Mamluks in Knee Boots

Dear Folk,

On this day July 31, 1291 an army made of former slaves took Beruit and put an end to the Crusader presence in Palestine and Syria. These soldiers were called Mamluks (or Mameluks or Mamelukes) and they are the reason we still have Islam.

The Mamluks were first recruited (bought, if you will) by the Ayyubids caliphs of Egypt. They were a mixture of Euro and Asian dudes brought up from birth to be fighters. Not just gladiators, these guys learned to fight in formation and to be the ones standing when all the cutting was done. So the caliphs raised up kiddies as bodyguards, gave them weapons, trained them, fed them, and what do you think those ungrateful children did? Well, what would you have done?

Exactly, they threw of the silken shackles and became what they most despised, the master. One of these slaves, Muez-Aibak, assassinated the Ayyubid sultan, Al Ashraf Musa, in 1252 and founded the Mamluk sultanate, which ruled Egypt and Syria for more than two centuries.

These were not effete Egyptians, remember. They were the first bunch of troops ever to defeat the Mongols in open combat when in 1260, the Mongols moved against Palestine and Egypt. Alerted by a chain of signal fires stretching from Iraq to Egypt, the Mamluks were able to marshal their forces in time to meet, and crush, the Mongols at 'Ayn Jalut near Nazareth in Palestine. It was their stopping the Mongols which saved Islam.

Since the Mamluks had been brought into the fold of Islam, they felt a deep commitment to that religion. This was reflected in intensive building in Jerusalem, which has left its mark on the Old City to this day, particularly around the Temple Mount.

Even though they whipped the crusaders, the Mamluks indirectly fostered relations between Europe and the Middle East even after the fall of the Byzantine Empire. The Europeans, loving those luxury items from the Middle East, had a bad thing for both its raw materials and its manufactured products, and the people of the Middle East wished to exploit the lucrative European market. It was sort of like China and the Coca-Cola Bottling Company. Beirut, smack in the middle of everything, became the center of intense trading activity. Despite religious conflicts among the different communities in Lebanon, intellectual life flourished.

The Mamluks were not just a temporary, steroid-boosted bunch of bully-boys. They retained control of Egypt until the Ottoman conquest in 1517. It is said that the Egyptians welcomed the Ottoman Turks into their country as a relief from the Mamluks. Thought it would be better. They were, of course, wrong. But that is another story. Mamluks were still around in Egypt as late as the 1800s.

Oh, wanted to tell you a quick story about a guy named Ignatius. He was a GQ sort of dude, took good care of his appearance. While he was helping his Spain defend against the French, a cannon ball shattered his leg. Now he was strong and did recover but there was this bone which stuck out beyond the end of his leg (just below the knee.) That made it hard to wear those slinky long boots that he favored. So he had the surgeons saw the bone off. It was a major, major painful operation but he hung with it. He lived on thirty-five years after that. Spent most of his time being a pious ascetic. You may have heard of the group he founded: The Society of Jesus. We mostly call them Jesuits. They became the Catholic Church bureau of internal affairs, watching out for heresy and infiltrators. Smart folk, the Jesuits. He was Ignatius Loyola and he died on July 31, 1556, aged sixty-five.

What have we learned from all of this? Slaves should not be armed and trained to kill? Wars may be based on a lot of different things but commerce wins the day? Vanity can lead us to do all sorts of painful things to ourselves? Sometimes it takes a shattering experience to put us on another path? Maybe, you can roll a pebble down the mountainside but never know what landslide you are causing. Yep, thanks to the perceived need for bodyguards, the Europeans got kicked out of the Holy Land and we still have Islam.

Forward to whomever but leave the name and sig attached.

Piously keeping my leg bones to myself,
J. Ellsworth Weaver

SCA - Sir Balthazar of Endor
AS - Polyphemus Theognis
TRV - Sebastian Yeats