Latest / The Rise of Colonialism: How Europe Divided the World — Fexingo History / The Mamluk Sultanate's Last Stand: Why Egypt Fell to the Ottomans
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about how Portugal and Spain carved up oceans and continents, but there's another story that runs parallel to all of that — the rise of the gunpowder empires. And one of the most dramatic moments was the fall of the Mamluk Sultanate in 1517, when the Ottomans took Cairo. It's a story about a military elite that had dominated the Middle East for nearly three centuries, and then got obliterated by cannon fire in just two years. Luna: Wait — the Mamluks were slave soldiers, right? How did they end up ruling Egypt? Lucas: Exactly. They started as slave-soldiers — mostly from the Caucasus, Circassians — who were bought as boys, raised in barracks, trained in horsemanship and archery, and then rose through the ranks. By 1250, they had seized power in Egypt and Syria. They defeated the Mongols at Ain Jalut, drove the Crusaders out of the Levant, and controlled the spice trade. For two and a half centuries, they were the dominant power in the eastern Mediterranean. Lucas: But by the 16th century, things were falling apart. The Portuguese had sailed around Africa and broken the Mamluk monopoly on the spice trade. Vasco da Gama's arrival in India in 1498 was a catastrophe for Cairo — the Mamluks had been taxing every pepper pod that moved through the Red Sea. Suddenly, that revenue stream dried up. Luna: So the economy was already in trouble. Lucas: Yeah, and then there was the plague. In 1492, a massive outbreak hit Egypt — killed maybe a third of the population. The Mamluks themselves were hit hard. And their whole system depended on importing fresh slave recruits from the Caucasus, but the Ottomans were blocking those routes. So by 1516, the Mamluk army was a shadow of what it had been. They still had the cavalry, but they had almost no gunpowder weapons. Lucas: Meanwhile, the Ottoman sultan Selim I had been modernising his army. He had the janissaries — infantry armed with arquebuses — and a corps of artillery, the topçu. He'd already crushed the Safavids at Chaldiran in 1514, using cannon and gunpowder. Now he turned south. Luna: And the Mamluk sultan at the time was Qansuh al-Ghawri, right? Lucas: Right. Al-Ghawri knew the threat was coming. He tried to buy time, even asked the Venetians for cannon — but the Ottomans intercepted the shipment. In August 1516, the two armies met at Marj Dabiq, north of Aleppo. The Mamluks had maybe 60,000 men, the Ottomans had perhaps 80,000. But the real difference was the artillery. Lucas: The Mamluk cavalry charged — and they were brave, no question — but the Ottoman cannons tore them apart. Al-Ghawri himself died on the field, either killed in the fighting or from a stroke, depending on which account you believe. Aleppo and Damascus fell immediately. And within a month, the Ottomans controlled all of Syria. Luna: What about Cairo? Who took over after al-Ghawri? Lucas: His successor was Tuman Bay II — a younger, more energetic figure. He tried to organise a defence of Egypt. He even managed to scrape together some artillery, but it was too little, too late. In January 1517, Selim I marched into Egypt. The final battle was at Ridaniya, just outside Cairo. Tuman Bay had dug trenches, positioned what cannon he had — but the Ottomans outflanked him. The Mamluks fought street by street in Cairo itself. Lucas: Tuman Bay escaped, raised another army, and fought on for a few more months. But eventually he was betrayed by his own Bedouin allies, captured, and hanged at the gate of Cairo. Selim I was not merciful. He ordered the execution of thousands of Mamluks. Luna: Harsh. But didn't the Mamluks survive in some form under the Ottomans? Lucas: They did, actually. The Ottomans needed local administrators. They kept the Mamluk emirs as a sort of landed gentry. For centuries, the Mamluk households — the beys — continued to run Egypt day-to-day. The Ottoman governor was often a figurehead. So in a weird way, the Mamluks outlasted the empire that conquered them. But the sultanate itself was gone. Lucas: And there's a really interesting coda: Selim I also took control of the Hejaz, including Mecca and Medina. The last Abbasid caliph, al-Mutawakkil III, who had been living in Cairo under Mamluk protection, was shipped off to Istanbul. Selim convinced — or forced — him to transfer the caliphate to the Ottoman sultan. That gave the Ottomans a huge legitimacy boost in the Muslim world. Luna: Right, the caliphate. That became a big deal for them later. Lucas: Exactly. So the fall of the Mamluks was a turning point. It marked the end of the medieval slave-soldier state and the beginning of the Ottoman golden age in the Middle East. And it's also a perfect example of how gunpowder technology reshaped the world — not just in Europe, but across Asia and Africa. Lucas: If you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, you might have noticed these episodes take a lot of work — reading the sources, checking the dates, scripting it so it makes sense in a conversation. And honestly, a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going. If you've gotten something out of them, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo really does make a difference. Luna: Yeah, it's amazing that listener support keeps this whole thing ad-free. Every bit helps. Lucas: So back to the Mamluks — one thing I love is how their legacy survives in architecture. Even today, Cairo's historic district is full of Mamluk mosques and madrasas, with those incredible striped stonework and carved domes. The Sultan Hassan Mosque, for example, is one of the most beautiful buildings in the Islamic world. So the empire fell, but the culture lasted. Luna: And the Mamluks themselves became part of Ottoman society. Lucas: Exactly. For centuries, the Ottoman elite spoke Turkish and Arabic, but many of them were actually of Circassian origin — descendants of those same slave-soldiers. So the Mamluk system didn't disappear; it just got absorbed. And that's often how empires work — they don't vanish, they get folded into something bigger. Lucas: So next time you're thinking about the Age of Exploration, remember the Mamluks. They were the ones who controlled the Red Sea route, who taxed the spice trade, who fought the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean. Their fall opened the door for the Ottomans, and that reshaped the balance of power in the Mediterranean for centuries. Luna: And it all came down to cannons, really. Lucas: And the will to use them. Selim I was ruthless, but he was also a brilliant strategist. He knew that to build an empire, you needed to adapt. The Mamluks didn't adapt fast enough, and that's the lesson.