Mamluks

The emergent of Mamluks started under Hasan Pashas whose intent was to strengthen his personalised base of power by creating a group of disciplined legions and civil functionaries committed uniquely to him and not to the government at Istanbul or the Arabs of Baghdad. A page corps was formed, originally recruited from local families but subsequently composed almost exclusively of knuckle downs imported from the Caucasus and Georgia (Thomas Philipp, Ulrich Haarmann, 1998.These slaves were instructed in reading material and writing, but likewise horse-manship and swimming, a combination of martial and bureaucratic virtues devising them superior to Turks and Iraqis as civil servants. Their training emphasized a find of interdependence and esprit de corps. They were made to feel that they owed their privilege to their master and to the Mamluks understructure. John Joseph Saunders in the The History of the Mongol Conquests noted that the Mamluks dominated the power elite, but as an alien force, and they were merciless to any suspected rival to their authority.A blotto disciplined fraternity, and the only effective civil and troops organization in spite of appearance the country, they provided their pashas with the power of an independent monarch. He argued, nevertheless, Mamluk pashas at no time renounced inscription to the sultan of the Ottoman Empire. He went on to explain how they defended Iraq from the Wahhabis and Persians but did not create war on neighbors within the empire. They were the only Moslem dynasty that withstands the invasions of the Turks and Mongol.They were slave boy children captured and trained carefully groomed for life as military men. They were leaders corps of warrior-slaves, mostly from Turkic or Kurdish commutation Asia, but also including some Christians from the Caucasus region of s fall outh-eastern Europe. They were called the Mamluks which literally mean slave. check to historians, Mamluks were young boys who were no t Muslim and groomed to be Sunni Muslim soldiers( Saunders 2001). The Mamluk institution creates a lot speculation and comment among pre modern observers.Consequently, James Waterson inform that the Mamluks are the slave warriors of medieval Islam who overthrew their masters, defeated the Mongols and the Crusaders and established a dynasty that lasted 3 hundred years. He continued to say that these young boys turn out to be great soldiers. Interestingly, Halperin commented that at the same time as the Islamic world was combating off Christian Crusaders from Europe, the great Muslim general Saladin conquered Egypt in 1169, founding the Ayyubid Dynasty. He also stated that Saladan and his descendants used increase numbers of Mamluk soldiers in their struggles for power.In fact, according Charles Halperin a researcher in the field of history commented how during this time the Crusaders controlled several small coastal principalities in the Holy Land. He explained that during the war the Mongols approached the Mamluks offering them an alliance against the Muslims. The Crusaders former enemies, the Mamluks, also sent representative to the Christians offering a deal against the Mongols. They feared that the Mongols were a more than immediate threat, the Crusader states opted to remain nominally neutral, but agreed to go forth the Mamluks armies to pass unhindered through Christians occupied lands.