It was not without good reason that Sultan Selim I of the Ottoman Empire, dope addict though he was, was called The Inflexible, and never did he have greater need of his stubbornness than when he marched on Persia. For 116 days the wily Shah of Persia dodged and retreated, laying waste the land as he did. But finally the two hosts met near the town of Caldiran in what is now eastern Turkey. The Ottoman army had guns, the Persians did not; and at the end of that battle in 1514, 25,000 Persian...
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