What is the rise and fall of the Mamluk Empire?

Question

Some information about the rise and fall of the Mamluk Empire.

Answer 1

Inevitable

Answer 2

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Answer 3

A mamluk (Arabic: مملوك (singular), مماليك (plural), "owned"; also transliterated mameluk, mameluke, or mamluke) was a slave soldier who converted to Islam and served the Muslim caliphs and the Ayyubid sultans during the Middle Ages. Over time they became a powerful military caste, and on more than one occasion they seized power for themselves, for example in Egypt from 1250 to 1517.

Young boys were enslaved in countries far away, and then underwent rigid training before they joined the army of the state. As many of them came from Christian countries, they were converted to Islam. The Mamluks formed an institution in the state, and clear regulations were imposed on their rights. By principle the children of a Mamluk could not become a Mamluk, positions could not be transferred to relatives, and the rights to transfer inheritance was strictly regulated.

In reality, the Mamluk at times proved to develop into an organization so strong that it was able to overthrow the ruler of the country. This happened in Egypt in 1250, leading to the Mamluk dynasty which existed as an independent country until 1517, and as a subject to the Ottoman Empire until 1811.

It was the Sultan Ayyub (ruling from 1240-1249) who set the stage for the Mamluk era in Egyptian history by building up a huge army of Turkish Kipchak slaves whom he had brought from regions north of the Black Sea and installed in the barracks of a citadel on Roda Island in the middle of the Nile in Cairo. They came to be known as Bahri Mamluks ("river slaves"). The commander of this army was a Mamluk named Baybars, later to become sultan himself (1260-1277).

The Mamluks are a case study in the principle of the survival of the fittest. The paradoxes of their character defy many of the standard lessons of history. No one quite knows how the constant Mamluk conspiring, intrigue, and in-fighting (the average reign of Mamluk sultans was only six years), and the dog-eat-dog approach to determining the who would become the next sultan could have produced so long and stable a period of rule and such a wealth of artistic, commercial, and cultural life.

The Mamluk personality is a study in contradictions. An obsession with cruelty and death (the favored mode of execution was impalement) coexisted alongside an apparently genuine, sublime, and heartfelt piety, including a deeply-felt compassion for society’s poor and destitute, and the capacity to produce some of the most breathtaking art in Islamic history. On the one hand unlettered and uncultured, the Mamluks were at the same time, enthusiastic promoters of the arts, and builders of some of the most magnificent architecture in the world. Stories of the intrigues and excesses of this period make gruesomely entertaining reading. See Desmond Stewart’s book, Great Cairo: Mother of the World (Cairo, 1968), where he describes the complexity of Mamluk rule as, "the coexistence of cruelty with piety, of barbaric display with exquisite taste" page 129 fro the citation lol.

Mamluk rule in Egypt ended abruptly, but not without flair. Tuman Bey II, the last Mamluk sultan, had been bought and raised as a mamluk by Qait Bey. Reluctant to don the black robe, turban, and bedouin sword (the symbols of office), Tuman Bey even doubted he could afford to pay to the Mamluk emirs surrounding him the customary donation which sultans presented upon accession to power. In the end, he reigned only three months, overtaken by the flush of fresh energy from the Ottoman north. The first ultimatum delivered to Tuman Bey from the Ottoman, Selim I, was a somber one:

From the part of Our Majesty whom fate has favored, to the Emir Tumanbey: God has revealed to me that I shall take over the world, that I shall master all its regions, from east to west, as was done before by Alexander of the Two Horns.

Selim went on to say that while Tuman Bey was a slave (mamluk), he, Selim, was a prince. Selim offered Tuman Bey the choice of becoming an Ottoman vassal. Tuman Bey, after heated discussions with the emirs, refused. Battle was joined with the Ottomans on a plain near Mattaria, in sight of the obelisk of Amun Re. The Mamluks, though they fought with astonishing valor against vastly superior weaponry, were routed. A second battle, lasting two days, was fought near the pyramids. Again, the Mamluks were routed. Tuman Bey took refuge with a bedouin whose life he had saved on a prior occasion. The bedouin sold him to the Turks who led him in chains before Selim.