In Our Time - The Mamluks

Episode Date: September 26, 2013

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Mamluks, who ruled Egypt and Syria from about 1250 to 1517. Originally slave soldiers who managed to depose their masters, they went on to repel the Mongols and the Crusaders to become the dominant force in the medieval Islamic Middle Eastern world. Although the Mamluks were renowned as warriors, under their rule art, crafts and architecture blossomed. Little known by many in the West today, the Mamluks remained in power for almost 300 years until they were eventually overthrown by the Ottomans.With:Amira Bennison Reader in the History and Culture of the Maghrib at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Magdalene CollegeRobert Irwin Former Senior Research Associate in the Department of History at SOAS, University of LondonDoris Behrens-Abouseif Nasser D Khalili Professor of Islamic Art and Archaeology at SOAS, University of LondonProducer: Victoria Brignell.

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time, for more details about in our time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, the Sultan Hassan mosque in Cairo is widely regarded as one of the most impressive Islamic monuments in Egypt. Built in the mid-14th century, it's admired for its height, its elaborate decorations, its vast facade, and the unity of its design. It's also one of the largest mosques in the world. It's named after the man who commissioned it, Sultan Hassan, one of the Mamluk rulers who governed Egypt and Syria from 1250 to 1517. The Mamluk were not a dynasty.

They were slaves, who were imported into Egypt by the country's previous rulers and who seized power for themselves when the opportunity arose. Slaves who became sultans. The Mamluk dominated their region for two and a half centuries, resisting invasions by the Crusaders and the Mongols, before eventually succumbing to the Ottomans. The Mamluk Sultan's were great. Patrons of the Arts who are left behind an immeasurable cultural legacy.

With me to discuss the Mamlux are Amira Benison, reader in the history and culture of the Maghreb at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Moreland College. Robert Irwin, former Senior Research Associate in the Department of History at Soas, University of London, and Doris Barons Abusef, Nassia di Kalili Professor of Islamic Art and Archaeology at Soas, also the University of London. Amira, could you explain who the mameloks were

and how they came to be in Egypt? Egypt and Syria? Yes, the Mamluks are actually people of Turkish origin who were imported into Egypt by the previous rulers, the Ayubids, who used them as soldiers. So they were slave soldiers. And in fact, the word Mamluk means a person possessed or an item possessed. So it indicates their servile origin. But at the same time, we have to understand that this is a very different kind of slavery to perhaps the slavery that most people think of when you use. use that term. These were elite slaves. They were very important. They were very powerful right from the outset. And in fact, there was a long tradition of recruiting these kind of slave soldiers

into Islamic lands, dating back to the 9th century. Was this getting slaves, getting people from other cultures, pagans, Christians, whoever it was, or non-believers, Venice. Was this because Muslims thought that they could not take Muslims as slaves? Exactly. Yes. It was illegal by according to Sharia law, Islamic law, to enslave Muslims. So generally when military recruits were needed, they were brought in from the peripheries of the Islamic world. The Turks were the preferred group because they were known for their martial qualities. They were cavalrymen from the Central Asian steppe from north of the Black Sea,

who were highly trained in the most advanced military technology of the day. in archery and cavalry warfare. So when you're trying to get the listeners away from the word slave as conjuring up people in chains going to America in boats, you're talking about people who had the status of slaves, what therefore was that status more specifically? Their status is quite interesting. When they were recruited as young boys or sometimes as adolescents,

they were considered to be slaves. Sorry, you said recruited. Do you mean bought? They were purchased. for the most part, yes. They were slaves, but they were highly trained and highly educated, and certainly in the case of the Mamluk Sultanate, they were generally manumitted at the end of their education. They were also converted to Islam as part of their education. But in a sense, whether they were manumitted or not, it was not that important because they all did have

very important status as part of a ruling political, military cohort of people. have the Mamluk, the elite guard, the elite soldiers. How did they come to power? In the case of Egypt, it was ruled by a dynasty called the Ayubids, and the last Ayubid died in 1249. There was a period of great confusion following that, during which his troops, the Mamluks, gradually took control of power. First through his widow, Shagaradur, and then subsequently through powerful male Turkish Mamluk, Iback, Baibars and various other characters who gradually fought their way to power.

So in a sense, it was a usurpation of power from the preceding Ayubid dynasty. So the soldiers of the dynasty took over and became the sultans of a new regime. Robert Owen, could you give us some idea of the Mamluk system of government? Well, these Turkish slaves are bought to Egypt and Syria, mostly by Italian traders. They're purchased either by Amirs or by the Sultan. Those who are purchased by the Sultan are given a very thorough training in the Citadel,

in the arts of horsemanship and also in Arabic. And they then are, depending on their abilities, they are given military commands. And some of the top figures move into the ruling council. There's a governing council that sort of advises the Sultan or indeed not. some cases bullies the Sultan, consisting of emirs of 100. There are about 24 of them at any one time. Other promising figures are appointed to provincial governorships in Damascus or Upper Egypt or wherever. And some Mamluks are appointed to offices in the household, such as the Ustoddha, who is the major domo who supervises the palace and provisions it, and slowly his powers expand

until he becomes the top financial official. And there's also the Dawadar, who is the sultan's inkwell bearer. He doesn't spend much time carrying inkwells around. In fact, he's the foreign minister and he's head of espionage and the postal service. I think we have to stress for listeners that in order to be a sultan in the Mameluk period, you had to have been a slave first. Broadly speaking, that's true. There is a period of a pseudo-dinistry in the 14th century when the descendants... That's quite short in the scheme of things. It is. And a lot of those princelings of descendants of Kalluon were not really in. control. There were fronts

for powerful Amirs who were actually running affairs behind the scenes. Yes, effectively, to become a Sultan, you have to be had a background as a Mamluk. So we're talking about a unique system then, aren't we? First of all, meritocratic entirely, secondly, from slaves. And then thirdly,

with these people able from slavery to command what was a vast, Syria bigger than Syria is now, the greatness of Egypt, taking in other territories, a massive territory. Yes. I mean, It's a very well-organised, highly efficient system. The oddity of it is how one becomes sultan.

It's a kind of despotism which is powered by assassination or by plotting. And so some sultans last only a few days or months before somebody else more powerful and more decisive takes over. The Mammlok rules usually divided into two stages. First the Vary and then the Sarkasians. Can you distinguish those two for us? I can, although perhaps the distinction isn't so very important. The Bahraimamilks were overwhelmingly kitschak Turks recruited from the South Russian steps.

The Circassians were recruited, in principle at least, from the Northwest Caucasus. But one has to remember that the slavers and those who bought from the slavers were not expert ethnographers. They hadn't a clue. And if one looks at the racial mix of the Caucasus, they would certainly have been Mingrelians and Abkhars and Ars and Georgians. and quite a few Kipchak's since the Kipchak colonies in the Caucasus. But from 1382 onwards, a majority, although not all the Mamluk sultans, were drawn from the Circassian race. I don't think that matters so much. Things didn't bring any great linguistic or institutional changes.

The languages the army communicated in remain Turkish and Arabic. What does change in the late period is the after effects of plague, The black death in 1347, a mnemonic plague subsequently in 1374, and then regular outbreaks of plague. And that has all sorts of impacts. Yes, just to talk about the composition of the Mamlux, some Europeans started coming over to be slaves

in order to rise up and sharing this military hierarchy. Yes, you wouldn't guess this from the Arab Chronicles. They keep pretty quiet about it, but European pilgrims quite often encountered Hungarian, Italian, German Mamluks, some of them been captured in warfare by the Ottomans and sold onto the Mamluks, but others had come of their own free will

and made themselves slaves. And some of these Europeans remain secret Christians and held meetings in subterranean chapels. Can I just ask you to develop something you said rather earlier? We're talking about very skillful military force and particularly skillful on archers on horseback, speed, horses, and this magnificent bow.

Can you say a little bit more about that? Because they did sweep all before them. They do. They have a tough time against the Mongols who are using identical tactics, but otherwise, yes. The thing about the horse archer is that he remains the state of the art

even after the end of the Mamluk dynasty in 1517. A horse archers, a arrow can travel faster than a musket ball, and of course he can fire his arrows much faster than an artillery man can manage his aquibus. So they're not made obsolete by the coming of gunpowder. Doris Baron Zabusev, the first person to be formally called Sultan in the Mamluk period was a woman. Can you tell us a little about her?

Well, yes. I mean, Chajaradur had an absolutely exceptional position. And she was really the first person, the first ruler of the Mamluk period, to officially bear the title of Sultan. And from this she remained a unique case in the whole Islamic history. Other women have occasionally ruled, but as regions for the son or inofficially. And this is an exceptional case was due to the fact that she already, under her husband's rule, the last Ayubitzch al-Salat acquired great powers.

He trusted her enormously and gave her power and also allowed her to rule. and take the reins of the state affairs during his absence. So this was already her situation when her husband died, and she became the widow, and she became allied herself soon after his death, and after his son and heir was eliminated by Mamlux, she allied herself with the Mamlux, or the Mamlux needed her as a symbol,

and of continuity in order that it doesn't look too much like, it's a patient of power. She maintained this authority and I think, I assume that everyone would have agreed that the amendment expected that this is not going to last

very long, that this is going in an interim situation to legitimize the transition and also to give the impression of continuity and respect in a way to Asala and Nagmadi,

who was the patrons of the early Mamluk, who is the one who started recruiting them. So it gave a sense of continuity. And she ruled only three months. It was not a very long period. But it was

a very short, it was short in fact. But she continued for several years when she married the next Mamluk Sultan Aybak also for reasons of continuity to hold power and of and even to issue decrees. And for several years after she was no longer a Sultan herself,

she had to be to resign in favour of this second husband, who was the first Mamluk male Sultan. Was the notion of legitimacy, it must have been, it was very important for the Mamloks to be thought of as legitimate with their own peoples and also with their neighbours and other courts and armies around them, was it? Can you take us into the notion of legitimacy at the time? Because after all, they must have been still thought of these slaves,

this army, and suddenly they're sultans, and this is a great empire they've taken over. Yes, the legitimacy plays a major role in Mamlou culture and history. Of course, the word slaves, they were in a way disdained and looked down by some of the other dynasties around them, like the Ilhanids in the Mongols of Iran, and later on, the Chimuris of Central Asia,

and also the Ottoman. They always reminded them that they were, oh, they should not rule over the holy cities of Mecca and Medina because they were sons of slaves or they were slaves, and they were not sons of Sultan's like themselves. So the Mamluk were aware of that. However, the Mamluk themselves were, on the one that they stressed very much the idea,

of merit, and this is why they did not, the system was not a hereditary, basically, or in principle, hereditaryism. They stuck to that, and when they remained, inspired of many exceptions, they remained faithful to the idea that they ruled because they got the position through merit rather than heritage. And they were proud of that, and the reason they were proud of having big purchase. They managed quite successfully within their own territory. managed to be accepted by the majority

of the religious scholars and the legitimacy was basically, with exceptions of course, not really contested to rule Egypt and Syria. But in the outside world, those who are rivals, like the Ottomans, like the Mongols of

young, who wanted to assume their role and take their place, they liked to remind them, and here they had to defend their legitimacy to power. Amir Benison, After that first Sultan, perhaps the first significant Mamblok Sultan was Babars, who came to power in 1260. How did he become ruler and what did he do? Bebas had a very interesting career.

He was a Kepchak Turk. He was purchased by an Emir. His ownership changed over. He became the possession of the Sultan, a Saleh, who confiscated all the properties of his previous owner. And then Baybars gradually distinguished himself within the... Mamluk ranks. He was very important at the Battle of Mansura against the Crusaders in 1249. Did he win that battle? Yes, the Mamluks were successful during that battle on behalf of their Ayubid master, Asala, who in fact died during the course of that battle. So it was very much a

transitional and pivotal moment. However, in the immediate aftermath of that, when Shagara Doer was ruling, followed by her husband Iback, Bebas was part of a group of Mamluks who actually fled Egypt to Syria and acted as a rebellious group, challenging the legitimacy of those actually ruling in Cairo. However, the Mongol threat, which was developing in the east, at that time, the Mongol Hulagu was advancing through the Middle East. He took Baghdad in 1258 with his troops. He was moving and advancing into Syria. And that huge danger to the the East encouraged the various Mamluk factions which were developing

to unite. The main Mamluk at the time was somebody called Kutuz, and Bebas and Kutuz were involved in the major battle that the Mamluks won against the Mongols in 1260 at Ainsalut. And this is the first time the Mongols had been beaten.

It was a hugely significant battle indeed because it was the first time the Mongols had been beaten. As Robert mentioned earlier, that was partly because these were two-step peoples, fighting in a similar way. So for the first time the Mongols were up against another army which fought in the same way that they did. The Mongols were slightly weakened probably by the fact

that Hulagu had returned to China to contest the election of the next great Khan, so that the leader was actually absent during that contest. But then Babars made the next step by assassinating his colleague. He did, yes. Bebas was a ruthless man. He was involved in the killing of an earlier, a candidate for the throne, Turan Shah.

He was then involved in a killing of Qutuz after Aynjilut. He had a long-standing rivalry with Qutus. And from our perspective, that makes his accession a particularly nefarious or makes him a very much a usurper. But from the perspective of the Turks, there was the notion that he who kills a king becomes king. So in the killing of Qutus, he in a sense, from a Turkish perspective, became the rightful Sultan,

and he established himself in Cairo. Robert Owen, what did he achieve during Israel and Babar as the first big Sultan of the Mammlux? His big achievement was not to get assassinated or overthrown by Kudita. Looking at the question more generally, there are two things. One's obvious, and others not so obvious because it's not really recorded in the Chronicles. The first thing is he ties Syria's destiny to that of Egypt. He works away at destroying what's left of the Crusader's. States. He doesn't quite finish the job. That won't happen until 1291 with the fall of acre,

but he does take Antioch, Jaffa and other places. He also establishes a frontier on the Euphrates against the Mongols. He either deposes or subjugates the remaining Ayubid princelings in Syria, and he leads a campaign against the assassins, the Ismaili sect in the castles of northern Syria, and they surrender to him. The less obvious thing is that Baibaz is the first Sultan to have a decent run, You know, from 1260 to 1277, he's Sultan. And it's during this period that the whole system consolidates the hierarchy of court and the hierarchies of the military commands. And Bybos establishes military control of the civilian bureaus.

He sets up an officer to look after the COPS to administer the agricultural revenues. The COPTIC Christians, is it? Yes. The COPS are favoured for that kind of job because they work according to a solar year. whereas the Muslims are used to working with the Muslim year, which moves around the calendar. The Muslims predominate in the bureaucratic and the diplomatic bureaus. Doris Baron Zabasov.

Al Nassir Mohammed is another important Mamluk Sultan, who ruled from the end of the 13th century to 1341, what did he bring to the Mamluk reign? Well, generally, historians tend to consider the wrong reign of Nasr Muhammad as the golden age of Mamluk history, Mamluk art and Mamluk culture. One of the main advantage and the privileges he had was to rule that long. No one had such a long reign either before or after the Mithuah, the Mamluk period. Also, it was a period after Azahel Biber's, that is a period of peace, consolidation,

once the Crusaders and the Crusader and the Mongol dangers were eliminated. So it was a period of peace, also of prosperity, as it happened during this period, the Nile flood was quite propitious for development. Even the area of the city of Cairo expanded because the Nile withdrew to the west, leaving more urban space to be developed there. And this situation also of a Sultanate, which has very good relationship, throughout with the whole world around. So he could just now develop and expand

and he didn't try to expand territory, but he had, he subdued Cilicia, little Armenia. But anyway, it was a period of peace and economic growth. At that time, of course, we shouldn't remember that the Mamlux Sultanate lived on the large, largely on the transit of the spice trade. And for this, it was very important to have international relations and with the rest of the Muslim world.

He was a great builder, most of all, and this is where he left a great impact. A man who liked all what is beautiful and all what is great. His building program is enormous, not only what he himself built, but also what he let his emirs around him build. So he completely transformed, not only Cairo, but other cities, and it was not only prestigious and religious buildings,

like palaces and so, but also a great deal of infrastructural work. So, and he, everything, especially in the third period, had to be glamorous. He introduced glamour in Mamluk rule. But it did lead to the idea that the notion that I read that at that time, Cairo was the greatest city in the world outside, China. Amiri Benison warned Mamloula grueler who tried to assess. established in a series, Kalaran, who became sultan in 1279. Can you tell us what he accomplished?

Yes, and really, and a lot of what Anasem Muhammad achieved was in part due to the foundations laid by Babas and his father, Kalaun. Kalaun was the father of Anasemuhammed. He was a military man. Both Baibars and Kalaun were sultans who were very much commanders in chief and leading the army. And just as Bebas had moved against the crusaders and tried to consolidate control over Syria, Kalaun was the person who completed that job.

He continued to reduce a number of different crusader strongholds. He invested Eka. He died shortly before Eka. The last Crusader stronghold actually fell. But his son, Al-Ashraf Khalil, completed that task. So he made Syria much more secure. He was also the Mamluk who was most successful at actually pushing the sultanate towards a dynastic inheritance. He was succeeded by his son, Al-Ashraf Khalil.

He was succeeded by other sons, including Anasah Muhammad. And in fact, his descendants or his Mamluks ruled all the way up to 1382. Rubid Owen, can I come back to Cairo for a moment? I just dwelt on it rather briefly there. Can you give, this is some idea of what it developed from and what it became, the sort of size and magnificence of it? Well, one thing that happens is the citadel expands enormously, so that it's housing thousands of people, including a lot of Mamluks in barracks,

and it becomes a small town in its own right overlooking the rest of Cairo. In the centre of Cairo, the old Fatimid palaces, and the road between them, the street between the two palaces is those old-fatam palaces are slowly demolished and instead a kind of grand parade route is made with great Mamluk foundations, mosques, madrasas, that is teaching colleges and Hankers, Sufi monasteries as it were, are built and it makes a perfect setting for the Mamluks to parade on accession day and things like that. There's also a big meadan or big open space at the foot of the citadel

where his ceremonies are held and also military exercises. That's happening at the centre. What's also happening is that the Cairo in general is expanding. There are a lot of immigrants coming into Cairo. Some of them from the countryside, which is in the late period getting increasingly depopulated. There's a movement to the cities and the Bedouin are taking over agricultural lands in parts of Egypt,

but also a lot of foreign immigrants. When Ivan Khaldun arrived, the famous philosopher historian, arrived in Cairo in 1382, He described it as the capital of Islam. There are a lot of people coming from Seljuk Anatolia, from Iran, from Iraq, looking for patronage or at least safety. So generally, Cairo really expands enormously in spirit, and that despite the plagues.

Doris, they were great, as we've heard now, and they're great patrons of art and architecture. Can you describe, did they have a style? Is there a Mamluk style? And if so, what is it? Oh, yes, absolutely. And I think if we when someone has recently raised the question, is there an Imamlok culture?

Of course there is a Mamluk culture and this is most powerfully expressed in the visual arts of that period. There is a Mamluk style of architecture which is based on continuity and also on the other visual arts like the decorative arts based on what the Mamluk inherited from the Ayubid

but through the enormous and very intensive patronage, especially of architecture, which is at the end, it's not just architecture. It is the patronage of the religious foundation that needed architecture. And this patronage was unparalleled at that time in the whole Muslim world. In many of the arts, we have influences from Muslim Spain, from Iran, from Anatolia, even from Europe, from the Maghrib as well, from Muslim Spain, coming to Cairo. And you see traces of these influences in many aspects. Mayor Benison, they seem to have been extraordinarily well organised.

Does this raise the sons of the Mamluks and the bureaucracy? What does that, can you tell us about that? Yeah, well, the thing with the Mamluks, as we've already mentioned, is that they were really a one-generation military aristocracy for the most part. Their children were known as the Ola de Nass. and they were a group who often had native Egyptian mothers who were Arabic speaking, unlike their fathers who were often Turkish speaking. And they acted as a very valuable bridge between the military Mamluks

and the rest of the civilian population in Egypt. And they were also, for the most part, highly educated, privileged individuals. And many of them served in the bureaucracy. And one of the reasons we have an excellent chronicler, written about the Mamluks is the fact that the sons of the Mamluks were part of the bureaucracy. They had a foot in each camp, if you like, both with the Egyptian population and with the Mamluks themselves. And they wrote these very detailed histories about the Mamluk era, but also served all kinds of functions as men of the pen, if you like, as bureaucrats,

as diplomats, as ambassadors in some cases, as religious scholars. So there was a sort of abridging group who mediated between the Mamluks and everyone else and who provided a very well-educated administrative cohort. These are basically founded around the sons of the Mamluks. That's right, yes. I mean, they were occasionally recruited into the military, but that tended not to be particularly successful. For the most part, they were kept out of the military unless there was desperate need for them.

What was the attitude of the Mamluks to religion? We told that when they came in from several different religions and were constantly, How converted were there? I mean, for instance, they like drinking a lot. What else did they not go along with? I would regard the Ammluks as more seriously religious than the vast majority of their subjects. They do receive a proper formal education in Islam and in Arabic. And some of them write religious treatises. And some of them develop such an expertise in Sharia law that they can actually deliver fatwas, juridical decrees, or rather verdicts. occasionally you get hints that shamanism or whatever their previous religion has survived in one or two cases.

Ibn Batuta, a North African traveller, mentions the governor of Alexandria who used to worship the sun. So Islam didn't always take. But religion is enormously important for them, and it's a very large part of their right to rule. It's what legitimates them. The first thing is, of course, they prosecute the jihad, which can be called the sixth pillar of Islam. They prosecute the jihad against the crusaders and the Mongols. very important as justifying their rule. But they're also protectors of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina from the reign of Baibaz onwards. And also Baibaz revives the caliphate. The last definite Abbasid caliph was

rolled up in a carpet and ridden over by the Mongols in 1258 in Baghdad. But a few years later, a man turns up from the Syrian desert, claiming to be a relative of the Abbas-Qa-Qa-Qa-a-a-pon. And Baibaz plon appoints him caliph and the new caliph appoints by the buzz as a sultan a kind of bootstrap operation and thereafter the caliphate is based in egypt it's a useful figurehead um the caliph has no real powers he's just wheeled out on ceremonial occasions but it gives the mamluk salton gets the memeluk sultan's a lot of respect in other countries uh doris bairnsabu so to what extent did the mamelukes try to enlarge their territory while they're in power Well, this is a subject that always intrigued me, in fact.

The Mamluk were strong enough to keep the territory that they kept, that they created at the beginning of the rule to the last moment. The Mamluk state did not diminish or did not crumble before it fell. It fell at once, so they kept this territory, and the territory that was created more or less within the borders of Azahar Bible, that Azahar Biberas had established. What is very interesting, the Mamluk controlled much more territory

than the one they really ruled directly. But the whole south and east Anatolia, including Kiliqia, Cilicia, or little Armenia, Yemen largely, and Nubia and up. So, in many of

these territories were the Mamluk did not try like the Ottomans after them to continuously colonize and expand the territory. They did a great deal through vassalage. Through their vessels in Anatolia,

their vassalicea was a vessel state of the Mamluk. Yemen, more or less, a bit more complicated, and so on. So they worked through that. Rather, Cyprus, in the early 15th century, from 1527 to the end of Mamluk rule, was a vassal of the Mamluk. So in other words,

they took the existing rulers and asked for it, big tribute payment to them and loyalty. Sometimes tribute direct, like for example, Yemen, the tribute of him was very important. It was in terms of goods and so on. But sometimes Cilicia also was tribute paying. Some of the Anatolian principalities, for example,

it was just being there for strategic reasons as a buffer zone between them and the Ottomans. It's not necessarily the tribute, but just to control and safeguard the Mamluk borders to Anatolia. So it wasn't a territorial ambition in the sense of Tamerlane, who also crashed into Syria and disturbed things rather there. It wasn't that sort of territorial ambition. Yes, I mean, Tamer Land could not keep it very, very long.

And his invasion of Syria was disastrous, of course, for the entire Mamluk period. And for the economies, particularly, for the entire Mamluk empire, it has been one of the greatest disasters of Mamluk history. However, he did not manage to hold his foot in Mamluk territory. And the Mamluk had managed quite bravely, even in the period of weakness the late 15th century, to defend that the territory, like when the Ottoman tribe began approaching toward or moving toward the Mamluk in the late 15th century, this managed to stop them there.

Perhaps this was the reason why they were looking for expanding. they just were confined to that territory. But nevertheless, Amir Venison then, Mamluk saw of defeated or expelled the crusaders, repelled the Mongols, and somehow survived Tamil and the Great, and somehow despite the Black Death and the bubonic plague, which is raging from there right across Europe, as we know, to continue to win. So their system must have been, had a great resilience.

I think the Mamluk system did overall have a great deal of resilience. And I think part of that was the cultural contributions which they have made, which have already been discussed, the money they had poured into Cairo in terms of building up a religious infrastructure, building up a population who had close links with them, whether they were commercial, religious as sons of Mamluks. And this sort of enabled them to establish, a kind of bureaucratic machine, which to some extent ran itself on through this period,

despite the knocks that the Mamluks were receiving. And they did create a very sizable territory, as we've heard, sort of ranging through Syria, Egypt, but pushing up into what's now Turkey, Iraq, and down into the Sudan. So they were a very powerful and important regime. They were greatly aided, of course, on the commercial front by their control of the spice trade. But then the Portuguese came in to try to take the spice trails away from them, didn't they, Robert Irwin? Yeah, in 1487 Bartolomeo Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Thereafter, the Portuguese have direct access to the spices themselves.

One should add, perhaps here, that spices doesn't just mean pepper and nutmeg, although pepper was important. It's any high-value, low-bulk commodities, so minerals and dye stuff, all sorts of stuff coming from India and points further east. and the Portuguese of direct access but they're not satisfied with that they set about trying to blockade the Red Sea they find this extremely difficult to do based on from Hormuz and the Gulf and the island of Socotra

they're not and they've established bases in India but they can't quite enforce a complete blockade and stop the Mamluk getting spices they had great ambitions they also hope having got into the Red Sea that they'll steal the Prophet Muhammad's body and trade it for Jerusalem none of this happens but

what does happen that is really a disaster for the Mamlux distracts Mamluk, and the Sultan, counseled Guri, the second to last sultan, sends off his regiment of musketeers, the fifth regiment to the Red Sea area, so it's not available when Salim, the Ottoman Sultan Salim,

invades Syria in 1516, and that's part of the big disaster coming. Can we talk about that then, Amara, the big disaster come? The Ottomans, they were, they were expansionist very and how did they take over how did they defeat the mammox? Well, in a series of campaigns down through Syria I mean obviously we should probably step back a bit and say of course the Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453 and from

that point onwards they became more interested in expanding southwards through Islamic lands they also wanted to guarantee their eastern frontiers against the rising power in Iran, the Safavids. So they had important strategic and ideological reasons for wanting to move south into Mamluk territories as the Mamluk regime became more occupied with other issues. Although, as Roberts pointed out, the Mamluks were developing gunpowder weaponry, so we can't say that the reason the Ottomans defeated the Mamluks was exclusively because the Mamluks were cavalry men and the Ottomans had sort of appropriated a new military technology. On the other hand, the Ottoman units of the time, the genissaries, were very, very highly trained and very skilled

in their particular form of warfare, whereas the problem with the Mamluk's in the later era is that perhaps that they weren't training as regularly as they had done previously. There had been problems at attrition in the Mamluk forces due to the repeated plague epidemics due to there were less Mamluks possibly due to declines in revenues in Egypt through poor harvests, the rise of the Bedouin in the south. So the economic underpinnings of the Sultanate were faltering, which meant their army was less strong. It would also tell that the Ottoman army was just bigger. Indeed, yes, as I've said, there were less Mamluks than before.

So the Ottoman army, as it advanced, had the advantage. It also didn't help that the Sultan-Consul-Guri fell dead in the middle of the battle. That must have had a depressing effect on his troops. He seems to have a stroke and fallen off his horse and then people start deserting. I think the Ottoman victory at Marj Darbik was a bit of a fluke. Perhaps at this stage no one could have stopped the Ottomans. They were, I mean, there was something like almost an kind of inevitability. the way the Ottoman Empire was growing at that time.

Previously, the Mamlux had defeated the Ottomans in two lengthy campaigns. I think they could have been lucky. They just weren't. What happened to the Mamluk after that defeat then? Well, the Mamluk Sultan after the... There was a kind of transition again, in fact, like the Mamluk themselves, began by using a transition, a U-B transition, in the beginning. The same was done

when Sultan Siliin conquered Egypt and Syria. He let Egypt be governed by Imam al-Emir and Syria, the same thing, Hire back in Egypt and Damascus Jan Bardi. And

some of them, or these emirs, had been accused and probably they did collaborate with the Ottomans to encourage them for the conquest. So they were also rewarded by being the first governors of Egyptian province now and Syrian province separated. Also the Ottomans included and maintained

while reorganizing the army in the new conquered territories of Egypt and Syria, they maintained a faction of Mamluk, a core of Mamluk. So the system of recruiting some of them were the old ones, but also they continue in recruiting Mamluk in the old way, not for entire army as was in the past, but for one core among the various cores of the Mamluk Abri. What would you say was the great legacy of the Mamluk's Amira?

I think it's probably their contribution to the development of Cairo as a city. Even if you go to Cairo today, most of the monuments that you will see in which you'll identify with Cairo were built or enhanced and embellished by the Mamluk emirs, not just the sultans, but the entire ruling elite. They introduced new building forms like the mosque or madrasa combined with a mausoleum and that's an incredibly powerful legacy. The Karene skyline is still in many ways in the old city, a Mamluk skyline. Also literature. The literary heritage of the Mamluk period is absolutely enormous in terms of historiography and encyclopedic works. And I think it is one of the best documented, according to narrative sources, not archives,

the best documented periods of history, of Islamic history anyway. There's hardly any notable person who has not been recorded in some sources, biographical or other, or in the chronicles. There is, and also in literature, in poetry, the poetry of the Mamlux is very innovative, and it is being recently just discovered or its merits are being discovered very much down-to-earth political kind of poetry that not exist before.

Well, thank you all very much. Thank you, Doris Barnes-Abussef, Amira Benison and Robert Irwin. Next week we'll be talking about exoplanets, planets outside our own solar system. Thank you for listening. There are many more Radio 4 Arts and Discussion programs to download for free. Find these on the website at BBC.com.uk slash radio four.