Selim I

Selim I took the Ottoman throne in 1512 and ruled for only eight years, but they were eight years of relentless expansion. Between 1516 and 1517 he conquered the entire Mamluk Sultanate - Egypt, the Levant, Hejaz, Tihamah - annexing the heartlands of Islam and claiming guardianship of the pilgrimage routes to Mecca and Medina. The empire grew by seventy percent under his watch, reaching 3.4 million square kilometers by his death in 1520. That conquest shifted the Ottoman center of gravity away from the Balkans and toward the Middle East, remaking the empire's identity. Later centuries would romanticize the moment as a transfer of the caliphate itself, though the story of an official handover was invented after the fact.