Mamluks (Islamic History)

Qalāwūnid discourse, elite communication and the Mamluk cultural matrix: interpreting a 14th-century panegyric

by Jo Van Steenbergen

Journal of Arabic Literature 43/1 (2012): 1-28

This article analyses a brief panegyric text from mid-14th-century Egypt, authored by the court scribe Ibrāhīm b. al-... more This article analyses a brief panegyric text from mid-14th-century Egypt, authored by the court scribe Ibrāhīm b. al- Qaysarānī (d. 1352) and dedicated to the Qalāwūnid Mamluk sultan al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ Ismāʿīl (r. 1342-5). It challenges this panegyric’s standard treatment as a work of history and as a product of court propaganda and connects it to wider issues of Mamluk literary production and social organisation. In doing so, a new understanding of this panegyric emerges within a specific context of Mamluk elite communication and social performance, demonstrating at the same time how such a social semiotic reading of Mamluk cultural expressions generates further insights into the symbiotic interactions between Mamluk culture and society.

The amir Yalbughā al-Khāṣṣakī (d. 1366), the Qalāwūnid sultanate, and the cultural matrix of Mamluk society. A re-assessment of Mamluk Politics in the 1360s.

by Jo Van Steenbergen

JAOS 131/3

This article focuses on surprisingly traditional aspects of Mamluk political culture in the 1360s. It presents a... more 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.

Mamluk Elite on the Eve of an-Nasir Muhammad's death (1341): A Look behind the Scenes of Mamluk Politics

by Jo Van Steenbergen

Mamluk Studies Review 9/2 (2005), pp. 173-199

"The Mamlūks in the Military of the Pre-Seljūq Persianate Dynasties," Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 46 (2008), 213-225

by Deborah Tor

The Mamluk sultanate as a military patronage state: household politics and the case of the Qalawunid bayt (1279-1382)

by Jo Van Steenbergen

Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (2012)

This article purports to offer new insights into the longue durée of the late medieval Islamic sultanate that once... more This article purports to offer new insights into the longue durée of the late medieval Islamic sultanate that once dominated the area between the Eastern Mediterranean and the Arabian Sea: the Syro-Egyptian Mamlūk Sultanate (1250-1517). The argument presented here endeavours to make more historical sense of recent research findings on Mamlūk socio-political history by developing and applying the revisionist conceptual framework of the early Mamluk sultanate as a military patronage state. Breaking free from the heuristic reins imposed on Mamluk studies by the paradigm of the Mamluk political elite as defined by the normative exclusivism of elite military slavery —the so-called ‘Mamluk System’—, it is demonstrated that the apparent royal, dynastic attitudes of early Mamluk politics were no mere façade for that Mamluk System, but rather powerful discursive, institutional and practical representations of a long-standing political culture of military leadership, patronage ties, household bonds, and unsteady devolved authorities, coalescing between 1279 and 1382 in the Qalāwūnid sultanate of Egypt and Syria.

"Mamluk Eunuchs, Habashis and Waqf in the 1340s"

by Jo Van Steenbergen

in U. Vermeulen & K. D'hulster (eds.), Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk Eras - V , ( Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta ), Leuven 2007.

Is Anyone my Guardian ...?' Mamluk Under Age Rule and the Later Qalawunids

by Jo Van Steenbergen

al-Masaq 19/1 (2007), pp. 55-65

Succession to the Mamlūk sultanate is one of those thorny issues that keep bothering historians. Within an environment... more Succession to the Mamlūk sultanate is one of those thorny issues that keep bothering historians. Within an environment that did not generally favour heredity of military/political status, a frequent tendency towards dynasticism remains difficult to explain, the Qalāwūnids (678-784/1279-1382) offering a case in point. This article analyses the age of accession of the later Qalāwūnids (741-784/1341-1382) and challenges the generally accepted view that they were mostly politically weak minors and mere stopgaps to a failing political system. It argues that there was a dynastic reflex at work, which combined with the specific political circumstances of the mid-fourteenth century and which resulted in the paradox of a very active, but continuously contested Qalāwūnid sultanate.

On the Brink of a New Era. Yalbugha l-Khassaki (d. 1366) and the Yalbughawiyya.

by Jo Van Steenbergen

Mamluk Studies Review 15 (2011): 117-152

This article focuses on incipient changes in Mamluk political culture of the 1360s by analyzing the December 1366... more This article focuses on incipient changes in Mamluk political culture of the 1360s by analyzing the December 1366 conflict that brought down the dominant Mamluk amir Yalbugha al-Khassaki. It is claimed that prosopography, and a more accurate identification of Yalbughā’s opponents and of their relationship with Yalbughā in general, opens up very interesting new perspectives. This eventually allows for a more positive reading of the causes and consequences of this conflict, moving towards a better understanding of the process of change and transformation which the Mamluk sultanate clearly was undergoing by the latter half of the fourteenth century, and which was to ensure its continued existence well into the sixteenth century!