Tuman Bay II - Gaza Campaign 1516 CE

Gaza Campaign 1516 CE

Meanwhile, Tripoli, Safed and other Syrian strongholds, besides Damascus, had fallen into Ottoman hands. It was thus the beginning of December before the force now raised at Cairo, delayed and diminished by the insatiable demands and waywardness of the Mamluks, set out under Emir Janberdi Al-Ghazali in the forlorn hope of saving Gaza; but before it reached its destination, Gaza had already fallen, and the army was beaten back. During Emir Janberdi Al-Ghazali’s absence an Embassy arrived with a dispatch from Selim I who, boasting of his victories, and the adhesion of the Caliph Al-Mutawakkil III, Judges and other leaders who had joined him, demanded of the Sultan that his supremacy should be acknowledged both in the Coinage and the public Prayers He said;

Do this and Egypt shall remain untouched; else swiftly I come to destroy thee, and thy Mamluks with thee, from off the face of the earth.

Though the Envoy and his followers were hooted and mishandled in the City, Sultan Tuman bay II was inclined to fall in with the Selim I's demand; but his infatuated Emirs overcame his better judgment, and the Ottoman messengers were put to death. Tidings of disaster now followed rapidly on one another. Terror and dismay pervaded the Cairo. The treachery of Khayr Baig and many other Emirs made the prospect all the darker. The inhabitants of Gaza having, on a false report of Egyptian victory, attacked the Turkish garrison, where by Selim's order in great numbers massacred.The news of Emir Janberdi Al-Ghazali’s discomfiture increased the gloom ; the more so as he himself, shortly after appearing, attributed the defeat not only to the numbers of the enemy, but to the cowardice of his mercenary followers, while even his own loyalty began to be suspected.