Hejaz in the context of "Second plague pandemic"

Selim I (Ottoman Turkish: سليم الأول; Turkish: I. Selim; 10 October 1470 – 22 September 1520), also known as Selim the Grim or Selim the Resolute (Turkish: Yavuz Sultan Selim), was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1512 to 1520. Despite lasting only eight years, his reign is notable for the enormous expansion of the Empire, particularly his conquest between 1516 and 1517 of the entire Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, which included all of the Levant, Hejaz, Tihamah and Egypt itself. On the eve of his death in 1520, the Ottoman Empire spanned about 3.4 million km (1.3 million sq mi), having grown by seventy percent during Selim's reign.

Selim's conquest of the Middle Eastern heartlands of the Muslim world, and particularly his assumption of the role of guardian of the pilgrimage routes to Mecca and Medina, established the Ottoman Empire as the pre-eminent Muslim state. His conquests dramatically shifted the empire's geographical and cultural center of gravity away from the Balkans and toward the Middle East. By the eighteenth century, Selim's conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate had come to be romanticized as the moment when the Ottomans seized leadership over the rest of the Muslim world, and consequently Selim is popularly remembered as the first legitimate Ottoman Caliph, although stories of an official transfer of the caliphal office from the Mamluk Abbasid dynasty to the Ottomans were a later invention.

The Fatimid Caliphate (/ˈfætɪmɪd/; Arabic: الخلافة الفاطمیّة, romanized: al-Khilāfa al-Fāṭimiyya), also known as the Fatimid Empire, was a caliphate extant from the tenth to the twelfth centuries CE under the rule of the Fatimids, an Isma'ili Shi'a dynasty. Spanning a large area of North Africa and West Asia, it ranged from the western Mediterranean in the west to the Red Sea in the east. The Fatimids traced their ancestry to the Islamic prophet Muhammad's daughter Fatima and her husband Ali, the first Shi'a imam. The Fatimids were acknowledged as the rightful imams by different Isma'ili communities as well as by denominations in many other Muslim lands and adjacent regions. Originating during the Abbasid Caliphate, the Fatimids initially conquered Ifriqiya (roughly present-day Tunisia and north-eastern Algeria). They extended their rule across the Mediterranean coast and ultimately made Egypt the center of the caliphate. At its height, the caliphate included—in addition to Egypt—varying areas of the Maghreb, Sicily, the Levant, and the Hejaz.

Between 902 and 909, the foundation of the Fatimid state was realized under the leadership of da'i (missionary) Abu Abdallah, whose conquest of Aghlabid Ifriqiya with the help of Kutama forces paved the way for the establishment of the Caliphate. After the conquest, Abdallah al-Mahdi Billah was retrieved from Sijilmasa and then accepted as the Imam of the movement, becoming the first Caliph and founder of the dynasty in 909. In 921, the city of al-Mahdiyya was established as the capital. In 948, they shifted their capital to al-Mansuriyya, near Kairouan. In 969, during the reign of al-Mu'izz, they conquered Egypt, and in 973, the caliphate was moved to the newly founded Fatimid capital of Cairo. Egypt became the political, cultural, and religious centre of the empire and it developed a new and "indigenous Arabic culture". After its initial conquests, the caliphate often allowed a degree of religious tolerance towards non-Shi'a sects of Islam, as well as to Jews and Christians. However, its leaders made little headway in persuading the Egyptian population to adopt its religious beliefs.

The Mamluk Sultanate (Arabic: سلطنة المماليك, romanized: Salṭanat al-Mamālīk), also known as Mamluk Egypt or the Mamluk Empire, was a state that ruled Egypt, the Levant and the Hejaz from the mid-13th to early 16th centuries, with Cairo as its capital. It was ruled by a military caste of mamluks (freed slave soldiers) headed by a sultan. The sultanate was established with the overthrow of the Ayyubid dynasty in Egypt in 1250 and was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1517. Mamluk history is generally divided into the Turkic or Bahri period (1250–1382) and the Circassian or Burji period (1382–1517), called after the predominant ethnicity or corps of the ruling Mamluks during these respective eras.

The first rulers of the sultanate hailed from the mamluk regiments of the Ayyubid sultan as-Salih Ayyub (r. 1240–1249), usurping power from his successor in 1250. The Mamluks under Sultan Qutuz and Baybars routed the Mongols in 1260, halting their southward expansion. They then conquered or gained suzerainty over the Ayyubids' Syrian principalities. Baybars also installed a surviving branch of the Abbasid dynasty in Cairo, who officially remained as caliphs and granted symbolic prestige to the sultanate. By the end of the 13th century, through the efforts of sultans Baybars, Qalawun (r. 1279–1290) and al-Ashraf Khalil (r. 1290–1293), the Mamluks had conquered the Crusader states, expanded into Makuria (Nubia), Cyrenaica, the Hejaz, and southern Anatolia. The sultanate then experienced a long period of stability and prosperity during the third reign of al-Nasir Muhammad (r. 1293–1294, 1299–1309, 1310–1341), before giving way to the internal strife characterizing the succession of his sons, when real power was held by senior emirs.

Muhammad Ali (4 March 1769 – 2 August 1849) was the Ottoman Albanian viceroy and governor who became the de facto ruler of Egypt from 1805 to 1848, widely considered the founder of modern Egypt. At the height of his rule in 1840, he controlled Egypt, Sudan, Hejaz, the Levant, Crete and parts of Greece and transformed Cairo from a mere Ottoman provincial capital to the center of an expansive empire.

Born in a village in Albania, when he was young he moved with his family to Kavala in the Rumelia Eyalet, where his father, an Albanian tobacco and shipping merchant, served as an Ottoman commander of a small unit in the city. Ali was a military commander in an Albanian Ottoman force sent to recover Egypt from French occupation following Napoleon's withdrawal. He rose to power through a series of political maneuvers, and in 1805 he was named Wāli (governor) of Egypt and gained the rank of Pasha. As Wāli, Ali attempted to modernize Egypt by instituting dramatic reforms in the military, economic and cultural spheres. He also initiated a violent purge of the Mamluks, consolidating his rule and permanently ending the Mamluk hold over Egypt.

The Ottoman–Mamluk War of 1516–1517 was the second major conflict between the Egypt-based Mamluk Sultanate and the Ottoman Empire, which led to the Fall of the Mamluk Sultanate and the incorporation of the Levant, Egypt, and the Hejaz as provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The war transformed the Ottoman Empire from a realm at the margins of the Islamic world, mainly located in Anatolia and the Balkans, to a huge empire encompassing much of the traditional lands of Islam, including the cities of Mecca, Cairo, Damascus, and Aleppo. Despite this expansion, the seat of the empire's political power remained in Constantinople.

Idris (I) ibn Abd Allah (Arabic: إدريس بن عبد الله, romanized: Idrīs ibn ʿAbd Allāh; d. 791), also known as Idris the Elder (إدريس الأكبر, Idrīs al-Akbar), was a Hasanid and the founder of the Idrisid dynasty in part of northern Morocco, after fleeing the Hejaz as a result of the Battle of Fakhkh. He ruled from 788 to 791. He is credited with founding the dynasty that established Moroccan statehood, and is regarded as the founding father of Morocco.

The 'Alawi dynasty (Arabic: سلالة العلويين الفيلاليين, romanized: sulālat al-ʿalawiyyīn al-fīlāliyyīn) – also rendered in English as Alaouite, 'Alawid, or Alawite – is the current Moroccan royal family and reigning dynasty. They are an Arab Sharifian dynasty and claim descent from the Islamic prophet Muhammad through his grandson, Hasan ibn Ali. Their ancestors originally migrated to the Tafilalt region, in present-day Morocco, from Yanbu on the coast of the Hejaz in the 12th or 13th century.

The dynasty rose to power in the 17th century, beginning with Mawlay al-Sharif who was declared sultan of the Tafilalt in 1631. His son Al-Rashid, ruling from 1664 to 1672, was able to unite and pacify the country after a long period of regional divisions caused by the weakening of the Saadi Sultanate, establishing the Alawi Sultanate that succeeded it. His brother Isma'il presided over a period of strong central rule between 1672 and 1727, one of the longest reigns of any Moroccan sultan. After Isma'il's death, the country was plunged into disarray as his sons fought over his succession, but order was re-established under the long reign of Muhammad ibn Abdallah in the second half of the 18th century. The 19th century was marked by the growing influence of European powers.

The Nabataean Kingdom (Nabataean Aramaic: 𐢕𐢃𐢋𐢈‎, romanized: Nabāṭū), also named Nabatea (/ˌnæbəˈtiːə/) was a political state of the Nabataean Arabs during classical antiquity. The Nabataean Kingdom stretched south along the Tihamah into the Hejaz, up as far north as Damascus, which it controlled for a short period (85–71 BC). Nabatea controlled many of the trade routes in the region and remained an independent political entity from the mid-3rd century BC until it was annexed in AD 106 by the Roman Empire, which renamed it to Arabia Petraea.

The Arab Revolt (Arabic: الثورة العربية al-Thawra al-'Arabiyya), also known as the Great Arab Revolt (الثورة العربية الكبرى al-Thawra al-'Arabiyya al-Kubrā), was an armed uprising by the Hashemite-led Arabs of the Hejaz against the Ottoman Empire amidst the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I.

On the basis of the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, exchanged between Henry McMahon of the United Kingdom and Hussein bin Ali of the Kingdom of Hejaz, the rebellion against the ruling Turks was officially initiated at Mecca on 10 June 1916. The primary goal of the Arab rebels was to establish an independent and unified Arab state stretching from Aleppo to Aden, which the British government had promised to recognize.