The penultimate Mamluk sultan, a great builder and patron whose defeat and death at Marj Dabiq opened Egypt and Syria to Ottoman conquest.
Life
Qansuh al-Ghawri (reigned 1501–1516) was an aged but energetic Mamluk sultan who fortified the realm, patronized architecture and letters, and struggled against the twin threats of the Portuguese in the Red Sea and the rising Ottomans. He was defeated and killed at the Battle of Marj Dabiq near Aleppo in 1516 by Selim I; within a year the Mamluk Sultanate fell and Egypt passed to the Ottomans.