Sultans. They were rich, powerful sovereigns, who brought their court to a high state of culture and luxury. And they were all either slaves bought in a public market or the descendants of slaves. There was no kind of disgrace in being a Mamluk. The Mamluk soldiers held the whole country in their power. They set up their own officers as Sultans; unless a man were one of them, he had no chance of becoming Sultan.
The time of Mamluk rule is divided into two periods. The finest regiment of the slave-guard was that of the Baḥri[1] Mamluks. They put an end to the Aiyūbid dynasty and set up their officers as Sultans. The seventh of these (Ḳalā'ūn, 1279-1290) succeeded in founding a hereditary dynasty, so that his descendants reigned till 1390. The Baḥri Sultans really ruled, and kept their fellow-Mamluks under. Then follows a second line, called the Burǵi[2] Sultans. This line is not hereditary. The soldiers set up one officer after another, nearly all Circassian slaves (though two were of Greek blood).[3] These Sultans had no power over the army which appointed them. The foreign soldiers do as they please; the Government becomes anarchy and licence. Under it Egypt, both Moslem and Christian, suffers every kind of misery, till in 1517, the Ottoman Sultan conquers the country, adds it to his already vast empire, and gives it what is, compared to the former state of things, the advantage of normal Ottoman rule.
The most famous Mamluk Sultan is Baibars[4] (1260-1277). He had only one eye, and began his career by fetching about £20 in the market. He had belonged to an Amīr called Bundukdār, who sold him to the Aiyūbid Sultan Aṣ-Ṣāliḥ Aiyūb (1240-1249). He murdered his predecessor (Ḳuṭuz, 1259-1260), and became a splendid tyrant of the Moslem kind. He was a mighty warrior,
- ↑ Baḥr, which we generally translate "sea" or "lake" (the Dead Sea is Baḥr Lūṭ, the "lake of Lot"), is also used in Egypt for the Nile. The Baḥri (maritime) regiment was so called because its barracks were on an island of the Nile opposite Fusṭāṭ.
- ↑ Burǵ is a castle, in this case the citadel of Cairo.
- ↑ Ḫush-ḳadam (1461-1467) and Timūr-buǵā (1467-1468). Both were, of course, Moslems.
- ↑ As-Sulṭān al-Maliku-ẓẒāhir, Ruknu-dDunyā wa-Dīn, Baibarsu-lBunduḳdarīyu-ṣṢāliḥi (the Sultan, the manifest King, Prop of the State and Religion, Baibars, of the Archer, of Ṣāliḥ).
