Selim was not the buccaneer Columbus was. He imposed Ottoman sovereignty not by erasing what existed before conquest, but rather by co-opting often hostile subjects and reshaping existing institutions along Ottoman lines. Surrounded his whole life by imperial administration, he was through learning and experience a bureaucrat. With an understanding of the reciprocity of rule embedded in the Circle of Justice, and having been informed by his mother’s far-sighted strategizing, he understood how to navigate the choppy
