Mamluk sultans and Ottoman governors
Slave-soldier sultans make Cairo the greatest city of the Islamic world and halt the Mongols; in 1517 Egypt becomes an Ottoman province for three centuries.
- The Cambridge History of Egypt, Volume 1: Islamic Egypt, 640–1517 — Carl F. Petry (ed.), Cambridge University Press (1998)
- The Cambridge History of Egypt, Volume 2: Modern Egypt, from 1517 to the End of the Twentieth Century — M. W. Daly (ed.), Cambridge University Press (1998)
- Cairo — André Raymond, Harvard University Press (2000)
- The Arabs: A History — Eugene Rogan, Basic Books (2009)
The Mamluks were soldiers bought as boys, mostly from the Turkic and Circassian lands, converted to Islam and trained as an elite cavalry. In 1250 they seized power from Saladin’s Ayyubid heirs and ruled Egypt and Syria as a sultanate. In 1260 at Ain Jalut in Palestine they defeated the Mongols who had just sacked Baghdad, and over the following decades they drove the last Crusaders from the Levant.
- The Cambridge History of Egypt, Volume 1: Islamic Egypt, 640–1517 — Carl F. Petry (ed.), Cambridge University Press (1998)
- The Mongols and the Islamic World: From Conquest to Conversion — Peter Jackson, Yale University Press (2017)
Under them Cairo, home to the Abbasid caliphs they sheltered, became the largest and richest city of the Islamic world, filled with mosques, madrasas and tombs that still define its skyline. The Black Death of 1348 and later plagues hit Egypt terribly.
- Cairo — André Raymond, Harvard University Press (2000)
- The Cambridge History of Egypt, Volume 1: Islamic Egypt, 640–1517 — Carl F. Petry (ed.), Cambridge University Press (1998)
In 1517 the Ottoman sultan Selim I conquered Egypt. For nearly three centuries it was a rich Ottoman province, but Mamluk households gradually regained much local power under Ottoman governors.
- The Cambridge History of Egypt, Volume 2: Modern Egypt, from 1517 to the End of the Twentieth Century — M. W. Daly (ed.), Cambridge University Press (1998)
- The Arabs: A History — Eugene Rogan, Basic Books (2009)
Why it matters today
Much of the Islamic Cairo that Egyptians and visitors admire, its domes, minarets and markets, was built by Mamluk sultans. The Mamluk victory over the Mongols at Ain Jalut is a point of pride, and the Ottoman centuries left Turkish words, dishes and family names behind.