God's Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World

by Alan Mikhail

By the end of July, Selim had begun his march southward, along the western shore of the Black Sea from Akkerman toward the outskirts of Edirne, the former imperial capital at the bend of the Meriç River. Further men and supplies accompanied him by boat. The time for letters and emissaries had passed. Bayezit, informed by a cascade of messengers of Selim’s steady advance, dispatched one of his highest-ranking and most able confidants in an attempt to intimidate his rebellious son. Hasan Pasha, the governor of Rumelia—perhaps the most important province in the whole of the empire, as it included the former capital, Edirne, and much of the empire’s lucrative lands in the Balkans—rode toward Selim’s camp with a dozen or so soldiers. But Selim refused to meet him. He let the size of his own military force speak for itself, impressing upon Hasan the gravity of the threat to his father’s throne.