Later on, a revolt against Tuman bay by the conspiring emirs, led to the appointment of Qansuh as Sultan against his will,[5] because he feared to be deposed by execution like his predecessors.

As dangerous to the throne, they were laid hold of, imprisoned or exiled and their property escheated; while the opposite party were restored to freedom and raised again to power and office.

Tuman bay I from his hiding-place was found to be plotting against the new Sultan; after some weeks, betrayed by his friends, he was murdered by the Mamluks of an Emir whom he had put to death; and so Al-Ashraf Qansuh al-Ghuri was saved from that danger without arousing the hostilities of his predecessor's party.

On the other hand, the remains of Sultan Al-Ashraf Janbulat were brought from Alexandria where Tuman bay I had caused him to be executed, and royally interred at Cairo.

To replenish the empty treasury, exorbitant demands were levied on every kind of property to the extent of from seven to ten months' income; even religious and charitable endowments not escaping.

For it was at this time that Vasco da Gama, having in 1498 found his way round the Cape and obtained pilots from the coast of Zanzibar, pushed his way across the Indian Ocean to the shores of Malabar and Kozhikode, attacked the fleets that carried freight and Muslim pilgrims from India to the Red Sea, and struck terror into the potentates all around.

The Sultan was affronted and angry at the attacks upon the Red Sea, the loss of tolls and- traffic, the indignities to which Mecca and its Port were subjected, and above all at the fate of his own ship, and he vowed vengeance upon Portugal.

Al-Ashraf Qansuh al-Ghuri now fitted out a new fleet to punish the enemy and protect the Indian trade; but before its results were known, Egypt had lost her sovereignty, and the Red Sea with Mecca and all its Arabian interests had passed into Ottoman hands.

Shah Ismail I of Persia was a Shia Muslim who had embarked on a war with the Sunni Ottoman Sultanate over the Caucasus and religious differences.

Many Sufi sects had been arrested or exiled by Sultan Bayezid II as dangerous to his rule; and Shah Ismail I's request, that instead they should be allowed free transit into Europe across the Bosporus, was rejected.

The fanaticism of the Sufis, which led even to their women joining in the combat, failed against the cavalry and artillery of the Turks, and Ismail after a disastrous defeat fled and escaped.

In the spring taking the field again, he attacked the bey of Dulkadirids who as Egypt's vassal had stood aloof, and sent his head with tidings of the victory to Mamluk Sultan Al-Ashraf Qansuh al-Ghuri.

Secure now against Shah Ismail I, a larger project dawned upon Selim I; it was the conquest of Egypt, and the fact that the invasion must be made from Syria.

With no anxieties toward the North, he could now safely make the advance, and so in the spring of 1516 CE he drew together for this end a great and well-appointed army; and with the view of deceiving Egypt, represented his object to be the further pursuit of Shah Ismail I.

[13] She made the acquaintance of the noted litterateur and hadith scholar Abd al Rahim Abbasi (died 1557), with whom she exchanged poems.