sovereigns, who had lately established his authority over the provinces of Persia]. … Selim set forth with an army estimated at over 140,000 men, 80,000 of which were cavalry. … After weary and painful marching, the Ottomans forced Ismail to give battle at Chaldiran [or Tabreez—see PERSIA: A. D. 1499-1887]," and defeated him. "The victory of Chaldiran (1514) might have been followed by the conquest of Persia, but the privations which the soldiery had undergone had rendered them unmanageable, and Selim was forced to content himself with the annexation of the important provinces of Kurdistan and Dyarbekr, which are still part of the Turkish Empire; and then turned homewards, to prosecute other schemes of conquest. No peace, however, was concluded between him and the Shah, and a frontier war continued to be waged for many years. During the campaign against Persia, the Turks had been kept in anxiety by the presence on their flanks of the forces of the Mamluk Sultans of Egypt and Syria, whose frontiers now marched with the territory of the Ottomans." Turning his arms against the Mamluks, "Selim set out in 1516 for Syria, and meeting the Mamluk army on the field of Marj Dabik near Aleppo, administered a terrible defeat, in which the aged Sultan El-Ghuri was trampled to death. He found a brave successor in Tuman Bey, but in the interval the Turks had mastered Syria and were advancing to Gaza. Here the Mamluks made another stand, but the generalship of Sinan Pasha was not to be resisted any more than the preponderance of his forces. The final battle was fought at Reydaniya in the neighbourhood of Cairo, in January, 1517. … Twenty-five thousand Mamluks lay stark upon the field, and the enemy occupied Cairo. There a succession of street-fights took place." The perfidious Turkish Sultan finally cheated the Mamluks into submission by offering amnesty, and then put them to the sword, giving the city up to massacre. "Tuman Bey, after some further resistance, was captured and executed, and Egypt became a Turkish province. … Sultan Selim returned to Constantinople in 1518, a much more dignified personage than he had set out. {3139} By the conquest of the Mamluk kingdom he had also succeeded to their authority over the sacred cities of Arabia, Mekka and Medina, and in recognition of this position, as well as of his undoubted supremacy among Mohammedan monarchs, he received from the last Abbaside Khalif, who kept a shadowy court at Cairo, the inheritance of the great pontiffs of Baghdad. The 'fainéant' Khalif was induced to make over to the real sovereign the spiritual authority which he still affected to exercise, and with it the symbols of his office, the standard and cloak of the Prophet Mohammed. Selim now became not only the visible chief of the Mohammedan State throughout the wide