This passage is taken from a treatise called The Book of the Districts and Monuments in Egypt and Cairo by the Egyptian scholar al-Maqrīzī (1354-1442). In his book, al-Maqrīzī described the urban geography of Cairo in the early fifteenth century, using its monuments to prompt reflections upon its history, culture, and famous inhabitants. This excerpt focuses on the barracks which had housed many generations of young mamluks belonging to the sultan. These mamluks were enslaved boys who had been purchased by the sultan for the purpose of intensive military training. If they completed the training program, they would be freed and given posts within the army and government bureaucracy. Those who were skilled and politically savvy could rise to positions of considerable power and wealth. The most successful of all became sultans in their own right.

Translated from the Arabic by Hannah Barker. Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Maqrīzī, Kitāb al-khiṭaṭ wa-al-athār fī Miṣr wa-al-Qāhirah, ed. Ayman Fu’ad Sayyid (London: Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2002-2004), 3:691-95. This translation CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.


The Barracks in Portico Square

The king al-Nāṣir Muḥammad ibn Qalāwūn[1] built [the barracks] and allocated it as living quarters for the sultan’s mamluks, and he built a quarter which was devoted to them. The kings took a deep interest in them, so that the king al-Manṣūr Qalāwūn had gone out most times to the courtyard when the food for the mamluks was due [to be distributed]. He commanded its presentation before him, and he inspected their meat, and he examined their food concerning its goodness and badness. When he saw a flaw in it, he was severe towards the supervisor (mushrif) and the steward (ustādār) and reproached them, and an unpleasant command from him befell them. He said: “All kings build something by which they are remembered, whether wealth or land. I raised walls and built protective fortresses for myself, my children, and the Muslims, and [those walls and fortresses] are the mamluks.”

The mamluks always resided in these barracks, not leaving them. When the king al-Ashraf Khalīl ibn Qalāwūn became sultan, he permitted the mamluks to go down [into the city] from the citadel during the day but not to spend the night [anywhere] except in it, so that one of them was not able to spend the night anywhere else. Then the king al-Nāṣir Muḥammad ibn Qalāwūn permitted them to go down to the bathhouse (ḥammām) one day per week, so they went down by turns with the eunuchs, then returned on their next day. This situation of theirs continued until the days of Qalāwūn’s family (banī Qalāwūn) ended.

There were good customs for the mamluks in these barracks. The first of them was that if his trader arrived with the mamluk, [the trader] presented [the mamluk] to the sultan. [The sultan] made him go down to the barracks of his race (jins) and handed him over to a eunuch intended for the current sultan’s mamluks (kitāba). So the first thing that he began teaching him was what was necessary for him of the noble Quran. Each part [of the barracks] had a teacher (faqīh) who came to it every day, and under him they studied the book of God Almighty, and knowledge of writing, and training in the rules of the law (sharīʿa), and the pursuit of the prayers and recitations.

It was the rule that the traders not import any except young mamluks. If one of the mamluks reached adolescence, the teacher (faqīh) taught something of law (fiqh) and made him read concerning it in an introductory way. If he reached the age of maturity, he studied the types of war under him: archery, the game of lances, and similar things. So the teacher (muʿallim) took over each group until he reached the goal in knowledge of what was necessary for him. If they rode to the game of lances or archery, neither soldier (jundī) nor commander (amīr) dared to speak to them or approach them. So [when] he was transferred, if to service, he was assigned in stages from rank to rank until he became one of the commanders. He didn’t reach this rank unless his behavior was refined, and his manners were multiplied, and the greatness of Islam and his people (ahl) mingled in his heart, and he become strong in archery, and his game of lances was excellent, and he trained in riding horses. Among them were those who became a knowledgeable teacher (faqīh) in rank, and a literary poet, and an expert calculator.

This, and they had restraints from the eunuchs and the greatest of the barracks heads (ras nūba): they tested the condition of each one of them with a clear test, and they punished him with the harshest punishment, and interrogated him concerning his movements and his resting places. If one of his teachers (muʿaddib) who taught him the Quran, or the eunuch to whom he was subject, or the barracks head who had authority over him found that he had committed a sin or violated a rule, or neglected a rule from the religious or secular rules, he confronted him about that with a severe and painful punishment in proportion to his crime.

It affected their instruction that the head eunuch of the palace mamluks (muqaddam al-mamālīk), if some of the head eunuchs of the barracks (muqaddamīn al-ṭibāq) came to him at dawn, would consult about a mamluk that washed from ritual impurity, and he would send someone to inquire about the reason for his impurity. If [the mamluk] had reached puberty, he examined whether or not there was impurity in his underwear. If he did not find impurity in them, death came to him from everywhere.

So they were the masters who ran the kingdoms, and the leaders who strove in the path of God, and the people of politics who did their utmost in displaying the beautiful, and who prevented whoever strayed or overstepped. They had many stipends of meat and food and sweets and fruit and splendid clothing, and sums of gold and silver so that the situations of their slaves (ghilmān) became rich, and their gifts flooded whoever considered them.

Then when the days of al-Ẓāhir Barqūq occurred, he maintained the situation in that in some things, until his reign ended in the year 791 [1389 CE].[2] When he returned to the kingdom, he allowed the mamluks to live in Cairo and marry. So they went down from the barracks of the citadel, and married women of the people of the city, and they lingered in idleness, and forgot those habits. Then conditions were ruined in the days of al-Nāṣir Faraj ibn Barqūq.[3] The payments of meat and the rest were cut, until the mamluks of the barracks appeared despite the smallness of their numbers, and a sum of 10 dirhams of money per day was paid to each one of them. Their breakfasts became mainly cooked fava beans (fūl), being incapable of buying meat and the rest.  


[1] Al-Nāṣir Muḥammad was one of the longest-reigning Mamluk sultans. He ruled the kingdom in 1293-1294, 1299-1309, and 1309-1341, having been displaced twice by rival claimants to the throne. Al-Nāṣir Muḥammad was never a mamluk himself, but his father, Qalawūn, had been a mamluk and was part of the founding generation of the Mamluk sultanate.

[2] The sultan al-Ẓāhir Barqūq ruled the Mamluk kingdom from 1382 to 1399 with a hiatus of roughly a year in 1389-1390. During this period he was deposed and imprisoned by two provincial governors from Mamluk Syria, but after a year of turmoil in Cairo Barqūq’s supporters defeated the Syrian governors and restored Barqūq to the throne.

[3] The son of al-Ẓāhir Barqūq. He ruled the Mamluk sultanate from 1395 to 1412, interrupted by a rebellion in 1405.


Discussion Questions

  1. What were young mamluks supposed to study? Why?
  2. What did young mamluks eat? The author talked about how their diet changed under different rulers. Why did he think this was a detail worth mentioning?
  3. Why were young mamluks required to spend every night in the barracks?

Related Primary Sources

Themes

Children, Elite Slaves, Eunuchs, Labor, Race, Religion, Trade