Mamluks of Mongol Origin and Their Role in Early Mamluk Political Life
Mamluks of Mongol Origin and Their Role in Early Mamluk Political Life It will come as no surprise to even a casual student of Mamluk history when I state that the Mongols were the major foreign policy concern of the Mamluk Sultanate during its first century of existence, certainly after 1260. Be it the war with the Ilkhanids in Iran and the surrounding countries, or the amicable relations with the Golden Horde, the leadership of the young sultanate devoted much thought and many resources to dealing with the Mongol danger from the east on the one hand, and co-opting the Mongols from the far north on the other. Even after the conclusion of peace with the Ilkhanate in the early 1320s, the Mongols remained a concern for the Mamluks, although perhaps without the same urgency. With the breakup of the Ilkhanid state after 1335, the Mamluks still had to take into account for several decades their relations with different Mongolian rump states on their eastern and northern frontiers. In short, one can scarcely comprehend the history of the early Mamluk Sultanate without considering the impact of its preoccupation with the Mongols. 1 One aspect of Mamluk-Mongol relations is the question of Mongols in the Mamluk army, as soldiers and officers, and once even as a sultan. These could be Mamluks themselves or Mongol tribesmen who came as wāfidīyah or mustaʾminūn, i.e., refugees seeking sanctuary in the sultanate. This phenomenon of the wāfidīyah, Mongol and otherwise, received attention over half a century ago in a well-known article by the late David Ayalon, 2 who subsequently touched upon the phenomenon of Mamluks of Mongol origin in his wide-ranging series of papers on the yāsā, 3 as well as in his article “Mamlūk” in the Encyclopaedia of Islam.
4 Recently, Nakamachi Nobutaka 5 has written an interesting and innovative essay published in Mamlūk Studies Review, in which the status of the wāfidīyah in general, with some emphasis on the Mongol wāfidīyah, is reconsidered. I propose in the following article to look mainly at the “Mongol” Mamluks and their role in early Mamluk political life, without neglecting their possible connections with the Mongol wāfidīyah. I will end with some comments about the Mongol wāfidīyah, particularly in light of Nakamachi’s article. Finally, one small technical note: in the interest of brevity, in this article I will generally refer to Mamluks of Mongol provenance as Mongol-Mamluks. I hope that this shorthand will not prove confusing. We have the names of several prominent Mongol-Mamluks who reached the sultanate in various ways. There were probably many more such Mamluks who remained nameless in the sources, reflecting their modest ranks and achievements. This is something that we could expect a priori. First, we could imagine that some Mongol youths would be caught up in the trade of young Qipchaq Turks from the realm of the Golden Horde (more about this below). This point has already been made by Ayalon. 6 Secondly, some young Mongols would have been among the captives from the battles and border warfare between the Mamluk Sultanate and the Ilkhanate, where the Mamluks almost invariably had the upper hand (some prominent examples are given below). Thus, it seems probable that the senior Mongol-Mamluk officers whose names we know were only the tip of an iceberg, made up of lower-ranking Mamluks of Mongol origin.
