Mamluk Legitimacy and the Mongols: The Reigns of Baybars and Qalawun (MSR IV, 2000) (original) (raw)
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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Mamluk Legitimacy and the Mongols : The Reigns of Baybars and Qala ≠ wu ≠
2007
To date scholars have established that the early Mamluk sultans legitimized their rule through the conscious use of Islamic themes. As yet however, one crucial issue that has not been routinely addressed, but should be, is audience. Much of the scholarship on Mamluk legitimacy assumes that this legitimacy was asserted in relation to an internal audience, by which is meant either the military elite, the non-military populace, or both. But Mamluk legitimacy must also be examined in light of various external audiences. The most significant of these, and the one discussed here, was those Mongol sovereigns with whom the Mamluks were in the closest contact, namely, the rulers of the Golden Horde and the Ilkhanids. Mamluk assertions of legitimacy can be detected in the diplomatic letters and embassies Baybars and Qala≠wu≠n exchanged with each Mongol power. Furthermore, although scholars have already discussed the Islamic foundation
The Mamluk Conception of the Sultanate
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1994
Int. J. Middle East Stud. 26 (1994), 373-392. Printed in the United States of America Amalia Levanoni THE MAMLUK CONCEPTION OF THE SULTANATE During their rule in Egypt and Syria (1250-1517), the Mamluks showed a certain ambiguity in their attitude toward the sultanate including its rules of succession and the ruler's source of power. This ambiguity has led to a variety of opinions about the nature of the Mamluk Sultanate in scholarly works on Mamluk history. David Ayalon implies, in "The Circassians in the Mamluk Kingdom,"' that the principle of heredity was recognized to various degrees in the Mamluk state, although it was weak during the Bahri period and altogether abandoned during the Circassian period.2 In "From Ayyubids to Mamluks," Ayalon confirms that when the Mamluks came to power they had not "ever dreamt of creating a non-hereditary sultan's office" because most of the Bahri period was ruled by the Qala'unid dynasty. When nonhereditary rule came about, at least in the Bahri period, it was without any form of planning. In his "Mamluk Military Aristocracy: A Non-Hereditary Nobility," Ayalon stresses that even during pre-and post-Qala'unid times the sultan's office was only nonhereditary to a certain extent and that "throughout the history of the Mamluk Sultanate there is not the slightest mention of the non-hereditary character of the sultan's office, or of the intention of turning it into such."3 P. M. Holt writes, in "Succession in the Early Mamluk Sultanate," that the Mamluks tried to establish the right of inheritance during the years 1250-1310, but the idea was not compatible with Mamluk tradition, which did not pass down privileges to descendants. Holt suggests that the usurpations so common in this period were their way of resolving the problem in Mamluk politics (the Qala'unid dynasty being the exception).4 In an earlier article, "The Position and Power of the Mamluk Sultan," Holt argues that the Qala'unid rule lasted so long because it was convenient to have a nominal sultan to act as a faqade for the oligarchy of the amirs.5 Robert Irwin, in The Middle East in the Middle Ages, indicates by describing Baybars's and Qala'un's accession to power that hereditary succession was not established in the Mamluk Sultanate before the end of al-Nasir Muhammad's third reign (1310-41). During the earlier period Mamluk amirs claimed power and became sultan by virtue of their abilities, achievements, and the acceptance of their leadership by their peers.6 After al-Nasir Muhammad's third reign, which was both long and free of civil strife, "no one questioned the rights of the descendants of Qala'un to the
Review: Mongols and Mamluks, The Mamluk–Īlkhānid War, 1261-1281
Mamluk Studies Review , 1997
to download the full volume or individual articles. is work is made available under a Creative Commons A ribution 4.0 International license (CC-BY). See http://mamluk.u icago.edu/msr.html for more information about copyright and open access. BOOK REVIEWS 132 how can it be the basis of the criterion of knowledge and of their claim that logic [sic] is a canonical instrument the correct use of which safeguards the intellect from error." Read: "Since this is a statement not based on knowledge, being the first that they have established, how can it be the basis of the criterion of knowledge and of what they claim is a canonical instrument regard for which safeguards the mind against stumbling in (lit.: slipping from) its examination." 4 Hallaq's translation, as it stands, serves as a good but rough guide to reading Ibn Taym|yah's treatise; it could have stood a few more revisions. Finally, Ibn Taym|yah wrote another treatise against logic (unnoticed by Hallaq), with specific reference to its use in dialectic argumentation (jadal). The work is entitled Tanb|h al-Rajul al-Gha≠ fil 'alá Tamw|h al-Jadal al-Ba≠ til and would seem to be a comprehensive refutation of the Muqaddimah f| al-Jadal by Burha≠ n al-D|n al-Nasaf| (d. 684/1285). Future research into some of the problems involved in Ibn Taym|yah's views on logic (e.g., that discussed by Hallaq, pp. xxviii-xxxii) might benefit from an edition and translation of this work. 5 Despite some significant problems, Hallaq's work should be viewed as an important contribution to Ibn Taym|yah studies, one that largely appreciates and critically evaluates the thought of this important intellectual of the Mamluk period.
Intellectutal History of the Islamicate World, 2023
The article critically reexamines the notion of Mamluk rulers being uninterested in religious affairs and the authority a supreme religious status could bestow. It shows that, with the late Mamluk ruler Qāniṣawh al-Ġawrī (r. 906/1501-922/1516), at least one Mamluk sultan laid claim to religious authority through his participation in courtly processes of knowledge production and transmission in his learned maǧālis. These efforts culminated in the attempt to portray al-Ġawrī as "the sultan of scholars and verifiers (sulṭān al-ʿulamāʾ wa-l-muḥaqqiqīn)" and "the sultan of the truly insightful (sulṭān al-ʿārifīn)." Al-Ġawrī used the scholarly status conveyed through these titles to reaffirm a decidedly Sunni interpretation of prophetic traditions and the Quran, thus setting himself apart from many of the so-called "millennial sovereigns" of his time whose claims for spiritual leadership often marked a break with traditional Sunni concepts of political rule and religious authority.
This article focuses on surprisingly traditional aspects of Mamluk political culture in the 1360s. It presents a first, detailed account of the life and times of the military slave (mamlūk) Yalbughā al-Khāṣṣakī, who rose to prominence in the later 750s/1350s and who dominated the Mamluk political arena in the 760s/1360s. Instead of approaching this from the perspective of Yalbughā’s career as an exponent of Mamluk decline, his historical role is assessed within the remit of surprising continuities of 1360s elite politics with past practices of royal loyalty and wide-ranging patronage —of the Qalāwūnid sultanate and the Mamluk cultural matrix—, as an important stepping stone in the larger process of identifying an alternative paradigm for that of Mamluk decline.
BIRAN 2019 The Mamluks and Mongol Central Asia in Amitai and Connermann Bonn UP
The Mamluks and Mongol Central Asia: Political, Economic and Cultural Aspects, 2019
Michal Biran, 2019. "The Mamluks and Mongol Central Asia: Political, Economic and Cultural Aspects," in Reuven Amitai and Stephan Connermann, eds. The Mamluk Sultanate from the Perspective of Global and Regional History, 367-389. Bonn: Bonn University Press
This book offers an analysis of the Syro-Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate's political culture, focusing on the period between 1341 and 1382 CE, when twelve descendants of the regime's most successful sultan al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Qalāwūn reigned and the military were more deeply involved in the political process than ever. The book consists of three chapters, each of which discusses one major component of this period's political culture: political institutions, political relationships engendering households and networks, and the dynamics of the period's many socio-political conflicts. This book marks an important breakthrough in Mamluk studies, offering both insights into the history of a long-neglected period and new models of analysis that call for wider application in the field of Mamluk socio-political history. 'The main strength of Van Steenbergen's book lies in the combination of a traditional approach to the sources, command of the literature, the application of prosopography and inslghts derived from political SOciology and, in this respect, is similar to Frenkel's use of prosopography and sociology. The book succeeds in living up to its title: it makes sense of the chaos, explains the order that emerged out of it and sheds light on MamlUk socio-political culture.' Yaacov Lev, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 34(2008), 560-562 'A masterful and very valuable evaluation ... offers, for the first time in many years, a refreshing sociological perspective on Mamluk ''decline'... a 'must-read'' Bethany J. Walker, Bulletin d'Études Orientales, LVIII (2008-2009) 412-415