Capture of Cairo (1517)

The capture of Cairo was the final major engagement of the Ottoman Mamluk war of 1516-1517. The city of Cairo, the capital of the Mamluk Sultanate, was sacked and fell into the hands of the Ottoman forces led by Sultan Selim I during the 27^th-30^th January 1517. Following Cairo's fall and the subsequent execution of the last Mamluk Sultan and member of the Abbasid dynasty: Tuman Bay II, the Mamluk Sultanate was absorbed into the expanding Ottoman Empire. Following its conquest, Cairo saw its status being reduced from the once prosperous capital of the Mamluk Sultanate to a provincial city governed from Constantinople. The economic decline present from the later years of the Mamluk Sultanate would continue under Ottoman rule, with the country being increasingly burdened by taxation by the imperial government and its status as a military base with the purpose of launching further expansion into surrounding lands.