were freedmen of the reigning sultan or of his predecessor; (b) the Amir’s Mamlūks; (c) Ajnād al-Ḥalqah – a corps of free, i.e. non-Mamluk, cavalry. The strength of the army in the whole Mamluk kingdom was as follows: the Royal Mamluks 10,000; the Amir’s Mamluks 8,000; Ajnād al-Ḥalqah 24,000.19
Apart from this regular force, there were auxiliary troops of natives, e.g. Turkoman and Kurdish shepherds; Bedouin tribes; Syrio-Palestinian and Lebanese tribes.20
(b) Justice
The Mamluk sultans paid great attention to the institution of justice, and organized it in many departments. There were public courts to which four qāḍīs (judges) were appointed, representing the four schools of jurisprudence. All civil and criminal cases where witnesses were needed were dealt with in these courts. A similar structure existed in most Muslim states of the time.
For the army, there were separate qāḍīs or quḍāt al-‘askar (judges of army). They dealt with cases within the army and with those between the military and civilian sectors.
There was another court, the maḥkamah al-maẓālim or court for grievances, where the Sultan himself presided. Its principal function seems to have been that of a court of appeal, but disputes between officials and public were also decided in this court. Court sessions were held every Monday and Thursday, all four qāḍīs being present to assist the Sultan.21 Nāṣir began this practice, and himself conducted the open sessions.22
Petty disputes were mostly decided by the muḥtasib (inspector-general), especially cases of a very urgent nature and where not much investigation was needed.23 A basic difference between the roles of qāḍī and muḥtasib was that the former issued a decree when a person filed suit in his court, whereas the muḥtasib or his assistant patrolled the streets and took note of any objectionable incident, which he usually decided on the spot.
(c) Internal political condition
The general internal state of the Mamluk Sultanate was one of instability. This had been brought about by the Mongol invasion, which had led to a sort of anarchy, and the many changes of sultan. Since there was no accepted rule or system of succession, after the death of every sultan a number of ambitious Mamluks and Amirs struggled for power and new disturbances took place.24 Only Baibars, Qalāwūn and, during his rule from 1309 to 1341 Nāṣir, were able to provide stable governments. Mainly for this reason their reigns witnessed academic and economic progress.
The Mamluk society was stratified into many classes: first, there were the Mamluks themselves who now assumed that they were born to rule and whose chief preoccupation was government and wars. They looked with contempt upon those who worked the land and hardly mixed with them, always preferring to marry in their own social class. There was thus a gulf between the rulers and the rest.
Besides the Mamluks, there was another class of people called ahl al-‘imāmah or ‘turban men’, employed in different offices, like secretaries, jurists, ‘ulamā’ and men of letters. This group provided the link between the ruling Mamluks and their subjects. The Mamluks respected the ‘ulamā’, since they learned religion from them, and sometimes they feared them because of their influence with the public.25 These ‘ulamā’ were never sparing of their criticism when they saw a breach of clear religious injunction.26
The third class was that of traders and merchants. Due to intense trading activity in this period, these were very rich, though at the same time a prey to different taxes and also, sometimes, to confiscation.
Apart from these upper classes, all large towns of the period had many labourers, craftsmen, small shopkeepers, and poor people. The fallāḥīn (farmers or landtillers) were in the majority, but their condition was the worst, as they were subject to multiple taxes.27 A collective tax imposed on a village irrespective of income level, was called by Ibn Taimīyah al-maẓālim al-mushtarakah, i.e. joint or common injustice.28
(a) Guilds29
Generally, craftsmen of one and the same trade lived in the same quarters: in Cairo, there were many quarters occupied by particular groups of craftsmen.30 But there were no guilds in the Western sense of a corporative monopoly that could fix the price of their products to their own satisfaction, as was the case in Europe. Lapidus, who has presented a well-documented study of Syrian and Egyptian towns in the Mamluk period, has denied the existence of any guilds in the Muslim cities of that time.31
(b) Towns
Among important towns of the Mamluk period were Cairo, Alexandria, Damietta, Aswan, Aidhab, Gaza, Damascus, Aleppo, Baalbak and Tripoli. The famous traveller, Ibn Baṭṭūṭali (d. 1377) has given a fine description of their economic and social conditions, indicating their importance, in his book Tuḥfah al-Nuẓẓār.32 He also mentions the doctors and scholars whom he visited in these cities. He reports having listened to Ibn Taimīyah delivering the Friday sermon in the mosque of Damascus,33 though some writers reject this on the ground that he was never known to deliver the Friday sermon; moreover, at the time Ibn Baṭṭūṭah visited Damascus in 1326, Ibn Taimīyah was imprisoned in the Damascus fort.34
(c) Impact of the crusades
The crusades deeply influenced the social and intellectual life of Muslims and Christians. Herbert Heaton writes in his book Economic History of Europe ‘that ‘the crusades came as a heaven-sent opportunity to establish firmer footholds in the meeting place of East and West’.35 As the period of peace was longer than that of war, Muslims and Christians mixed freely on social, Economic and academic levels, to their mutual advantage.
2. Intellectual and educational background
Egypt and Syria became the centres of learning during the Mamluk period. A number of educational institutes (madrasahs) were established by the Sultan in different cities of the kingdom.36 There were specialized teachers for each subject, who awarded certificates to their students on completion of their studies. The value of these certificates depended on the personal fame of the teacher himself.37 The Mamluk Sultans took a lively interest in the collection of books and establishment of libraries. Almost every madrasah and mosque had a valuable library, and there were also private libraries. Sultan Qalāwūn enriched his collection with many books of commentary on the Qur’ān, traditions of the Prophet, jurisprudence, language, medicine, literature, and poetry.38
Speaking of the intellectual climate of the age, P. K. Hitti remarks: ‘Viewed intellectually the entire Ayyubid-Mamluk period was one of compilation rather than of origination. Nevertheless, Damascus and Cairo, especially after the destruction of Baghdad and the disintegration of Moslem Spain, remained the educational and intellectual centres of the Arab world. The schools founded and richly endowed in these two cities served to conserve and transmit Arab science and learning.’39
Translation of Greek ideas and philosophy in the earlier phases of Islamic civilization generated a struggle among original Muslim thinkers that was to endure for centuries. The struggle between the rationalist tendency of Greek philosophy and the
