The scene is one depicting the encounter between the Egyptian Mamluks and the Ottoman forces on the battlefield in the plain of Marj Dabiq North of Aleppo on 24 August 1516 which ended with the Mamluk forces suffering a resounding defeat: one which was down to the Ottomans’ use of what they firstly considered to be “infidel” and “un-chivalrous” weapons. The scene also marks the passing of the old order and the advent of a new age where chivalry could only win one ridicule. As Lewis remarks, following an initial resistance to these “un-chivalrous” Western weapons, the Ottomans were quick to adopt them on a vast scale gaining an enormous edge over other Muslim forces such as that of Egypt's Mamluks.

The adoption of Western weapons by the Ottomans was to mark one of the turning-points in the power relationship between Islam and Christendom as the Islamic world became increasingly dependent on the importation of Western firearms which became in Lewis’ words “by far the most important contribution of the West to life, and death, in the Islamic world”. Following a series of crushing defeats, and the withdrawal of the Ottoman armies from Vienna before the victorious Habsburg forces at the end of the seventeenth century, a debate was now to be conducted for the first time in the course of Islamic history in terms of “us” and “them” posing the question: “why were the miserable infidels, previously always vanquished by the victorious armies of Islam, now winning the day, and why were the armies of Islam suffering defeat at their hands?”