Mamluk Sultanate: A Visual History

The Mamluk Sultanate ruled Egypt, Syria and the Hejaz from 1250 to 1517. Its rulers were mamluks, Turkish and later Circassian slaves bought as boys, trained as cavalry and freed, who overthrew the Ayyubids. Baybars and Qutuz stopped the Mongols at Ain Jalut in 1260, and Baybars and al-Ashraf Khalil destroyed the Crusader states, taking Acre in 1291. Cairo became the greatest city of the Islamic world. Plague, Timur, Portuguese competition in the spice trade and Ottoman gunpowder ended the sultanate when Selim I conquered Egypt in 1517.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Mamluk Sultanate. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Mamluk territory

Timeline of the Mamluk Sultanate

1. 1250
   Mamluks take powerLouis IX's crusade defeated.
2. 1260
   Ain Jalut
3. 1261
   Abbasid caliph installed in Cairo
4. 1291
   Acre fallsThe Crusader states end.
5. 1348
   Black Death
6. 1382
   Circassian Burji sultans
7. 1400
   Timur sacks Damascus
8. 1516
   Marj Dabiq
9. 1517
   Ottomans take Cairo

Slaves become sultans

The Ayyubid sultan al-Salih built a regiment of Qipchaq Turkish mamluks quartered on an island (bahr) in the Nile. When Louis IX's crusade invaded Egypt in 1249-1250, the mamluks defeated it and then murdered al-Salih's heir. Shajar al-Durr, al-Salih's widow, briefly ruled as sultana before marrying the mamluk Aybak. Sultans thereafter came from the mamluk ranks, each importing and training his own household of slaves.

Ain Jalut and Acre

In September 1260 Qutuz and Baybars destroyed the Mongol army left in Palestine at Ain Jalut, the first clear Mongol defeat. Baybars murdered Qutuz on the way home and ruled for 17 years, taking Crusader castles and Antioch. His successors took Tripoli in 1289 and Acre in 1291, ending two centuries of Crusader presence. Al-Nasir Muhammad's third reign (1310-1341) was the sultanate's golden age of building and trade.

Decline and the Ottomans

The Black Death of 1348 and repeated later plagues devastated Egypt. Circassian sultans after 1382 faced Timur's sack of Aleppo and Damascus (1400), factional violence and a shrinking tax base. The Portuguese route round Africa after 1498 threatened the spice transit trade. Selim I destroyed the Mamluk army at Marj Dabiq in 1516 and Ridaniya in 1517 and hanged the last sultan, Tumanbay, at Cairo's Bab Zuwayla. Mamluks continued as a military class in Ottoman Egypt until Muhammad Ali massacred them in 1811.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Ayyubid dynasty (1171 to 1260)
• Ilkhanate (1256 to 1335)
• Ottoman Empire (1299 to 1922)
• Timurid Empire (1370 to 1507)
• First Portuguese Empire (1415 to 1663)
• Abbasid Caliphate (750 to 1258)

Wars of the same era and region

• Crusades (1096 to 1291)
• Mongol invasions and conquests (1206 to 1368)
• Conquests of Timur (1370 to 1405)
• Reconquista (718 to 1492)

8 surprising things about the Mamluk Sultanate

1. 'Mamluk' means 'owned'; the sultans were proud former slaves and looked down on the free-born.
2. Sons of mamluks could not become mamluks; each generation had to be bought fresh from the steppe or Caucasus.
3. Baybars, the greatest sultan, had been sold cheaply because of a cataract in one eye.
4. Cairo under the Mamluks had perhaps 500,000 people, larger than any city in Europe.
5. The Mamluks kept a line of puppet Abbasid caliphs in Cairo for 250 years to legitimise their rule.
6. Mamluk sultans built much of medieval Cairo's surviving skyline, including the Sultan Hasan mosque.
7. The 1811 massacre of the mamluks at Cairo's Citadel by Muhammad Ali ended the caste 300 years after the sultanate fell.
8. Shajar al-Durr, the sultana of 1250, was reportedly beaten to death with clogs by her murdered husband's slave women.

Sources

• Mamluk Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Mamluk Sultanate Wikipedia
• Mamluk Sultanate World History Encyclopedia
• Robert Irwin, The Middle East in the Middle Ages: The Early Mamluk Sultanate (1986) Croom Helm

Back to all empires and wars