Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- PREFACE
- INTRODUCTION
- CHAPTER I A HISTORY OF CITIES IN THE MAMLUK EMPIRE
- CHAPTER II THE MAMLUK REGIME IN THE LIFE OF THE CITIES
- CHAPTER III THE URBAN SOCIETY
- CHAPTER IV THE POLITICAL SYSTEM: THE MAMLUK STATE AND THE URBAN NOTABLES
- CHAPTER V THE POLITICAL SYSTEM: THE COMMON PEOPLE BETWEEN VIOLENCE AND IMPOTENCE
- CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION: SOCIETY AND POLITY IN MEDIEVAL MUSLIM CITIES
- BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
- INDEX
CHAPTER V - THE POLITICAL SYSTEM: THE COMMON PEOPLE BETWEEN VIOLENCE AND IMPOTENCE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- PREFACE
- INTRODUCTION
- CHAPTER I A HISTORY OF CITIES IN THE MAMLUK EMPIRE
- CHAPTER II THE MAMLUK REGIME IN THE LIFE OF THE CITIES
- CHAPTER III THE URBAN SOCIETY
- CHAPTER IV THE POLITICAL SYSTEM: THE MAMLUK STATE AND THE URBAN NOTABLES
- CHAPTER V THE POLITICAL SYSTEM: THE COMMON PEOPLE BETWEEN VIOLENCE AND IMPOTENCE
- CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION: SOCIETY AND POLITY IN MEDIEVAL MUSLIM CITIES
- BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
- INDEX
Summary
The established order of Mamluk cities was based on a condominium of two elites. The local notables were guardians of the values of Islamic society and were entrusted with the intricacies of local affairs, while the tasks of defense and control of the urban economy were vested with the Mamluks. Sometimes cooperative, sometimes antagonistic, this combination of Mamluk repressive and economic power and ulama and merchant social skills created the political order of the towns.
This order of society, however, did not fully meet the needs of the common people. The absence of centralized governmental institutions, the weakness of economic associations, and the imperfect inclusion of both internal urban communities and lumpenproletarian groups generated pressures for which the Mamluk-ulama order afforded no regular outlet. The result was that the frustrations of the common people characteristically expressed themselves in mob violence which articulated needs and demands not otherwise served by the city elites. Still, we should not think of violence as necessarily senseless and chaotic. Violent action fell into patterns which not only reflected the limitations of the social order, but served to integrate the common people into a more complex over-all form of social organization. Violence as controlled and channeled by the Mamluks and the ulama could often be made to serve, though with great stress and at high cost, to consolidate the existing form of society. Mass political violence ranged from protests against food shortages and high prices, to resistance to fiscal exploitation, to outright rebellion.
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- Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages , pp. 143 - 184Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1984