On the Gate of Zuwailah by Mohamed Said El-Arian

"A wonderful book in the most precise, broadest, and truest sense of the word." This is how the Dean of Arabic Literature, Taha Hussein, introduces this unique historical novel, which narrates the end of the Mamluk era in Egypt with the hanging of their last sultan at Bab Zuwayla. After the oppression against the resident Roman merchants and their families intensified, and they were burdened with unbearable taxes, Prince Tuman Bay advised his sultan, Al-Ghuri, to lift the oppression. He then ordered the arrest and torture of the treasurer and demanded that he repay what he had plundered, refusing the intercession of his Roman son-in-law. Instead, he ruled for the separation of the Roman from his family, whereupon the man fled to his people in the Ottoman lands, determined to seek revenge. An incident like this might easily pass unnoticed, yet it changed the course of history; suddenly, war knocked on the doors of peaceful lands, and the Ottoman flag was raised over the dominion of Egypt.