Without understanding the role of the Ottomans in the history of the last five hundred years, we cannot hope to understand either the past or the present. The Ottomans stood, in 1492, at the very center of the known world. The Ottoman Empire made the world we know today.

Taking a comparative perspective, they might have discerned that sharia courts in Selim’s day provided more rights to religious minorities, especially to women in the realm of family law, than did Christian courts in Europe. Needless to say, in such polemical conversations, historical reality is usually beside the point.

If for Columbus Muslims represented the ultimate other through which to understand all difference anywhere in the world, for Twain Native Americans played this role.

In Lincoln’s mind, California and Jerusalem existed on a continuum. Each represented both a spiritual destiny and a geographic destination for Americans. Such a notion derived from the same mythology of Crusade that drove Columbus west—a redemptive journey to gain the promises of a Promised Land.

While estimates vary, Muslims might have constituted

Sunnis and Shiites and Protestants and Catholics all fused religion to politics, making their wars not only about empire but also about eternity.

Because of the unique status he had earned for himself, Selim was the only ruler capable of leading such a program of reform, the only Muslim monarch able to adapt the civilization and institutions of Islam to stand as universal principles of governance. His retooling of the court system for worldly rule represented one of the most monumental admin

Selim’s reforms allowed Ottoman subjects, for the first time, to create permanent and protected public records of their local community’s affairs that they could summon during a later dispute or otherwise reference when needed. Thus, the courts came to serve as valuable repositories of communal history and memory.

With his promulgation of a new imperial legal code, Selim secularized the courts to make them more accessible and relevant. Serving multiple functions, they now combined the roles of a local public records office, a police station, a forum for public shaming, and an agency for dispute resolution. Recast almost as Ottoman embassies in nearly every u