Amin Maalouf - Leo Africanus

Three months passed, during which we received regular news of the sovereign’s progress: Gaza, Tiberias, then Damascus, where an incident was reported. The master of the mint, a Jew named Sadaqa, had thrown some newly-minted silver pieces at the sultan’s feet at the time of his triumphal entry into the city, as was the custom. Qansuh’s guards had rushed forward to pick up the coins, in such a way that the sultan, severely jostled, had almost fallen off his horse.

It was known that after Damascus the sultan went to Hama and then Aleppo. Then there was silence. For three weeks. A silence which at the beginning was not interrupted by the slightest rumour. It was only on Saturday, the sixteenth of Sha‘ban, 14 September 1517, that a messenger arrived at the Citadel, out of breath and covered with dust; a battle had taken place at Marj Dabiq, not far from Aleppo. The sultan had taken part in it, wearing his little hat, dressed in his white cloak, with his axe on his shoulder, with the caliph, the qadis and the forty bearers of the Qur’an around him. In the beginning, the army of Egypt had had the upper hand, taking seven flags from the enemy and some large artillery pieces mounted on carriages. But the sultan had been betrayed, particularly by Khairbak, the governor of Aleppo, who was in league with the Ottomans. While he was commanding the left flank, he had turned back, which immediately spread discouragement throughout the whole army. Realizing what was happening, Qansuh suffered a stroke. Falling from his horse, he died at once. In the confusion, his body had not even been recovered.

The inhabitants of Cairo were appalled, the more so as other rumours soon followed one another about the advance of the Ottomans, who followed the route of the Egyptian army in reverse. Thus Aleppo had fallen into their hands, then Hama. At Khan al-Khalili, several shops belonging to Turks from Asia Minor or to Maghribis were looted, but order was energetically restored by Tumanbay who announced the abolition of all taxes and reduced the prices of all essential goods in order to alleviate the effect of this news.

Although the secretary of state had the situation in hand, he waited a month before having himself proclaimed sultan. That very day, Damascus had just fallen in its turn into Salim’s hands; Gaza would soon follow it. Lacking sufficient soldiers, Tumanbay ordered the setting up of popular militias for the defence of the capital. He emptied the prisons and announced that the crimes of all those who enlisted would be pardoned, including homicides. In the last days of the year, when the Ottoman army was approaching Cairo, the Mameluke sultan drew up his troops in Raydaniyya camp, to the east of the city. He also brought several elephants and some newly-cast cannons, and had a long deep trench dug, in the hope of sustaining a long siege.

However, this was not the Ottoman’s intention. After having given his army two days to rest after the long crossing of Sinai, Salim ordered a general assault, with such a profusion of cannons and such an overwhelming numerical advantage that the Egyptian army scattered in a few hours.

It was thus that on the very last day of the year the Grand Turk made his solemn entry into Cairo, preceded by criers who promised the inhabitants that their lives would be spared, calling on them to resume their normal lives the next day. It was a Friday, and the caliph, who had been captured in Syria and brought back in the suite of the conqueror, had a sermon pronounced in all the mosques in the capital in the name of ‘the sultan son of the sultan, sovereign of the two continents and the two seas, destroyer of the two armies, master of the two Iraqs, servant of the holy sanctuaries, the victorious King Salim Shah.’

Nur’s eyes were bloodshot. She was so distressed by the triumph of the Grand Turk that I feared for the life of the child she was carrying. As she was a few days from her time, I had to make her swear to stay still on her bed. As for me, I found consolation in promising myself to leave this country as soon as she recovered. In my street, all the notables had hidden their precious possessions and their flags in their family vaults out of fear of looting.

Nevertheless, that day my orderly and his donkey presented themselves outside my door as usual to take me into the city. The boy told me with some hilarity that on the way he had stumbled over the severed head of a Mameluke officer. As I did not laugh at all, he permitted himself to voice the opinion that I was taking things too seriously. Which earned him a blow from the back of my hand.

‘So,’ I growled in a fatherly way, ‘your city has just been occupied, your country has been invaded, its rulers have either been massacred or have fled, others replace them, coming from the ends of the earth, and you reproach me for taking things too seriously?’

His only reply was a shrug of his shoulders and this phrase of centuries-old resignation:

‘Whoever takes my mother becomes my step-father.’

Then he started laughing again.

One man, however, was not at all resigned. It was Tumanbay. He was girding himself to write the most heroic pages in the history of Cairo.

923 A.H.

24 January 1517 — 12 January 1518

Master of Cairo, the Grand Turk strutted about as if he was intent on brushing over each holy place, each quarter, each door, each frightened look with his indelible shadow. In front of him, the heralds never wearied of proclaiming that no one should fear for their life or property, while at the same time massacres and looting were taking place, often a few paces from the sultan’s retinue.

The Circassians were the first victims. Mamelukes or descendants of Mamelukes, they were hunted down relentlessly. When a high dignitary of the old regime was captured, he was perched upon a donkey, facing backwards, his hair in a blue turban and decked out with little bells which were hung around his neck. Thus accoutred, he was paraded around the streets before being decapitated. His head was then displayed upon a pole, and his body thrown to the dogs. In each camp of the Ottoman army hundreds of these poles were planted in the earth, each alongside the other, macabre forests through which Salim liked to wander.

Of course the Circassians, deceived for a moment by the Ottoman promises, did not take long to get rid of their customary headdresses, skull caps or light turbans, and put on large turbans in order to merge with the rest of the population. In consequence the Ottoman soldiers began to arrest all passers-by indiscriminately, accusing them of being Circassians in disguise and forcing them to pay a ransom to be allowed to go. When the streets were empty the soldiers forced open the doors of houses, and under the pretext of flushing out escaping Mamelukes, gave themselves over to pillage and rape.

The fourth day of that year, Sultan Salim was in the suburb of Bulaq, where his army had set up the largest of its camps. He had attended the executions of several officers and had then ordered that the hundreds of decapitated corpses which were cluttering up the camp should immediately be thrown into the Nile. Then he had gone to the hammam to purify himself before going to the evening prayer at a mosque near the landing stage. By nightfall he had returned to the camp and called several of his aides around him.

The meeting had just begun when an extraordinary tumult broke out; hundreds of camels, laden with burning tow, rushed towards the Ottoman positions setting fire to the tents. It was already dark, and in the ensuing chaos thousands of armed men invaded the camp. Tumanbay was at their head. There were certainly regular troops among his soldiers, but it was mostly the common people, sailors, water carriers, former criminals who had joined the popular militia. Some were armed with daggers, others had only slings, or even clubs. However, with the assistance of nightfall and surprise, they sowed death among the ranks of the Ottomans. In the most intense moment of the battle, Salim himself was surrounded on all sides, and only the determination of his bodyguard enabled him to force his way out. The camp was in the hands of Tumanbay, who, without losing a moment, ordered his partisans to throw themselves into the pursuit of the occupation troops in all the quarters of Cairo, and to take no prisoner.