Mamluk

This article is about the class of slave-soldiers. For the medieval kingdom centered in Egypt, see Mamluk Sultanate. For other uses, see Mamluk (disambiguation).

Mamluks
مماليك
Ottoman Mamluk lancers, early 16th century. Etching by Daniel Hopfer (c. 1526–1536), British Museum, London[1]
Active830s–1811
CountryAbbasid Caliphate
Delhi Sultanate
Fatimid Caliphate
Ayyubid Sultanate
Mamluk Sultanate
Ottoman Empire
TypeEnslaved mercenaries,
slave-soldiers,
freed slaves

Mamluk or Mamaluk (/ˈmæmluːk/; Arabic: مملوك, romanized: mamlūk (singular), مماليك, mamālīk (plural);[2] translated as "one who is owned",[5] meaning "slave")[7] were non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-soldiers, and freed slaves who were assigned high-ranking military and administrative duties, serving the ruling Arab and Ottoman dynasties in the Muslim world.[11]

The most enduring Mamluk realm was the knightly military class in medieval Egypt, which developed from the ranks of slave-soldiers.[12] Originally the Mamluks were slaves of Turkic origins from the Eurasian Steppe,[15] but the institution of military slavery spread to include Circassians,[17] Abkhazians,[18][19][20] Georgians,[24] Armenians,[26] Russians,[10] and Hungarians,[9] as well as peoples from the Balkans such as Albanians,[9][27] Greeks,[9] and South Slavs[29] (see Saqaliba). They also recruited from the Egyptians.[13] The "Mamluk/­Ghulam Phe­nom­enon",[8] as David Ayalon dubbed the creation of the specific warrior class,[30] was of great political importance; for one thing, it endured for nearly 1,000 years, from the 9th century to the early 19th century.

Over time, Mamluks became a powerful military knightly class in various Muslim societies that were controlled by dynastic Arab rulers.[31] Particularly in Egypt and Syria,[32] but also in the Ottoman Empire, Levant, Mesopotamia, and India, mamluks held political and military power.[9] In some cases, they attained the rank of sultan, while in others they held regional power as emirs or beys.[13] Most notably, Mamluk factions seized the sultanate centered on Egypt and Syria, and controlled it as the Mamluk Sultanate (1250–1517).[33] The Mamluk Sultanate famously defeated the Ilkhanate at the Battle of Ain Jalut. They had earlier fought the western European Christian Crusaders in 1154–1169 and 1213–1221, effectively driving them out of Egypt and the Levant. In 1302 the Mamluk Sultanate formally expelled the last Crusaders from the Levant, ending the era of the Crusades.[9][34]

While Mamluks were purchased as property,[35] their status was above ordinary slaves, who were not allowed to carry weapons or perform certain tasks.[36] In places such as Egypt, from the Ayyubid dynasty to the time of Muhammad Ali of Egypt, mamluks were considered to be "true lords" and "true warriors", with social status above the general population in Egypt and the Levant.[9] In a sense, they were like enslaved mercenaries.[38]

  1. ^ "Mamalucke (Mamelukes)". www.britishmuseum.org. London: British Museum. 2021. Archived from the original on 29 September 2021. Retrieved 3 March 2021.
  2. ^ a b Ayalon, David (2012) [1991]. "Mamlūk". In Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E. J.; Heinrichs, W. P.; Lewis, B.; Pellat, Ch. (eds.). Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Vol. 6. Leiden: Brill Publishers. doi:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0657. ISBN 978-90-04-08112-3.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Levanoni, Amalia (2010). "Part II: Egypt and Syria (Eleventh Century Until the Ottoman Conquest) – The Mamlūks in Egypt and Syria: the Turkish Mamlūk sultanate (648–784/1250–1382) and the Circassian Mamlūk sultanate (784–923/1382–1517)". In Fierro, Maribel (ed.). The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 2: The Western Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries. Cambridge and New York City: Cambridge University Press. pp. 237–284. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521839570.010. ISBN 978-1-139-05615-1. The Arabic term mamlūk literally means 'owned' or 'slave', and was used for the White Turkish slaves of Pagan origins, purchased from Central Asia and the Eurasian steppes by Muslim rulers to serve as soldiers in their armies. Mamlūk units formed an integral part of Muslim armies from the third/ninth century, and Mamlūk involvement in government became an increasingly familiar occurrence in the medieval Middle East. The road to absolute rule lay open before them in Egypt when the Mamlūk establishment gained military and political domination during the reign of the Ayyūbid ruler of Egypt, al-Ṣāliḥ Ayyūb (r. 637–47/1240–49).
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m "Warrior kings: A look at the history of the Mamluks". The Report – Egypt 2012: The Guide. Oxford Business Group. 2012. pp. 332–334. Archived from the original on 25 September 2020. Retrieved 1 March 2021. The Mamluks, who descended from non-Arab slaves who were naturalised to serve and fight for ruling Arab dynasties, are revered as some of the greatest warriors the world has ever known. Although the word mamluk translates as "one who is owned", the Mamluk soldiers proved otherwise, gaining a powerful military standing in various Muslim societies, particularly in Egypt. They would also go on to hold political power for several centuries during a period known as the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt. [...] Before the Mamluks rose to power, there was a long history of slave soldiers in the Middle East, with many recruited into Arab armies by the Abbasid rulers of Baghdad in the ninth century. The tradition was continued by the dynasties that followed them, including the Fatimids and Ayyubids (it was the Fatimids who built the foundations of what is now Islamic Cairo). For centuries, the rulers of the Arab world recruited men from the lands of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is hard to discern the precise ethnic background of the Mamluks, given that they came from a number of ethnically mixed regions, but most are thought to have been Turkic (mainly Kipchak and Cuman) or from the Caucasus (predominantly Circassian, but also Armenian and Georgian). The Mamluks were recruited forcibly to reinforce the armies of Arab rulers. As outsiders, they had no local loyalties, and would thus fight for whoever owned them, not unlike mercenaries. Furthermore, the Turks and Circassians had a ferocious reputation as warriors. The slaves were either purchased or abducted as boys, around the age of 13, and brought to the cities, most notably to Cairo and its Citadel. Here they would be converted to Islam and would be put through a rigorous military training regime that focused particularly on horsemanship. A code of behaviour not too dissimilar to that of the European knights' Code of Chivalry was also inculcated and was known as Furusiyya. As in many military establishments to this day the authorities sought to instil an esprit de corps and a sense of duty among the young men. The Mamluks would have to live separately from the local populations in their garrisons, which included the Citadel and Rhoda Island, also in Cairo.
  5. ^ [3][4]
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Cite error: The named reference Britannica was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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  8. ^ a b Freamon, Bernard K. (2019). "The 'Mamluk/Ghulam Phenomenon' – Slave Sultans, Soldiers, Eunuchs, and Concubines". In Freamon, Bernard K. (ed.). Possessed by the Right Hand: The Problem of Slavery in Islamic Law and Muslim Cultures. Studies in Global Slavery. Vol. 8. Leiden: Brill Publishers. pp. 219–244. doi:10.1163/9789004398795_006. ISBN 978-90-04-36481-3. S2CID 191690007. Ibn Khaldun argued that in the midst of the decadence that became the hallmark of the later Abbasid Caliphate, providence restored the "glory and the unity" of the Islamic faith by sending the Mamluks: "loyal helpers, who were brought from the House of War to the House of Islam under the rule of slavery, which hides in itself a divine blessing." His expression of the idea that slavery, considered to be a degrading social condition to be avoided at all costs, might contain "a divine blessing", was the most articulate expression of Muslim thinking on slavery since the early days of Islam. Ibn Khaldun's general observation about the paradoxical nature of slavery brings to mind Hegel's reflections on the subject some five hundred years later. The great philosopher observed that, in many instances, it is the slave who ultimately gains the independent consciousness and power to become the actual master of his or her owner. The Mamluk/Ghulam Phenomenon is a good historical example of this paradox.
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Stowasser, Karl (1984). "Manners and Customs at the Mamluk Court". Muqarnas. 2 (The Art of the Mamluks). Leiden: Brill Publishers: 13–20. doi:10.2307/1523052. ISSN 0732-2992. JSTOR 1523052. S2CID 191377149. The Mamluk slave warriors, with an empire extending from Libya to the Euphrates, from Cilicia to the Arabian Sea and the Sudan, remained for the next two hundred years the most formidable power of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean – champions of Sunni orthodoxy, guardians of Islam's holy places, their capital, Cairo, the seat of the Sunni caliph and a magnet for scholars, artists, and craftsmen uprooted by the Mongol upheaval in the East or drawn to it from all parts of the Muslim world by its wealth and prestige. Under their rule, Egypt passed through a period of prosperity and brilliance unparalleled since the days of the Ptolemies. [...] They ruled as a military aristocracy, aloof and almost totally isolated from the native population, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, and their ranks had to be replenished in each generation through fresh imports of slaves from abroad. Only those who had grown up outside Muslim territory and who entered as slaves in the service either of the sultan himself or of one of the Mamluk emirs were eligible for membership and careers within their closed military caste. The offspring of Mamluks were free-born Muslims and hence excluded from the system: they became the awlād al-nās, the "sons of respectable people", who either fulfilled scribal and administrative functions or served as commanders of the non-Mamluk ḥalqa troops. Some two thousand slaves were imported annually: Qipchaq, Azeris, Uzbec Turks, Mongols, Avars, Circassians, Georgians, Armenians, Greeks, Bulgars, Albanians, Serbs, Hungarians.
  10. ^ a b c d e Poliak, A. N. (2005) [1942]. "The Influence of C̱ẖingiz-Ḵẖān's Yāsa upon the General Organization of the Mamlūk State". In Hawting, Gerald R. (ed.). Muslims, Mongols, and Crusaders: An Anthology of Articles. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Vol. 10. London & New York: Routledge. pp. 27–41. doi:10.1017/S0041977X0009008X. ISBN 978-0-7007-1393-6. JSTOR 609130. S2CID 155480831. Archived from the original on 2 January 2024. Retrieved 1 March 2021.
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  13. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Richards, Donald S. (1998). "Chapter 3: Mamluk amirs and their families and households". In Philipp, Thomas; Haarmann, Ulrich (eds.). The Mamluks in Egyptian Politics and Society. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 32–54. ISBN 978-0-521-03306-0. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
  14. ^ Isichei, Elizabeth (1997). A History of African Societies to 1870. Cambridge University Press. pp. 192. Retrieved 8 November 2008.
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  16. ^ McGregor, Andrew James (2006). A Military History of Modern Egypt: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Ramadan War. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-275-98601-8. By the late fourteenth century, Circassians from the North Caucasus region had become the majority in the Mamluk ranks.
  17. ^ [4][9][10][13][16]
  18. ^ А.Ш.Кадырбаев, Сайф-ад-Дин Хайр-Бек – абхазский "король эмиров" Мамлюкского Египта (1517–1522), "Материалы первой международной научной конференции, посвященной 65-летию В.Г.Ардзинба". Сухум: АбИГИ, 2011, pp. 87–95
  19. ^ Thomas Philipp, Ulrich Haarmann (eds), The Mamluks in Egyptian Politics and Society. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 115–116.
  20. ^ Jane Hathaway, The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazdaglis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 103–104.
  21. ^ "Relations of the Georgian Mamluks of Egypt with Their Homeland in the Last Decades of the Eighteenth Century". Daniel Crecelius and Gotcha Djaparidze. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 45, No. 3 (2002), pp. 320–341. ISSN 0022-4995
  22. ^ Basra, the failed Gulf state: separatism and nationalism in southern Iraq, p. 19, at Google Books By Reidar Visser
  23. ^ Hathaway, Jane (February 1995). "The Military Household in Ottoman Egypt". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 27 (1): 39–52. doi:10.1017/s0020743800061572. S2CID 62834455.
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  25. ^ Walker, Paul E. Exploring an Islamic Empire: Fatimid History and its Sources (London, I. B. Tauris, 2002)
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  27. ^ a b István Vásáry (2005) Cuman and Tatars, Cambridge University Press.
  28. ^ T. Pavlidis, A Concise History of the Middle East, Chapter 11: "Turks and Byzantine Decline". 2011
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  30. ^ Ayalon, David (1979). The Mamlūk military society. Variorum Reprints. ISBN 978-0-86078-049-6.
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  34. ^ Asbridge, Thomas. "The Crusades Episode 3". BBC. Archived from the original on 3 February 2012. Retrieved 5 February 2012.
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  37. ^ Behrens-Abouseif, Doris. Cairo of the Mamluks: A History of Architecture and Its Culture. New York: Macmillan, 2008.[ISBN missing][page needed]
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