The Battle of Çorlu represented the first time in Ottoman history that a prince warred against his father the sultan. The unprecedented nature of this conflict is why we know of its outcome but not the details of the fighting itself. Such a story necessitated suppression, an observation that prompts caution when relying on accounts such as the Selimname. Within Ottoman political culture, raising an army against a sultan, the divinely endowed leader of the Ottoman realm, was by definition inherently illegitimate, not to mention illegal and immoral. Even some of Selim’s own supporters, as much
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