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Egypt EGYPT UNDER THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
In 1517 the Ottoman sultan Selim I (1512-20), known as Selim
the Grim, conquered Egypt, defeating the Mamluk forces at Ar
Raydaniyah, immediately outside Cairo. The origins of the Ottoman
Empire go back to the Turkish-speaking tribes who crossed the
frontier into Arab lands beginning in the tenth century. These
Turkish tribes established themselves in Baghdad and Anatolia,
but they were destroyed by the Mongols in the thirteenth century.
In the wake of the Mongol invasion, petty Turkish dynasties
called amirates were formed in Anatolia. The leader of one of
those dynasties was Osman (1280-1324), the founder of the Ottoman
Empire. In the thirteenth century, his amirate was one of many;
by the sixteenth century, the amirate had become an empire, one
of the largest and longest lived in world history. By the
fourteenth century, the Ottomans already had a substantial empire
in Eastern Europe. In 1453 they conquered Constantinople, the
Byzantine capital, which became the Ottoman capital and was
renamed Istanbul. Between 1512 and 1520, the Ottomans added the
Arab provinces, including Egypt, to their empire.
In Egypt the victorious Selim I left behind one of his most
trusted collaborators, Khair Bey, as the ruler of Egypt. Khair
Bey ruled as the sultan's vassal, not as a provincial governor.
He kept his court in the citadel, the ancient residence of the
rulers of Egypt. Although Selim I did away with the Mamluk
sultanate, neither he nor his successors succeeded in
extinguishing Mamluk power and influence in Egypt.
Only in the first century of Ottoman rule was the governor of
Egypt able to perform his tasks without the interference of the
Mamluk beys (bey was the highest rank among the Mamluks). During
the latter decades of the sixteenth century and the early
seventeenth century, a series of revolts by various elements of
the garrison troops occurred. During these years, there was also
a revival within the Mamluk military structure. By the middle of
the seventeenth century, political supremacy had passed to the
beys. As the historian Daniel Crecelius has written, from that
point on the history of Ottoman Egypt can be explained as the
struggle between the Ottomans and the Mamluks for control of the
administration and, hence, the revenues of Egypt, and the
competition among rival Mamluk houses for control of the
beylicate. This struggle affected Egyptian history until the late
eighteenth century when one Mamluk bey gained an unprecedented
control over the military and political structures and ousted the
Ottoman governor.
Data as of December 1990
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