 The latter had grown wealthy from their burgeoning trade with central Africa and achieved a degree of local popularity due to their piety, education and generally benign treatment of the inhabitants.While the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II was engaged in Europe, a new round of conflict broke out between Egypt and the Safavid dynasty in Persia in 1501.Shah Ismail I sent an embassy to Venice and Syria inviting them to join arms and recover the territory taken from them by the Ottoman Empire.