• DOI:10.1163/9789004345058_003
• Corpus ID: 135107016

Usages of Kinship Terminology during the Mamluk Sultanate and the Notion of the ‘Mamlūk Family’

@inproceedings{Yosef2017UsagesOK,
  title={Usages of Kinship Terminology during the Mamluk Sultanate and the Notion of the ‘Mamlūk Family’},
  author={Koby Yosef},
  year={2017}
}

• Koby Yosef
• Published 27 July 2017
• History

Inspired by the work of David Ayalon, most students of Mamluk politics and society have tended to focus on mamlūk ties such as the relationship between a master and his mamlūks, or the connections among mamlūks of the same household serving the same master (khushdāshiyya), and underestimated the role of non-mamlūk elements in Mamluk politics and society, and the importance of non-mamlūk relationships such as blood ties and marital ties.1 Although not uncontested, Ayalon’s notion of a ‘one generation nobility’ is still very persuasive, and the Mamluk Sultanate is still sometimes perceived as a political entity dominated by a non-hereditary principle in which any influence of non-mamlūk elements “was the result of the breaking of some ‘basic law’.”2 Amalia Levanoni was one of the first specialists to challenge the perception of the Sultanate’s ruling elite as exclusively, or almost exclusively, mamlūk. In her A Turning Point in Mamluk History: The Third Reign of al-Nāṣir Muḥammad Ibn Qalāwūn (1310–41), published in 1995, she drew attention to the role of marital ties and non-mamlūk elements including the mamlūks’ descendants (awlād al-nās) and mamlūks’ relatives, in Mamluk politics and society during al-Nāṣir Muḥammad ibn Qalāwūn’s third reign (709–41/1310–41).3 In her “Awlād al-Nās in the Mamluk Army during the Baḥrī Period,” published in 2006, Levanoni further explored the position of mamlūks’ descendants during the Turkish period of the Sultanate (648–784/1250–1382), and showed that even in the early Turkish period (648–709/1250–1310) mamlūks’ descendants at times held highranking military positions.4 In the last three decades, students of the Mamluk Sultanate have gradually come to acknowledge the role played in Mamluk