Word Finder - mamelukes

definition

A member of a military regime created and run originally by freed white European slaves, which formed a ruling caste in Egypt from 1250 until 1812 and in Syria until 1516.

definition

A slave (especially European and white) in a Middle Eastern Muslim country.

The chief direct result in the life of the Egyptian people was the virtual destruction of the governing caste of the Mamelukes, the Turks finding it easy to rid themselves of their surviving chiefs and to re-establish the authority of the Sultan.

They were archers fighting on horseback, and in their cavalry consisted the strength of the Parthian army; the infantry were mostly slaves, bought and trained for military service, like the janissaries and mamelukes.

These dynasties were founded by emancipated mamelukes, who had held high office at court and in camp under powerful amirs, and who, on their death, first became stadtholders for their descendants, and then usurped the throne of their masters.

Later, it allied itself with the Mongols and fought against the Mamelukes, to whom, however, it finally succumbed in 1375.

The final collapse of the kingdom of Jerusalem had been really determined by the battle of Gaza in 124 4, and by the deposition of the Ayyubite dynasty by the Mamelukes.

The Mamelukes, who are analogous to the janissaries of the Ottoman Turks, were made of sterner and more fanatical stuff; and Bibars, the greatest of these Mamelukes, who had commanded at Gaza in 1244, had been one of the leaders in 1250, and was destined to become sultan in 1260, was the sternest and most fanatical of them all.

The Christians were, however, able to maintain a footing in Syria for forty years after St Louis' departure, not by reason of their own strength, but owing to two powers which checked the advance of the Mamelukes.

His general, a Christian named Kitboga, marched southwards to attack the Mamelukes of Egypt, but he was beaten by Bibars (who in the same year became sultan of Egypt), and Damascus fell into the hands of the Mamelukes.

The French kings are all crusaders - in name - until the beginning of the Hundred Years' War; but the only crusader who ever carried war in Palestine and sought to shake the hold of the Mamelukes on the Holy Land was Peter I., king of Cyprus from 1359 to 1369.

In 1516 the Ottomans took it from the Egyptian Mamelukes.

Egypt, Syria and the Hejaz, the former empire of the Mamelukes, were added to the Ottoman dominions.

Thereafter the Mamelukes took and kept possession, despite the renewed Tatar inroad of 1401, until the final conquest by the Ottomans in 1517.

For some time he served the Mamelukes who still held Egypt.

During the conflict between the Mamelukes and the sultan Selim I., he considered it more prudent to transfer himself to Tunis.

It split the citizens into two parties; the Eidgenots relying on the Swiss, while the Mamelus (mamelukes) supported the duke.

In Selim I.'s reign he served with great distinction in the Persian and Egyptian campaigns and fell at the battle of Ridania, where the Mamelukes were defeated, in 1517.

Beyond the eastern wall of the city are the splendid mausolea erroneously known to Europeans as the tombs of the caliphs; they really are tombs of the Circassian or Burji Mamelukes, a race extinguished by Mehemet Ali.

South of the citadel is another group of tombmosques known as the tombs of the Mamelukes.

On the west bank of the Nile, opposite the southern end of Roda Island, is the small town of Giza or Gizeh, a fortified place of considerable importance in the times of the Mamelukes.

Mehemet Ali, originally the Turkish viceroy, by his massacre of the Mamelukes in 1811, in a narrow street leading to the citadel, made himself master of the country, and Cairo again became the capital of a virtually independent kingdom.

The Mahmal, a kind of covered litter, first originated by Queen Sheger-ed-Dur, is brought into the city in procession, though not with as much pomp as when it leaves with the pilgrims. These and other processions have lost much of their effect since the extinction of the Mamelukes, and the gradual disuse of gorgeous dress for the retainers of the,, officers of state.

The Mamelukes (slaves), imported from the eastern borders of the Black Sea and then trained as soldiers, usurped the government of Egypt, and held it till 1517, when the Ottomans began to rule.

Then Mehemet Ali, a small tobacconist of Kavala, Macedonia, coming with Albanian mercenaries, made himself governor, and later (1811), by massacring the Mamelukes, became the actual master of the country, and after seven years war brought Arabia under Egypts rule.

He made large purchases of slaves (Mamelukes) for his army, and when the inhabitants of Cairo complained of their lawlessness, he built barracks for them on the island of Roda (Raula), whence they were called Bahri or Nile Mamelukes, which became the name of the first dynasty that originated from them.

Sultan Bibars, who proved to be one of the most competent of the Baliri Mamelukes, made Egypt the centre of the Moslem world by re-establishing in theory the Abbasid caliphate, which had lapsed through the taking of Bagdad by Hulagu, followed by the execution of the caliph.

On the 1st of July 1277 Bibars died, and the events that followed set an example repeatedly followed during the period KaIaa of the Mamelukes.

Under Kalan we first hear of the Burjite Mamelukes, who owe their name to the citadel (Burj) of Cairo, where 37C0 of the whole number of 12,000 Mamelukes maintained by this sovereign were quartered.

He paid exceptionally high prices for Mamelukes, many of whom were sold by their Mongol parents to his agehts, and accustomed them to greater luxury than was usual under his predecessors.

His successor in the office of first minister was a mere tool in the hands of his Mamelukes, who compelled him to institute and depose governors, &c., at their pleasure.

On the 15th of March 1377 the sultan was murdered by the Mamelukes, owing to his refusing a largess of money which they demanded.

The infant son of the late sultan All, a lad of eight years, was proclaimed with the title Malik al-Manv2r; the power was in the hands of the ministers Kartai and Ibek, the latter of whom overthrew the former with the aid of his own Mamelukes, Berekeh and Barktik.

His reign was marked by friendly relations with the Ottoman sultan Mahommed II., whose capture of Constantinople (1453) was the cause of great rejoicings in Egypt, but also by violent excesses on the part of the Mamelukes, who dictated the sultans policy.

This person, proving incompetent, was deposed by a revolution of the Mamelukes on the 4th of December 1467, when the Atabeg Timurbogha was proclaimed with the title Malik al-Zahir, In a months time, however, there was another palace revolution, and the new Atabeg Kait Bey or Kaietbai (January 3tst, 1468) was proclaimed sultan, the dethroned Timurbogha being, however, permitted to go free whither he pleased.

Syria passed quickly into the possession of the Turks, whose advent was in many places welcome as meaning deliverance from the Mamelukes.

The register by which a great portion of the land was a fief of the Mamelukes was left unchanged, and it is said that a proposal made by the sultans vizier to appropriate these estates was punished with death.

Ismail held this office for sixteen years, while the pashas were constantly being changed, and succeeded in reconciling the two factions of Mamelukes.

That there might be no doubt of the friendly feeling of the French to the Porte, villages and towns which capitulated to the invaders were required to hoist the flags of both the Porte and the French republic, and in the thanksgiving prescribed to the Egyptians for their deliverance from the Mamelukes, prayer was to be offered for both the sultan and the French army.

A municipal council was established in Cairo, consisting of persons taken from the, ranks of the sheiks, the Mamelukes and the French; and presently delegates from Alexandria and other important towns were added.

The Turkish troops advanced to Bilbeis, where they were received by the sheiks from, Cairo, and the Mamelukes also returned to that city from their hiding-places.

Soon after the evacuation of Egypt by the French, the country became the scene of more severe troubles, in consequence of the attempts of the Turks to destroy the power of the Mamelukes.

Such was the beginning of the disastrous struggle between the Mamelukes and the Turks.

The form of government, however, was not the same as that before the French invasion, for the Mamelukes were not reinstated.

In March 1803 the British evacuated Alexandria, and Mahommed Bey al-AlfI accompanied them to England to consult respecting the means to be adopted for restoring the former power of the Mamelukes, who meanwhile took Minia and interrupted communication between Upper and Lower Egypt.

A certain Ahmed Pasha, who was about to proceed to a province in Arabia, of which he had been appointed governor, was raised to the important post of pasha of Egypt, through the influence of the Turks and the favor of the sheiks; but Mehemet Ali, who with his Albanians held the citadel, refused to assent to their choice; the Mamelukes moved over from El-Giza, whither they had been invited by Thir Pasha, and Ahmed Paslia betook himself to the mosque of al-Zflhir, which the French had converted into a fortress.

This offered a fair pretext to the Mamelukes to rid themselves of a man proved to be a perfidious tyrant.

The death of Ali Pasha produced only temporary tranquillity; in a few days (February 12, 1804) the return of Mahommed Bey al-AlIT (called the Great) from England was the signal for fresh disturbances, which, by splitting the Mamelukes into two parties, accelerated their final overthrow.

The latter was now supreme among the Mamelukes, and this fact considerably heightened their old enmity.

The Mamelukes in the citadel directed a fire of shot and shell on the houses of the Albanians which were situated in the Ezbekia; but, on hearing of the flight of their chiefs, they evacuated the place; and Mehemet Au, on gaining possession of it, once more proclaimed Mahommed Khosrev pasha of Egypt.

On the following day the other Mamelukes north of the metropolis actually penetrated into the suburbs; but a few days later were defeated in a battle fought at Shubra, with heavy loss on.

Al-BardIsi passed to the south of Cairo, and the Mamelukes gradually retreated towards Upper Egypt.