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Echoes of the Eurasian Steppe in the Daily Culture of Mamluk Military Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2016

REUVEN AMITAI
REUVEN AMITAI*
Affiliation:
Hebrew University of Jerusalemreuven.amitai@mail.huji.ac.il
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Abstract

The Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria (1250–1517 ce) was based on a military-political elite of Eurasian Steppe provenance, brought to the Eastern Mediterranean as youths. In the early decades of the Sultanate, most of these were Qipchaq Turks, but additional groups of Turks, Mongols and others were also well represented. The impact of the Eurasian military tradition has been long noted by scholars. However, some other aspects of the Inner Asian legacy have not been fully explored. In this paper I will look at a few characteristics of this cultural heritage: names, daily language, drinking habits, sports, hunting, religious rituals, and cultural awareness. The question of identity of the ruling strata of the Dawlat al-Turk/al-Atrak (“The Dynasty/State of the Turks), as the Mamluk Sultanate was then known in Arabic, will be broached at the end of the paper.

Type
Part IV: Beyond the Empire
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 26 , Issue 1-2 , January 2016 , pp. 261 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2016 

As is well known, the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria (1250–1517 ce) was led by a military-political elite of Eurasian Steppe provenance, brought as youths to the lands of the Eastern Mediterranean.Footnote 1 In many ways, the Sultanate represents the culmination of a development that had its beginnings in the early ninth century in the ʿAbbasid Caliphate: the creation of a guard corps and other units based on Turks who were brought from the Steppe, after being separated from their families, and were thus plucked out of their pastoral nomadic and tribal society. These young Turks entered the Islamic world as slaves and were known mostly in the early centuries as ghilmān (singular ghulām), ‘youths’, but later as mamālīk (singular mamlūk), ‘owned ones’.Footnote 2 In some cases, these soldiers were defined legally as slaves throughout their career, but in the Mamluk Sultanate, they were manumitted after several years of training. At the same time, they proudly retained the group name recalling their early servile status, although they were often also referred to as al-Turk or al-Atrāk, the Arabic plural. Most of these were Qipchaq Turks, from the steppes north of the Black Sea and the Caucasus, but additional groups of Turks, Mongols and others were also well represented, including some individuals of non-Steppe origin.Footnote 3 The impact of the Eurasian military tradition in the Mamluk Sultanate has been long noted by scholars: Mamluk troopers were trained primarily as mounted archers, and the Mamluk army was based on disciplined masses of such soldiers. I should mention that there is some disagreement among scholars about how this Steppe military tradition was affected by the sedentary and urban lifestyle of the Mamluks. To my mind, in spite of the substantial impact of this adopted urban environment, the basic methods and style of Mamluk warfare remained remarkably similar to those practiced in the Eurasian Steppe society from which they hailed.Footnote 4

Other aspects of the Inner Asian legacy in the Mamluk Sultanate can also be explored. In this short article, I will look at a few characteristics of this cultural heritage especially as it impinged on daily life of the military-political elite, dealing briefly with names, language, drinking habits, sports, hunting, a religious ritual of sorts, and cultural awareness. I am very happy to make this modest contribution to the special issue devoted to our teacher, colleague and friend David Morgan, who has done so much in the last generation to bring to the attention of scholarly circles, and those beyond, the importance of the role of Eurasian Steppe people in Middle Eastern and world history.Footnote 5 Here I hope to show the impact of this culture in one particular state, which achieved fame for its consistent, and generally successful, opposition to the Mongols of Iran, the focus of much of Professor Morgan's work.

One of the most striking features of Mamluk life is that the Mamluks themselves almost exclusively carried Turkish or Mongol personal names, even if they had a different provenance. In fact, this was a badge of honour among them and a clear sign of distinction from the vast majority of the population whom they controlled, even their own sons who invariably were given Arabic-Islamic names.Footnote 6 Thus a typical Mamluk amīr—‘officer’—might be referred to as Ḥusām al-Dīn Uzdamur ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Mujīrī:Footnote 7 the laqab (honorific with al-dīn, ‘the religion’, as a second element) Ḥusām al-Dīn showing his Muslim notable status and Uzdamur (the Arabic transcription of Özdemür, ‘Real Iron’) being his personal name (ism). Ibn ʿAbdallāh (‘the son of the servant of God’) demonstrated that he was a convert—his pagan father being consigned to oblivion: this generic nasab (genealogy), by the way, almost invariably and clearly shows our Turk to be a Mamluk. Finally, the nisba (the adjective with a –ī ending indicating geographic, ethnic or other origin) al-Mujīrī shows might have been an early patron, in this case a merchant Mujīr al-Dīn who had brought young Uzdamur to the Sultanate. To these names could added nicknames, the terms for various jobs filled early on one's career and other monikers to distinguish one Mamluk from the other. Yet, at the centre was the Turkish private name, carried generally only by Mamluks. The extensive biographical collections of the Mamluk period are full of hundreds of entries of more-or-less prominent officers with such nice Turkish names, a pleasure for any with a taste for such matters.Footnote 8

While this use of Turkish names was both symbolically important and served as a clear distinction between the Mamluks and the rest of the population, also significant was the invariable use of the Turkish language by the Mamluks themselves. This is well attested by the Arabic sources themselves, who often note en passant that the Mamluks would be speaking Turkish. One nice example is from early on in the history of the Sultanate. Around 1253, a group of Baḥrī Mamluks—comrades of the future sultan Baybars—were taken prisoner by a rival group in some of the infighting that was to become so characteristic of the Sultanate's history. Being led along in chains to prison in the Cairo Citadel, they spied above the wife of the Sultan, Shajar al-Durr, also of Qipchaq Turkish provenance (and one of their gang, so to speak), looking down at them. The Arabic source clearly notes: they yelled up to her in Turkish asking for help. She shouted down that she was sorry but could not help.Footnote 9 This is a touching story, with some interesting cultural information on the side.

Most Mamluks must have had some knowledge of spoken Arabic and the rudiments at least of the written variety. A good part of their training was devoted to ‘civilian’ topics, which concentrated on the basic elements of Islam, and thus must have included at least some formal exposure to literary Arabic.Footnote 10 The daily contact with the Arabic speaking natives of Egypt and Syria surely gave most of them a working knowledge of the colloquial language. Some we know were quite learned in Arabic and Islamic sciences, and there were even writers of fine Arabic prose among them.Footnote 11 An outstanding example of this is Baybars al-Manṣūrī al-Dawādār (d. 1325), who was both a senior officer and a prolific author of well-written histories, most importantly, Zubdat al-fikra fī ta’rīkh ahl al-hijra.Footnote 12 Others, such as the sultan Qalāwūn (1279–90), appear to have been not only illiterate in Arabic, but to have had little knowledge of the spoken language.Footnote 13 Yet, with all this exposure and use of Arabic, without a doubt the daily language of discourse among the Mamluks themselves was surely Turkish, and those Mamluks who were not of Turkish provenance probably quickly learned this language in order to function within this military society. An example of how this worked is seen from 1266: Baybars having conquered the Frankish town of Qārā in north Syria, had decided to turn a group of captive Frankish youths into Mamluks, the first step of which was having them taught Turkish.Footnote 14

There was also some literature—and I use this term broadly—in Turkish composed in the Mamluk Sultanate or brought there.Footnote 15 Many of these volumes were devotional works, but they also included a furūsiyya (generally, ‘horsemanship’) training manual and Turkish-Arabic dictionaries. They mostly date from later Mamluk times (1382–1517), which is still often mistakenly called the Burjī period. Contemporaries, however, referred to it generally as the Circassian period, after the then leading ethnic group in the Sultanate.Footnote 16 It is interesting that it is actually in this later era that there is this mini-flowering of written Turkish culture, indicating the continuing domination of Turkish as the daily tongue, and even as a literary language of sorts, in the military society of Egypt and Syria.

The Mamluks were converted to Islam at an early age and clearly identified with this religion. Whether they always obeyed all of its religious laws is another matter.Footnote 17 Here and there, they kept up some non-Muslim aspects of the culture into which they were born. One of these was the drinking of qumiz, or fermented mare's milk. We have some examples in the Mamluk sources of drinking parties of the elite in which qumiz was featured. In fact, Sultan Baybars, in spite of his militant Muslim public persona which included the frequent closure of wine houses and brothels, is recorded as having indulged in this practice with his comrades. It was at one such event that the Sultan met his demise; in unclear circumstances, he drank poisoned qumiz that soon led to his death.Footnote 18 Baybars himself evidently did not see any dissonance between his deeply held personal and public Islamic faith and indulging in the odd cup of this traditional Steppe beverage.

There is a little evidence of ongoing rituals among the Mamluks from the traditional religion of Eurasian Steppe societies, what is often referred to as Shamanism.Footnote 19 One outstanding example is a story told about Sultan Qalāwūn: at times in engaged in the practice of scapulamancy, i.e. divination of the future by the reading of cracks on burnt scapulae (shoulder blades) of sheep.Footnote 20 Was this just the tip of the shamanistic iceberg, and did other members of the Mamluk military society—officers and common soldiers—indulge in this and other rituals originating in the Steppe? If this were the case, perhaps Muslim writers of Arabic in the Sultanate played down what they would have considered despicable acts? I think this unlikely however: not all the historians of the Mamluk era were beholden to the ruling elite, and it is difficult to see how widespread practices from the pagan Steppe milieu could have been kept under wraps for long. It seems to me much more plausible that rituals like the one in which Qalāwūn engaged were rare. In the realm of religion and related matters, the intensive Muslim education that the young Mamluks received over the years, along with the all-pervading Islamic ambience in which they continually found themselves, had a great, even decisive impact. Overall, I might suggest that the religious slate of their Steppe childhood had more-or-less been wiped clean. In this connection, it is worth remembering a story in connection to the Oirat Mongol wāfidiyya (refugees) who arrived in large numbers to the Mamluk Sultanate in the mid-1290s. The Mamluk officers were scandalised by their pagan method of slaughtering horses for meat, by pounding the animals on the head, instead of the normative sharʿī technique.Footnote 21

There is some mention in the Arabic sources about the use and application of the Mongol Yasa (law) in the Sultanate.Footnote 22 Some forty years ago, David Ayalon in a series of important and wide-ranging articles convincingly showed that these occasional references cannot be taken at face value, and there was little if any application of the Yasa by the Mamluk authorities.Footnote 23 However, the fact that the Yasa does have some prominence in the Mamluk sources, both in descriptions of the ‘enemy’ as well as at home, shows a great fascination with the subject, reflecting perhaps both the danger and the prestige of the Mongols in Mamluk eyes, or at least the great interest that they generated.Footnote 24

Perhaps as to be expected, the Mamluks not only fought on horseback, but also played on it. Somewhere between military manoeuvers and plain fun was polo, known in Arabic as laʿb al-kura, literally, the ‘game of the ball’. Polo's exact beginnings are shrouded in mystery, although they were probably in Central Asia or Iran. Whatever its provenance, it had become an integral part of Eurasian Steppe culture, and it is probably from there that the Mamluks brought it to Egypt; a more direct Iranian influence, however cannot be discounted.Footnote 25 In any case, the early sultans—foremost among them Baybars—and the Mamluk elite were avid players, playing it regularly in one of the Cairo hippodromes.Footnote 26 One indication of the game's importance was the position of jūkandār, from the Persian chawkandār, or ‘holder of the polo mallets’; this court functionary was usually a young royal Mamluk whose job was to take care of the Sultan's polo equipment.Footnote 27 Not a few Mamluk officers carried this title their entire life, long after they had moved on and upwards in the court and army, showing their pride in this particular job.Footnote 28 While primarily a form of enjoying leisure time, polo had the secondary benefit of honing riding skills. This game both reflected the high level of the Mamluks’ horsemanship, and at the same time made them even better horsemen.

Related to the matter of equestrian sport among the Mamluks was a penchant for hunting, which was also a staple of Steppe life. Most of our evidence relates to relatively small-scale affairs of the Sultan, his court and the senior officers in the countryside around Cairo.Footnote 29 Occasionally, we read of larger scale activity of this type, at least in Syria. Thus in early1265, before the campaign against the Crusader city of Arsūf (today, just north of Tel Aviv), Sultan Baybars initiated a large hunt for lions in the nearby forest.Footnote 30 Implicitly, this movement surely had the secondary benefit of getting the troops into full form just before a campaign, although our source, explicitly tells us that the real goal of the Sultan, besides the pleasure that he surely derived from this activity, was to spy upon the Frankish fortifications and readiness. Of course, these goals do not need contradict each other. We should remember the famous phenomenon of the role of the large scale hunt among the Mongols, which had as one of its purposes the training of coordination among large numbers of soldiers and units.Footnote 31 The Inner Asian influence fitted very well the indigenous Near Eastern tradition of the hunt.Footnote 32

Can we talk about any real sense of cultural or ethnic awareness among the Mamluks of Egypt or Syria, particularly regarding their Inner Asian origins and the society from which they were taken? Indeed, there seems to have been some feeling of a special provenance, different from the vast majority of subjects, in spite of the common religion. The Arabic sources refer to the Mamluk Sultanate as Dawlat al-Turk, Dawlat al-Atrāk, or al-Dawla al-Turkiyya, i.e., the Dynasty (more correct here than the modern meaning of ‘State’) of the Turks, or the Turkish Dynasty, and never al-Dawla al-Mamlūkiyya or Dawlat al-Mamālīk, which are modern constructions.Footnote 33 This may represent the independent views of these Arabic, mostly Muslims writers, but I think it more likely that it also shows their understanding of how the Mamluks—elite and common troopers—saw themselves. We can remember that there is a not an insignificant group of Arabic writers in the Sultanate who were the sons and grandsons of Mamluks, and even historians writing in Arabic who were themselves members of the Mamluk elite. The most famous of these is the celebrated Baybars al-Manṣūrī, already mentioned but there was also the lesser-known Qirṭāy (or Qaraṭāy) al-Khaznadār (fl. early 14th century).Footnote 34 Among the descendants of Mamluks who wrote history and related literature, we can note Ibn al-Dawādārī (fl. 1330s), al-Ṣafadī (d. 1363); Ibn Taghrī Birdī (d. 1470), and Ibn Iyās (d. 1524).Footnote 35 All of these would have been conduits of information about Turkish (and other) ethnicity and identity among the Mamluks to the mainstream of historical writing from the period. In addition, there are frequent notices in the Arabic sources to the Qipchaqi ethnicity of the Mamluks and how this influenced the search for new Mamluks.Footnote 36 The above mentioned Turkish-Arabic dictionaries also reflects an awareness of a special culture, let alone a distinct language, giving expression to intellectual curiosity among learned Arabic speakers, let alone the need by Arab speaking officials to facilitate communication with the Mamluks.Footnote 37

In the connection of cultural awareness, even nostalgia, I can mention a particularly interesting instance recorded by Ibn al-Dawādārī, the grandson of Mamluk officers on both sides. He tells of his participation of a study group of Mamluks and civilians that met to learn about Turkish and Mongol culture and stories. In fact, this author brings us the text in Arabic of a short work that describes in some detail the origin myths of both groups. This remarkable text has been analysed in some depth by the late Ulrich Haarmann, and is familiar to scholars of both the Mongols and Mamluks.Footnote 38 Whether these meetings and the composition in question represent a larger trend of cultural and intellectual activity in the Mamluk Sultanate is unclear, but I would wager that it was not a unique occurrence. Certainly, there were some Mamluks of Mongol origin, notably Aytamish (or Ūtāmish) al-Muḫammadī (d. 1336), a Mamluk of Sultan al-Nāṣir Muḫammad, who was an expert in Mongolian language and culture, and could have provided a focus for learning and discussion of such matters.Footnote 39

What were the avenues of Steppe influence on the military, social and cultural life of the Mamluks? Certainly, the provenance of the Mamluks themselves played a role, having arrived in the Sultanate mostly from the lands north of the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Caspian at a relatively early age. We can remember that certain Mamluks, such as the just mentioned Aytamish, had great knowledge and a profound understanding of the cultures of Steppes, and these would have intensified such nascent influences. In the early decades of the Mamluk Sultanate, successive groups of Mongols and Turkish soldiers—tribesmen and even Mamluk-like troopers from conquered areas such as Iraq and Anatolia—fled to its territories from across the Euphrates and were integrated into its army and the political life; generally these military refugees, known inter alia as wāfidiyya, were relegated to secondary political and military status, but this does not mean that their cultural impact was not significant. Baybars, Qalāwūn and al-Nāṣir Muḫammad were married to women of clear Inner Asian origin, including a few Mongols, and overall, the Mamluks preferred wives of such provenance.Footnote 40 The role of women in conveying cultural elements from the Steppe to the Sultanate would be an interesting avenue to pursue in the future studies.

Overall, we should keep in mind the overriding significance of Muslim religion and culture on the Mamluks when looking at the impact of Inner Asian Steppe culture on them. True: the Mamluks spoke Turkish, had Turkish names, at times drank a Turkish alcoholic beverage, etc. But as mentioned above, I think that an extremely formative—perhaps the most seminal—feature of their conscious and unconscious life was the Islam to which they had been exposed even before arriving in the Sultanate (by slave merchants), and driven home by years of orderly education and indirectly by the Muslims who surrounded them and their culture. The Mamluks may have lapsed at times in their strict observance of all the Muslim laws and rituals, but this does not mean that they did not see themselves as loyal Muslims whose job it was to defend the Islam and the Muslim community as a whole. As expressed in coins, inscriptions, documents and countless literary sources, and well as through their hundreds (or thousands) of construction projects spread over Egypt and Syria, the Mamluks were dyed in the wool Muslims in their own way.Footnote 41 Of Steppe origin certainly, speaking Turkish among themselves of course and practicing aspects of Steppe culture at times for sure. But their deepest loyalties were to each other (most of the time) and to Islam invariably, and when push came to shove, it was as Muslims that they fought.

References

1 For the Mamluk state in general, see Loiseau, J., Les Mamelouks, XIIIe-XVIe siècle: une experience du pouvoir dans l’Islam médiéval (Paris, 2014)Google Scholar; Northrup, Linda, “The Baḥrī Mamlūk Sultanate, 1250–1390”, in Petry, Carl (ed.), The Cambridge History of Egypt, I: Islamic Egypt, 540–1517 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 242–289 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Garcin, J-C., “The regime of the Circassian Mamlūks”, in Petry (ed.), The Cambridge History of Egypt, I, pp. 290–317 Google Scholar; Irwin, R., The Middle East in the Middle Ages: The Early Mamluk Sultanate 1250–1382 (London, 1986)Google Scholar.

2 A survey of the institution of military slavery from its beginnings until the nineteenth century is found in Amitai, R., “The Mamluk institution: 1000 years of military slavery in the Islamic world”, in Morgan, Philip and Brown, Christopher (eds.), Arming Slaves: From Classical Times to the Modern Age(New Haven, 2006), pp. 40–78 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. However, as Jürgen Paul has pointed out, we should be wary of anachronistically seeing all of these slave soldiers over the centuries as being cut from one cloth, or reading back too much from the well-documented Mamluk Sultanate to previous generations. See Paul, Jürgen, “The state and the military: The Samanid case”, Papers on Inner Asia, no. 26 (Bloomington, 1994), pp. 4–5 Google Scholar.

3 For the various ethnic groups from which the young Mamluks were taken for service in the Sultanate, see Ayalon, D., “Ḥarb, iii. The Mamlūk Sultanate”, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, III, pp. 184–190 Google Scholar.

4 May, T., “Mamluks”, in Martel, G. (ed.), The Encyclopedia of War (Oxford, 2012), III, pp. 1299–1303 Google Scholar; Smith, J. M. Jr., “ʿAyn Jālūt: Mamlūk success or Mongol failure”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 44 (1984), pp. 307–345 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Amitai-Preiss, R., Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-Ilkhanid War 1260–1281 (Cambridge, 1995), Chapter 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 I first encountered Morgan's, David work in the form of the paper “The Mongols in Syria, 1260–1300”, in Edbury, P. (ed.), Crusade and Settlement. Papers Read at the First Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East and Presented to R.C. Smail (Cardiff, 1985), pp. 231–235 Google Scholar, leading me right away to read more of his then published studies on the Mongols in Iran and beyond. The impact of his work on my own studies was compounded when I showed up at SOAS in the fall of 1985 as a visiting research student. There I was fortunate that year to take a class with then Dr Morgan, and I am happy that he has remained a formidable presence in my academic life (and beyond) since then. The present paper had its origins as a somewhat different short communication given at the 55th annual meeting of the Permanent International Altaic Conference (PIAC), held at Indiana University (Bloomington) in July 2011.

6 Sauvaget, J., “Noms et surnoms de Mamelouks”, Journal Asiatique 238 (1950), pp. 31–58 Google Scholar; Ayalon, D., “Names, titles, and ‘nisbas’ of the Mamluks”, Israel Oriental Studies 5 (1975), pp. 189–232 Google Scholar, and reprinted in Ayalon, D., The Mamlūk Military Society (London, 1979)Google Scholar.

7 This is the name of the Mamluk officer who served as an envoy to Ilkhan Ghazan around 1302. For the reported conversation between the two, see Ibn al-Dawādārī (Abū Bakr b. ‛Abd Allāh), Kanz al-durar wa-jāmi‛ al-ghurar, IX: Al-Durar al-fākhir fī sīrat al-malik al-nāṣir, (ed.) H. R. Roemer (Cairo, 1379/1960), pp. 71–76; and the anonymous chronicle edited by Zetterstéen, K.V., Beiträge zur Geschichte der Mamlūkensultane in den Jahren 690–741 der Hiģra nach arabischen Handschriften (Leiden, 1919), pp. 101–104 Google Scholar. The passage in question was translated in Amitai, R., Holy War and Rapprochement: Studies in the Relations between the Mamluk Sultanate and the Mongol Ilkhanate (1260–1335) (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 109–155 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 See the summary translation by Gaston Wiet of Birdī's, Ibn Taghrī Manhal al-Ṣāfī (Les biographies du Manhal Safi [Cairo, 1932])Google Scholar, for many examples of the Turkish names of the Mamluks.

9 Ibn al-Dawādārī, Kitāb durar al-tījān wa-ghurar tawārīkh al-zamān, partial edition and translation in Graf, G., Die Epitome der Universalchronik Ibn ad-Dawādārīs im Verhältnis zur Langfassung. Eine quellenkritische Studie zu Geschichte der ägyptischen Mamluken (Berlin, 1990), p. 69 (Arabic text), p. 211 (translation). For more on the use of Turkish, see A. Mazor, The Manṣūriyya in the First Mamluk Sultanate, 678/1279 –741/1341. ‘Mamluk Studies”, vol. 12 (Göttingen, 2015), p. 42Google Scholar.

10 Ayalon, D., L’esclavage du Mamelouk, Oriental Notes and Studies no. 1 (Jerusalem, 1951), pp. 13–14 Google Scholar (reprinted in Ayalon, The Mamlūk Military Society). See now also J. Frenkel, “Some notes concerning the trade and education of slave-soldiers during the Mamlūk era”, and Amir Mazor, “The Early Experience of the Mamlūk in the First Period of the Mamlūk Sultanate (1250–1382 ce)”, both to appear in Christoph Cluse and Reuven Amitai (eds.), Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean (c. 1000–1500ce) (forthcoming). Both Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406), Kitāb al-‛ibar (Bulaq, 1284/1867–68), V, pp. 371–373, and al-Maqrīzī (d. 1442), Kitāb al-Khiṭaṭ (Bulaq, 1270/1853–54), II, pp. 213–214 (who may well have taken this information from the former), note that only with the completion of the religious education was the formal military training begun. However, this seems unlikely, not the least since the inculcation of military skills, based on the steppe upbringing of the young Mamluks, necessitated long-term, continual, practice. See Mazor for this point.

11 See Berkey, J. P., “Mamluks and the world of higher Islamic education in medieval Cairo, 1250–1517”, in Elboudrari, H. (ed.), Modes de transmission de la culture réligieuse en Islam, (ed.) Hassan Elboudrari (Cairo, 1993), pp. 93–116 Google Scholar; Berkey, J. P., “‘Silver Threads among the Coal’: A well-educated Mamluk of the ninth/fifteenth century”, Studia Islamica 73 (1991), pp. 109–125 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haarmann, U., “Arabic in speech, Turkish in lineage: Mamluks and their sons in the intellectual life of fourteenth-century Egypt and Syria”, Journal of Semitic Studies 33, 1 (1988), pp. 81–114 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See comments in Amir Mazor, The Rise and Fall of a Muslim Regiment, pp. 41-42.

12 (Ed.) D. S. Richards (Beirut and Berlin, 1998). See the introduction for biographical details. There is some evidence that Baybars may have received some assistance in the composition of this work by a native Arabic speaking Christian official (ibid., pp. xxi-xxii).

13 Northrup, L., From Slave to Sultan: The Career of al-Manṣūr Qalāwūn and the Consolidation of Mamluk Rule in Egypt and Syria (678–689 ah/1279–1290 ad) (Stuttgart, 1998), p. 67 Google Scholar.

14 Thorau, P., The Lion of Egypt: Sultan Baybars I and the Near East in the Thirteenth Century, translated P. M. Holt (London and New York, 1992), p. 175 Google Scholar.

15 Eckmann, J., “The Mamluk-Kipchak literature”, Central Asiatic Journal 8 (1963), pp. 304–319 Google Scholar; Flemming, B., “Literary activities in Mamluk halls and barracks,” in Rosen-Ayalon, M. (ed.), Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet (Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 249–260 Google Scholar; Bodrogligeti, A., “A Grammar of Mameluke-Kipchak”, in Ligeti, L. (ed.), Studia Turcica (Budapest, 1971), pp. 89–102 Google Scholar; Kurtlusus, O. (ed. and tr.), Munyatu’l-Ghuzat: A 14th Century Mamluk-Kipchak Military Treatise (Cambridge, MA, 1989)Google Scholar; Houtsma, M. T., Ein türkisch-arabisches Glossar, nach der leidener Handschrift (Leiden, 1894)Google Scholar.

16 Robert Irwin discussed this ethnic group in an important paper, “How Circassian were the Circassian Mamluks?” presented in the 2006 conference held in Haifa and Jerusalem, which will hopefully soon see the light of day. For the question of how the later period should be called, see Ayalon, D., “Baḥrī Mamlūks, Burjī Mamlūks—inadequate names for the two reigns of the Mamluk Sultanate”, Tārīḫ 1 (1990), pp. 3–53 Google Scholar, and reprinted in Ayalon, D., Islam and the Abode of War (Aldershot, 1994)Google Scholar.

17 Berkey, J. P., “The Mamluks as Muslims: The military elite and the construction of Islam in medieval Egypt”, in Phillip, T. and Haarmann, U. (eds.), The Mamluks in Egyptian Politics and Society (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 163–173 Google Scholar; Little, D. P., “Religion under the Mamluks”, The Muslim World 73 (1983), pp. 165–168 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and reprinted in Little, D. P., History and Historiography of the Mamlūks (London, 1986)Google Scholar. I address this subject further in Holy War and Rapprochment, Chapter 4.

18 Irwin, Middle East, pp. 57–58; Thorau, Lion of Egypt, pp. 240–243, 268. On qumiz/qumis in general, see Allsen, T. T., “Ever Closer Encounters: The appropriation of culture and the apportionment of peoples in the Mongol Empire”, Journal of Early Modern History 1, 1 (1997), pp. 13–15 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Doerfer, G., Türkische und mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen (Wiesbaden, 1963–75)Google Scholar, III, pp. 512–517 (no. 1529).

19 On the assemblage of rituals and beliefs that constitute what (for lack of a better term) I have termed ‘traditional Steppe religion’, see Roux, J-P., “Turkic Religions”, in Eliade, M. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion (New York, 1987), xv, pp. 87–94 Google Scholar; W. Heissig, “Mongol religion”, in Eliade (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion., x, pp. 54–57; Heissig, W., The Religions of Mongolia, translated by G. Samuel (London, 1980), esp. Chapter 2Google Scholar; Boyle, J.A., “Turkish and Mongol shamanism in the Middle Ages”, Folklore 83 (1972), pp. 177–193 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, and reprinted. in Boyle, J.A., The Mongol World Empire 1206–1370 (London, 1977)Google Scholar.

20 Northrup, From Slave to Sultan, p. 67, citing Ibn al-Furāt, Ta’rīkh al-duwal wa’l-mulūk, VIII, ed. C.K. Zurayk and N. Izzedin (Beirut, 1939), pp. 94–95 (a translation of this passage is found in n. 15).

21 On this, see Ayalon, D., “The Great Yāsa of Chingiz Khān. A re-examination. Part A”, Studia Islamica 33 (1971), pp. 118–120 Google Scholar, who notes that this method attributed to the Oirats was different from another method of slaughter ascribed elsewhere to the Mongols: slitting the chest of the animal and pulling out its heart.

22 Al-Ṣafadī (Khalīl b. Aybak), A‛yān al-‛aṣr wa-a‛wān al-naṣr, (ed.) ‛A. Abū Zayd et al. (Beirut-Damascus, 1418/1998), I, p. 634; al-Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, II, pp. 219–222; Birdī, Ibn Taghrī (Jamāl al-Dīn Abū al-Maḥāsin Yūsuf), al-Nujūm al-zāhira fī mulūk miṣr wa’l-qāhira (Cairo, 1348–92/1929–72), VI, p. 268 Google Scholar; VII, p. 182. All of these are cited and discussed at length by Ayalon in the series of articles cited in the next note, especially in Part C2, pp. 127–140.

23 Ayalon, D., “The Great Yāsa of Chingiz Khān. A reexamination. Part A”, Studia Islamica 33 (1971), pp. 97–140 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “. . .Part B”, Studia Islamica 34 (1971), pp. 151–180; “. . .Part C1”, Studia Islamica 36 (1972), pp. 113–158; “. . .Part C2”, Studia Islamica 38 (1973), pp. 107–156; all reprinted in Ayalon, Outsiders in the Lands of Islam: Mamluks, Mongols, and Eunuchs (London, 1988). This important study helped to propel a vigorous discussion by scholars about the origins and nature of the Yasa in a more general, mostly Mongol context, in which David Morgan has played a key part. See Morgan, D. O., “The ‘Great Yāsā of Chingiz Khān’ and Mongol law in the Īlkhānate”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 49 (1986), pp. 163–176 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morgan, D. O.., “The ‘Great Yasa of Chinggis Khan’ revisited”, in Amitai, R. and Biran, M. (eds.), Mongols, Turks, and Others: Eurasian Nomads and the Sedentary World (Leiden, 2005), pp. 291–308 Google Scholar. For a comprehensive and up-to-date review of the whole subject, see P. Jackson, “Yāsā”, Encyclopaedia Iranica, online edition. Available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/yasa-law-code (accessed 3 March 2015).

24 See Amitai, R., “The Mongols as seen by the Arabic sources: The view from across Asia”, in Chinggis Khan and Globalization (Ulaan Baatar, 2014), pp. 125–126 Google Scholar; Amitai, R. and Biran, M., “Arabic Sources for the History of the Mongol Empire”, in Biran, M. and Kim, Hodong (eds), The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire (Cambridge, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

25 On polo in general in the Islamic world, with a few comments regarding its origins and early appearance, see H. Massé, “Čawgān”, Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edition, II, pp. 16–17. See also Shoshan, B., “Sports,” in Meri, J. W. (ed.), Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia (New York and London, 2006) ii, pp. 768–770 Google Scholar. For Polo in China, see: Liu, J. T. C., “Polo and Cultural Change: From T’ang to Sung China”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 45 (1986), pp. 203–224 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (esp. pp. 203–205); Bower, V. L., “Polo in Tang China: Sport and Art”, Asian Art 4/1 (Winter 1991), pp. 23–45 Google Scholar. See also the comment in Allsen, T. T., The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History(Philadelphia, 2006), p. 266 Google Scholar, who refers to polo as “the first international sport, played by both elites and commoners from Korea to the Mediterranean”. It is not impossible that polo passed to the Mamluks directly from China or Iran, but the Inner Asian provenance seems the most likely, or at least reinforced its initial borrowing from another source.

26 For this game in the Sultanate, see Ayalon, D., “Notes on the Furūsiyya exercises and games in the Mamluk Sultanate”, in Heyd, U. (ed.), Studies in Islamic History and Civilization (Jerusalem, 1961 = Scripta Hierosolymitana 9), pp. 31–62 Google Scholar, esp. pp. 53–55, and reprinted in Ayalon, Mamlūk Military Society. For an example of Baybars playing polo (from 659/1261 in Damascus), see Ibn ‛Abd al-Zahir (Muḥyī al-Dīn), al-Rawḍ al-zāhir fī sīrat al-malik al-ẓāhir, (ed.) ‛A-‛A. al-Khuwayṭir (Riyad, 1396/1976), pp. 119–120: the author notes that the Sultan played with a large group of kings and princes, including many Ayyubid scions, comparing him favourably to Saladin, who had played with a less impressive—so it is implied—group of Seljuq and Zengid princes. See now al-Sarraf, Sh., “The Mamluk Furūsiyya Literature and Its Antecedents”, Mamlūk Studies Review 8, 1 (2004), pp. 190–192 Google Scholar, and the comment in Guo, Li, “Sports as Performance: The Qabaq-game and Celebratory Rites in Mamluk Cairo”, Ulrich Haarmann Memorial Lecture, vol. 5 (Berlin, 2013), p. 20 Google Scholar. Mention should also be made of the remarkable collection of evidence, going well beyond the Mamluk Sultanate, by E. Quatremère in a note in his partial translations of Maqrīzī's Kitab al-Sulūk: L’Histoire des sultans mamelouks de l’Égypte (Paris, 1837–45), vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 121–132.

27 For this title, as well as how it was represented on Mamluk “heraldic” symbols, see Mayer, L. A., Saracenic Heraldry (Oxford, 1933)Google Scholar, index, s.v. “jūkandār”. Mayer, however, translates this as ‘polo-master’, but I prefer ‘the holder of the polo mallets’, following R. Dozy, Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes (Leiden, 1881), i, p. 235.

28 One example from the beginning of Mamluk rule in Syria is Ḥusām al-Dīn Lājīn al-Jūkandār al-‛Azīzī (d. 662/1263–4), actually a Mamluk of an Ayyubid prince in Syria, who briefly controlled Aleppo in the aftermath of ‛Ayn Jālūt; Thorau, Lion of Egypt, pp. 94–95; al-Maqrizi (Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAlī), Kitāb al-sulūk li-ma‛rifat al-duwal wa’l-mulūk, (ed.) Muḥammad Muṣṭafā Ziyāda et al. (Cairo, 1934–73), i, p. 522.

29 E.g., Baybars was hunting outside Cairo at the end of 1264 when news arrived of a Mongol attack on al-Bīra on the Euphrates: Ibn ‛Abd al-Ẓāhir, Rawḍ, pp. 221–222. For an example of Qalāwūn's sons out on the hunt, see Northrup, From Slave to Sultan, p. 247. Al-Ashraf Khalīl (r. 1290–3) was murdered while out on a hunting expedition; Irwin, Middle East, p. 82.

30 Ibn ‛Abd al-Ẓāhir, Rawḍ, p. 229; Amitai, R., “The conquest of Arsūf by Baybars: Political and military aspects”, Mamluk Studies Review 9 (2005), pp. 61–63 Google Scholar.

31 For the Mongol hunt, see Morgan, D., The Mongols (Oxford, 1986), pp. 84–85 Google Scholar; Jagchid, S. and Hyer, P., Mongolia's Culture and Society (Boulder and Folkestone, 1979), pp. 27–37 Google Scholar; and May, T., The Mongol Art of War: Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Military System (Barnsley, South Yorkshire, 2007), pp. 46–47 Google Scholar.

32 For the larger question of the royal hunt in the Old World, see the magisterial study by Allsen, The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History. However, without delving into the matter too deeply, it appears to me that under the Mamluks the hunt never developed quite the importance that it seems to have had in ancient Iran, the Mongol empire, or Mogul India, which is so clearly portrayed in Allsen's book. This is a subject to which I hope to return in the future.

33 Thus, for example, Baybars al-Manṣūrī calls one of his chronicles al-Tuḥfa al-mulūkiyya fī al-dawla al-turkiyya (“The Royal Gem Concerning the Turkish Dynasty”), (ed.) ʿA-R.S. Ḥamdān (Cairo, 1987), and Ibn al-Dawādārī entitled volume VIII of his chronicle al-Durra al-zakiyya fī akhbār al-dawla al-turkiyya (“The Pure Pearl Regarding the Turkish Dynasty”), (ed.) U. Haarmann (Cairo, 1391/1971).

34 Qaraṭāy [sic] al-‛Izzī al-Khaznadārī, Ta’rīkh majmū‛ al-nawādir, (ed.) H. Hein and M. Ḥujayrī (Beirut and Berlin, 2005).

35 The compositions of the first three have been mentioned above. For the last named, admittedly not directly relevant to the time-span of the present article, see the comments in D.P. Little, “Historiography of the Ayyūbid and Mamlūk epochs”, in Petry (ed.), Cambridge History of Egypt, pp. 440–441.

36 These have been collected and analysed by Ayalon, “Great Yāsa. . .Part C1”, pp. 117–126. Of particular interest is the passage from al-‛Umarī (Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā ibn Faḍlallāh), Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār, partial edition and translation in Klaus Lech, Das Mongolische Weltreich: al-‛Umarīs Darstellung der mongolischen Reiche in seinem Werk Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār (Wiesbaden, 1968), p. 70 (Arabic text): “Since the time that al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb had made up his mind to buy Qipchaqi Mamluks, the sultans and commanders of this country have been of these Turks. Then, when the rule [of Egypt] passed into their hands, their kings inclined toward the people of their own race, and they decided to increase their numbers, until Egypt had become populated and protected by means of them.” [Translation by Ayalon, with minor changes.]

37 See now the recent publication by Yosef, Dr Koby, who emphasises the particular importance of this ethnic identity: “ Dawlat al-atrāk or dawlat al-mamālīk? Ethnic origin or slave origin as the defining characteristic of the ruling élite in the Mamlūk Sultanate”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 39 (2012), pp. 387–410 Google Scholar. Dr Amir Mazor has also dealt with some of these matters in his recent book The Rise and Fall of a Muslim Regiment, pp. 33–35, 164–168, 191–192.

38 Haarmann, Ulrich, “Alṭun Ḫān und Čingiz Ḫān bie den ägyptischen Mamluken”, Der Islam 51 (1974), pp. 1–36 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., “Turkish legends in the popular historiography of medieval Egypt”, in Proceedings of the VIth Congress of Arabic and Islamic Studies (1972) (Stockholm and Leiden, 1975), pp. 97–107.

39 Ayalon, “Great Yāsa. . .Part C2”, pp. 131–140, 143–145; Little, D. P., “Notes on Aitamiš, a Mongol Mamlūk”, in Haarmann, U. and Backmann, P. (eds.), Die islamische Welt zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit: Festschrift für Hans Robert Roemer zum 65. Geburtstag (Beirut and Wiesbaden, 1979), pp. 387–401 Google Scholar, and reproduced in Little, History and Historiography of the Mamlūks; Amitai, R., “A Mongol governor of al-Karak in Jordan?: A re-examination of an old document in Mongolian and Arabic”, Zentralasiatische Studien 36 (2007), pp. 263–275 Google Scholar.

40 For possible Steppe influences—especially Mongol—and the means by which these were conveyed, see Ayalon, “Great Yāsa. . .Part C1”, pp. 130–136; for the role of the Wafidiyya as agents of these influences, see Nobutaka, Nakamachi. “The rank and status of military refugees in the Mamluk army: A reconsideration of the Wāfidīya”, Mamluk Studies Review 10, 1 (2006), pp. 55–81 Google Scholar; but cf. Amitai, R., “Mamluks of Mongol origin and their role in early Mamluk political life”, Mamluk Studies Review 12, 1 (2008), pp. 119–137 Google Scholar; Holt, P. M., “An-Nāṣir Muḫammad b. Qalāwūn (684–741/1285–1341): His ancestry, kindred and affinity”, in Vermeulen, U. and de Smet, D. (eds.), Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk Eras (Leuven, 1995), pp. 313–324 Google Scholar.

41 This is a point that I tried to make in Holy War and Rapprochement, chapter 4. See also Berkey, J., “Mamluk Religious Policy”, Mamluk Studies Review 13, 2 (2009), pp. 7–22 Google Scholar.