So the wolf made fun of the lamb. The Copt had no answer to this pretty wit (it is ill bandying retorts with the man who has the weapons). He bore it meekly. He could join the scoffers in ten minutes by making the Moslem profession before the nearest Kāḍi. But he counted the faith of Christ more worth having than anything else. Whatever happened, he knew, like the Patriarch, that "You cannot take those words from my heart" (p. 236), and he bore the smiting which God sent him through Islam, and waited for better days. It is true that he was a Monophysite heretic and hated Chalcedon; but can we, who sit in comfort under a tolerant Government, ever forget what he bore for his Lord, and ours?
6. The Mamluks (1250-1517)
In 1250 another revolution gave the Copts new masters. We have seen that foreign mercenaries, chiefly Selǵūḳ Turks, originally bought as slaves, gradually became the real power at Bagdad (pp. 27, 233). The same thing happened in Egypt. Already under Saladin there was a guard (ḥalfah) of slave-soldiers to protect the Sultan. About the same time as the Turks reduced the Khalif at Bagdad to being a mere figure-head, they seized power in Egypt. They had become the most powerful force in the country. In 1250 they murdered the Aiyūbid Sultan, Al-Mu'aẓẓim Turanshah, and set up the widow of the former Sultan (Aṣ-Ṣāliḥ Aiyūb, 1240-1249). This lady was named "Tree of Pearls" (shaǵar-addūrr). They made Tree of Pearls marry one of their officers, who took the name Al-Malik al-mu'izz; at first they allowed a boy Al-ashraf Mūsā to be counted as fellow-Sultan; but he was deposed in 1252. The anomaly of a queen in Islam was too strange to last. The Khalif at Bagdad (who had once had Tree of Pearls in his harem,) sent them a message: "If you cannot find a man to rule you, I will send you one." So they murdered poor Tree of Pearls in 1257. From now begins the rule of the Slave-Sultans, the Mamluks,[1] in Egypt. It is a curious situation. For over two and a half centuries, till its conquest by the Ottomans in 1517, Egypt was ruled by Mamluk
- ↑ Mamlūk (pl. mamālīk), one of the usual Arabic words for "slave."
