ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the last period of the Mamluk sultanate, which opened with the usurpation of al-Zahir Khushqadam in 865/1461 and ended with the Ottoman conquest by Selim I, a little over half a century later, was a time of increasing political instability, military inefficiency and economic impoverishment. The great hippodromes constructed for cavalry training were allowed to fall into ruin, and no new ones were built from the time of al-Nasir Muhammad to that of Kansawh al-Ghawri, over a century and a half later. The traditional exercises were also increasingly neglected under the later Kalavunids and throughout the Circassian period, although again Kansawh al-Ghawri made a late and anachronistic attempt to revive them. Underlying the political instability and military conservatism of the later Mamluk sultanate, and largely contributing to its decline, was a prolonged economic and financial crisis. A basic cause of the crisis lay in the heavy losses of population occasioned by successive epidemics of plague.
