al-Mutawakkil III
al-Mutawakkil III, the caliph of the Abbasid of Cairo caliphate, ruling 1508–1517 CE.
Reign · Abbasid Caliphate of Cairo · no. 17 in the chain · 1508–1517 CE
Ruled the caliphate
Events of the reign
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Battle of Gaza (1516)
Draft card for Battle of Gaza (1516); its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Battle of Ridaniyya and the fall of the Mamluk state
Ridaniyya, 1517 — the Mamluks' execution of Selim's envoy brought the Ottoman army across Sinai; Gaza then Ridaniyya broke Tuman Bay and ended the Circassian sultanate. Selim's defence: 'I came only with the ulema's fatwa — I was bound for jihad against the Rafida and the fujjar until your Ghawri marched into my inherited kingdom'.
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Capture of Cairo
After Ridaniyya Selim I entered Egypt; al-Salabi quotes the chronicler Salahsur — companion of Selim and author of the manuscript *Fath-nameh Diyar al-Arab* — that Selim wept long in the Dome of the Rock and prayed for Egypt's opening. He appointed Khayr Bak over Egypt and Janbirdi al-Ghazali over Damascus; at Shadharat, Tuman Bay was hanged at Bab Zuwayla and the Circassian state ended.
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The Battle of Marj Dabiq and Selim's Entry into Egypt
In his colophon Suyuti's student Jaramard al-Nasiri names the ninth century's calamity: Selim Shah ibn Uthman — his wars on his brothers and their killing 'the worst of killings, leaving none great or small', his breaking of the lord of the East and killing of Ali Dawlat, then meeting Egypt's host and sultan at Marj Dabiq, killing the sultan and his great amirs, then entering Egypt 'in the swiftest state and shortest time' — a blow, he says, beside which the Tatars' and Timur's calamities seem small, for they never entered Egypt.