ORIENTA L TRA NSLA TION F UND ' N EW S ERIES X X V VOL. A N A CC OU N T O F TH E OTTOMAN CONQUEST OF EGYP T , Y EA R M ) 1 5 1 6 IN TH E ( . ) TRA NSL A TED FR OM TH E TH IRD VOL UM E OF TH E ‘ A RABIC CH R ONICL E OF M UH AM M ED IB N A H M ED YA A - IB N I S , N E YE WITNESS OF TH E S CENE S H E DES CRIB ES B Y’ L 1 E - L N EL W H L . SA M ON UT CO O . P RINTED A N D P UB L ISH ED U N D ER T H E P ATRONAGE O F T H E ROYA L A SIA TIC SOCIETY A N D SOL D AT 7 4 G R SVE R REE L D 1 O NO ST T , ON ON, W . 1 9 2 1 ST EP H EN A UST IN A N D SO NS LT D , P R INT ERS H ERTFOR D . , F OREW ORD TH IS translation was undertaken at the suggestion of Mar oliouth Professor g , and was almost completed when the M outbreak of the Great War consigned the S. to a drawer for five years . Strangely enough , this War , which seemed to have all - obliterated other war stories , has brought the places mentioned by Ibn Iyas into fresh prominence ; Damascus , and rn Hamah , Aleppo, Ho s , with Gaza and the routes from Syria to Egypt , have become familiar to us in our daily papers . The barbaric splendours and appalling cruelties in the m narrative seem to belong to remote times ; as a atter of fact , VIII V it was the age of Henry and Francois I , of Charles n and Luther , but the conquering Turk took no accou t of the Renaissance or the Reformation . Even at the present time the bul k of th e nation seems to remain much as it was four r centu ies ago . Mar oliouth My best thanks are due to Professor g , of Oxford , C A . f n and to Mr . Storey of the India O fice for the ki d help they have given me in the solution of many difficulties . S LM . W . H . A ON 57 H OLL N P A K A D R , L O DO W . l . N N , l 1 92 1 . IN TROD U CTIO N DURING the years which have elapsed since the trans lator of the following pages undertook his task the countries which the Sul tan Seli m I in his Eastern campaigns annexed to the Ottoman Empire have through the fortune of war been withdrawn from it , and Egypt , after four centuries of dependence , has again become the seat of a Sultanate . n These extraordi ary events , which were not anticipated when the work was begun , lend a special interest to a detailed and contemporary account of the victory which brought Egypt with its dependencies under Ottoman rule . The sto ry was toid by von Hammer in his Geschichte des 1 Osma ni schen Reiclws mainly after Turkish and European 2 s ki chte der ha lz en . Gesc C authoritie , and by G Weil , in his f , after Ibn Iyas and another contemporary Arabic account . Zinkeisen in his admirable Ottoman history followed von me luke or la ve D nast . M a S Hammer , and Sir W Muir , in his y y o E t u f gyp , was dependent on Weil . The very brief acco nt in the latest Ottoman history on a large scale 3 rests apparently on the statements of European witnesses . The work of Ibn Iyas which Weil used in MS . was published 1 1 1 Boul a A H . 3 m . in three volumes at the Govern ent Press , k, ’ ‘ ’ ‘ 1 31 2 1 893 It is called Bada i al - z uhar f i waqci i al - dubti -r , and is one of four works by the same author; all of 4 o which are preserved . N biography of its author appears to have been discovered , but a little can be gleaned from his 5 writings about his family and his career . He informs us that ‘ 6 Rab i ii 852 8 he was born on Saturday , (June , so 1 V i i l . o oo k i e st 1 828 . , b xx v , P , V l o . ch s. xxi ii St a rt 1 862 . v , , xx , uttg , 3 N i - 4 1 a . J o r a Geschi chte d es Osm a ni achen Re ches i i . 336 G ot g , , , pp , h , l 9 9 . P W uste nfe ld i t hr ciber N o . 5 13 B rock e lmann i i 295 , G esch ch sc , ; , , ; ’ Vol le rs i n R — ev ue d E te 1 895 . 5 44 3 gyp , , pp 7 . 5 Se e e s e ia V i i 1 44 . o ll e rs l . o p c lly , . , v iii INTROD UCTION in 922 that , when the events recorded in the extract took place , - f he was seventy (lunar) years old . His great grand ather , the ‘ ‘ i Iz d omir i i Khaz ind ar Am r Umar Nasir , known as the , after i ‘ having been Am r Silah, was made by the Sultan Sha ban V 1 iceroy of Tripoli . Presently he was transferred to Halab , 2 and in 768 recalled and again made Amir Silah . He was é imprisoned for a time during an meute in Cairo , but was “ a rele sed and appointed governor of Damascus , but died before he could start in This person had originall y been m i Sh aikh o a slave , and sold by the same erchant as th e Am r , ’ i i m sbahs whom he succeeded as Am r S lah in 757 . Of his i i to i Nas r is likely to refer the Sultan of that name , and Saif to his son the Sultan Saif al - d in ; he was then a Circassian slave , purchased by the first of these sovereigns and manumitted by the second . Ibn Iyas appears to say nothing of his father or grandfather, but mentions that his sister Kurkmas was married to one , an Amir Akh ur of the fourth ‘ ’ i class , who was called Ala , and died in battle in the year He names among his shaikhs the famous polygraph , al - d in Su fi i Jalal y t , for whom he appears to have felt no 4 ‘ al - i anefite great respect , and Abd Basit b . Khal l the H , 5 whose history (preserved in MS . ) he cites . He himself s belonged to the ame legal school , and had the honourable Zairi al - d in al - d in title or Shihab . o n 928 The Chr nicle termi ates at the end of , and its com o p sition seems to have occupied a number of years . Thus a 1 9 0 . Ab i passage in II, , where it is stated that Ahmad b ‘ i Sa d is still on the Timurid throne , must have been written 899 n 6 not later than , when the reign of that prince termi ated , and one of the existing MSS . bears a colophon , wherein the author asserts that the volume was finished on 1 5 Muh arram 1 i 2 1 3 A . H . 764 . Fo r th e i t e s i n th e e se e Van B e rcli e m “ , , t l t xt , ‘ M a téri a ux our un Cor us Inacr i ti n m o u . 45 1 . p p p , p 2 3 i i 2 2 1 . n 1 4 4 , , . i i 1 1 9 , , 2 7 1 , 307 , 339 , 392 . i i 1 04 1 05 W s e l e o . N O . 50 8 . , , ; u t nf ld , . , Vol l e r s se e m s to a o r h v e v e l ook e d th i s. I NTROD UCTION i x 9 15 5 (May , This volume ends with the events of 9 12 . r For the period for which he is a contempora y authority , n n his work co sists in the main of a court circular, recordi g the doings of the sovereign and the decorations which he confers ; in this it resembles some of the chronicles of the Moghul Emperors . Into this framework various memorabilia i Of ui are ntroduced , chiefly Obituaries disting shed men , but also public calamities , the movements of the market , and ’ ca uses celébres ; to this last -category belongs the discussion al - of the orthodoxy of the poet Ibn Farid, which occupies much space . At times contemporary verses , serious or - satirical , are inserted . The composition of the court circular n f must have been the busi ess of some of icial , as also the preservation of the notices ; ‘ it is possible that Ibn Iyas himself was employed by the gov ernment to discharge these d l r uties , and this is rendered ikely by the fact that he f equently in cites his own poems , some of them encomia on men power , which are likely to have been composed in some official capacity . There 1 8 one feature about his history which counts as a d 2 efect with Oriental critics , but as a merit among Western scholars it is that it is written in a language which embodies much of the vernacular of the time , and in consequence is of value for the history of the Arabic language and the develop m the i ent of Cairene dialect .