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Visitors from the West: A New Order

Initial contact with the Ottomans was distant but cordially received on both sides. On a level both were the inheritors of ancient empires that had been friends and something close to allies. Both were in their own way upstarts in the scheme of history and both looked to expand and take up the mantle of Islam. Both exchanging ambassadors in 1499, one to Istanbul (a city on the rift between two seas) and Barara (a city on the rift between two tectonic plates). While neither had a common border, they did have common trade interests, especially concerning their position within the silk road. Before the initial Mamluk-Ottoman war the Ottomans had joined the Anti-Portuguese alliance effort by sending timber and craftsmen to help with establishing coastal forts along the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. The actions by the Ottomans in the following years have been considered by many to be in great question, especially if the true motives of the Ottomans were in fact to scout ahead for future territory.

Defeating the Iranian Safavids in 1513 lead to Ottoman control over the majority of Mesopotamia and would set the stage for the next plans for Ottoman expansion. In 1514 they invaded Mamluk territory in the Levant and the next year they followed up their successes with invasion of Egypt proper. To say Jamal ud-Din was surprised was an understatement, the speed that the Mamluks had been defeated caught the Negus flatfooted and in an unfavorable position to take advantage of the situation. With a good majority of Habashah’s forces preparing for the Great Rift campaign and the ouster of the Portuguese from the Swahili Coast to the south. Had it not been for the Portuguese threat the Habashabs would have been in an ideal position to seize Mecca for themselves and push up the Nile possibly as far as Luxor.

While these opportunities fell to the Ottomans the Negus was still able to salvage a measure of opportunity from the Mamluk’s defeat. Prior to the Ottomans, the borders between Habashab and Mamluk control had been moderated by buffer states and tribal confederations along their mutual borders along the Nile and South Arabia. Now, the Habashabs had no reason to not assert full control. In Southern Arabia, Arabia Felix, through negotiation and completion of a chain of forts from Aden to Sana’a the Negus secured the loyalty of the tribes from Al Quffundah to Al Mukalla. At the junction of the White and Blue Nile rivers the Habashabs consolidated their hold on the Nubian Kingdom of Soba, already pressed by an influx of Arab and Funj tribes from the north. Saving the kingdom, Habashab and Nubian forces would push north scattering the Arab tribes (and preventing the Arabization of that stretch of the Nile) and seized as far up the Nile as Aswan before they encountered Ottoman forces.

The short skirmish between the two forces was conducted around the area of modern day Wadi Ammar, scout forces between both sides clashed along the Nile and surrounding desert. Camel and horse mounted scouts fought with one another thinking the other was apart of the last Mamluk hold outs in the area. It was only after the prisoners taken on both sides began to talk that each side realized their error. A truce was settled between the two forces and prisoners exchanged. Both sides would meet in Cairo and declare again a truce toward one another, confirmation of the gains made by each side (the Ottomans cared much more that they had gained Mecca than a stretch of the Nile) and a commitment to end the Portuguese threat once more.

With a possible threat to the north at least contained, the Habashabs could focus their full attention on campaigns to the south. The Habashabs struck south in two prongs, one along the coast and another further inland. The Habashabs had long held their border south along the tip of Lake Turkana, preferring to keep their borders here static as they dealt with tribes of the invading Oromo after their defeat years before. Now though they desired to capture the highlands to the south, it would open trade with the Great Lakes region and if need be allowed the Habashabs to strike from the interior against the Portuguese on the coast if they ever returned in force. The Habashabs used force and negotiation to make their way south and east, following the Great Rift Valley, encountering different tribes of the largely semi-pastoralist Turkana, Samburu and Kikuyu people. Largely through the establishment of a series of forts close to strategic water wells. This would mark the beginning of a policy of southward expansion that over centuries would take the Habashabs as far south as Lake Malawi.

Lead by Guleed Ali, the main Habashab push to crush the Portuguese presence along the eastern coast of Africa would set off nigh ten thousand soldiers at various parts of the campaign itself, as well as fifty ships ranging from light galleys and brigs to the first of the Habashab carracks that would be a match for even the Portuguese vessels of the same make. Setting sail from Mogadishu the army of Habashah set sail for Malindi the site of the main Portuguese customs house and a small fort. Going first by sea the Habashabs landed their forces to the north and south of the city before converging on it, surrounding it by land and sea. While sieging the city they also looked across the Swahili Coast to other friends and enemies. The city of Mombasa was quick to offer aid to the Habashabs, already having been a victim of their raids more than once and pointed the Habashabs to Kilwa Kisawani which was still in the thrall of a Portuguese fort in the city.

As what happened in Malindi the Habashabs repeated their actions in Kilwa, surrounding the city and defeating the Portuguese, massacring the Europeans as they did and so they moved further south over the following months defeating Portuguese forts and installing puppet governors of their choosing, for the most part their actions would dethrone the Arab merchant classes that had held sway from even before the advent of Islam. The island of Mozambique, the city of Sofala, the Comoros islands, and event on Madagascar. And in each case, they repeated the actions of the Portuguese, setting up their own forts and trading customs influencing the city-states from the guns of forts that many had been Portuguese a year ago.

These efforts would undo almost twenty years of conquests by the Portuguese and in an act would help strangle the Portuguese and their hold on India. The Portuguese responses were by no means meek, as they fought to undo the efforts of the Habashabs.