SELINUS 



SELKIRKSHIRE 



307 



Prophet, and gained possession of the sacred cities 

 of Mecca and Medina. He also laid the foundation 

 of a regular marine, constructed the arsenal of 

 Pera, chastised the insolence of the Janizaries with 

 savage severity, and laboured to ameliorate, by 

 improved institutions, the condition of the various 

 peoples lie had conquered. He died 22d Septemlier 

 1520, while planning an expedition against Rhodes. 

 Strange to say, this savage fanatic was a lover of 

 literature, and even himself cultivated the poetic 

 art. He was succeeded by his son, Solyman (q.v.) 

 the Magnificent For other sultans named Selim, 

 see TURKEY. 



Selinus, an ancient Greek colony in the west- 

 ern end of Sicily, now represented by ruins close to 

 the modern Castelvetrano. It was founded by 

 Dorians about 628 B.C., conquered by the Carth- 

 aginians in 409, and utterly destroyed by them in 

 249, the inhabitants being deported. The most 

 notable ruins still extant are six great Doric 

 temples. 



SHjllks. a division of the Ghnzz confederacy 

 of the Turkish tribes, who were settled on the 

 Jaxartes and in Transoxiana in the llth century, 

 when they became converts to Islam. Togrul 

 Beg, grandson of a chief named Seljuk (whence 

 the name of the several successive dynasties), 

 severely crippled the empire of Ghazni (1040), 

 and then turning westwards conquered all Persia. 

 Ten years later he inarched upon Bagdad, to 

 the assistance of the Abbaside Calif (q.v.), a mere 

 faineant sovereign, who existed by the favour and 

 protection of a powerful family of the Shiite faith. 

 The head of this family (the Bowides) was, how- 

 ever, the master rather than the protector of the 

 calif. Him Togrul seized and supplanted ; and, 

 being of the orthodox Sunnite faith, he was nomi- 

 nated by the calif 'Commander of the Faithful.' 

 Dying in 1063, Togrul was succeeded by his 

 nephew Alp-Arslan. This sovereign wrested Syria 

 and Palestine from the rival Fatimite calif of 

 Egypt, and in 1071 defeated the Byzantine emperor 

 Romanus Diogenes, and captured him. The price 

 of his release was a heavy ransom and the cession 

 of great part of Anatolia or Asia Minor to the 

 Seljuk. Alp-Arslan was stablied by a captive 

 enemy in distant Turkestan (1072), and was suc- 

 ceeded by his son Malik Shah. His reign is chiefly 

 remarkable for the enlightened rule of his grand- 

 vizier, Nizam nl-Mnlk, the schoolfellow of Omar 

 Khayyam (q.v.), the poet, and of Hassan ibn 

 Sabbali, the founder of the Assassins (q.v.). This 

 statesman founded a university at Bagdad, an 

 observatory, and numerous schools and mosques, 

 and with the help of his old friend Omar Khayyam 

 revised the astronomical tables and introduced a 

 new era, the Jelalian. After the death of Malik 

 ( 1092) the extensive empire liegan to break up into 

 smaller kingdoms. But already during his life- 

 time, and even that of his predecessors, powerful 

 tributary princes had ruled over separate provinces 

 in Syria (see NUR ED-DlN and SALADIN), in Kerman 

 (lieside the Persian Gulf), and in Asia Minor. 

 During the first half of the 12th century the most 

 powerful of these provincial rulers was Sinjar, who 

 governed Khorassan, with Merv for his capital. He 

 spent his life righting against the Gnaznevids, 

 against the Turkestan chiefs, and latterly against 

 the Mongols. But a stronger and more immediate 

 -t attaches to the province of Syria and that 

 of Asia Minor, or Rum, as the Seljuks preferred to 

 call it. It was the rulers of these two provinces or 

 kingdoms who persecuted the Christian pilgrims 

 and so provoked the Crusades (q.v.), and it was the 

 rnlers of the same two kingdoms against whom the 

 crusaders of Europe principally fought. The capital 

 of Rum was fixed at Iconinm (Konieh) in the first 



half of the 12th century. This dynasty reached 

 the acme of its power under Kaikavus (1211-34), 

 who ruled over nearly the whole of Asia Minor and 

 extensive territories in Mesopotamia and northern 

 Persia. During the reign of his son Kaikhosran 

 II. the poet Jelal-ed-Din Rumi flourished and the 

 various orders of dervishes arose ; and at the same 

 time the Mongols began to threaten the eastern 

 borders of the state. Indeed from about 1243 the 

 real sovereign power of that part of Asia was in 

 the hands of the Mongol chiefs, Hulagu and his 

 successors, until the rise of the Ottoman princes. 

 These last, Turks like the Seljuks, had retreated 

 westwards before the all-conquering Mongols about 

 the middle of the 13th century, and at the end of 

 it they entered the service of the Seljuk ruler of 

 Asia Minor. After that the name Osmanli or 

 Ottoman soon superseded that of Seljuk as the 

 appellative of the Turkish rulers and ruling classes 

 in Asia Minor. And out of the Ottoman supre- 

 macy grew the empire of Turkey (q.v.). The 

 Seljuks, however, had centuries before, whilst 

 they were still settled in Transoxiana, lost a good 

 many of their peculiarly Turkish characteristics and 

 had become 'Turkomans,' i.e. ' Like the Turks ;' 

 and with their conversion to Islam they also adopted 

 the Perso-Arahian civilisation and customs, though 

 still retaining their own language as well as using 

 those of the peoples they had conquered. 



See De Gnignes, Hittoire del Hum, &c. (4 vols. 1756- 

 58), and the German translation (by Vullere, 1838) of 

 Mirkhund's Persian Hiitory of the Seljuki. 



Selkirk, a Scottish royal -burgh, the county 

 town of Selkirkshire, on an eminence 400 to 619 feet 

 high, that Hanks the right bank of Ettrick Water, 

 tij miles S. by \V. of Galashiels by a branch-line 

 (1856) and 40 SSE. of Edinburgh. The county 

 buildings ( 1870), the town-hall ( 1803), with a spire 

 110 feet high, and the statues of Scott (1839) and 

 Mungo Park (1859) are the chief features of the 

 place, with the beautiful grounds of the Haining 

 House. The ' souters of Selkirk ' were long famous 

 for their ' single-soled shoon ;' but to-day the staple 

 manufacture is that of tweeds, which dates from 

 1835. With Hawick and Galashiels Selkirk 

 returns one member since 1868. Pop. ( 1831 ) 1880 ; 

 ( 1861 ) 3695 ; ( 1891 ) 6397. About 1113 Earl David 

 founded at Schelechyrch, ('kirk of the shiels') a 

 Tironensian abbey, which as David I. he removed 

 about 1126 to Kelso (q.v.). The story of the eighty 

 Selkirk men who marched to Flodden (1513), but 

 of whom one only returned, bringing a captured 

 pennon, dates, according to Mr Craig-Brown, only 

 from 1722. Mr Andrew Lang is a native. 



Selkirk, ALEXANDER. See JUAN FERNANDEZ. 



Selkirk, EARL OF. See DOUGLAS, MANITOBA. 



Selkirk Mountains, an outlying range of 

 the Rocky Mountains, in British Columbia, extend- 

 ing southwards from about 52 N. lat. to near 

 the United States frontier. The range contains 

 enormous glaciers, and is the home of bears, big- 

 horn sheep, the Rocky Mountain sheep, &c. One 

 pass-valley (Rogers') has been reserved as a 

 national park. The Canadian Pacific Railway 

 climbs over the mountains at a point 4300 feet 

 above the sea. See W. S. Green, Among the 

 Selkirk Glaciers (1890), who describes what he 

 saw of the range as ' a perfect Alpine paradise.' 



Selkirkshire, an inland county in the south 

 of Scotland, hounded by Peebles, Edinburgh, Rox- 

 burgh, and Dumfries shires. Measuring 28 miles 

 bv 17, it has an area of 260 sq. m. or 166,524 acres, 

 o{ which barely one-seventh is under crops. Silu- 

 rian in formation, and drained by Ettrick and 

 Yarrow Waters to the Tweed, it is a pastoral 

 region, of grassy rounded hills Minchmoor (1856 

 feet), Dun Rig (2433, the highest), Ettrick Pen 



