The 1st Mameluk War
After the war with Byzantium, our ruler first decided to redeploy his armies. The 3rd army was deployed to Anatolia, while the 1st army moved on to Macedonia. The Ottoman Empire could enjoy a little peace while it would rebuild its forces for the next onslaught.
Murad II, our wise and noble ruler, set upon him to rebuild our military. He supported an increase in power to the nobility, which would in turn serve more easily in his army, and also signed several trade agreements, in particular with Venice, Genoa and Portugal. He also entered an alliance with Ak Koyunlu, one of the few states with which he enjoyed friendly relations. Then the unexpected happened: Our ally, Ak Koyunlu declared war with their traditional enemies, the Qara Koyunlu, which had allied themselves with our own traditional enemies, the Mameluks. Calling on us, we quickly replied and supported our allies against them, eager to conquer Egypt.
Since we did not share a border with the Mameluks, we had a distinct advantage: We could only fight by moving accross the Mediteranean, and our navy was by far superior to theirs.We thus loaded our two strong armies in our fleet, and set sail for Egypt. We sailed to the Bay of Alexandria, and unloaded both armies in Egypt. We fought the Mameluk armies there, defeating them twice in a row. Our first army set to besiege Egypt itself, the second moved into Delta to besiege it. I need to mention how chaotic were the defenses of the Mameluks. While my liege was eager to fight them, he expected them to be a worthy challenge. He was wrong. Their only major army, not locked in conflict against our ally, was the one in Egypt. By defeating it, we effectively scattered their defenses, and all they could do was send minor armies against our well-equipped and sizeable armies, and were always repulsed. Oh, there were lots of battles. But most of what they did was only get themselves killed, barely scratching our invading armies. So it was that my lord decided to wage a war that would bring more spoils than he expected at first: He decided to occupy all the lands of the Mameluks. This would take some time, but he was convinced it would work.
April 1425, my lord instituted the Sheikh-ul-Islam Office, to better coordinate the spread of the Islamic faith. Two months later, we captured the province of Egypt, and moved on to fight on the Nile borders. By December, we had captured the province and moved on to the Sinai while we captured the province of Delta and set ourselves to attack Alexandria and occupy the powerful trade center which my lord lusted for. By 1427, we had occupied Delta, Egypt, Sinai, Nile, Alexandria, Judea, Samaria and Cataract. Such was our progress against the Mameluks, that its neighbors grew lusty and decided to wage war on them also. Within 6 months, Nubia, Teke and Karaman had independently declared war on the Mameluks.
On the home front, things were going well. Every province had a newly appointed tax collector, the provinces of Morea and Smyrna had been converted to Islam, though we failed to do the same in Anatolia. Murad II had designs to convert his whole realm to the One True Faith however, and did not give up, and raised an army to quickly quell the rebels.
In Africa, our troops continued the rapid attacks on Mameluks outpost, occupying them one by one. In February of 1929, our ally had left the war, signing peace with our enemies, taking Azerbaijan as a spoil, however we continued to wage war on the Mameluks. In September of 1430, we had occupied all territories of the Mameluks, except the province bordering Karaman, which they occupied, and started negociating for peace. The negociations was harduous, as my lord demanded unbelievabely large ammounts of territory, which the Mameluks kept refusing. Finally in March 1431, we finally reached a compromise: the Mameluks would give us Alexandria, Delta, Samaria, Lebanon, Sinai and Judea. The Mameluks were left greatly weakened, while we had grown to the size of a small Empire.