Selim, emperor of Constantinople, had defeated Canso el Gauri, Soldan of Egypt, and slain him in the field. After a second battle he had taken Cairo, the capital of that country; and, under the specious pretence of a violation of the law of nations, by Tomum Bey, the successor, who was said to have put his ambassadors to death, he had hanged that prince upon one of the principal gates of his own capital; and, by this execution, had totally destroyed the succession of the Mamalukes. Sinan Basha, the great general and minister of Selim, in a very few months over-ran all the peninsula of Arabia, to the verge of the Indian Ocean. These people, trained to war, Mahomet had inspired with enthusiasm, and led them to the conquest of the East. Trade and luxury had, after that, disarmed and reduced them to much the same situation as, in a former age, they had been found by Augustus Cæsar. Sinan Basha, with a troop of veterans, had, by degrees extirpated the native princes of the country; those that resisted, by force; and those that submitted to him, by treachery; and in their place, in every principal town, he had substituted Turkish officers of confidence, strongly supported by troops of Janizaries, who knew no other government but martial law. War had now changed its form entirely under these new conquerors. Muskets, and large trains of artillery, were introduced against javelins, lances, and arrows, the only arms then known in Arabia, and in the opposite continent of Abyssinia. A large fleet, crowded with soldiers, and filled with military stores, the very name of which, as well as their destructive qualities, were till now unknown in these southern regions, were employed by the Turks to extend their conquest to India, where, though by the superior valour of the Portuguese they were constantly disappointed in their principal object, they nevertheless, in their passage outward and homeward, reinforced their several posts in Arabia, from which they looked for assistance and protection, had any enemy placed himself in their way, or a storm, or other unexpected misfortune, overtaken them in their return. These Janizaries lived upon the very bowels of commerce. They had, indeed, for a shew of protecting it, established customhouses in their various ports; but they soon made it appear, that the end proposed by these was only to give them a more distinct knowledge who were the subjects from whom they could levy the most enormous extortions. Jidda, Zibid, and Mocha, the places of consequence nearest to Abyssinia on the Arabian shore, Suakem, a sea-port town on the very barriers of Abyssinia, in the immediate way of their caravan to Cairo, on the African side, were each under the command of a Turkish basha, and garrisoned by Turkish troops sent thither from Constantinople by the emperors Selim and Soliman, his successors.