Contributions to Arabic culture

By the time of the Mamluks, the Arabization of Egypt must have been almost complete. Arabic had been the language of the bureaucracy since the early 8th century and the language of religion and culture even longer. Moreover, the prevalence of Arabic as a written and spoken language is attested by the discovery in the genizah (storeroom) of a Cairo synagogue of thousands of letters and documents—called the Genizah Documents—dating from the 11th through the 13th century. Though often written in Hebrew characters, the actual language of most of these documents is Arabic, which proves that Arabic was widely used even by non-Muslims. The main incentive for learning Arabic must have come from the desire of a subject population to learn the administrative and scholarly language of the ruling and learned elite. The immigration of Arab tribesmen during the early centuries of the occupation, and their intermarriage with the indigenous inhabitants, must also have contributed to the gradual spread of Arabic in Egypt.

The specific Mamluk contribution to Arabic culture (i.e., the ethnically diverse community united by the Arabic language), however, lay above all in military achievement. By defeating the Mongols, the Mamluks provided a haven in Syria and in Egypt for Muslims fleeing from Mongol devastation. The extent of this haven was narrowed by subsequent Mongol attacks against Syria, one of which led to a brief Mongol occupation of Damascus in 1294–95, so that Egypt received an influx of refugees from Syria itself as well as from areas farther east.

This accidental displacement of scholars and artisans into Egypt does not, however, wholly account for the efflorescence of certain types of cultural activity under the Mamluks. In the same way that they supported the caliphate as a visible symbol of their legitimate claim to rule Islamic territory, the Mamluks cultivated and patronized religious leaders whose skills they needed in administering their empire and in directing the religious sentiments of the masses into safe (i.e., nondisruptive) channels. Those divines who cooperated with the state were rewarded with government offices in the case of the ʿulamāʾ (religious scholars) and with endowed zāwiyahs (monasteries) in the case of the Sufis (mystics). On the other hand, those who dared criticize the prevailing social and moral order were thrown into prison; such was the fate of renowned legist Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328), who, having emigrated from Mesopotamia to escape the Mongols, was incarcerated in Cairo by the Mamluks for spreading doctrines that their religious functionaries considered heresy.

Concrete evidence of the stimulus the Mamluks gave to cultural life in an era of economic prosperity can be found chiefly in the fields of architecture and historiography. Dozens of public buildings erected under Mamluk patronage are still standing in Cairo and include mosques, madrasahs (colleges), hospitals, zāwiyahs, and caravansaries. Historical writing under the Mamluks was equally monumental, in the form of immense chronicles, biographical dictionaries, and encyclopaedias. (See Ibn Khallikān, al-ʿUmarī, Ibn Kathīr, Ibn Khaldūn.)

Religious life

The Mamluk period is also important in Egyptian religious history. With few and therefore notable exceptions, the Muslim rulers of Egypt had seldom interfered with the lives of their Christian and Jewish subjects so long as these groups paid the special taxes (known as jizyah) levied on them in exchange for state protection. Indeed, both Copts and Jews had always served in the Muslim bureaucracy, sometimes in the very highest administrative positions. Even the Crusades apparently failed to upset the delicate balance between Muslims and Christians. Trade with the Italian city-states had certainly continued, and there is no evidence that the local Christians were held accountable for the Crusader invasions of Egypt.

With the establishment of the Mamluk sultanate, however, it is generally agreed that the lot of the Christians, both in Egypt and in Syria, took a distinct turn for the worse. One indication of this change is the increased production of anti-Christian polemics written by Muslim theologians. A possible reason for the change may have been the association of Christians with the Mongol peril. Because the Mongols used Christian auxiliaries in their armies—Georgians and Armenians in particular—they often spared the Christian populations of towns they conquered, while slaughtering the Muslims. Also, the diplomatic efforts aimed at uniting the Mongols with Christian European powers in a joint Crusade against the Muslims might have contributed to the Mamluks’ distrust of the Christians. But the dissatisfaction seems to have originated not so much with the Mamluk rulers as with the masses, and it seems to have been directed not so much against Christians’ sympathy for the Mongols as against their privileged position and role in the Mamluk state.

On several occasions popular resentment against the Copts’ conspicuous wealth and their employment in the government was manifested in public demonstrations. Both Muslims and Christians resorted to arson, burning the others’ sanctuaries to express their hatred. Under such pressure, the Mamluk government dismissed Christians from the bureaucracy on no fewer than nine occasions between 1279 and 1447. (It was usually necessary to appoint new Copts, since they alone understood the accounting system that had been used since pharaonic times.) In 1301 the Mamluks ordered all the churches in Egypt to be closed. As a result of these intermittent persecutions and the destruction of churches, it is believed that the rate of conversion to Islam accelerated markedly in the Mamluk period and that Coptic virtually disappeared except as a liturgical language. By the end of Mamluk rule, the Muslims may well have reached the same numerical superiority that they enjoy in modern times—a ratio of perhaps 10:1.

Economic life

In trade and commerce, the Mamluk period marks the zenith of medieval Egyptian economic history. During the 13th and 14th centuries (as long, that is, as the sultanate was able to maintain order in Egypt), trade was heavy with Mediterranean and Black sea ports and with India. The Oriental trade was controlled largely by a group of Muslim merchants known as the Kārimīs; the Mediterranean trade was left to European traders, whom the Mamluks allowed certain privileges in Alexandria. By the 15th century, however, Egypt’s commercial importance rapidly deteriorated as the result of population losses caused by the plague, increased government interference in commerce, Bedouin raiding, and Portuguese competition in the Indian trade.