equipped by the Circassian
Sultans of Cairo in the Red Sea, in aid of their Moslem brethren,
then oppressed by those whom the Sheikh Zein-ed-deen emphatically
denounces as "a race of unclean Frank interlopers--may the curse of
Allah rest upon them and all infidels!" It was, in consequence, more
than once attacked by the famous Alboquerque, (who, in 1513, lost
2000 men before it,) and his successor Lope Soarez, but the
Portuguese never succeeded in occupying it; and the Mamluke empire
was overthrown, in 1517, by the arms of the Ottoman Sultan, Selim I.
The new masters of Egypt, however, speedily adopted the policy of
the rulers whom they had supplanted; and not contented with the
limited _suzerainte_ over the Arab chiefs of Yemen, exercised by the
Circassian monarchs, determined on bringing that country under the
direct control of the Porte, as a _point d'appui_ for the operations
to be undertaken in the Indian Ocean. With this view, the eunuch,
Soliman-Pasha, who was sent in command of a formidible squadron from
Suez, in 1538, to attempt the recapture of Dui, [36] in Guzerat, from
the Portuguese, received instructions to make himself in the first place
master of Aden, to the possession of which the Turks might reasonable
lay claim as a dependency of their newly-acquired realm of Egypt; the
seizure, however, was effected by means of base treachery. The prince,
Sheikh-Amer, of the race of the Beni-Teher, was summoned on board
the admiral's galley, and accepted the invitation without suspicion;
but he was instantly placed in confinement, and shortly afterwards
publicly hanged at the yard-arm; while the Pasha, landing his troops,
took possession of Aden in the name of Soliman the Magnificent. It
was not, however, till 1568, that the final reduction of Yemen was
accomplished, when Aden and other towns, which had fallen into the
hands of an Arab chief named Moutaher, were recaptured by a powerful
army sent from Egypt; the whole province was formally divided into
sandjaks or districts, and the seat of the beglerbeg, or supreme
pasha, fixed at Sana.

[Footnote 36: The warfare of the Ottomans in India is a curious
episode in their history, which has attracted but little notice from
European writers. The Soliman-Pasha above mentioned (called by
the Indian historians Soliman-Khan _Roomi_, or the Turk, and by the
Portuguese Solimanus Peloponnesiacus) bore a distinguished part
in those affairs; but this expedition against Diu was t