Khushqadam

Khushqadam ( Arabic الظاهر سيف الدين خشقدم, DMG aẓ-Ẓāhir Saif ad-Dīn Ḫušqadam ), born 1402 , died 1467 , was Sultan of the Mamluks in Egypt from 1461 to 1467.

The Greek-born Mamluken-Emir az-Zahir Chushqadam deposed Sultan Inal's son al-Mu'ayyad Ahmad soon after his enthronement and had him locked up.

Although, or perhaps precisely because abuse of power and corruption flourished during his sultanate, Khushqadam was able to stay in power for six years.

In terms of foreign policy, his rule was marked by growing tensions with the Ottoman Empire. Its sultan, Mehmed II , had gained enormous prestige through the conquest of Constantinople (1453) and his increased self-confidence flowed into ideological-religious and territorial ambitions, which brought him into conflict with the Mamluk sphere of influence in Anatolia, whereby this conflict under Khushqadam's sultanate was still mainly carried out diplomatically.

In the year of Chushqadam's seizure of power, a Hajj pilgrim had complained to Mehmed II about the poor condition of the water wells along the pilgrimage route to Mecca , whereupon the Ottoman Sultan sent envoys to the Mamluk governors concerned with money for the necessary repair work, but without the to deliver the usual diplomatic gifts as a sign of respect, and also bypassed the direct route of an emissary to the Mamluk Sultan in Cairo . Mehmed also sent a messenger to the Mamluk governor of Aleppo and threatened him with the invasion of Ottoman troops into Mamluk territory if the poor security situation on the roads to Jerusalem did not improve. In doing so, the Ottoman sultan deliberately tried to undermine the traditional authority of the Mamluk sultan over the holy places of Islam and the pilgrimage to them.

In the same year (1461), Mehmed had conquered the last successor state of the Byzantine Empire with the Empire of Trebizond . However, there was no Mamluk ambassador among the numerous foreign dignitaries who congratulated him afterwards in Constantinople, which was probably due to the fact that Chushqadam was fully occupied with consolidating his rule in his first chaotic months as sultan.

Three years later, in 1464, Chushqadam sent an embassy, ​​apparently intended as a gesture of apology, with generous gifts to Constantinople, which Mehmed II accepted and answered with an Ottoman embassy to Cairo. However, at the audience in Cairo on June 4, 1464, Mehmed's ambassador refused to kiss the floor in front of the Mamluk sultan, which was demanded by every foreign envoy - allegedly because he had been badly treated by the Mamluk commanders the night before the audience. Worse still: In his cover letter, Mehmed did not address the Mamluk Sultan, who was thirty years his senior, not, as would have been customary (and as he had also done with Chushqadam's predecessor Inal ), with “Our Father, the Sultan of the Holy Places”, but with “ Our Brother, the Servant of the Holy Places ”. The Ottoman envoy apologized for these formulations by saying that Mehmed's secretaries were probably not familiar with the correct way to address the Mamluk sultan, but was treated accordingly less friendly.

This in turn meant that a Mamluk follow-up embassy in Constantinople in December 1464, through which Chushqadam had hoped for an alliance with Mehmed against Uzun Hasan , the ruler of the Turkmen Aq Qoyunlu , failed. Uzun Hasan not only interfered in the inheritance disputes of the six sons of the late Karamanid prince Ibrahim Bey in south-central Anatolia, but also took over the border town of Gerger , which is traditionally under Mamluk control . He gave the city back to the Mamluk Empire, but demanded a generous "compensation" for it. In the meantime, Mehmed II had interfered in the inheritance disputes among the Karamanid princes, favoring Ahmed Bey, who was related to him, and - to Chushqadam's annoyance - dispatched troops to support him.

In another Anatolian beylik , that of the Dulkadir , which immediately followed the Mamluk-Syrian border in the north, the interests of Mehmed II clashed with those of the Khushqadams. After the Dulkadir-Bey Malik Arslan (1454–1465) was murdered by an assassin commissioned by Chushqadam during a Friday prayer in October 1465 , it came between his two brothers Şahbudak, who was supported by Chushqadam, and Şehsuvar, who Mehmed II favored , to the struggle for inheritance. The civil war lasted two years, during which numerous envoys traveled between Cairo and Constantinople to improve the strained relations between the two sultans. But Chushqadam refused to comply with Mehmed's request and to withdraw his support for Şahbudak, and when he was finally defeated and driven out by his brother Şehsuvar in October 1467, this was a severe blow to the Mamluk supremacy in this region, and the Chushqadam no longer with a campaign planned since September, as he died completely unexpectedly the following month and the Mamluk Empire sank, as usual, into a turmoil for the next few months.

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• Jörg-Dieter Brandes (1996): The Mameluks. The rise and fall of a slave despotism. Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Sigmaringen, p. 235.
• Cihan Yüksel Muslu (2014): The Ottomans and the Mamluks. Imperial Diplomacy and Warfare in the Islamic World. IB Tauris & Co. Ltd., London & New York, pp. 117-127.

predecessor	Office	successor
al-Mu'ayyad Ahmad III.	Sultan of Egypt ( Burji dynasty ) 1461–1467	az-Zahir Bilbay