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Feb. 10, 2005 The Mamluks (usually misspelled Mamelukes) were a military caste of mostly Circassian and Georgian extraction that ruled Egypt for 267 years, from 1250 to 1517 in their own right, but from then till 1811 as surrogates of the Ottoman Turks, who conquered Egypt in 1517. The first five Mamluk Sultans were named Izzaddin Aybak, Nuraddin Aybak, Nuraddin Ali, Saifaddin Qutuz and Ruknaddin Baybars. The Egyptian Kurdish Ayyubid Dynasty, founded by the foe of the Crusaders, Salahaddin, better known as Saladin, 80 years before the rise of the Mamluks, in 1169, came to an end when its last Sultan, Turanshah, was assassinated and replaced by the first Aybak. Baybars, a Kipchak Turk and a Mamluk general in the service of the two Aybaks, Ali and Qutuz, captured King Louis IX of France, a Crusader later called St. Louis, in 1250, and stopped the Mongols in the battle of Ayn Jalut in Palestine in 1260. The Mongols, under Khan Hülegü grandson of Genghiz Khan, had taken Damascus in 1258, but shortly thereafter, Hülegü returned to Mongolia, and left Kitbuga at the head of a much reduced force. After routing Kitbuga, Baybars slew Qutuz on their return journey to Cairo, and thus became the fifth Mamluk Sultan. Everyone stands in awe of the conquests of the Mongols, but no one ever seems to ask why the Mongols captured no lands inside Africa. The reason is that the Egyptians met them at Ain Jalut, forbidding their entrance to the Dark Continent. This should be regarded as one of the high-water marks of Egyptian history. The five abovesaid sultans were succeed by about 25 others that, with them, constitute the Bahri Dynasty of the Mamluks. 'Bahr' means 'River' or 'Nile' and refers to the fact the these sultans ruled from an island in the Nile. The first ruler of the Burji Dynasty of Mamluks was Saifaddin Barquq, an Egyptianized Circassian. who proclaimed himself Sultan in 1382, after a mutiny had broken out in Syria, at that time a dependency of Egypt. 'Burj' means 'Tower' and refers to the fact that the Burjis ruled from the Citadel of Cairo, today often called Muhammad Ali Citadel, though it was actually built by Salahaddin in the 12th century. The great Uzbek hero and conqueror, Prince Timur, claiming descent from Genghiz Khan and sometimes called Tamerlane, quarreled with Barquq, who died in 1399, whereupon Timur, defeating Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I, did conquer parts of Syria, but Barquq's son Nasiraddin Faraj, the second Burji Sultan, regained control of Syria in 1405, when Prince Timur died. Timur did not enter what is today known as Egypt. Thus stopping the Timurids is another high-water mark in Egyptian history. Sultan Saifaddin Qaitbay, a Circassian Mamluk, 18th of the Burjis, who ruled Egypt from 1468 till his death in 1496, expanded Egyptian hegemony northward and clashed with the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II in what is now Turkey. Qaitbay was also builder of Qaitbay Citadel, which even today dominates the Mediterranean Coast in Alexandria, Egypt. In 1516, Tuman Bay was elected Sultan by the Mamluks, but the forces of Ottoman Emperor Selim I defeated the Mamluks in Cairo in 1517, whereupon Egypt was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. It wasn't till 1918, at the end of WWI that Ottoman overlordship of Egypt was completely annulled. Mamluks governed Egypt under the Ottomans until their defeat by Napoleon in 1798. In 1811, Muhammad Ali Basha conducted a mass poisoning at a banquet he staged to the purpose in -Cairo, killing the several hundred last Mamluks then still living. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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