By Fred H. Lawson
Several thoughtful, accessible, and up-to-date histories of the Ottoman Empire have appeared in recent years. Nothing similar has existed that offers a sophisticated introduction to the era that immediately preceded Ottoman rule in Syria and Egypt—three eventful centuries during which political, economic, and cultural institutions and practices took shape that survived long after Sultan Selim I Yavuz (usually called “Selim the Grim”) captured Damascus and Cairo. Carl Petry’s magisterial The Mamluk Sultanate at last fills this important lacuna.
Based on a career of path-breaking contributions to scholarship concerning the history of the late medieval Middle East, Petry spells out the ways in which non-native military officers, known as possessed ones (mamluks) due to the fact that they were imported from areas around the Black Sea to serve as armed retainers in the households of local commanders, competed for control over the governmental apparatus of Egypt. Ambitious commanders did their best to promote the interests of their respective households and the military establishment as a whole, and at the same time satisfy their personal ambitions. Those who accrued the greatest renown—not only during their lifetimes but also in retrospect—were individuals who succeeded at all three enterprises.
Historical surveys confront the perennial problem of whether to emphasize the broad patterns that persist over time or instead to highlight the particular changes that occur at shorter intervals. The Mamluk Sultanate pays primary attention to the former, and tends to make sweeping assertions about the thrust of political, economic, and cultural developments across the three hundred years of Mamluk rule. This strategy helps to prevent the tale from getting bogged down in too much detail. Yet it is discomfiting that an historian as astute as Petry occasionally remarks that some way of doing things has been taking place in Egypt “for millennia.” Even the most mundane aspects of Egyptian life changed in subtle but significant ways as the decades passed.
General readers might consider using The Mamluk Sultanate as a reference volume, to be dipped into for insight regarding specific topics, rather than as a single narrative to be read from cover to cover. In particular, it would make good sense for non-specialists to start with the overview of political organization that makes up Chapter Two, then take in the explication of social structure found in Chapter Four, followed by the outline of economic transformations in Chapter Five. Chapter One’s dense “synopsis” of successive leaderships might well be held in reserve, as a touchstone to be consulted whenever one wishes to place a trend or event in the context of contests at the pinnacle of the political order.
Anyone interested in Middle Eastern international relations will find Chapter Three most intriguing, since it addresses the profound question of why the Mamluk Sultanate that managed to block the onslaught of the Mongols proved unable to head off the advance of the Ottomans. Alternatively, anyone who has visited Cairo, and observed how deeply the Mamluk legacy affects its built environment, will wish that the discussion of culture had devoted more space to architecture. Anyone who might be anxious to push the boundaries of conventional history-writing will delight in the sections devoted to gender and domestic life. One book obviously cannot provide the definitive treatment of so many different aspects of late medieval Egypt, not to mention the peculiarities of the Sultanate’s provinces of Syria and western Arabia. But as a prolegomena and stimulus for further inquiry, The Mamluk Sultanate stands as a remarkable accomplishment.
Fred H. Lawson (ΦBK, Indiana University) is Professor of Government Emeritus of Northeastern University.