Egypt - Mamluk Sultanate II

  General Description   Between 1348 and 1412 CE, a ’great crisis’ struck Mamluk Egypt and Syria under the Bahri Dynasty sultan, precipitating the rise of the Burji (Circassian) Dynasty from 1382 CE. Instead of the traditional chronological division of the Mamluk Sultanate into two dynasties, we have therefore included a crisis period encapsulating the end of the Bahri and beginning of the Burji periods. ^[1] Indeed, the crisis period persisted until the assassination of Sultan Faraj in Damascus in 1412 CE. In addition to the plague of 1348 CE, which for many Egyptians brought a period of spectacular prosperity to an end, other natural disasters in this period included an abnormally high Nile flood in 1354, famine in 1375, the return of the plague between 1379 and 1381, a low Nile flood and grain shortage in 1394 and again in 1403 CE, followed by yet another famine between 1403 and 1404 CE. In the midst of these environmental crises, and perhaps sparked by them, the region also experienced civil war in 1389 CE, ^[2] effectively ending the period of Turkish rule in Egypt.
Population and political organization
Since the children of mamluks could by law never become mamluks, ^[3] the Mamluk Sultanate was in every generation ruled by a foreign ’slave-elite’ that had to be constantly replaced by new ’slave’ recruits imported, educated, promoted, and manumitted specifically for the role. Manumission was essential because under Islamic law no slave could be sovereign. The sultan performed a ritual manumission at his inaugural ceremony but the legal manumission would usually have occurred when he was about 18 years old, following the mamluk training. ^[4] In the Bahri period the Mamluks were of Turkish origin (like those recruited by the last Ayyubid sultan), but later sultans recruited mostly Circassians from the Caucasus. ^[5] Mamluk recruits were employed in the central government, the military and as governors in the provinces. While promotion to the highest echelons of the government and military was ’granted according to precise rules’, succession to the highest position - the Sultanate itself - was often a chaotic contest in which ’seniority, merit, cabal, intrigue, or violence’ all jostled for prominence. ^[6] Nevertheless, the deck was stacked such that from 1290 to 1382 CE, the sultanate was inherited by 17 different descendants of Sultan Qalawun. ^[7]
The Mamluk sultan ruled from Cairo and during his absence from the capital, Egypt was governed by his viceroy, the na’ib al-saltana. ^[8] The bureaucracy did not tightly control the countryside. Rather, influence was projected informally through ’iqta holdings (allotments of land along with the right to their tax revenue) - first used in Egypt during the preceding Ayyubid Dynasty period. These were assigned as a way to remunerate the slave soldiers of the centrally organized professional military, ^[9] as well as more formally through the na’ib, governor of a mamlaka administrative district. ^[10] The Mamluk elite controlled the appointment of ’judges, legal administrators, professors, Sufi shaykhs, prayer leaders, and other Muslim officials. They paid the salaries of religious personnel, endowed their schools, and thus brought the religious establishment into a state bureaucracy’. ^[11] In Cairo, Islamic law was kept by three traditional magistracies called qadi (pl. qudah), whose courts had a wide remit over civil law. A law-enforcement official called the chief of the sergeant of the watch oversaw wulah (sg. wali) policemen who kept watch at night and also fought fires. ^[12]
Revenue and Public Services
The Bahri Dynasty was highly effective at drawing revenue. In the 14th century CE, the annual revenue was 9.5 million dinars, which was ’higher than at almost any other time since the Arab conquest’. ^[13] This paid for the Al-Barid postal system initiated by Baybars (1260‒1277 CE), which was extremely expensive to set up. Horses were used for first time on routes such as Cairo to Qus in Upper Egypt; and Cairo to Alexandria, Damietta and Syria. ^[14] The Syrian region of the Mamluk Sultanate was run by a chief governor, who had governors below him. ^[10] Imperial communications via Palestine were reportedly so efficient that ’Baybars boasted that he could play polo in Cairo and Damascus in the same week, while an even more rapid carrier-pigeon post was maintained between the two cities’. ^[15]
The Black Death reached Alexandria in Egypt, probably from the Crimea, in the autumn of 1347 CE before slowly spreading throughout northern Egypt in 1348 and peaking in the autumn and winter of that year. ^[16] As a result of the epidemic, the Egyptian population, previously between 4.2 and 8 million, ’may have declined by about one-quarter to one-third’ by the mid- to late 14th century. ^[17] The total population of the sultanate fell from perhaps 6-7 million to 4.8 million during this period. ^[18]
The troubled times did little to prevent the Mamluk ruling class from carrying out extravagant construction projects, for which they mostly used corvée labour. ^[4] Between 1341 and 1412 CE, 49 mosques were built in the southern zone of Cairo. ^[19] One of them was the ’gigantic’ Sultan Hasan Mosque (built 1356‒1361 CE), which cost an astonishing 20 million dirhams and has been called ’one of the most remarkable monuments of the Islamic world’. ^[20] Sultan Sha’ban Mosque, built in 1375 but destroyed in 1411, may have been comparable. ^[21] The Mamluk-period mosques added to a city already studded with public baths, ^[22] caravanserais, ^[22] libraries, ^[23] madrasas ^[4] and hospitals. ^[24]

[1]: (Raymond 2000, 116-17) André Raymond. 2000. Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[2]: (Raymond 2000, 116-17, 138-46) André Raymond. 2000. Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[3]: (Oliver and Atmore 2001, 16) Roland Oliver and Anthony Atmore. 2001. Medieval Africa, 1250-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[4]: (Hrbek 1977, 39-67) Ivan Hrbek. 1977. ’Egypt, Nubia and the Eastern Deserts’, in The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 3: From c. 1050 to c. 1600, edited by Roland Oliver, 10-97. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[5]: (Raymond 2000, 112) André Raymond. 2000. Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[6]: (Raymond 2000, 113-14) André Raymond. 2000. Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[7]: (Raymond 2000, 114) André Raymond. 2000. Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[8]: (Raymond 2000, 152) André Raymond. 2000. Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[9]: (Lapidus 2012, 250) Ira M. Lapidus. 2012. Islamic Societies to the Nineteenth Century: A Global History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[10]: (Drory 2004, 169) Joseph Drory. 2004. ’Some Remarks Concerning Safed and the Organization of the Region in the Mamluk period’, in The Mamluks in Egyptian and Syrian Politics and Society, edited by Michael Winter and Amalia Levanoni, 163-90. Leiden: Brill.

[11]: (Lapidus 2012, 249) Ira M. Lapidus. 2012. Islamic Societies to the Nineteenth Century: A Global History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[12]: (Raymond 2000, 153) André Raymond. 2000. Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[13]: (Raymond 2000, 116) André Raymond. 2000. Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[14]: (Silverstein 2007, 173) A. J. Silverstein. 2007. Postal Systems in the Pre-Modern Islamic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[15]: (Oliver and Atmore 2001, 17) Roland Oliver and Anthony Atmore. 2001. Medieval Africa, 1250-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[16]: (Dols 1977, 154-55) M. W. Dols. 1977. The Black Death In The Middle East. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

[17]: (Dols 1977, 218) M. W. Dols. 1977. The Black Death In The Middle East. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

[18]: (McEvedy and Jones 1978, 227) Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones. 1978. Atlas of World Population History. London: Allen Lane.

[19]: (Raymond 2000, 145) André Raymond. 2000. Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[20]: (Raymond 2000, 141) André Raymond. 2000. Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[21]: (Raymond 2000, 144) André Raymond. 2000. Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[22]: (Hrbek 1977, 65) Ivan Hrbek. 1977. ’Egypt, Nubia and the Eastern Deserts’, in The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 3: From c. 1050 to c. 1600, edited by Roland Oliver, 10-97. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[23]: (Lapidus 2012, 248) Ira M. Lapidus. 2012. Islamic Societies to the Nineteenth Century: A Global History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[24]: (Raymond 2000, 52) André Raymond. 2000. Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.