¹ For the Mamluk state in general, see Loiseau, J., Les Mamelouks, XIIIe-XVIe siècle: une experience du pouvoir dans l’Islam médiéval (Paris, 2014)Google Scholar; Northrup, Linda, “The Baḥrī Mamlūk Sultanate, 1250–1390”, in Petry, Carl (ed.), The Cambridge History of Egypt, I: Islamic Egypt, 540–1517 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 242–289 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Garcin, J-C., “The regime of the Circassian Mamlūks”, in Petry (ed.), The Cambridge History of Egypt, I, pp. 290–317 Google Scholar; Irwin, R., The Middle East in the Middle Ages: The Early Mamluk Sultanate 1250–1382 (London, 1986)Google Scholar.

² A survey of the institution of military slavery from its beginnings until the nineteenth century is found in Amitai, R., “The Mamluk institution: 1000 years of military slavery in the Islamic world”, in Morgan, Philip and Brown, Christopher (eds.), Arming Slaves: From Classical Times to the Modern Age(New Haven, 2006), pp. 40–78 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. However, as Jürgen Paul has pointed out, we should be wary of anachronistically seeing all of these slave soldiers over the centuries as being cut from one cloth, or reading back too much from the well-documented Mamluk Sultanate to previous generations. See Paul, Jürgen, “The state and the military: The Samanid case”, Papers on Inner Asia, no. 26 (Bloomington, 1994), pp. 4–5 Google Scholar.

³ For the various ethnic groups from which the young Mamluks were taken for service in the Sultanate, see Ayalon, D., “Ḥarb, iii. The Mamlūk Sultanate”, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, III, pp. 184–190 Google Scholar.

⁴ May, T., “Mamluks”, in Martel, G. (ed.), The Encyclopedia of War (Oxford, 2012), III, pp. 1299–1303 Google Scholar; Smith, J. M. Jr., “ʿAyn Jālūt: Mamlūk success or Mongol failure”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 44 (1984), pp. 307–345 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Amitai-Preiss, R., Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-Ilkhanid War 1260–1281 (Cambridge, 1995), Chapter 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ I first encountered Morgan's, David work in the form of the paper “The Mongols in Syria, 1260–1300”, in Edbury, P. (ed.), Crusade and Settlement. Papers Read at the First Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East and Presented to R.C. Smail (Cardiff, 1985), pp. 231–235 Google Scholar, leading me right away to read more of his then published studies on the Mongols in Iran and beyond. The impact of his work on my own studies was compounded when I showed up at SOAS in the fall of 1985 as a visiting research student. There I was fortunate that year to take a class with then Dr Morgan, and I am happy that he has remained a formidable presence in my academic life (and beyond) since then. The present paper had its origins as a somewhat different short communication given at the 55th annual meeting of the Permanent International Altaic Conference (PIAC), held at Indiana University (Bloomington) in July 2011.

⁶ Sauvaget, J., “Noms et surnoms de Mamelouks”, Journal Asiatique 238 (1950), pp. 31–58 Google Scholar; Ayalon, D., “Names, titles, and ‘nisbas’ of the Mamluks”, Israel Oriental Studies 5 (1975), pp. 189–232 Google Scholar, and reprinted in Ayalon, D., The Mamlūk Military Society (London, 1979)Google Scholar.

⁷ This is the name of the Mamluk officer who served as an envoy to Ilkhan Ghazan around 1302. For the reported conversation between the two, see Ibn al-Dawādārī (Abū Bakr b. ‛Abd Allāh), Kanz al-durar wa-jāmi‛ al-ghurar, IX: Al-Durar al-fākhir fī sīrat al-malik al-nāṣir, (ed.) H. R. Roemer (Cairo, 1379/1960), pp. 71–76; and the anonymous chronicle edited by Zetterstéen, K.V., Beiträge zur Geschichte der Mamlūkensultane in den Jahren 690–741 der Hiģra nach arabischen Handschriften (Leiden, 1919), pp. 101–104 Google Scholar. The passage in question was translated in Amitai, R., Holy War and Rapprochement: Studies in the Relations between the Mamluk Sultanate and the Mongol Ilkhanate (1260–1335) (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 109–155 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ See the summary translation by Gaston Wiet of Birdī's, Ibn Taghrī Manhal al-Ṣāfī (Les biographies du Manhal Safi [Cairo, 1932])Google Scholar, for many examples of the Turkish names of the Mamluks.

⁹ Ibn al-Dawādārī, Kitāb durar al-tījān wa-ghurar tawārīkh al-zamān, partial edition and translation in Graf, G., Die Epitome der Universalchronik Ibn ad-Dawādārīs im Verhältnis zur Langfassung. Eine quellenkritische Studie zu Geschichte der ägyptischen Mamluken (Berlin, 1990), p. 69 (Arabic text), p. 211 (translation). For more on the use of Turkish, see A. Mazor, The Manṣūriyya in the First Mamluk Sultanate, 678/1279 –741/1341. ‘Mamluk Studies”, vol. 12 (Göttingen, 2015), p. 42Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Ayalon, D., L’esclavage du Mamelouk, Oriental Notes and Studies no. 1 (Jerusalem, 1951), pp. 13–14 Google Scholar (reprinted in Ayalon, The Mamlūk Military Society). See now also J. Frenkel, “Some notes concerning the trade and education of slave-soldiers during the Mamlūk era”, and Amir Mazor, “The Early Experience of the Mamlūk in the First Period of the Mamlūk Sultanate (1250–1382 ce)”, both to appear in Christoph Cluse and Reuven Amitai (eds.), Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean (c. 1000–1500ce) (forthcoming). Both Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406), Kitāb al-‛ibar (Bulaq, 1284/1867–68), V, pp. 371–373, and al-Maqrīzī (d. 1442), Kitāb al-Khiṭaṭ (Bulaq, 1270/1853–54), II, pp. 213–214 (who may well have taken this information from the former), note that only with the completion of the religious education was the formal military training begun. However, this seems unlikely, not the least since the inculcation of military skills, based on the steppe upbringing of the young Mamluks, necessitated long-term, continual, practice. See Mazor for this point.

¹¹ See Berkey, J. P., “Mamluks and the world of higher Islamic education in medieval Cairo, 1250–1517”, in Elboudrari, H. (ed.), Modes de transmission de la culture réligieuse en Islam, (ed.) Hassan Elboudrari (Cairo, 1993), pp. 93–116 Google Scholar; Berkey, J. P., “‘Silver Threads among the Coal’: A well-educated Mamluk of the ninth/fifteenth century”, Studia Islamica 73 (1991), pp. 109–125 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haarmann, U., “Arabic in speech, Turkish in lineage: Mamluks and their sons in the intellectual life of fourteenth-century Egypt and Syria”, Journal of Semitic Studies 33, 1 (1988), pp. 81–114 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See comments in Amir Mazor, The Rise and Fall of a Muslim Regiment, pp. 41-42.

¹² (Ed.) D. S. Richards (Beirut and Berlin, 1998). See the introduction for biographical details. There is some evidence that Baybars may have received some assistance in the composition of this work by a native Arabic speaking Christian official (ibid., pp. xxi-xxii).

¹³ Northrup, L., From Slave to Sultan: The Career of al-Manṣūr Qalāwūn and the Consolidation of Mamluk Rule in Egypt and Syria (678–689 ah/1279–1290 ad) (Stuttgart, 1998), p. 67 Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Thorau, P., The Lion of Egypt: Sultan Baybars I and the Near East in the Thirteenth Century, translated P. M. Holt (London and New York, 1992), p. 175 Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Eckmann, J., “The Mamluk-Kipchak literature”, Central Asiatic Journal 8 (1963), pp. 304–319 Google Scholar; Flemming, B., “Literary activities in Mamluk halls and barracks,” in Rosen-Ayalon, M. (ed.), Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet (Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 249–260 Google Scholar; Bodrogligeti, A., “A Grammar of Mameluke-Kipchak”, in Ligeti, L. (ed.), Studia Turcica (Budapest, 1971), pp. 89–102 Google Scholar; Kurtlusus, O. (ed. and tr.), Munyatu’l-Ghuzat: A 14th Century Mamluk-Kipchak Military Treatise (Cambridge, MA, 1989)Google Scholar; Houtsma, M. T., Ein türkisch-arabisches Glossar, nach der leidener Handschrift (Leiden, 1894)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Robert Irwin discussed this ethnic group in an important paper, “How Circassian were the Circassian Mamluks?” presented in the 2006 conference held in Haifa and Jerusalem, which will hopefully soon see the light of day. For the question of how the later period should be called, see Ayalon, D., “Baḥrī Mamlūks, Burjī Mamlūks—inadequate names for the two reigns of the Mamluk Sultanate”, Tārīḫ 1 (1990), pp. 3–53 Google Scholar, and reprinted in Ayalon, D., Islam and the Abode of War (Aldershot, 1994)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Berkey, J. P., “The Mamluks as Muslims: The military elite and the construction of Islam in medieval Egypt”, in Phillip, T. and Haarmann, U. (eds.), The Mamluks in Egyptian Politics and Society (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 163–173 Google Scholar; Little, D. P., “Religion under the Mamluks”, The Muslim World 73 (1983), pp. 165–168 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and reprinted in Little, D. P., History and Historiography of the Mamlūks (London, 1986)Google Scholar. I address this subject further in Holy War and Rapprochment, Chapter 4.

¹⁸ Irwin, Middle East, pp. 57–58; Thorau, Lion of Egypt, pp. 240–243, 268. On qumiz/qumis in general, see Allsen, T. T., “Ever Closer Encounters: The appropriation of culture and the apportionment of peoples in the Mongol Empire”, Journal of Early Modern History 1, 1 (1997), pp. 13–15 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Doerfer, G., Türkische und mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen (Wiesbaden, 1963–75)Google Scholar, III, pp. 512–517 (no. 1529).

¹⁹ On the assemblage of rituals and beliefs that constitute what (for lack of a better term) I have termed ‘traditional Steppe religion’, see Roux, J-P., “Turkic Religions”, in Eliade, M. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion (New York, 1987), xv, pp. 87–94 Google Scholar; W. Heissig, “Mongol religion”, in Eliade (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion., x, pp. 54–57; Heissig, W., The Religions of Mongolia, translated by G. Samuel (London, 1980), esp. Chapter 2Google Scholar; Boyle, J.A., “Turkish and Mongol shamanism in the Middle Ages”, Folklore 83 (1972), pp. 177–193 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, and reprinted. in Boyle, J.A., The Mongol World Empire 1206–1370 (London, 1977)Google Scholar.

²⁰ Northrup, From Slave to Sultan, p. 67, citing Ibn al-Furāt, Ta’rīkh al-duwal wa’l-mulūk, VIII, ed. C.K. Zurayk and N. Izzedin (Beirut, 1939), pp. 94–95 (a translation of this passage is found in n. 15).

²¹ On this, see Ayalon, D., “The Great Yāsa of Chingiz Khān. A re-examination. Part A”, Studia Islamica 33 (1971), pp. 118–120 Google Scholar, who notes that this method attributed to the Oirats was different from another method of slaughter ascribed elsewhere to the Mongols: slitting the chest of the animal and pulling out its heart.

²² Al-Ṣafadī (Khalīl b. Aybak), A‛yān al-‛aṣr wa-a‛wān al-naṣr, (ed.) ‛A. Abū Zayd et al. (Beirut-Damascus, 1418/1998), I, p. 634; al-Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, II, pp. 219–222; Birdī, Ibn Taghrī (Jamāl al-Dīn Abū al-Maḥāsin Yūsuf), al-Nujūm al-zāhira fī mulūk miṣr wa’l-qāhira (Cairo, 1348–92/1929–72), VI, p. 268 Google Scholar; VII, p. 182. All of these are cited and discussed at length by Ayalon in the series of articles cited in the next note, especially in Part C2, pp. 127–140.

²³ Ayalon, D., “The Great Yāsa of Chingiz Khān. A reexamination. Part A”, Studia Islamica 33 (1971), pp. 97–140 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “. . .Part B”, Studia Islamica 34 (1971), pp. 151–180; “. . .Part C1”, Studia Islamica 36 (1972), pp. 113–158; “. . .Part C2”, Studia Islamica 38 (1973), pp. 107–156; all reprinted in Ayalon, Outsiders in the Lands of Islam: Mamluks, Mongols, and Eunuchs (London, 1988). This important study helped to propel a vigorous discussion by scholars about the origins and nature of the Yasa in a more general, mostly Mongol context, in which David Morgan has played a key part. See Morgan, D. O., “The ‘Great Yāsā of Chingiz Khān’ and Mongol law in the Īlkhānate”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 49 (1986), pp. 163–176 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morgan, D. O.., “The ‘Great Yasa of Chinggis Khan’ revisited”, in Amitai, R. and Biran, M. (eds.), Mongols, Turks, and Others: Eurasian Nomads and the Sedentary World (Leiden, 2005), pp. 291–308 Google Scholar. For a comprehensive and up-to-date review of the whole subject, see P. Jackson, “Yāsā”, Encyclopaedia Iranica, online edition. Available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/yasa-law-code (accessed 3 March 2015).

²⁴ See Amitai, R., “The Mongols as seen by the Arabic sources: The view from across Asia”, in Chinggis Khan and Globalization (Ulaan Baatar, 2014), pp. 125–126 Google Scholar; Amitai, R. and Biran, M., “Arabic Sources for the History of the Mongol Empire”, in Biran, M. and Kim, Hodong (eds), The Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire (Cambridge, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

²⁵ On polo in general in the Islamic world, with a few comments regarding its origins and early appearance, see H. Massé, “Čawgān”, Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edition, II, pp. 16–17. See also Shoshan, B., “Sports,” in Meri, J. W. (ed.), Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia (New York and London, 2006) ii, pp. 768–770 Google Scholar. For Polo in China, see: Liu, J. T. C., “Polo and Cultural Change: From T’ang to Sung China”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 45 (1986), pp. 203–224 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (esp. pp. 203–205); Bower, V. L., “Polo in Tang China: Sport and Art”, Asian Art 4/1 (Winter 1991), pp. 23–45 Google Scholar. See also the comment in Allsen, T. T., The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History(Philadelphia, 2006), p. 266 Google Scholar, who refers to polo as “the first international sport, played by both elites and commoners from Korea to the Mediterranean”. It is not impossible that polo passed to the Mamluks directly from China or Iran, but the Inner Asian provenance seems the most likely, or at least reinforced its initial borrowing from another source.

²⁶ For this game in the Sultanate, see Ayalon, D., “Notes on the Furūsiyya exercises and games in the Mamluk Sultanate”, in Heyd, U. (ed.), Studies in Islamic History and Civilization (Jerusalem, 1961 = Scripta Hierosolymitana 9), pp. 31–62 Google Scholar, esp. pp. 53–55, and reprinted in Ayalon, Mamlūk Military Society. For an example of Baybars playing polo (from 659/1261 in Damascus), see Ibn ‛Abd al-Zahir (Muḥyī al-Dīn), al-Rawḍ al-zāhir fī sīrat al-malik al-ẓāhir, (ed.) ‛A-‛A. al-Khuwayṭir (Riyad, 1396/1976), pp. 119–120: the author notes that the Sultan played with a large group of kings and princes, including many Ayyubid scions, comparing him favourably to Saladin, who had played with a less impressive—so it is implied—group of Seljuq and Zengid princes. See now al-Sarraf, Sh., “The Mamluk Furūsiyya Literature and Its Antecedents”, Mamlūk Studies Review 8, 1 (2004), pp. 190–192 Google Scholar, and the comment in Guo, Li, “Sports as Performance: The Qabaq-game and Celebratory Rites in Mamluk Cairo”, Ulrich Haarmann Memorial Lecture, vol. 5 (Berlin, 2013), p. 20 Google Scholar. Mention should also be made of the remarkable collection of evidence, going well beyond the Mamluk Sultanate, by E. Quatremère in a note in his partial translations of Maqrīzī's Kitab al-Sulūk: L’Histoire des sultans mamelouks de l’Égypte (Paris, 1837–45), vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 121–132.

²⁷ For this title, as well as how it was represented on Mamluk “heraldic” symbols, see Mayer, L. A., Saracenic Heraldry (Oxford, 1933)Google Scholar, index, s.v. “jūkandār”. Mayer, however, translates this as ‘polo-master’, but I prefer ‘the holder of the polo mallets’, following R. Dozy, Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes (Leiden, 1881), i, p. 235.

²⁸ One example from the beginning of Mamluk rule in Syria is Ḥusām al-Dīn Lājīn al-Jūkandār al-‛Azīzī (d. 662/1263–4), actually a Mamluk of an Ayyubid prince in Syria, who briefly controlled Aleppo in the aftermath of ‛Ayn Jālūt; Thorau, Lion of Egypt, pp. 94–95; al-Maqrizi (Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAlī), Kitāb al-sulūk li-ma‛rifat al-duwal wa’l-mulūk, (ed.) Muḥammad Muṣṭafā Ziyāda et al. (Cairo, 1934–73), i, p. 522.

²⁹ E.g., Baybars was hunting outside Cairo at the end of 1264 when news arrived of a Mongol attack on al-Bīra on the Euphrates: Ibn ‛Abd al-Ẓāhir, Rawḍ, pp. 221–222. For an example of Qalāwūn's sons out on the hunt, see Northrup, From Slave to Sultan, p. 247. Al-Ashraf Khalīl (r. 1290–3) was murdered while out on a hunting expedition; Irwin, Middle East, p. 82.

³⁰ Ibn ‛Abd al-Ẓāhir, Rawḍ, p. 229; Amitai, R., “The conquest of Arsūf by Baybars: Political and military aspects”, Mamluk Studies Review 9 (2005), pp. 61–63 Google Scholar.

³¹ For the Mongol hunt, see Morgan, D., The Mongols (Oxford, 1986), pp. 84–85 Google Scholar; Jagchid, S. and Hyer, P., Mongolia's Culture and Society (Boulder and Folkestone, 1979), pp. 27–37 Google Scholar; and May, T., The Mongol Art of War: Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Military System (Barnsley, South Yorkshire, 2007), pp. 46–47 Google Scholar.

³² For the larger question of the royal hunt in the Old World, see the magisterial study by Allsen, The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History. However, without delving into the matter too deeply, it appears to me that under the Mamluks the hunt never developed quite the importance that it seems to have had in ancient Iran, the Mongol empire, or Mogul India, which is so clearly portrayed in Allsen's book. This is a subject to which I hope to return in the future.

³³ Thus, for example, Baybars al-Manṣūrī calls one of his chronicles al-Tuḥfa al-mulūkiyya fī al-dawla al-turkiyya (“The Royal Gem Concerning the Turkish Dynasty”), (ed.) ʿA-R.S. Ḥamdān (Cairo, 1987), and Ibn al-Dawādārī entitled volume VIII of his chronicle al-Durra al-zakiyya fī akhbār al-dawla al-turkiyya (“The Pure Pearl Regarding the Turkish Dynasty”), (ed.) U. Haarmann (Cairo, 1391/1971).

³⁴ Qaraṭāy [sic] al-‛Izzī al-Khaznadārī, Ta’rīkh majmū‛ al-nawādir, (ed.) H. Hein and M. Ḥujayrī (Beirut and Berlin, 2005).

³⁵ The compositions of the first three have been mentioned above. For the last named, admittedly not directly relevant to the time-span of the present article, see the comments in D.P. Little, “Historiography of the Ayyūbid and Mamlūk epochs”, in Petry (ed.), Cambridge History of Egypt, pp. 440–441.

³⁶ These have been collected and analysed by Ayalon, “Great Yāsa. . .Part C1”, pp. 117–126. Of particular interest is the passage from al-‛Umarī (Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā ibn Faḍlallāh), Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār, partial edition and translation in Klaus Lech, Das Mongolische Weltreich: al-‛Umarīs Darstellung der mongolischen Reiche in seinem Werk Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār (Wiesbaden, 1968), p. 70 (Arabic text): “Since the time that al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb had made up his mind to buy Qipchaqi Mamluks, the sultans and commanders of this country have been of these Turks. Then, when the rule [of Egypt] passed into their hands, their kings inclined toward the people of their own race, and they decided to increase their numbers, until Egypt had become populated and protected by means of them.” [Translation by Ayalon, with minor changes.]

³⁷ See now the recent publication by Yosef, Dr Koby, who emphasises the particular importance of this ethnic identity: “ Dawlat al-atrāk or dawlat al-mamālīk? Ethnic origin or slave origin as the defining characteristic of the ruling élite in the Mamlūk Sultanate”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 39 (2012), pp. 387–410 Google Scholar. Dr Amir Mazor has also dealt with some of these matters in his recent book The Rise and Fall of a Muslim Regiment, pp. 33–35, 164–168, 191–192.

³⁸ Haarmann, Ulrich, “Alṭun Ḫān und Čingiz Ḫān bie den ägyptischen Mamluken”, Der Islam 51 (1974), pp. 1–36 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., “Turkish legends in the popular historiography of medieval Egypt”, in Proceedings of the VIth Congress of Arabic and Islamic Studies (1972) (Stockholm and Leiden, 1975), pp. 97–107.

³⁹ Ayalon, “Great Yāsa. . .Part C2”, pp. 131–140, 143–145; Little, D. P., “Notes on Aitamiš, a Mongol Mamlūk”, in Haarmann, U. and Backmann, P. (eds.), Die islamische Welt zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit: Festschrift für Hans Robert Roemer zum 65. Geburtstag (Beirut and Wiesbaden, 1979), pp. 387–401 Google Scholar, and reproduced in Little, History and Historiography of the Mamlūks; Amitai, R., “A Mongol governor of al-Karak in Jordan?: A re-examination of an old document in Mongolian and Arabic”, Zentralasiatische Studien 36 (2007), pp. 263–275 Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ For possible Steppe influences—especially Mongol—and the means by which these were conveyed, see Ayalon, “Great Yāsa. . .Part C1”, pp. 130–136; for the role of the Wafidiyya as agents of these influences, see Nobutaka, Nakamachi. “The rank and status of military refugees in the Mamluk army: A reconsideration of the Wāfidīya”, Mamluk Studies Review 10, 1 (2006), pp. 55–81 Google Scholar; but cf. Amitai, R., “Mamluks of Mongol origin and their role in early Mamluk political life”, Mamluk Studies Review 12, 1 (2008), pp. 119–137 Google Scholar; Holt, P. M., “An-Nāṣir Muḫammad b. Qalāwūn (684–741/1285–1341): His ancestry, kindred and affinity”, in Vermeulen, U. and de Smet, D. (eds.), Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk Eras (Leuven, 1995), pp. 313–324 Google Scholar.

⁴¹ This is a point that I tried to make in Holy War and Rapprochement, chapter 4. See also Berkey, J., “Mamluk Religious Policy”, Mamluk Studies Review 13, 2 (2009), pp. 7–22 Google Scholar.