great. He had spent nearly two decades trying to modernize the empire he loved, and he was killed for it.

  Born on the 24th of December 1761, Selim was the son of Sultan Mustafa III, a ruler who believed deeply in military reform and feared Russian expansion. An oracle had predicted that young Selim would become a world conqueror, and his father marked the birth with seven days of celebration. What followed was not conquest but something more complicated: a reign defined by the collision between a sultan's genuine vision and the ancient institutions that refused to yield to it.

  Who was the man behind the reforms? What made him different from the sultans who came before him? And why did an army he built to save the empire become the reason he could not save himself?

• 2. A Prince Shaped by Two Fathers

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  Mustafa III died of a heart attack in 1774, during the Russo-Turkish War, before he could see whether his reforms would hold. His fear of Russia had driven him to open maritime and artillery academies, declare new military regulations, and attempt to field an army of professional soldiers. Young Selim, still a child when his father died, was left in the care of his uncle Abdul Hamid I, who took the throne.

  Abdul Hamid I did not neglect his nephew. He emphasized Selim's education and oversaw his development as a prince. Selim emerged from those years as a man of striking breadth: he spoke Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Old Bulgarian fluently. He studied poetry, music, calligraphy and the fine arts. Many of his calligraphic works were placed on the walls of mosques and convents.

  Selim was also a member of the Mevlevi Order of Sufi dervishes, entering the order at the Galata Mevlevihanesi under the name Selim Dede. This spiritual dimension shaped his understanding of the world and his sense of duty to both faith and state. When Abdul Hamid died and Selim succeeded him on the 7th of April 1789, at the age of 27, he brought all of this to the throne - an inheritance from two very different father figures, one biological and one by circumstance.

• 3. The Nizam-I Cedid

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  By 1806, the new army Selim had built - the Nizam-i Cedid, meaning the New Order - numbered around 23,000 troops, including a modern artillery corps. It had been formed in 1797 from Turkish peasant youths drawn from Anatolia, deliberately bypassing the old devshirme system that had long fed the Janissaries. European officers drilled and officered the force. French-style uniforms replaced traditional dress. Modern weapons replaced outdated ones.

  The idea behind this unit was not revolution but survival. Selim had watched Russia take the Black Sea through the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774, before he even reached the throne. He had seen Napoleon's forces land in Ottoman-controlled Egypt on the 1st of July 1798, forcing him to declare war on France. He had watched Austrian-backed Osman Pazvantoğlu invade Wallachia in 1801, and seen Janissaries murder his own enlightened governor in Serbia. The Nizam-i Cedid was his answer to a long series of failures the old military structure could not prevent.

  But Selim could not integrate the new force with the existing army. That failure was not merely strategic. It reflected the deeper problem of his reign: the Derebeys, the feudal vassals, were alarmed that Selim financed his new troops partly by confiscating timars, their traditional land grants. The ulama, the religious scholars, objected to the European models underpinning the reforms. From the very start of his reign, the Janissaries had seen the entire project as a threat to their independence.

• 4. Diplomacy in a Hostile Century

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  Selim understood something that many of his predecessors had not: the Ottoman Empire needed permanent representation in the courts of Europe's great powers. He pushed for resident embassies in Britain, France, Prussia and Austria, overcoming significant religious resistance to the idea of Muslim ambassadors at Christian courts.

  He also maintained a personal correspondence with Louis XVI, one cultured ruler writing to another. When the French republic dismantled the monarchy, the Ottoman government was troubled, but French representatives in Constantinople worked to preserve goodwill. The relationship with France remained important until Napoleon's army crossed into Egypt.

  Selim also found himself drawn into a distant conflict in South Asia. Tipu Sultan, the ruler of the Sultanate of Mysore, had requested Ottoman assistance during the Third Anglo-Mysore War. The British then asked Selim to write to Tipu Sultan urging him to stop fighting the British East India Company. Selim wrote the letter, criticizing France and offering Ottoman mediation. Tipu Sultan wrote back twice, rejecting the advice. Before most of his replies could reach Constantinople, the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War broke out, and Tipu Sultan was killed during the Siege of Seringapatam in 1799. The correspondence ended before it could change anything.

  By December 1806, war was declared on Russia, and in March 1807 on Britain. The British attacked the Dardanelles in February 1807, an assault that ended inconclusively. The alliances of Selim's reign shifted constantly, and each shift narrowed his room to maneuver at home.

• 5. Composer, Poet, Patron

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  Selim III studied music as a prince under Kırımlı Ahmet Kamil Efendi and Tanburi İzak Efendi. His regard for Tanburi İzak Efendi was so deep that the Sultan rose to his feet in respect whenever his teacher entered the court - an unusual gesture for a sitting sultan toward a musician.

  He went on to create fourteen makams, the melodic types that form the structural foundation of Turkish classical music. Three of those makams are still in use today. Sixty-four compositions attributed to Selim III are known, some of which remain part of the active performance repertory. He played the ney, the reed flute, and the tanbur, a long-necked fretted lute.

  His patronage extended beyond his own playing. He encouraged composers Dede Efendi and Baba Hamparsum. He commissioned the Hamparsum notation system, which became the dominant system for writing down both Turkish and Armenian music. In 1797 he invited an opera troupe to court for the first opera performance ever held in the Ottoman Empire.

  Writing poetry under the pen name İlhami, Selim collected his verse in a divan. Şeyh Galib, considered one of the four greatest Ottoman poets, was a regular presence at his court and is believed to have been a genuine friend, close in age to the Sultan. Through Galib's poetry, scholars find strong support for Selim's military reform program - a poet lending his voice to a sultan's cause. Selim also extended patronage to the Flemish architect Antoine Ignace Melling, appointing him court architect in 1795. Melling built several palaces and created engravings documenting contemporary Constantinople for posterity.

• 6. The Night of the Swords

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  The Janissaries rose in revolt in 1806, the same year their resistance to the Nizam-i Cedid crystallized into open opposition. They persuaded the Sheikh ul-Islam to issue a fatwa against the reforms. They dethroned and imprisoned Selim III on the 29th of May 1807 and placed his cousin on the throne as Mustafa IV, who had pledged not to interfere with their privileges. The embassies Selim had built in Europe were dismantled. The Nizam-i Cedid troops were dispersed.

  A loyalist named Alemdar Mustafa, the ayan of Rustchuk, raised an army of 40,000 men and marched on Constantinople to put Selim back on the throne. Word reached Mustafa IV that this force was approaching. He gave orders to kill Selim and also to kill Prince Mahmud, the only other surviving member of the House of Osman.

  On the night of Thursday, the 28th of July 1808, Selim was in the Harem with his consorts Refet Kadın and Pakize Hanım. The assassins who came for him included the Master of the Wardrobe, a man named Fettah the Georgian, the Treasury steward Ebe Selim, and a black eunuch named Nezir Ağa. Selim saw their drawn swords and understood what was happening. Pakize Hanım threw herself between the assassins and the sultan; she was cut in the hand. Refet Kadın screamed. A slave girl who ran in fainted at the sight. In the struggle that followed, Selim was killed, his last words a prayer.

  Alemdar Mustafa arrived too late to save him. Finding Selim already dead, he turned his vengeance on Mustafa IV and placed Mahmud II on the throne. Mahmud, who had survived his own assassination attempt that same night, later ordered the assassins executed. Selim III was buried in the Laleli Mosque, near his father's tomb.