The Mamluks • 131jar al-Durr the new sultan—one of the few times in Islamic history that a
woman has ruled in her own name—but in reality the Mamluks took over
(see Map 9.1). Their commander made this clear when he married Shajar
al-Durr a few months later.
The Mamluk Ruling System
The Mamluks developed a succession pattern unique in Middle East his¬
tory. Although a son would often succeed his father as sultan, he usually
(especially after 1382) had only a brief reign during which the major fac¬
tions would fight for power. As soon as one Mamluk party had defeated
the others, its leader would seize the sultanate. It should have been the
worst governmental system in history; oddly enough, it worked for more
than 250 years.
One reason was that it enabled several gifted leaders to rise to the top and
stay there. Our favorite example is Baybars (r. 1260-1277), who had served
his predecessor as one of his generals at Ayn Jalut. Soon after this victory, he
killed his master and conned the other Mamluks into accepting him as
their new sultan. Ever mindful of the Mongol threat to the east, Baybars
tried to bring much of Syria under Mamluk control. This meant absorbing
a few lands still under Ayyubid princes, reducing the Crusaders' territories
to a coastal strip (they held Acre until 1291), and ravaging the kingdom of
Little Armenia, the Mongols' most faithful ally. But Baybars did not let reli¬
gion or nationality stop him from making useful alliances. He courted the
Byzantines and the Christian rulers of Aragon, Sicily, and several Italian
city-states, all of which became Egypt's trading partners. He sided with the
Mongols in Russia—the Golden Horde (which had become Muslim)—
against their Il-Khanid cousins in Persia. Baybars made Egypt the richest
Muslim state. He also took in a fugitive Abbasid prince from Baghdad and
proclaimed him caliph, thereby gaining some prestige. But Muslims cared
more that Baybars earned the title of "Servant of the Two Holy Cities,"
when Mecca and Medina accepted Mamluk sovereignty. The implication of
this title was that until those cities were taken by the Ottoman Empire in
1517, any Muslim making the hajj passed through Mamluk lands.
It has become so normal for army officers to seize power in the Middle
East that modern readers may picture Baybars as a thirteenth-century
prototype for Saddam Husayn. But there is a difference. Baybars set up a
lasting political system. Only lately have Muslim and Western scholars
learned the secrets of Mamluk power and endurance. A mamluk, as we
noted earlier, is a slave. Slavery in early Islam was not as bad as we tend to
think, for it often enabled gifted young men to rise to power through the