68 ISLAM AT WAR
The Mamluk army was based on the feudal system with various emirs
receiving fiefs of land in exchange for service. In 1313 the sultan began
to reallocate the fiefs among his followers, while taking the bulk of them
for his own use. Those fiefs he retained served his personal needs and
supported the Royal Mamluks. The latter would eventually evolve into an
utterly uncontrolled palace guard, whose demands for bribes would ruin
the finances of the empire. The sultan had controlled the nobility with the
army, but there was no controlling the army.
As time progressed and the power of the Royal Mamluks grew, they
steadily abandoned their martial training and focused more and more on
politics. Their interests as a privileged foreign class were not those of the
nation. The core of the empire would literally rot out. The army lost their
services, and they ruined the court with terrible corruption and venality.
While the Mamluk empire struggled with internal disorders in 1394,
the great Tamerlane appeared. Born in Samarkand in 1336, in 1381 he led
his army into Persia, imitating Genghis Khan by slaughtering every man,
woman, and child in each town that he captured. He took Baghdad in
October 1393 and then Tabriz. In February 1394 he sent a long dispatch
full of threats to the Mamluks in Cairo. The Mamluks responded by mo-
bilizing and marching to war.
On December 31, 1400, the Mamluks met Tamerlane outside of Da-
mascus in battle. The Mamluk left was defeated, but their right forced
back Tamerlane’s left. The battle was a draw, and despite the chaotic
rivalries that divided the Mamluk emirs, they were still able to hold their
own in a “soldiers’ battle.”
Tamerlane sent a message requesting a truce, but it was rejected. The
Mamluk emirs, instead of planning strategy, quarreled over fiefs and ap-
pointments, and some abandoned the Mamluk army, taking their men with
them. The rumor spread that they were planning a coup d’e ́tat. The sultan’s
leading supporters, alarmed for their privileges back in Cairo, swept up
their puppet and on January 8 rode posthaste to Cairo, abandoning the
field and their army to Tamerlane. The remaining Mamluks, seeing them-
selves abandoned, immediately decamped. The army that had held off a
ferocious foe literally disintegrated of its own ineptitude.
Damascus, abandoned by the Mamluk army, was then attacked by Tam-
erlane’s host, but the citizens defeated the first effort. The Mongol warlord
then entered into negotiations with the principal religious leaders, pro-
fessing that he had accepted Islam. True or not, the imams believed him—
apparently forgetting their recent experiences with Ghazan—and signed
an agreement with Tamerlane to spare their city for a bribe of one million
gold dinars. However, once inside the city, Tamerlane repudiated his