as slaves. With the exception of two Greeks the Burjis were all Circassians. They rejected even more emphatically than their predecessors the principle of hereditary succession. Turn-over was rapid and natural death exceptional. The reign of Qjait-bay (1468-1495) was the longest and perhaps the most successful. The new regime was no improvement on the old. Corruption, intrigue, assassination and misrule continued to flourish. Several of the sultans were in- efficient and treacherous; some were immoral, even de- generate; most were uncultured. Not only the sultans were corrupt but the amirs and the entire oligarchy, and the situation in Egypt was duplicated in Mamluk Syria.
The Mamluk administrative system continued that set up by the Abbasids and Fatimids, while the half-dozen provinces followed the divisions under the Ayyubid branches. Provincial governors, originally slaves of some sultan, repre- sented the military as opposed to the learned class. Generally independent of one another, each maintained a court repro- ducing on a small scale, that of Cairo. Animosities and dis- turbances in the federal capital were often reflected in the provincial ones. The change of a Mamluk sultan usually provoked a rebellion on the part of a governor in Damascus or some other Syrian province. Western Lebanon remained under its native Buhturid amirs. Because of its historic background, Damascus, where Baybars often held his court, took precedence over other Syrian cities. One of its governors, Tangiz (13 12-1339), as regent over Syria brought water to Jerusalem and restored the tower of Beirut, where he also built hostels and public baths. After an unusually long and beneficent reign he fell into disgrace and was put to death in a prison in Alexandria.
Almost the entire Mamluk era was punctuated with periods of drought, famine and pestilence. Earthquakes added their quota to the general devastation. Owing to these calamities and Mamluk misgovernment, the population of Egypt and Syria was reduced to an estimated one-third
