12. The Mamluks might have been slaves, but their strength and skill in combat gave them an elevated status in the Arabic world
Strictly speaking, the Mamluks were slaves. Not only were they bought and sold at auction, in the Arabic world, the term was also synonymous with the word ‘slave’ for hundreds of years. At the same time, however, the Mamluks were more than just forced labor. They were fearsome warriors who held an elevated status in society. They often became rich, even famous, even if they would never win their freedom, and Mamluk fighters were behind a number of notable military victories over the centuries.
While historians have yet to agree on when Mamluk warriors first started to emerge, it’s likely that it was in Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate (in the 9th century) that elite groups of slave soldiers first started to be put together. From that point onwards, the Mamluks became relatively common across the Islamic world. Generally speaking, they were all young men of Turkish or Caucasian ethnicity. They would be purchased at auction while still young boys and then raised in closed-off barracks. Here, cut off from the rest of the world, they would learn how to fight. Perhaps more importantly, growing up together in the barracks allowed the slave soldiers to bond, making them into an effective, and fearsome, fighting force.
Mamluk fighters were famed for their skills with swords, with bows and arrows and on horseback. Such skills came in useful at the Battle of Fariskur in 1250, for example. Here, Mamluks routed the army of King Louis IX, bringing his North African adventure to a bloody end. Mamluk also scored major victories over the Mongols in 1260. According to some scholars, this latter victory may have even prevented Islam from being wiped off the map for good. And that’s not all. More than 500 years later, Mamluk soldiers were the elite soldiers who helped Napoleon’s hopes of taking over Egypt in 1798. This would be their last hurrah, however. As the Ottoman Empire drew to a close in the 18th century, Sultans were no longer able to buy Christian boys at slave markets. Their private slave armies slowly vanished.