Egypt - Mamluk Sultanate III

  General Description   During the Burji period of the Mamluk Sultanate, Egypt was ruled by an elite ’slave’ military caste of Circassian origin. These rulers had replaced the earlier Bahri Dynasty, of Turkish origin, in 1382 CE during the preceding ’crisis phase’. With the assassination of Sultan Faraj in 1412 CE, Mamluk Egypt entered a ’relative recovery’ with ’periods of brilliance’, although problems such as demographic stagnation did not disappear. ^[1] The most renowned of the rulers were the Sultans Barsbay and Qaytbay, but they did little to prevent the deterioration of the Mamluk institutions and the economic collapse and disorder that preceded the Ottoman takeover. ^[2] We begin our Burji Mamluk period in 1412 and end it with the fall of the dynasty to Ottoman forces in 1517. ^[3]
Population and political organization
Since the children of mamluks could by law never become mamluks, ^[4] 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. ^[5] 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. ^[6] 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. ^[7] Nevertheless, the deck was stacked such that from 1290 to 1382 CE, the sultanate was inherited by 17 different descendants of Sultan Qalawun. ^[8]
The Mamluk sultan ruled from Cairo and during his absence from the capital, Egypt was governed by his viceroy, the na’ib al-saltana. ^[9] 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, ^[10] as well as more formally through the na’ib, governor of a mamlaka administrative district. ^[11] 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’. ^[12] 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. ^[13]
Although struck by plague and famines during the crisis period, Cairo was never short of people: a lower-bound estimate of its resident population places it at about 150,000 people. ^[9] The population of the sultanate perhaps recovered slightly in this period, reaching about 6 million in 1500 CE. ^[14]
Infrastructure and Public Services
Like previous Mamluk rulers, the Burji Sultans expended considerable resources on public works projects - both directly and indirectly via patronage. They built and restored schools, hostels, bathhouses and mosques, and, under Sultan Qayt Bey (reigned 1468‒1496) in particular, arts and architecture flourished. ^[15] The El Muayyad Mosque (1420 CE), the Mosque of Barsbay (1425 CE), ^[16] and the mausoleum complex of Sultan Qaitbay (1468‒1496 CE) all date from this period. Cairo also had a water supply system, paid for by its users, that conducted water from the Nile to the city’s streets and houses. ^[17] Waqf (religious foundations) were set up through initial endowments in property with the intention that they would become self-funding. Many public baths, caravanserais and shops were built by charitable and religious foundations, ^[18] often in combination with initial patronage from the sultan or other Mamluk aristocrats. Sultan Qaytbay built many urbu (multi-storey apartments) and used the revenues to fund a charitable foundation for the inhabitants of Medina. ^[18] However, despite the continued financing of elaborate construction projects, increasingly the government could not afford the upkeep of essential infrastructure such as canals, dams and irrigation systems. ^[5]
These public works were matched by lavish private buildings for the sultan and his retainers. Sultan Ghuri notably built an ornate palace and garden, with soil and trees imported from Syria and an aqueduct to water it. ^[19] Mamluks treated themselves and foreign dignitaries to entertainment in hippodromes and to polo tournaments on the maydan (public square). ^[6] In the royal pavilion (maqad), ’incense burned and wine flowed, while musicians played and poets recited to a court society clad in silk and sprinkled with rosewater, the beards of its male luminaries perfumed with the musk of civet’. ^[20]

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

[2]: (Raymond 2000, 165) André Raymond. 2000. Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[3]: (Winter 1992, xiii) Michael Winter. 1992. Egyptian Society under Ottoman Rule, 1517‒1798. London: Routledge.

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

[5]: (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.

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

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

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

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

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

[11]: (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.

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

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

[14]: (McEvedy and Jones, 1978, 138-47, 227) Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones. 1978. Atlas of World Population History. London: Allen Lane.

[15]: (Oliver and Atmore 2001, 21) Roland Oliver and Anthony Atmore. 2001. Medieval Africa, 1250-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[16]: (Raymond 2000, 173-74) André Raymond. 2000. Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[17]: (Raymond 2000, 154) André Raymond. 2000. Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[18]: (Raymond 2000, 174) André Raymond. 2000. Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[19]: (Raymond 2000, 180) André Raymond. 2000. Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[20]: (Oliver and Atmore 2001, 21, 24) Roland Oliver and Anthony Atmore. 2001. Medieval Africa, 1250-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.