Mamluk Egypt Survives or Falls Faster:

[DaleCoz]

The Mamluks were a major power in the Middle East, with a base in Egypt and control into Syria. In the 1490s they fought the Ottomans to a stalemate. Then, around 1516, the Ottomans came back for a rematch and destroyed the Mamluks as a independent power They continued as Ottoman subjects into the 1800s, but never recovered, never became a great power again.

I have some ideas on why the power-shift between the Mamluks and Ottomans happened--mainly the Ottomans figured out how to use artillery and other firearms effectively before other powers in the area and used that knowledge to clobber the Persians in 1510 and then the Mamluks a few years later.

Other factors: The Mamluks fought a disastrous war with the Portuguese between their two wars with the Ottomans. The Portuguese managed to cut off a lot of the Mamluk revenue from the Indian Ocean trade and exposed Mamluk weakness.

How could the Ottomans have won big in the 1490s and what would the implications have been? Conversely, how could the Mamluks have survived the 1516 war as a great power and how would that have changed the balance of power in North Africa and in Europe?

As I did a bit more research on the period, the question evolved a bit. The Ottomans weren’t just successful against the Mamluks and Persians. They were also devastating against European opponents like the Hungarians at Mohacs and other European opponents. Part of that was two very effective rulers in a row, Selim I followed by Suleiman the Magnificent. While Selim’s reign was shorter, he did a lot of the early conquests, including the Persian and Mamluk ones. The other part was the Ottoman use of Janissaries—slave soldiers as an initially well disciplined and effective standing army.

Selim I was arguably a usurper. His father arguably designated one of his other sons as successor, but Selim took over, killing most of his close relatives as potential threats to his power. That provoked a brief Ottoman civil war from 1509 to 1513, but the Janissaries closed ranks around Selim, partly because of some missteps his rival made in attempting to suppress a Shiite rebellion in Anatolia. Those missteps resulted in the death of his most powerful supporter and alienated the Janissaries.

Make this an extended Civil War, maybe with the Janissaries splintering into warring factions or worse yet backing the side that ultimately lost and being suppressed or disbanded. If Selim I doesn’t become Sultan, presumably neither does his son, Sulieman the Magnificent. Historically, Selim I died in 1520 at age 49. Maybe extend the fighting until then and have Selim die approximately on schedule. Instead of expanding dramatically between 1513 and 1520, the Ottomans become a partial vacuum , with peripheral and recent conquests breaking away and the surrounding powers fishing in those troubled waters.

For what it is worth, the partial vacuum would have probably allowed Shia Islam to spread further west, carried by Persian armies, which had been expanding in a major way until the Ottomans crushed them. It would undoubtedly have led to widespread revolts in the European parts of the empire and a reprieve, at least for a while, for the Knights of Rhodes.

Beyond that, I’m not sure. Any speculations on any of these scenarios are welcome, of course.

 

[heraclius]

Arguably the Mamelukes' main long-term problem for creating a stable leadership was the same in 1500 as it had been in the C13th, namely the difficulty in creating a long-term order out of what was essentially a small (and ethnically alien) junta of Turkic officers sitting on top of a large, mostly local army and populace. A charismatic and militarily capable strongman might emerge out of the ruling faction at any point and hold power for his lifetime; a repeat of the successful career of Sultan Baybars as master of the Levant in 1260-77 was still technically possible for around 1500 though only if his army faced neighbours with equal or inferior numbers and weaponry.

Once a neighbour like the Ottomans gets hold of a reasonably large number of European cannons or prototype muskets, the Mameluke army with its poorer resources is likely to be defeated heavily - unless its leadership has managed to interest the European powers in expanding trade with Alexandria on a large scale and used the income to buy cannons themselves. They then need to create a Europeanised regimental army backed up by local African tribal infantry - like an earlier Mehmed Ali regime? Around 1500 is the wrong date for this, given that Spain and Portugal are now heavily involved in the just-expanding India and West Indies trade and won't be interested in Egypt - unless possibly the Mamelukes had recently overhauled their corn-growing system in the Nile valley (with European mercenary help?) and had more corn to export or were exporting huge numbers of slaves after a successful conquest of the Sudan?

Even if the Mamelukes were defeated by an up-to-date Ottoman army (or possibly the Safavids if Ismail has had longer to establish his control of Iraq and feels he has a 'mission' to revive the Shi'a Caliphate of Ali in the C7th and the old Achaemenid empire?) they might then lose Syria and Palestine but not Egypt. It is a long march from Antioch/ Aleppo to Cairo with extended supply-lines, and if Selim had won less convincingly in 1514-16 and still had a strong Safavid state threatening the upper Euphrates (or his health had given way) he might not have gambled on a march as far as Egypt. Once he has the holy city of Jerusalem in his hands and can dominate the pilgrimage route to Mecca he can pose as the protector of Sunni Islam and leave the conquest of Egypt for later, especially if a new Mameluke Sultan does homage to him; and then once he is dead in 1520 Sulaiman has other priorities. Conceivably, if Egypt is still standing in the 1520s Charles V will try to prop it up to distract Sulaiman from attacking W from Hungary, and supply cannons and troops to a Mameluke ally.

One of the main 'What Ifs' of Middle Eastern history at this juncture is the very real possibility of the Ottoman regime going the same way as many other late medieval Moslem states - and the seemingly invincible Mongol and Timurid ones - and splitting up permanently among feuding heirs. Once an equilibrium among rivals is created it is very hard to reunite the original large state - as happened to the Carolingian empire in E Europe after 842 once Lewis the German and Charles the Bald had defeated Emperor Lothar. It nearly happens to the Ottomans when Timur splits the empire up by force in 1402, only the separate European and Asia Minor states were reunited after 1411 by Musa then Mehmed I. It could happen again in 1481 or 1512.

I have experimented with ideas of how the Byzantines and Western Europeans could have helped the split to be made permanent after 1411, in my second Alternative History: Byzantium book (pub impending by Sealion, as 'Rampart of Christendom'). In some of these scenarios, the Ottoman split of 1402 becomes stabilised, the Crusaders succeed in breaking the empire up by killing Murad II at Varna in 1444 and starting a civil war, or the Byzantines do this to them by killing Mehmed II at Constantinople in 1453 -
and in all these cases the Ottomans are too weak to ever conquer Egypt, and possibly Syria either. It was arguably the large army of Balkan 'Yeni Cheri'/ Janissary regiments and European artlllery that gave the Ottomans the edge in the Levant; take these away and a strong Mameluke Sultan or the Safavids might win. But to keep a strong Mameluke dynasty going, you arguably need the same mix of lucky genetics for the ruling dynasty, no boy-Sultans ready to be deposed by their regents, plus quick liquidation of rebels for the C16th as the Ottomans had. Even then, they will be at risk from European predators as outdated by the C18th.