Mamelukes, properly MAMLŪKS, an Arabic word signifying white slaves captured in war or purchased in the market, and especially applied to the slave-kings in Egypt. These had their origin in the importation of a large number of Turkish slaves, from the regions of the Caucasus and Asia Minor, by Es-Sâlih Ayyûb, grand-nephew of Saladin, and sultan of Egypt, in the middle of the 13th century. They were intended to act as a bodyguard and to defend their master against his numerous rivals as well as against the Crusaders, and they fulfilled their duty well, as is shown by the success of their repulse of the French invasion and the capture of St Louis in 1249. In the absence of capable successors to Es-Sâlih, his Mamelukes set up one of their own number as sultan of Egypt in 1250, and from that year to the Ottoman conquest in 1517 that country and Syria were ruled exclusively by Mameluke sultans. They were forty-eight in number, often retaining the throne but a few years, or even months, in consequence of the intrigues of rival emirs; and they fell into two dynasties, the Bahrî or Turkish Mamelukes (1250-1390) and the Burji or Circassian (1390-1517). The sultan was chosen out of the military oligarchy, and owed his throne to personal prowess and the support of the biggest battalions, rarely to hereditary title. The Mamelukes did not readily propagate their race in a foreign country, and fresh importations were necessary to keep up the stock. As a rule the most powerful lord of the day became king, and kept his place just so long as he retained his following. Violent deaths were common; the sultan's bodyguard was the most essential part of the constitution, and held a large portion of the land of Egypt on a species of feudal tenure. Each of the great lords was a Mameluke sultan in miniature, kept a bodyguard, lived in much state, and was generally prepared to fight his way to the throne should occasion favour the attempt. The streets of Cairo were frequently the scenes of sanguinary conflicts, and its citadel is full of the memories of treacherous assassinations. With all their excesses, however, it may be doubted whether Egypt ever since the days of the Pharaohs possessed a more enlightened series of rulers than the Mamelukes. Their system of law and police, their military organisation and naval enterprise, their postal service, their irrigation-works and engineering operations were far in advance of their time; and, rough soldiers as they appear, they were munificent patrons of art and literature. Nearly all the exquisite mosques that still adorn Cairo, essentially the Mameluke city, are of their building, educational institutions met with their unfailing support, and they carried their taste for refinement into the smallest details of house furniture and decoration. The museums of Europe and Cairo are full of their delicate inlaid and engraved brass-work, wood carvings, ivory reliefs, enamelled glass, tiles and stone and plaster work, mosaic pavements, and silk embroideries. Their court ceremonies were gorgeous with the pomp of heraldry and armour and dazzling robes; their luxury at home was stupendous. Turks as a rule, they had tastes beyond the ken of the Ottoman Turks who dispossessed them in 1517, and Egypt has not yet recovered from their loss. After the Turkish conquest the government was placed in the hands of an Ottoman pasha assisted by a council; whilst twenty-four Mameluke beys were allowed to administer the provinces. The beys retained most of the power, however, and the pasha became a cipher. Their last brilliant achievements were on the occasion of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, when they fought the disastrous battle of the Pyramids near Cairo; but after the retirement of the French and British armies Egypt became a prey to disorder, rival Mamelukes fought and intrigued, and order was not restored until Mohammed Ali established his authority as pasha under the Porte, and by two treacherous massacres, in 1805 and 1811, exterminated the Mameluke princes, save a small remnant who took refuge in the Sûdân, where their medieval armour was recently seen by the British forces employed against the Mahdi.
See Weil, Geschichte der Khalifen; Quatremère, Makrizi's Histoire des Sultans Mamelouks; S. Lane-Poole, Art of the Saracens in Egypt; Sir W. Muir, The Mameluke or Slave Dynasty (1896).