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

“The highest praise for a history book is that it makes you think about things in a new way.”
—Ian Morris, New York Times Book Review

“Captivating. . . . A welcome and important corrective, Mikhail’s recalibration of the modern era is ambitious and provocative. . . . Mikhail writes authoritatively, as one would expect from so accomplished a historian. He writes accessibly and vividly, too, which means that the book, while scholarly, is readable, enjoyable, and relatable. . . . A terrific guide to the Ottomans during a period of profound change.”
—Peter Frankopan, Air Mail

“Seeing the Ottoman Empire as pivotal in shaping the Western world, this history casts developments such as the Reconquista, the Inquisition, the Reformation, and exploration of the New World as responses to rising Islamic power. . . . European rulers obsessively feared Muslim expansion; Mikhail traces the influence of this paranoia on the Islamophobia that continues to inform American politics.”
—The New Yorker

“Mikhail’s ambitions, like those of his subject, are bold, and in God’s Shadow he has given us three or four books in one. At the centre is a fast-paced biography of its subject whose killing of his siblings, the alleged murder of his father and battlefield exploits makes the work highly readable.”
—Mark Mazower, Financial Times

“Mikhail draws on sources in several languages to tell this gripping story; he wields a lucid and fast-moving prose, and his analysis is full of surprises. For like a skilled janissary—one of those elite troops that made Ottoman armies so formidable in the field—Mr. Mikhail has more than one string to his bow. He sets Selim’s accomplishments within an exceedingly wide context. . . . Mr. Mikhail makes his case convincingly.”
—Eric Ormsby, Wall Street Journal

"If you want a ticket out of 2020, may I recommend this biography of bloodthirsty Ottoman Sultan Selim I (1470–1520)? It not only argues that Columbus’s voyage to America happened because Europeans were busy avoiding the Turks, it’ll also tell you that the Turks had a thing for moles (in 1470, a Sufi mystic predicted that the next sultan would have seven moles, and indeed Selim was born with seven). There’s also fratricide (a rite of passage for sultans-to-be), insane concubine politics, and circumcision festivals, and it sent me down a rabbit hole reading up on sultans. How’s this for a jetpack out of the present: Look up Ibrahim the Mad (1615–1648), who was raised in a gilded cage, loved plus-size ladies, and drowned 280 women from his harem when he was paranoid that another man had ‘tampered with’ them."
—Sandi Tan, Glamour

"Mikhail, chair of Yale’s history department and a specialist in Ottoman history, makes it his mission to demonstrate how this utterly compelling leader helped define his age, bending the world to his will. And he succeeds with a flourish.... Mikhail offers a refreshingly Ottoman-centric picture of the 15th- and 16th-century Mediterranean."
—Justin Marozzi, The Spectator

"[A] refreshingly readable history book that offers a new world view.... It challenges conventional Eurocentric narratives about the Matamoros (“moorslaying”) Christopher Columbus and the triggers for the Protestant Reformation. A radical picture of the Ottoman Empire emerges “as a unified juggernaut” conquering and controlling three continents, while Europe was a “mosaic of squabbling polities”. How I wish I’d been in Damascus when Selim discovered the tomb of Ibn ‘Arabi."
—Diana Darke, Times Literary Supplement

"[Mikhail] masterfully juxtaposes the triumphs of Selim I’s reign with events taking place elsewhere in the rapidly globalizing world of the early sixteenth century.... God’s Shadow is a revisionist history in the best sense of the term. It offers readers a distinct prism through which to view a familiar and, at times, unfamiliar chronicle of events.... For readers unfamiliar with pre-modern Middle Eastern history, God’s Shadow will be an excellent starting point.... Mikhail’s erudition is global in scope, enabling him to make concrete connections between contemporaneous events in the West and the Middle East."
—Clayton Trutor, The New Criterion