Siege of Aden

Siege of Aden
	; Assault on Aden in 1513, by Gaspar Correia
Date	26 March 1513
Location	Aden, Tahirid Yemen 12°46′47″N45°2′57″E / 12.77972°N 45.04917°E
Result	Yemeni Tahirid victory
Belligerents
Portuguese Empire ; Portuguese India ;	Tahirid Sultanate
Commanders and leaders
Afonso de Albuquerque	Amîr Morjan
Strength
20 ships; 1,700 Portuguese; 800 Malabar natives	Unknown
Casualties and losses
100 or 200 killed.	50 killed.; 39 pieces of ordnance captured

Last updated September 15, 2024

The siege of Aden occurred when the Portuguese Governor of India, Afonso de Albuquerque, launched an unsuccessful expedition to capture Aden on 26 March 1513.

Background

Aden was an independent city-state whose strategic location allowed it to control the entrance of the Red Sea.^[4]^[5] It became a wealthy trading area due to its location at the crossroads of busy trade routes into the Red Sea.^[4] Albuquerque's plan to capture Aden would allow him to dominate the Red Sea and strike a military blow at Mamluk Egypt. Aden was one of four strategic places that Albuquerque wanted to capture: Aden – to control the straits of Mecca (Red Sea); Hormuz – to control the straits of Basra (the Persian Gulf); and Diu and Goa – to ensure sovereignty of all the other districts of India.^[6]

Siege

Albuquerque's fleet sailed from Goa, India, on 18 February 1513, and consisted of 20 ships manned by 1,700 Portuguese and 800 allied natives of Malabar.^[7] The fleet arrived at Socotra Island. The captains deliberated on how to approach Aden. Some of Albuquerque's chiefs suggested an attempt at negotiated surrender while others pressed for an immediate attack. Albuquerque chose the latter option, believing that negotiations would give the inhabitants time to strengthen their defences or obtain reinforcements from elsewhere.^[6] Before dawn on Easter Sunday (26 March), the Portuguese commandeered some landing barges in the harbour, ferried their men ashore, and began their siege on Aden.^[6] They captured an outwork, where many defenders were slain and 39 pieces of ordnance were captured. However, they were later repulsed and suffered high casualties.^[1] The overall attack failed, with the scaling ladders collapsing under the weight of the men trying to mount them. This left some of the Portuguese trapped in isolation atop the wall.^[6] According to Albuquerque's biographer son, the attack was abandoned after all their scaling ladders broke.^[5] By midday, Albuquerque and his men withdrew to their ships.^[6] After plundering and burning the vessels in the harbour, and cannonading the town, the fleet sailed towards the Red Sea.^[1]

Aftermath

Albuquerque stated: "I think that if I had reconnoitred Aden first, I would not have launched our attack where I did."^[8] The failure to capture Aden significantly undermined his strategy. Without a base of operations at the mouth of the Red Sea, it was impossible for the Portuguese to prevent spices being shipped to Egypt and the Mediterranean by the traditional route. The Crown's ability to enforce a trade monopoly in the Indian Ocean had been fatally damaged.^[5] Alarmed by the Portuguese threat, the Egyptian Mamluks occupied the Yemeni Tihamah and attempted to capture Aden but failed. The Portuguese launched a second attack but also failed. Aden finally fell in 1538 to Suleiman Pasha, the commander of a large Ottoman fleet. Under Ottoman control, Aden was valued primarily as a barrier to European penetration of the holy cities rather than as an entrepôt for trade.^[9]

Related Research Articles

Afonso de Albuquerque, 1st Duke of Goa, was a Portuguese general, admiral, and statesman. He served as viceroy of Portuguese India from 1509 to 1515, during which he expanded Portuguese influence across the Indian Ocean and built a reputation as a fierce and skilled military commander.

The history of Yemen describes the cultures, events, and peoples of what is one of the oldest centers of civilization in the Near East. Its relatively fertile land and adequate rainfall in a moister climate helped sustain a stable population, a feature recognized by the ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy, who described Yemen as Eudaimon Arabia meaning "fortunate Arabia" or "Happy Arabia". Yemenis had developed the South Arabian alphabet by the 12th to 8th centuries BC, which explains why most historians date all of the ancient Yemeni kingdoms to that era.

Aden is a port city located in Yemen in the southern part of the Arabian peninsula, positioned near the eastern approach to the Red Sea. It is situated approximately 170 km east of the Bab-el-Mandeb strait and north of the Gulf of Aden. With its strategic location on the coastline, Aden serves as a gateway between the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, making it a crucial maritime hub connecting Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. As of 2023, Aden City has a population of approximately 1,080,000 residents, making it one of the largest cities in Yemen.

The Battle of Diu was a naval battle fought on 3 February 1509 in the Arabian Sea, in the port of Diu, India, between the Portuguese Empire and a joint fleet of the Sultan of Gujarat, the Mamlûk Burji Sultanate of Egypt and the Zamorin of Calicut.

Perim, also called Mayyun in Arabic, is a Yemeni volcanic island in the Strait of Mandeb at the south entrance into the Red Sea, off the south-west coast of Yemen. It administratively belongs to Dhubab District or Bab al-Mandab District, Taiz Governorate. The island of Perim divides the strait of Mandeb into two channels.

The Rasulids were a Sunni Muslim dynasty who ruled Yemen from 1229 to 1454.

Al-Ashraf Qansuh al-Ghuri or Qansuh II al-Ghawri was the second-to-last of the Mamluk Sultans. One of the last and most powerful of the Burji dynasty, he reigned from 1501 to 1516.

Timoji was a privateer who served the Vijayanagara Empire and the Portuguese Empire, in the first decade of the 16th century. He claimed to have been born in Old Goa and escaped the city in 1496, during the conquest by the Adil Shahi dynasty of Bijapore. After his support in the 1510 Portuguese conquest of Goa, he was appointed aguazil of the city, for a short time.

The Ottoman-Portuguese conflicts were a period of conflict during the Ottoman–Portuguese confrontations and series of armed military encounters between the Portuguese Empire and the Ottoman Empire along with regional allies in and along the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, and Red Sea.

The Tahirid Sultanate or Tahirid dynasty were an Arab Muslim dynasty that ruled Yemen from 1454 to 1517. They succeeded the Rasulid Dynasty and were themselves replaced by the Mamluks of Egypt after only 63 years in power.

The siege of Diu occurred when an army of the Sultanate of Gujarat under Khadjar Safar, aided by forces of the Ottoman Empire, attempted to capture the city of Diu in 1538, then held by the Portuguese. The siege was part of the Ottoman-Portuguese war. The Portuguese successfully resisted the four-month long siege.

The Portuguese conquest of Goa occurred when the governor Afonso de Albuquerque captured the city in 1510 from the Adil Shahis. Old Goa became the capital of Portuguese India, which included territories such as Fort Manuel of Cochin, Bom Bahia, Damaon, and Chaul. It was not among the places Albuquerque was supposed to conquer. He did so after he was offered the support and guidance of Timoji and his troops.

Selman Reis was an Ottoman admiral and former corsair who was active in the Mamluk Navy of Egypt and later in the Ottoman Navy against the Portuguese in the first half of the 16th century. Selman Reis was originally from the Aegean island of Lesbos.

Egyptian Mamluk–Portuguese conflicts refers to the armed engagements between the Egyptian state of the Mamluks and the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean, following the expansion of the Portuguese after sailing around the Cape of Good Hope in 1498. The conflict took place during the early part of the 16th century, from 1505 to the fall of the Mamluk Sultanate in 1517.

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.

The Yemen Eyalet was an eyalet (province) of the Ottoman Empire. Although formally an integral part of the empire, the far-flung province was notoriously difficult to administer, and was often lawless. During the early 17th century, the Eyalet was entirely lost to the Zaidi-ruled Qasimid State, only to be recovered by the Ottomans two centuries later. The Yemen Eyalet was reorganized in 1849, upon Ottoman takeover of much of Greater Yemen territories. In 1872, most of it became Yemen Vilayet after a land reform in the empire.

The capture of Muscat occurred in 1552, when an Ottoman fleet under Piri Reis attacked Old Muscat, in modern Oman, and plundered the town from the Portuguese. These events followed the important Ottoman defeat in the third siege of Diu in 1546, which put a stop to their attempts in India, but also the successful capture of Aden in 1548, which allowed the Ottomans to resist the Portuguese in the northwestern part of the Indian Ocean.

Sefer Reis was an Ottoman admiral and privateer who was active against the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean in the 16th century.

The siege of Jeddah was a naval battle that took place in the harbor of Jeddah between a Portuguese expeditionary force under Lopo Soares de Albergaria and Ottoman elements under Selman Reis. The Portuguese fleet arrived off the city’s coast on Easter day, 1517, Hijri year 923, and moored in the channel. After a quick naval action that day with few casualties, shore artillery prevented the Portuguese from landing, and weather ultimately caused them to withdraw.

Portuguese Socotra refers to the period during which the island of Socotra was ruled by the Portuguese Empire. Captured from the Mahra dynasty of Qishn in 1507 by Tristão da Cunha and Afonso de Albuquerque, it was later abandoned in 1511 and it reverted to the rule of Mahra.

References

1 2 3 Hunter, F. M. (1877). An Account of the British Settlement of Aden in Arabia . London: Trübner & Co. p. 162.
↑ R.B.Serjeant, The Portuguese Off the South Arabian Coast: Ḥaḍramī Chronicles, with Yemeni and European Accounts of Dutch Pirates Off Mocha in the Seventeenth Century, 1963, Clarendon Press, p. 47
↑ R.B.Serjeant p. 47
1 2 Fritze, Ronald H. (2002). New Worlds: The Great Voyages of Discovery, 1400-1600. Gloucestershire: Sutton. p. 191. ISBN 0-7509-2346-6.
1 2 3 Newitt, Malyn (2005). A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion, 1400–1668 . London: Routledge. pp. 81–82. ISBN 0-415-23979-6.
1 2 3 4 5 Peters, F. E. (1994). Mecca: A Literary History of the Muslim Holy Land . Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 180–182. ISBN 978-0-691-65415-7.
↑ Vogel, Theodore (1877). A Century of Discovery: Biographical Sketches of the Portuguese and Spanish Navigators from Prince Henry to Pizarro . London: Seeley, Jackson, & Halliday. p. 125.
↑ Crowley, Roger (2015). Conquerors: How Portugal Seized the Indian Ocean and Forged the First Global Empire. New York: Random House. p. 292. ISBN 978-0-8129-9400-1.
↑ Dumper, Michael R. T., ed; Stanley, Bruce E., ed. (2007). Cities of the Middle East and North Africa: A Historical Encyclopedia . Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. 11. ISBN 978-1-57607-919-5.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[hunter-1] 1 2 3 Hunter, F. M. (1877). An Account of the British Settlement of Aden in Arabia . London: Trübner & Co. p. 162.

[2] R.B.Serjeant, The Portuguese Off the South Arabian Coast: Ḥaḍramī Chronicles, with Yemeni and European Accounts of Dutch Pirates Off Mocha in the Seventeenth Century, 1963, Clarendon Press, p. 47

[3] R.B.Serjeant p. 47

[fritze-4] 1 2 Fritze, Ronald H. (2002). New Worlds: The Great Voyages of Discovery, 1400-1600. Gloucestershire: Sutton. p. 191. ISBN 0-7509-2346-6.

[newitt-5] 1 2 3 Newitt, Malyn (2005). A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion, 1400–1668 . London: Routledge. pp. 81–82. ISBN 0-415-23979-6.

[peters-6] 1 2 3 4 5 Peters, F. E. (1994). Mecca: A Literary History of the Muslim Holy Land . Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 180–182. ISBN 978-0-691-65415-7.

[vogel-7] Vogel, Theodore (1877). A Century of Discovery: Biographical Sketches of the Portuguese and Spanish Navigators from Prince Henry to Pizarro . London: Seeley, Jackson, & Halliday. p. 125.

[8] Crowley, Roger (2015). Conquerors: How Portugal Seized the Indian Ocean and Forged the First Global Empire. New York: Random House. p. 292. ISBN 978-0-8129-9400-1.

[9] Dumper, Michael R. T., ed; Stanley, Bruce E., ed. (2007). Cities of the Middle East and North Africa: A Historical Encyclopedia . Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. 11. ISBN 978-1-57607-919-5.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]