132 • 9 FIREARMS, SLAVES, AND EMPIRESarmy or the bureaucracy. In remote Middle Eastern areas—the Central
Asian steppes (home of the Turks and the Mongols), the eastern shore of
the Black Sea (inhabited by Circassians), the northern Zagros Mountains
(Kurdistan), and even the Mediterranean islands—lived families that were
willing to let their sons go, via slave traders, to serve Muslim rulers. In the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the greatest source of new mamluks
was the Kipchak Turkic tribe. Then, after 1382, the Circassians took the
lead, sending their sons to the barracks and their daughters to the harems
of Muslim sultans and amirs (princes).
A boy usually became a mamluk when he was between ten and twelve,
not yet adolescent but old enough to take care of himself and to learn to
ride a horse, if indeed he had not been riding ever since he knew how
to walk. He would be sold into the service of the reigning sultan (if he was
lucky), or to one of the amirs, and put into a barrack or dormitory with
other mamluks his own age. All the boys would receive basic instruction in
Islam and Arabic. They would be drilled in the care and riding of horses,
taught to fight with lances and swords, and trained in archery. This rigor¬
ous education lasted eight to ten years, during which the youths were kept
under the strictest discipline (a visit to the public baths was the high point
of their week), but each cohort developed a feeling of unity that lasted the
rest of their lives. Each mamluk, upon completing his military training,
received his liberation paper, a horse, and his fighting equipment.
Even as a freed soldier of fortune, though, the mamluk stayed loyal to
the sultan or amir who had trained and liberated him, to his teachers and
proctors, and to the men who had gone through training with him. Each
cohort of trainees tended to become a faction within the army, rather like
a house in a boarding school or a pledge class in a fraternity. If the master
died or lost his position, often his mamluks would suffer demotion or ex¬
ile rather than attach themselves to someone else. Not surprisingly, the
leaders of mamluk factions formed larger alliances, took power, and be¬
came amirs or, after 1250, sultans. In other words, men who had them¬
selves been trained as mamluks often became the owners and trainers of
new mamluk boys from Central Asia or the Caucasus mountains. The ties
between master and mamluk were much like those within a family. In fact,
few sons of mamluks entered the system. Those who did ranked below the
sultan's or even the amir's mamluks; they preferred to become ulama or
administrators. Succession to the sultanate was seldom hereditary. The
Mamluk sultans rose through the ranks of the sultan's mamluks. Their
ability to reach the top depended on their military skills and political acu¬
men. No Muslim dynasty that you have studied so far managed to rule
Egypt and Syria for as long as the Mamluks did.