al-Mustakfi bi'llah II Sulayman ibn al-Mutawakkil
Cairo caliph [845–854] — the author's own father wrote his deed of appointment and served as his imam: 'we grew up in none but his house and bounty; I doubt the earth bore a caliph's house more devout since Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz's'. He died Friday, last day of Dhu'l-Hijja 854; the sultan walked his funeral and bore the bier himself, and Suyuti's father died forty days later.
Reign · Abbasid Caliphate of Cairo · no. 12 in the chain · 1441–1451 CE
Ruled the caliphate
Events of the reign
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Al-Sakhawi joins Ibn Hajar's dictation circle, 846/1442 until the master's death
From 846/1442 al-Sakhawi wrote down what Ibn Hajar dictated 'with the company', continuing until the shaykh's death; his father's house adjoined Ibn Hajar's, so he missed almost nothing that was read to him and became one of his most assiduous transmitters.
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Death of al-Suyuti’s father, 855/1451
Al-Suyuti’s father died prematurely in 855/1451, when the boy was five years and seven months old and had already reached Surat al-Tahrim in the Qur’an; his father had entrusted his guardianship to a group of scholars, among them al-Kamal ibn al-Humam.
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Albanian–Venetian War
Draft card for the Albanian–Venetian War of 1447–1448, the League of Lezhë's war against Venice and the Ottomans together; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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The second battle of Kosovo
The Second Battle of Kosovo, 17 October 1448 — three days ending in a crushing Ottoman victory that took Hungary out of offensive war for a decade.
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Battle of Gomit (1445)
Draft card for Battle of Gomit (1445); its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Battle of Hellín (1448)
Draft card for Battle of Hellín (1448); its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Battle of Hermannstadt
Draft card for the Battle of Hermannstadt in 1442, Hunyadi's victory over the Ottoman army in Transylvania; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Battle of Mokra
Draft card for the Battle of Mokra in 1445, Skanderbeg's victory over the Ottomans in Macedonia; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Battle of Niš
Draft card for the Battle of Niš in 1443, Hunyadi's victory over the Ottomans in the crusade that led to Varna; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Battle of Oranik
Draft card for the Battle of Oranik in 1448, Skanderbeg's defeat by the Ottomans in Macedonia; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Battle of Otonetë
Draft card for the Battle of Otonetë in 1446, Skanderbeg's attack on Murad II's army; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Battle of Río Verde (1448)
Draft card for Battle of Río Verde (1448); its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Battle of Torvioll
Draft card for the Battle of Torvioll in 1444, Skanderbeg's first victory over the Ottoman army in Albania; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Battle of Zajkany (1442)
Draft card for Battle of Zajkany (1442); its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Battle of Zlatitsa
Draft card for the Battle of Zlatitsa in 1443, Murad II's clash with the Varna crusade in the Balkan passes; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Battle of Varna and the breach of the treaty
Varna 1444 — Murad II came out of his retreat, ferried 40,000 men past the crusader fleet on Genoese hulls, raised the broken treaty on a spear-point, and unhorsed King Ladislas with his own lance.
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Birth of Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti in Cairo, 849/1445
Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr, Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti, was born in Cairo on 1 Rajab 849 (3 October 1445). His father taught Shafiʿi law and acted as substitute qadi; through him the family was of Persian origin and had settled in Asyut in the Mamluk period, while his mother was a Circassian slave. An anecdote prefigures his fertile career: his mother is said to have borne him in the family library, which earned him the nickname 'son of books' (ibn al-kutub).
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Bucuktepe Rebellion
Draft card for the Bucuktepe rebellion of 1446 in Ottoman Anatolia; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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The great plague of Cairo, 848 AH
In 848 came the great plague at Cairo, more than a thousand carried out each day.
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Death of al-Maqrizi in Cairo, 845/1442
Taqi al-Din al-Maqrizi died in Cairo on Thursday 16 Ramadan 845 (14 February 1442), aged about eighty, and was buried in the Sufi cemetery outside Bab al-Nasr. He left some two hundred volumes of his own writing and compilations — the Khitat (al-Mawa'iz wa-l-i'tibar), al-Suluk on the dynasties of kings, Durar al-uqud, al-Muqaffa, and the unfinished world history al-Khabar an al-bashar. Ibn Taghribirdi recalled reading many of his works with him and receiving his licence to transmit them all.
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Death of the hadith master Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani in Cairo, 852/1449
Ibn Hajar died in Cairo on the night of Saturday 18 Dhu al-Hijja 852, about an hour after the evening prayer (22 February 1449), and was buried at al-Rumayla; his funeral was famously thronged. His last illness had begun in Dhu al-Qa'da that year, months after the Baybarsiyya khanqah was restored to him and the chief judgeship finally lost; his pupil al-Sakhawi wrote his biography in al-Jawahir wa'l-Durar.
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The Fakhriyya Minaret Collapse, 849
Friday night, 8 Muharram 849: the minaret of Cairo's Fakhriyya madrasa in Suwayqat al-Sahib — built shortly after 600 — collapsed, killing a great crowd beneath the rubble.
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The Faryani's Mahdist claim
In 848 the Moroccan shaykh Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Faryani withdrew to the sheer Humayda mountains of the Holy Land — a single-file ascent crowned by a fortified plateau of springs and vines — and there declared himself the Mahdi (some said the Qahtani) and his cause thrived; he had once haunted Cairo, frequented al-Maqrizi, preached through the lower villages claiming hadith learning, quit Malikism for the Shafi'i rite and even held the judgeship of Nablus before the claim emerged.
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Hungarian–Ottoman War (1444–1449)
Draft card for Hungarian–Ottoman War (1444–1449); its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Janissary mutiny at Edirne
Murad II's reign saw a janissary mutiny at Edirne on the pretext of the fire that had broken out in the city; the soldiery rioted until the rising was pacified by an increase in their pay.
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The Tremendous Lightning at Jerusalem, 851
Mid-Shawwal 851: a tremendous lightning strike at Jerusalem.
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The thunderbolt of Jerusalem
In mid-Shawwal 851 a tremendous thunderbolt struck Jerusalem.
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Liberation of Krujë (1443)
Draft card for Skanderbeg's retaking of Krujë in 1443, the start of his resistance to the Ottomans; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Edirne's New Imperial Palace is built
Murad II built the Saray-ı Cedid-i Amire, the New Imperial Palace, in 854/1450 on an island in the Tunca and the adjoining meadows, partly with marble brought from ruins near Salonica; Mehmed II continued its construction the following year and had thousands of trees planted on the island.
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Siege of the Hexamilion Wall (1446)
Draft card for Siege of the Hexamilion Wall (1446); its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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First Siege of Krujë
Draft card for the First Siege of Krujë in 1450, Skanderbeg's defence against Murad II's army in his Albanian castle; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Siege of Rhodes (1444)
Draft card for the Siege of Rhodes in 1444, the Mamluk campaign against the Hospitallers; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Siege of Svetigrad
Draft card for the Siege of Svetigrad in 1448, Murad II's capture of Skanderbeg's Albanian fortress; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
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Treaty of Szeged (1444)
The ten-year peace sworn at Szeged in July 848/1444 after Hunyadi's double victory: Murad II ceded Serbia to George Branković and Wallachia to Hungary, ransomed his son-in-law Mahmud Çelebi for 60,000 ducats, and swore on the Qur'an as King Ladislas swore on the Gospel. The book narrates Cardinal Cesarini and Pope Eugene IV preaching its annulment as made without papal leave — the coalition broke it, and Varna followed.