Sulayman Pasha al-Khadim's Indian expedition (1538)

The great Ottoman expedition to India under Sulayman Pasha al-Khadim, governor of Egypt, in 945/1538 under Sulayman the Magnificent ³.

Al-Salabi records Sulayman's compact with the Indian rulers of Calicut and Cambay against Portugal, and his decree to Sulayman Pasha: "Upon receiving our orders, prepare your baggage and provisions, fit out a fleet at Suez for jihad in God's path; once it is armed and victualled and a sufficient army gathered, sail for India, take those parts and hold them — for if you cut the road and beset the ways leading to Mecca, you will have averted the evil the Portuguese wrought and struck their banner from the sea" ¹.

Sulayman al-Khadim reached Jeddah in seven days, turned to Kamaran, took Aden and set a six-hundred-man garrison, then pressed on to besiege Diu; unable to storm it he withdrew having lost some four hundred men, though he took a forward castle with eighty Portuguese prisoners — and but for fresh Portuguese reinforcements, the book says, every castle would have surrendered ⁴.