Selim II and the Conquest of the Holy Land, 1566-75
jwolf: I hope to create a strong Turkish presence in the new world, but I'll have to discover more of it first
Sadly, my only historic conquistador died right when I finally had some use for him, maybe I'll luck out with a random conquistador.
Fodoron: I did indeed get the "conquests of Selim I" event but just haven't gotten around to bullying those Mamluk pacifists yet.
Dead William, Catknight: The Mamluks get attacked this very update!
Storey: That's good luck. I first discovered Spain's Aztec inheritance event the same way. And now on with the show...
In 974/1566 Suleyman I, following a long and successful reign on the Ottoman throne, passed away quietly one dark night in the imperial city. His place at the helm was occupied in its turn by Selim II, "the Drunkard" (his actual nickname), Suleyman's debauched son by his favorite wife, a Balkan lady by the name of Roxellana who made a grab for the power inhering in the Ottoman throne upon the death pf Suelyman. Though she possessed no mean skills in the curious art of harem politics, she was ultimately outwitted by the Grand Vizier Mehmed Sokollu, who became the de facto head-of-state while Sultan Selim passed the time with an endless series of drunken revleries. Aside from the cast-iron fortitude of his liver, Selim II was remarkable only for the interest he took in poetry (both as patron and composer) and the stable of poets kept in Istanbul throughout his reign was his only real contribution to Ottoman life. In anything good can be said of Selim's capabilities as a ruler, it was the trust he placed in his highly competent subordinate Mehmed Sokollu, under whose firm direction, the ship of state continued to sail much the same course as it had in Suleyman's lifetime.
Mehmed Sokollu and the rest of the divan (which soon dropped the formality of consulting Selim on anything besides the palace's spiralling liquor expenses) were in complete agreement that the frontiers of the New World held great potential profit for the Empire's future, and money was set aside to continue the colonizing mission whenever it was feasible to do so. As popular as Canadian seafood was becoming in the Ottoman lands, few of the empire's citizens had any desire to permanently settle in Placentia, whose rude frontier life, subsistence existence, and ferocious winters were well known to the populace of the empire, official propaganda to the contrary nonwithstanding. The central authorities were soon resorting to rather unorthodox means of supplying the colony, sending prisoners, rebels, and other miscellaneous "undesirables" to stock the colony's population.
Surprisingly, these disparate elements gelled relatively well on the distant frontier, due to the need to band together for sheer survival if nothing else. In a fortunate experience not often duplicated in many other parts of the new world, the indigenous tribes had genuinely good relations with the Turkish settlers, sharing their crops and considerable store of local knowledge for the textiles, coffee, and other civilized comforts the Turks brought to the new world with them. The Imam of Placentia's first mosque even managed to classify the native peoples as members of the Ahl al-Kitab (people of the book, aka tolerated religious minorites) by virtue of their shamanist traditions in a feat of intellectual gymnastics remarkable even for medieval times.
Yet distant Canada was but a small part of the empire of Osman, and many important developments closer to home diverted Istanbul's attention from the new world to the old. Though Suleyman's armies had thoroughly crushed several attempted Spanish incursions into the Balkans, the enterprising Spaniards, rather than acknowledging defeat, merely redirected their forces at less capable opponents in Venice and Albania, leading to the Spanish conquest of Istria from the Venetians and the total annexation of Albania into the Spanish realms. These were of course alarming developments for Istanbul, and even though the treaty with Spain had not yet expired, fresh preparations for a new war with Spain were already underway.
Yet even then Sokollu's mind was occupied with an even more pressing problem--the deplorable state of Mamluk Sultanate. The Mamluks, once the saviors of Islam against the terrifying Mongols, were now looking idly by as the Iberian Christians were conquering more and more Muslim territory. Neither the Mamluk Sultan nor his pathetic creature, the pseudo-Abbasid Caliph had made so much as a diplomatic remonstrance to the Christians for their attacks against Islamic lands. Ever since Suleyman's triumphant return from the Spanish wars, a great many Muslims both within and without the Empire had abandoned their allegiance with the useless pseudo-Abbasids and recognized Suleyman and the Hosue of Osman as the rightful Caliphs of Islam. Sokollu could hardly allow the Mamluks to continue claiming the Caliphal dignity--the continued existence of the dillapidated Sultanate was a festering sore in Ottoman foreign policy--one that Mehmed Sokollu decided he could no longer tolerate.
Therefore in the year 977/1570 he sent a terse letter to the Mamluks demanding the immediate surrender of all Mamluk-held territories in Syria. When the Mamluks refused, Sokollu swung the entirety to the Ottoman military machine at the Mamluks, with two of the most capable generals of their day in command of the respective Ottoman strike forces. Lala Mustapha commanded the Egyptian army, which landed in Alexandria in force, smashed a Mamluk guard force and captured the citadel soon afterwards. As Lala Mustapha's army defeated a large Mamluk force in the province of Delta a second Ottoman army led by Ozdemiroglu Osman was slicing its way through Syria like hot iron. Less than 18 months into the war, the crumbling infrastructure of the Mamluk state simply collapsed under the pressure of the Ottoman invasion. Shortly before Lala Mustapha's army took Cairo, the last Mamluk Sultan together with the last of the Egyptian Abbassids fled the capital and disappeared somewhere between Cairo and Nubia. The fugitizes were not pursued but the Sultanate of the Mamluks was dissolved and incorporated into the empire of Osman, sending waves of shock and alarm through the Safavid court in Persia and prompting a new shift in the direction of Ottoman foreign policy.
