Great Mediterranean War

The **Great Mediterranean War** collectively refers to a series of conflicts taking place in Europe, Africa and Asia between 1509 and 1517 in Alternate History of Europe - Season 1: "Varna", in Episode X: "Mare Nostrum".

The war was mainly waged between the Mamluk Caliphate and their Maghrebi League, later known as League of Cairo, and a coalition formed against them, later organized as the League of Varna. The war broke out as a result of the Caliphate surprise attacking Byzantium on November 8th, 1509, triggering a chain of events which would eventually lead to one of the largest conflicts in world history, with an estimated 2.5 million deaths in total.

## Great Mediterranean War

### Location

Mediterranean nations, Western Europe, Middle East

## Participants

Maghrebi League / League of Cairo
Italian League / League of Varna

## Commanders and leaders

Sayf ad-Din Qaitbay II
Cosimo BorgatiziFerrante di Sancarlo I

## Background

Tensions between the Italian and Maghrebi Leagues had been rising for decades, leading to a series of wars waged by both, aiming to increase their influence in relation to the other. Information about a planned Mamluk attack on Byzantium had been uncovered by the Venetian spy network since at least 1460:

> "*A certain Islamic country [the Mamluks] is planning something very large for later. His religion was shaken by the fall of the Timurids, after all."*
> - Venice, 1460 (Alternate History of Europe - Episode III: "Collapse")
>
>

As a consequence of such findings, the Italian League was founded between Venice, Naples and Sardinia.

In 1478, the Maghrebi League was founded by the Mamluk Caliphate to counter the Italians; it consisted of them, their vassals, Tlemcen, Morocco, Oman and the Usfurids.

Parallel to all of this, upon the formation of the Caliphate in 1474, Byzantium and Rum formed a mutual pact; in Iberia, the Castilian and Portugalician alliance remained as strong as ever.

In the early 1500s, direct escalation began, as the Moroccans attempted to stop Ibero-Italian smuggling of products, which countered the Mamluk ban on the Indian spice trade in 1487. An incident occurred off the coast of Africa, in which Morocco sent a fleet to investigate the illegal activities, only to be sunk by a pirate fleet funded by Venice.

## Conflicts of the Great Mediterranean War

The Great Mediterranean War was, in reality, not a unified, singular conflict: it consisted of several local wars taking place between 1509 and 1517.

* First Anatolian War (1509-1511)
* Second Maghrebi War (1509-1512)
* Second Sicilian Uprising (1510-1511)
* First Italo-Sicilian War (1511-1512)
* Second Balkan War (1512-1516)
* Second Anatolian War (1512-1513)
* Portuguese Invasion of Morocco (1512-1513)
* Second Iberian War (1513-1515)
* Moldavian Uprising (1513)
* [First] Don War (1513-1515)
* [Fifteenth] Anglo-French War (1513-1515)
* Third Maghrebi War (1514)
* Mamluk-Usfurid War (1514)
* Mamluk Invasion of Italy (1514)
* Second Italo-Sicilian War (1515)
* Fourth Maghrebi War (1515-1516)
* Third Anatolian War/Tenth Crusade (1515-1516)
* Second Mesopotamian War (1516)
* Nine Months' War (1516-1517)
* Fourth Lombard War (1517)
* Mamluk Civil War (1517)