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The Mamluks were motivated by personal piety or political expediency for Islam was both an assimilating and unifying factor between the Mamluks and the majority of their subjects; the early mamluks had been brought up as Sunni Muslims and the Islamic faith was the only aspect of life shared between the Mamluk ruling elite and its subjects.
After the fragmentation of the Abbasid Empire, military slaves, known as either Mamluks or Ghilman, were used throughout the Islamic world as the basis of military power. The Fatimid Caliphate (909–1171) of Egypt had forcibly taken adolescent male Armenians, Turks, Sudanese, and Copts from their families to be trained as slave soldiers.
Most of the mamluks in the Ayyubids' service were ethnic Kipchak Turks from Central Asia, who, upon entering service, were converted to Sunni Islam and taught Arabic. A mamluk was highly committed to his master, to whom he often referred as 'father', and was in turn treated more as a kinsman than as a slave. [8]
That was the first open war among the Mongols and signaled the end of the unified empire. Hulagu Khan died in 1265 and was succeeded by his son Abaqa. The Muslim Mamluks defeated the Mongols in all battles except one. Beside a victory to the Mamluks in Ain Jalut, the Mongols were defeated in the second Battle of Homs, Elbistan and Marj al-Saffar.
Thus freed of other concerns, by 1516, the Ottoman Empire turned its full might against the Mamluks to complete the Ottoman conquest of the Middle East. [2] Sultan Selim alleged that the Mamluks were Muslim oppressors and that they were allied with the Shia Safavids. Based on these accusations, a fatwa appeared, stating: “Whoever helps people ...
The Mamluks fielded heavy cavalry – a match for the Crusader knights – and were much more hostile. The Crusaders initially attempted to maintain a cautious neutrality with the Mamluks. In 1260, the Barons of Acre granted the Mamluks safe passage through the Latin Kingdom en route to fighting the Mongols; the Mamluks subsequently won the ...
Despite being two Sunni Muslim states, the relationship between the Ottomans and the Mamluks was adversarial: both states vied for control of the spice trade, and the Ottomans aspired to eventually take control of the Holy Cities of Islam. [6] The two states however were separated by a buffer zone occupied by Turkmen states such as Karamanids ...
While the mostly Christian or non-Sunni Muslim-populated mountain regions between the coast and the interior plains of the Levant were not treated with suspicion as potential Crusader allies by the Mamluks, the Kisrawan's inhabitants were viewed differently. The Druze in the hills south and east of Beirut allied with the Mamluks.