Selim I: the Ottomans take the Land of Israel
In half a year the Ottomans defeat the Mamluks, and the Land of Israel passes for four centuries under the hand of Istanbul.
On 24 August 1516 at Marj Dabiq, north of Aleppo, the Ottoman army of Sultan Selim I defeated the Mamluks. Damascus surrendered in October, the towns of the Land of Israel came into Ottoman hands during the winter, on 22 January 1517 the Mamluks were beaten a second time at Ridaniya outside Cairo, and on 3 February Selim entered Cairo. The Mamluk state was no more, and rule over Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias passed to Istanbul, where it remained until 1917.
The change fell in the years when the exiles from Spain and Portugal were still looking for somewhere to settle. The Ottomans had long been receiving them, and now Constantinople, Salonika and the Land of Israel lay under one rule: the road from one community to another became a road inside a single state. What came of it this timeline tells in its own records: the Safed of the kabbalists, the walls of Jerusalem raised under Suleiman son of Selim, and the Tiberias venture of Don Joseph Nasi.
Sources
Documents of the period
- Ottoman chronicles and documents of the campaign of 1516-1517 — the days of the battles: Marj Dabiq on 24 August 1516, Ridaniya on 22 January 1517, the entry into Cairo on 3 February
Scholarship
- Studies in the history of the Ottoman Empire and the Land of Israel — the passing of the Land of Israel to Ottoman rule and the four centuries of that rule
Basis: documents and evidence.