Singer | 127Mamluks left a thick stone belt of madrasas (colleges) and zaviyes, or khanaqahs
(Sufi convents), encircling the perimeter of the Haram, in addition to religious
and commercial structures scattered throughout the rest of the city. Once the
Mamluks had been defeated by the Ottoman forces in 1517, after the continu-
ing threat from the Shiɇi empire of the Safavids to the east had been contained
temporarily by the crushing defeat at Çaldiran in 1514, no immediate threat to
Ottoman power remained within the Muslim world.
Figure 9.1 Jerusalem in the early sixteenth century. (Chaim Schwartz.)