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What happened to the Mamluks?
conquered by the TVRKs in 1517
They still existed after they were conquered
They were slaughtered by Muhammad Pasha.
After the Ottoman conquest they turned into glorified gangs that infested Egyptian cities. Sometimes one would arise, subdue the others, and be willing to challenge Ottoman power but for the most part they were a net drain on Egyptian society, culture, and economy after the mid 16th century. And whenever they left their strongholds and ventured into rural lands they would get slaughtered by bedouins
WTF no, Ottoman mamluks kept the bedouin situation handled. Up until Napoleon they practically ran Egypt themselves.
Wrong. Ottomans used bedouins to protect their administrators and officials whenever they sent them down to Egypt. Mamluks had barely any power outside of centers like Cairo. There are multiple instances of Mamluks asking bedouins for safe passage through Palestine and syria whenever they had to go up north. European travelers in the 18th and 19th century continously remarked how disorganized Egypt was, manluk blood fueds destroying urban safety and bedouins basically having free reign to raid and extort whatever they want outside of city walls
They used Ottoman jannisaries and Sipahis and soldiers to protect themselves.
Mamelukes were in the ottoman army too. They just rolled over and started speaking Turkish mostly. Many were Kipchak Turk or Circassian origin. They mixed with the ottoman troops and officials who were stationed in Egypt and turned into the Turkish Egyptian minority.
As for feuds. There are a few famous ones from the 17th c one included the harem eunuch chief having to be sent there to arbitrate. He was an official of the divan and usually administered the Egypt financial affairs. Many eunuch chiefs also retired to Egypt or Mecca so his office had interests there.
There are a few more feuds known about from 19th c. One was made into a movie. Two families tried to lobby Tosun Pasha for land rights over some new canals. No violence but they tried to make their cases and send gifts.
Wrong
Wrong.
There were a few famous feuds of ottoman families but they weren’t bloody. Mostly amounted to lobbying the ottoman governor and the Istanbul court for privileges. Ottoman governor had to balance appointments to certain families to keep everyone happy.
>Bedouins
Would raid the Hejaz pilgrimage and one of the Egypt governors jobs was to protect the pilgrims on their way to Mecca.
Egypt was largely an urban society.
Assimilated into what became the Turkish speaking Turkish minority of Egypt. Still there but smaller than ever before.
Played mount and blade until they got BTFO'd by ottomans
They became part of Ottoman Turkish aristocracy in Egypt. Still around as of 19th and 20th c. Today part of Turkish-Egyptian ethnicity. Many of them have been linguistically Arabized or migrated to Turkey. They used to be the entire political, scientific, business, and military elite until the Nasser revolution. They’re still around however.
Nasser and his Arab nationalists seethed about Turks
>This interiorized rejection of things local and Arabic in part derives from the fact that the ruling and upper classes in the years before the revolution were mainly Turkish, or of Turkish descent, part of the heritage from the Ottoman rule in Egypt. If one was not really Western, but belonged to the elite, one was Turkish. Only the masses, the country folk, were quite simply Egyptian in the first place, and possibly Arabs secondarily."
To this day if you go down lists of prominent Egyptians, and dig into their bios, most are Turkish origin.
Mamelukes became part of the Turkish Egyptian elite after the 16th c. There’s some more detailed family histories but they were tied into the provincial rule and Istanbul ties.
This is the movie about the family feud over the Tosun Pasha appointments.
It’s a comedy inspired by these events. https://youtu.be/guqpuNWQDhc
The Kazdagli-Faqari families feud from the 18th c is also famous.
Kazdagli was appointed head of the Jannisaries in Egypt after a few generations of his family being appointed the deputy commander.
Meanwhile the Faqari family’s chief Hasan Agha was head of the Egyptian volunteers division. His son in law was also the Defterdar (scribe) of the governor.
These families worked hard to limit the others advancement in every way imaginable short of open violence. They sent letters, accused each other of incompetence, arrange for promotions, made marriage alliances, and sent gifts. Kazdali sent a harem eunuch slave as a gift to Istanbul who eventually became a high ranking official overseeing the public foundations (vakif or waqf) in Egypt. This was an important job that involved oversight and management of public Ottoman lands in Egypt, including those held in public trust like lands, farms, shops, real estate held on behalf of soup kitchens or mosques or endowments for schools, as well as for the state and ottoman government itself. Kazdagli won some privileges it seems when this happened, having invested in this eunuchs career and having probably encouraged his rise.
These privileges included the appointment of iltizam, or tax farms. Introduced as a crisis tool in the 17-18th c during times of war. This practice eventually took over the prior 15-16th c centralized tax collecting system by the 18th c. These families would compete to be given tax-collection rights and responsibilities. They would be responsible to send over a certain amount to Istanbul but could presumably keep the rest. So it was lucrative.
In 1704, a Mameluke Turk soldier named Mustafa Bey al Bilifa emerged as a a leading tax farmer in his own right having inherited a cluster of farms from the Jannisaries for services rendered.
In 1711, the Circassian origin Mameluke Ismail Bey ibn Ivaz Bey was assassinated in a conspiracy led by the Faqari faction and also Cerkez Mehmet Bey, and Bosnak Ibrahim Bey in a dispute over villages appointed for Evkaf (tax collecting, administering). This 1711 episode was unusually bloody. The grand vizier Nevsehirli Ibrahim Pasha sent inquiries about it and the Chief eunuch Beshir Agha secured a pardon for the killers with the sultan.
The killers were actually sentenced to death and had already been captured by the Ottoman troops when the news of the pardon came in. The historian Ahmet Celebi who was present wrote that Cerkez Mehmet turned white with fright as he was led to execution but the firman was read and he was spared.
How does this guy not catch fire?
The machinations continued. There were seasonal time dependent tax collecting and governance rights that would be appointed for 2 year terms. The ottoman scribes would go around and calculate the tax receipts and population of each district and then the ottoman governor would appoint someone to oversee that governance for that 2 year period. These factions, sometimes led by specific families but really broader than that— more like political parties— would lobby intensely with the Ottoman governor and his Lieutenants to make sure their own members were given these offices. The governor would usually dispense offices to all powerful and relevant groups. Often in their own power base.
In 1699, Mustafa III received a petition by Jannisaries that mütevalli (district governor) jobs were unfairly handed out. So he cancelled all appointments and sent over a new governor to oversee a more fair distribution.
Mustafa II*
The Ottoman officials sent to Egypt as the oversight officer was given Vekil-I-Darüssade rights. A special sort of representation of court authority usually preserved only for the grand vizier or special generals. This led to a re organizing of the sub governorships. Some local elites suspected of bribing ottoman officials were killed or exiled depending on the severity of the case.
Note that Istanbul had an Egyptian quarter in this period, and a special Egyptian market. There were many Egyptian origin Mameluke/Turks/ottomans in Istanbul.
The Vekil took special actions to ensure that exiles were not engaging in politics back home. One of his tasks was to safeguard the proper shipment of grains and to prevent civil strife from disrupting the peace of the land and to restore justice to the land.
Abdurrahman Bey, the tax-farmer of Dalja village in Ushmunayn subprovince was among those exiled and possibly “turned” as he betrayed some of his Faqari backers, patrons, and leaders and talked to the Vekil about their influences/infiltration of the Ottoman kaymakan (prosecutor). So this office was investigated and the official was executed for corruption. The Faqari faction lost an insider in the governor office who had advanced their names to those pivotal lists. The commander of the volunteer regiment himself came under suspicion next and this Osman Agha was exiled from his position. The Qatamishli Ibrahim Bey, Mayor of Cairo (Sheikh Al Balad) was part of the Faqari faction and suspected by Sipahi commanders of hiding the amount of grain his granaries held in order to sell the surplus and of collecting more grain than he was allowed to by law. He was investigated and deposed and the excess grains returned to peasants.
The preceding decades of the 1690s had been one of intense war for the ottomans in Central Europe and the focus on these campaigns had led to some oversights in provincial Justice but after the war, order was swiftly restored. The Faqari family survived these events and still exists but they lost the special influence they had seized.
The Qatamishli misdeeds were disturbing to the Ottoman central government. A young vizier named Mehmet Ragip Pasha (future grand vizier) was dispatched to oversee the eventual execution of the deposed Qamishli mayor and his fellow criminals, including his family members and deputy mayors Ibrahim Bey Qamishli and Halil Bey Qamishli. The case became famous in ottoman politics and jurisprudence. The Vekil Osman Agha and the Vizier Ragip Pasha wrote a report about it that became part of required reading for future Ottoman officials and Ragip Pasha would frequently take special interest in Egypt once he became grand vizier where he interrogated/teased the local sub governors about whether their granaries held more grain than they should and to remember how he had cut the Qamishli family from power and he entreated them to be just and humble and fear god.
No it didn’t. If you’re referring to Napoleon’s bombardment of Cairo…
No Muhamed Pasha massacred the Mamluks.