حملة سليمان الخادم على الهند

Al-Salabi says that Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent ordered Suleiman Pasha al-Khadim, governor of Egypt, to equip a fleet at Suez and set out for India to cut off the routes of the Portuguese to Mecca. ¹

The sultan saw that defending the holy places was a responsibility of the Ottoman state. He made an agreement with the rulers of Calicut and Cambay, who had suffered from the Portuguese invasion, to act together. ¹

Suleiman Pasha reached Jeddah in seven days, then Kamaran, and took Aden and put in it a garrison of six hundred soldiers. Then he besieged Diu, did not storm it, and withdrew, having lost about four hundred of his men. ¹

He returned and took one of the forward fortresses and captured eighty Portuguese. Al-Salabi holds that the fortresses would have surrendered had it not been for new Portuguese reinforcements, and that the campaign enabled the Ottomans to secure the Red Sea. ¹

The year of the campaign (945 AH / 1538 CE) is derived from the context of the campaign on Aden and Yemen. ²