12 CIVIL HISTORY AND 



Instigated by the fanatical ambition of founding- 

 an Eastern empire, the King of Portugal had 

 assumed, among other magnificent titles, that of 

 *' Lord of the Navigation, Conquest, and Commerce 

 of Arabia;" and commenced the exercise of his 

 prerogative by capturing a Moorish vessel, the crew 

 of which were treated in the most savage manner. 

 From the beginning of the sixteenth century dif- 

 ferent expeditions from Lisbon visited the Arabian 

 eoast, Alphonso Albuquerque, in 1506, reduced 

 Curiat, Muscat, and other important cities on both 

 sides of the Persian Gulf. Gauri, the last of the 

 Mamlouk sultans of Egypt, before his overthrow 

 by Selim, desirous to rid his neighbourhood of 

 these troublesome adventurers, fitted out an expc' 

 dition, and seized most of the ports on the Red 

 Sea. But on the extinction of that dynasty the 

 greater part of these cities fell again into the hands 

 of their European masters. The Ottomans, in order 

 to secure the possession of Egypt, and restore to its 

 ports the lucrative trade of the East, found it ne,. 

 cessary to continue the war against the Portuguese 

 in co-operation with the sultans of India. Solyman 

 Pasha, the governor of Cairo, was ordered by Selim 

 to equip at Suez a fleet of seventy galleys, manned 

 by 7000 of the best Turkish soldiers. With this 

 powerful armament he recovered all the towns on 

 the Arabian Gulf as far as Aden. 



Another circumstance tended to confirm the do- 

 minion of Selim over Arabia. One of the descend-, 

 ants of the caliphs of Bagdad (Mohammed XL), on 

 the ruin of that capital by the Moguls, had fled to 

 Egypt ; and being the last of the sacred race, his 

 family were treated with all the respect due to the 

 successor of the successors of the Prophet. A scion 

 of this fallen trunk of the Abbassides was found 

 by Selim at Cairo in 1517, and conducted to Con- 

 stantinople, where he maintained him at his own 

 expense, and at his demise received from him the 

 formal renunciation of the caliphate. In this emptv 



