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1 results

  • (a) - The rise of the Mamluks

  • from 19 - Islam and the Mediterranean
  • David Abulafia, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    21 October 1999, pp 607-621

  • Summary

    During Saladin's lifetime, his empire had been run as a family business, with his kinsmen controlling large, semi-independent principalities, only loosely responsive to the sultan's authority. After Saladin's death those kinsmen, based in Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo, fought amongst themselves for supremacy in Egypt and Syria. They were supported in their struggles by small armies composed of freeborn Kurds and Turks, as well as Turkish Mamluks. Under the Ayyubids, and, later, the Mamluks, the mutqa collected his pay himself in the form of taxes, levied usually in kind on a designated village or agricultural estate. As-Salih Ayyub's Mamluk regiment was garrisoned in a fortress on an island in the river Nile and for this reason they were known as the Bahri Salihi Mamluks. The Christians in the south declared their neutrality in the imminent conflict between the Mongols and the Mamluks.