LIVESTREAMING NOTE : Don’t forget to join Elizabeth Urban of Islamic History for the Curious and me tomorrow at 8 PM eastern for the second in our new monthly livestream series. This month I’ll be asking Elizabeth about pre-Islamic Arabia and we will take your questions. Find us in the Substack app or bookmark the link so you won’t miss it!
TODAY IN HISTORY
August 24, 410: A Visigothic army under Alaric sacks Rome. This was the first time the city had been sacked by a foreign army since the Gauls did so around 800 years earlier and is considered one of the milestones in the collapse of the Roman Empire in the western Mediterranean. Rome was no longer a political capital but its prestige (and wealth) as the mother city of the empire and the center of Christianity in the west was still immense. Alaric continued plundering south through Italy, but his plans to invade Sicily and North Africa were interrupted first by weather and then by his death. The Visigoths moved into what is now southern France, where they established a kingdom within what was ostensibly Roman territory.
August 24, 1516: The Ottomans decisively defeat the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate’s army at the Battle of Marj Dabiq in what is today northern Syria’s Aleppo province. The Ottomans and Mamluks found themselves on opposite sides of a relatively lopsided rivalry as the former expanded into eastern Anatolia and began to absorb principalities that had been Mamluk vassals. After Ottoman Sultan Selim I defeated the Safavids in the 1514 Battle of Chaldiran and eliminated their threat to his empire, he turned his attention to the Mamluks and made short work of them. The virtual annihilation of the Mamluk army at Dabiq allowed Selim to take Egypt easily the following year. The Ottoman conquest of the former Mamluk domains was a massive boost to the empire both in size and wealth. It also brought Islam’s three holiest cities—Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem—under Ottoman control, which had significant benefits for the empire from a political and ideological point of view.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
The US government formally lifted Syria’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism on Monday. When the Trump administration notified Congress of its intention to lift that designation last month, it kicked off a 45 day review period and that’s now ended without incident. There are now three countries remaining on the state sponsors list: Cuba, Iran, and North Korea.
