Mamlukica
Studies on the History and Society of the Mamluk Period / Studien zu Geschichte und Gesellschaft der Mamlukenzeit
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Once a person starts to study the 250-some years of the Mamluk Era in Egypt and Syria (1250–1517), one characteristic of that period stands out immediately – the very unusual polarization of its society. A predominantly Arabic population was dominated by a purely Turkish-born elite of manu-mitted military slaves who sought to regenerate themselves continuously through a self-imposed fiat. The only person who could become a Mamluk was a Turk who had been born free outside the Islamic territories as a non-Muslim, then enslaved, brought to Egypt as a slave, converted to Islam, freed, and finally, trained as a warrior. Only those who met these prerequisites were members of the ruling stratum with all the concomitant political, military, and economic advantages. On this historically unique model of a society, Stephan Conermann has published a series of seminal articles. In this edited volume the reader gets an excellent introduction to some of the central issues of the ongoing research on the Mamluk history and society.
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Mamlukica, Stephan Conermann
- Language
- Released
- 2013
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- Title
- Mamlukica
- Subtitle
- Studies on the History and Society of the Mamluk Period / Studien zu Geschichte und Gesellschaft der Mamlukenzeit
- Language
- English
- Authors
- Stephan Conermann
- Publisher
- V & R Unipress, Bonn Univ. Press
- Publisher
- 2013
- ISBN10
- 3847101110
- ISBN13
- 9783847101116
- Series
- Mamluk studies
- Category
- World history
- Description
- Once a person starts to study the 250-some years of the Mamluk Era in Egypt and Syria (1250–1517), one characteristic of that period stands out immediately – the very unusual polarization of its society. A predominantly Arabic population was dominated by a purely Turkish-born elite of manu-mitted military slaves who sought to regenerate themselves continuously through a self-imposed fiat. The only person who could become a Mamluk was a Turk who had been born free outside the Islamic territories as a non-Muslim, then enslaved, brought to Egypt as a slave, converted to Islam, freed, and finally, trained as a warrior. Only those who met these prerequisites were members of the ruling stratum with all the concomitant political, military, and economic advantages. On this historically unique model of a society, Stephan Conermann has published a series of seminal articles. In this edited volume the reader gets an excellent introduction to some of the central issues of the ongoing research on the Mamluk history and society.