On 24 August 1516, on the plain of Dabiq north of Aleppo, the Ottoman army of Sultan Selim I defeated the Mamluk army of Sultan Qansuh al-Ghawri, ruler of Egypt and Syria. The Mamluk horsemen charged first and shook the Ottoman wings, but the janissaries' muskets and the guns chained in front of the Ottoman center stopped them. By afternoon the Mamluk army had broken, and the elderly sultan died during the flight. Within weeks Syria was in Ottoman hands, and the next January Selim's victory at Ridaniya opened Cairo to him.
From Chaldiran to Syria
After beating the Safavids of Persia at Chaldiran in 1514, Selim turned on the Mamluk sultanate, which ruled Syria, Egypt and the holy cities of Arabia. The Ottoman historian Feridun Emecen, writing in the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, sees Selim's aims as control of eastern Anatolia, the old trade routes and the holy places, which the Mamluks were struggling to protect from the Portuguese. Qansuh al-Ghawri feared that Selim would turn on him next, made contact with the Safavid shah Ismail, and marched north with his army; he entered Aleppo on 11 July 1516.1
Selim's campaign had been presented as one against the Safavids, and the decision to march on the Mamluks was announced only in August. Gary Rashba, writing in <em>Military History</em>, records that when the Mamluk envoy came to Selim's camp with an offer of neutrality, his escort was killed and he was sent back with a challenge to meet at Marj Dabiq.2
Cavalry against guns
The two armies met on the morning of Sunday 24 August 1516 (25 Rajab 922 in the Islamic calendar; the Christian date is Julian). Their size is uncertain. Emecen estimates the Ottomans at no more than about 80,000, although some sources give 120,000, and the Mamluks at 70,000 to 80,000; Rashba cites Ottoman estimates of only 20,000 to 30,000 Mamluks against 60,000 to 100,000 Ottomans. Emecen describes about 300 gun carriages chained together in front of the janissaries at the Ottoman center. The Mamluks had firearms too but made little use of them, trusting in the cavalry charge.3
The Mamluks attacked first. Their horsemen, led by the governors of Damascus on the right and Aleppo on the left, spread out against both Ottoman wings and drove them back. The Ottomans reinforced the wings from the center, and the fire of the musketeers and guns stopped the charge. Sibay, the governor of Damascus, was killed, his wing began to break, and Khayr Bey, the governor of Aleppo, pulled his men out of the fight. The Ottoman center then advanced on the sultan's own troops and scattered them, and by afternoon the Mamluk army was in full retreat.4
Treason or defeat?
Rashba follows the long-standing story that Khayr Bey had been in secret contact with the Ottomans, spread a rumor that the sultan had fallen and deliberately abandoned the field, and he notes that Khayr Bey was later made the first Ottoman governor of Egypt. Emecen rejects the claim that Khayr Bey and Janbirdi al-Ghazali betrayed the army by announcing the sultan's death; according to the sources of the time, he writes, Khayr Bey was captured while fleeing and brought before Selim, and the contacts came after the battle. Seyyid Muhammed es-Seyyid, in the same encyclopedia, relies on the Egyptian chronicler Ibn Iyas: Khayr Bey withdrew when he saw Sibay's men scattering, and his withdrawal brought down the left wing.5
Qansuh al-Ghawri, then about 78, died during the flight; the TDV encyclopedia says that, according to one account, he fell from his horse, and that his body was never found. Rashba suggests he may have suffered a stroke. He was the first Mamluk sultan to die on the battlefield.6
The end of the Mamluk sultanate
Selim entered Aleppo, and Hama, Homs and Damascus surrendered. Emecen records that about 2,000 Mamluk soldiers were executed after the battle. The new sultan in Cairo, Tumanbay, refused to submit, and in January 1517 Selim defeated him at Ridaniya outside Cairo, bringing Syria, Egypt and Palestine under Ottoman rule. In Cairo the sharif of Mecca presented Selim with the keys of the holy city, a symbolic acknowledgment of his leadership of the Islamic world.7
Selim's life and campaigns are told in our biography of Selim I, and his victory over the Safavids in our article on the Battle of Chaldiran.
Also on this day
- 1704: Battle of Málaga. Off Vélez-Málaga in southern Spain, an Anglo-Dutch fleet under George Rooke fought a Franco-Spanish fleet weeks after the allied capture of Gibraltar, in the War of the Spanish Succession.
