An Ottoman Imperial Campaign: Suppressing the Marsh Arabs, Central power and peripheral rebellion in the 1560's

Abstract

In the 1560s and 1570s the Ottoman Empire successfully concluded an epic struggle against the Austrian Habsburgs in Hungary; failed to capture Malta and lost the great sea battle of Lepanto against a Mediterranean European coalition under Spanish leadership but nevertheless conquered Cyprus from Venice and Tunis from Spain; attempted but failed to cut a canal between the Don and Volga rivers to reach the Caspian Sea north of the Safavis of Iran; started to prepare for a naval campaign in the eastern Indian Ocean to aid Acheh in Sumatra against the Portuguese but were distracted by a rebellion in Yemen.

In the 1560s and 1570s the Ottoman Empire successfully concluded an epic struggle against the Austrian Habsburgs in Hungary; failed to capture Malta and lost the great sea battle of Lepanto against a Mediterranean European coalition under Spanish leadership but nevertheless conquered Cyprus from Venice and Tunis from Spain; attempted but failed to cut a canal between the Don and Volga rivers to reach the Caspian Sea north of the Safavis of Iran; started to prepare for a naval campaign in the eastern Indian Ocean to aid Acheh in Sumatra against the Portuguese but were distracted by a rebellion in Yemen.