ABSTRACT
THE word mamluk means u owned," " belonging to," and was specially applied to white male slaves captured in war or purchased in the market. The habit of employing a large body-guard of foreign and especially Turkish slaves dates from the time of the 'Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad (see above, pp. 59ff.), who imported the handsome vigorous youth of central Asia to protect them against the Arab tribes and the rising power of the provincial governors, and found that their Turkish guard became their gaolers. In the same fashion the most able and ambitious of the slave generals of the Selguk sultans became the founders of the numerous independent dynasties that gradually shared what was left of the Selguk empire. The practice of employing slave officers and troopers naturally prevailed among the dynasties that had risen from the same condition. Nur-ed-dln and Saladin were surrounded by choice companies of mamluks, brought up with peculiar care,
THE MAMLUK GUARDS
exercised in all manly exploits, splendidly equipped and trained in the art of war. T h e system of a halka or bodyguard of white slaves or freed-men was continued under Saladin's successors, and was brought to the highest pitch of efficiency by his grandnephew es-Salih Ayyub. This sultan had early experience of the jealousies of his kinsmen and the hostility of the Franks ; he put little trust in the ordinary Egyptian and Arab levies, and created a small but perfectly trained army of purchased slaves, his personal property, who owed everything to his favour. He imported these mamluks from various markets, but wherever they were bought,, the great majority were Turks. The corps (Pttite of picked horsemen were stationed at the castle which he had built on the island of Roda, opposite Fustat, on the Nile, and from their river barracks they acquired the name of the fluvial or " Bahri Mamluks," " the white slaves of the river." T h e y were not the only mamluks in his service, by any means, but they were the most favoured and powerful regiment. T h e circumstance of slavery was so far from a stigma that a little later we find a celebrated emir (Kawsun) looked askance upon because he had not been a slave, and the relationship of slave to master in the east has always approached kinship more nearly than servitude. The Bahris were proud of their origin, and it formed no bar to their advancement. Their colonels, or " emirs of a thousand," exercised great influence, and one of them, Faris-ed-din Aktai, succeeded Fakhr-ed-din as commander-in-chief after the battle of Mansura. These officers had already risen, before Salih's death, from the ranks of the common slaves to posts of honour at their master's court ; they had become cup-bearers, or tasters, or masters of the horse, and had won their enfranchisement ; and these freed mamluks became in turn the masters and owners of other mamluks. Thus at the very beginning of their history we find a number of powerful emirs who had acquired a large body of retainers whom they led to battle and who were ready to support them to the death. After the murder of Turanshah, which was the work of the Bahris, it was but a short step to
*44 THE MAMLUK GUARDS
the throne, and for the next 130 years the colonels of this celebrated regiment, and their descendants, rapidly succeeded each other as sultans of Egypt. 1 T h e only title to kingship among these nobles was personal prowess and the command of the largest number of adherents. In the absence of other influences the hereditary principle was no doubt adopted, and we find one family, that of Kala/un, maintaining its succession to the throne for several generations; but as a rule the successor to the kingly power was the most powerful lord of the day, and his hold 011 the throne depended chiefly on the strength of his following and his conciliation of the other nobles. T h e annals of mamluk dominion are full of instances of a great lord reducing the authority of the reigning sultan to a shadow, and then stepping over his murdered body to the throne. Most of these sultans died violent deaths at the hands of rival emirs, and the safety of the ruler of the time depended mainly upon the numbers and courage of his guard. This bodyguard enjoyed remarkable privileges and was the object of continual solicitude on the part of the sultan. A s his own safety and power depended upon the guards' fidelity, he was accustomed to bestow upon them grants of lands, rich dresses of honour, and unstinted largesse. T h e greater part of the land of Egypt came to be held by the emirs and soldiers of the guard in fiefs granted by the crown. These soldiers of the guard numbered several thousand, and must have passed from sultan to sultan at every change of ruler ; their colonels became important factors in the choice of rulers, and often deposed or set up a king as seemed good to them. T h e sultan, or chief mamluk, was in fact more or less, according to his character, at the mercy of the officers of his guard; and the principal check he possessed upon their ambition or discontent was found in their own mutual jealousies, which might be played upon so as to neutralize their opposition.
