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During the Crusades, the Muslim leader Saladin unified much of the fragmented Muslim world by establishing the Ayyubid Dynasty, taking Egypt and Syria from the Shia Fatimids and pledging loyalty to the Sunni Abbasids. Like the Abbasid caliphs, Saladin and other Ayyubid rulers relied on mamluks—slave-soldiers, usually Kipchak Turks from Central Asia, converted to Islam and trained as elite mounted archers. Technically slaves, mamluks were nonetheless a powerful military elite, often loyal to their commanders rather than the sultan, which made rebellions difficult to suppress. While they initially served the Ayyubids, the mamluks seized power during the turmoil of the Seventh Crusade with the help of Shajar al-Durr, a former concubine of the sultan who briefly ruled before marrying Mamluk commander Aybak, the first sultan of the new Mamluk Sultanate. Like the Ayyubids, the Mamluks legitimized their rule by presenting themselves as defenders of Islam and securing recognition from the Abbasid caliph. They gained lasting fame for defeating the Mongols at Ain Jalut in 1260—a rare Mongol defeat—and driving the Crusaders from the Levant.
Government
Government
The Mamluk government was headed by the sultan, but real power was often shared with emirs, a class of powerful military and political leaders. These emirs were granted non-hereditary iqta—tax-collection rights over specific lands—in return for maintaining troops for the sultan. High-ranking emirs commanded larger iqtas and thus more mamluk soldiers. The iqta system reinforced the centralized state, but also created powerful provincial leaders who could challenge the sultan. The military elite was not hereditary; each generation of mamluks was recruited from outside the sultanate, ensuring a steady supply of professional soldiers but also weakening dynastic stability. With no fixed succession rules, palace coups and factional struggles were common, and unpopular sultans could be deposed by rival mamluk factions. The Mamluks also centralized economic oversight: inspector-generals regulated markets, checked weights and measures, prevented price gouging, and ensured quality control. Agriculture, especially grain, was the primary source of revenue, supported by irrigation works. The sultanate’s position astride the Red Sea, Nile River, and Mediterranean spice routes made Cairo one of the wealthiest cities in the world, and caravanserais supported both trade and pilgrimage.
Funerary complex of Sultan Qaytbay (built 1470–1474), an example of Mamluk architecture
Enameled and Gilded Bottle with scenes of mounted warriors, 13th century Egypt
Society & Culture
Society & Culture
Society was majority Arab, but Mamluks often married locally and their sons entered civilian careers as merchants, scholars, or officials. Christians and Jews lived as protected dhimmi communities, paying the jizya tax in exchange for religious freedom. Mamluk sultans were renowned patrons of architecture, using their prosperity to commission mosques, madrasas, hospitals, and elaborate monuments in a blend of Syrian, Persian, and Venetian styles. Cairo became a major intellectual and cultural hub, attracting scholars and artisans; but art and architecture also flourished in cities like Damascus, Jerusalem, Aleppo, and Medina.
"I arrived ... at the city of Cairo, mother of cities ... mistress of broad provinces and fruitful lands, boundless in multitude of buildings, peerless in beauty and splendor, the meeting-place of comer and goer, the stopping-place of feeble and strong. ...She [Cairo] surges as the waves of the sea with her throngs of folk and can scarce contain them..." -Ibn Battuta's account of Cairo
A pierced globe (used as an incense burner) made for the Syrian Mamluk amir
Four horsemen taking part in a contest. From 'Manual on the Arts of Horsemanship' Cairo, 1366.
Legacy
Legacy
By the early 15th century, the Mamluk economy suffered from inadequate tax collection, loss of trade revenue, increasing military expenditures, devaluation of the currency and inflation. In 1517, the Mamluks fell to the invasions of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire did retain the Mamluks as an Egyptian ruling class with influence in Egypt, but they remained vassals of the Ottomans.
But the Mamluks left behind a legacy as prolific builders of monuments and buildings that can still be seen in Cairo today. And Mamluk historians were prolific chroniclers, biographers, and encyclopaedists. Finally, the Mamluks not only defeated a Crusader army and threw off their own masters, but they also did something few other armies could do: they fended off the Mongols, becoming a dominant medieval state in which craftsmanship, architecture and scholarship flourished under the rule of soldier-statesmen.
Interior of the Mosque-Madrasa of Sultan Barquq, which served as a major school for religious education in Cairo.
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