Mamluk or Mamaluk (/ˈmæmluːk/; Arabic: مملوك, romanized: mamlūk (singular), مماليك, mamālīk (plural);[2] translated as "one who is owned",[5] meaning "slave")[7] were non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-soldiers, and freed slaves who were assigned high-ranking military and administrative duties, serving the ruling Arab and Ottoman dynasties in the Muslim world.

Over time, Mamluks became a powerful military knightly class in various Muslim societies that were controlled by dynastic Arab rulers.

[39] The Zubayrids army under Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, son of Zubayr, used these freed slave retainers during the second civil war.

[6] Until the 1990s, it was widely believed that the earliest Mamluks were known as Ghilman or Ghulam[8] (another broadly synonymous term for slaves)[Note 1] and were bought by the Abbasid caliphs, especially al-Muʿtaṣim (833–842).

Conflict between the Ghilman and the population of Baghdad prompted the caliph al-Muʿtaṣim to move his capital to the city of Samarra, but this did not succeed in calming tensions.

The Fatimid Caliphate (909–1171) of Egypt had forcibly taken adolescent male Armenians, Turks, Sudanese, and Copts from their families to be trained as slave soldiers.

The rebel al-Basasiri was a Mamluk who eventually ushered in Seljuq dynastic rule in Baghdad after attempting a failed rebellion.

[13] In Egypt, studies have shown that mamluks from Georgia retained their native language, were aware of the politics of the Caucasus region, and received frequent visits from their parents or other relatives.

In addition, they sent gifts to family members or gave money to build useful structures (a defensive tower, or even a church) in their native villages.

[44] The practice of recruiting slaves as soldiers in the Muslim world and turning them into Mamluks began in Baghdad during the 9th century CE,[4] and was started by the Abbasid caliph al-Muʿtaṣim.

When the Egyptian sultan as-Salih Ayyub died, the power passed briefly to his son al-Muazzam Turanshah and then his favorite wife Shajar al-Durr, a Turk according to most historians, while others say she was an Armenian.

[citation needed] When the Mongol Empire's troops of Hulagu Khan sacked Baghdad in 1258 and advanced towards Syria, the Mamluk emir Baibars left Damascus for Cairo.

When Möngke Khan died in action against the Southern Song, Hulagu pulled the majority of his forces out of Syria to attend the kurultai (funeral ceremony).

In the process they consolidated their power over Syria, fortified the area, and formed mail routes and diplomatic connections among the local princes.

By the late fourteenth century, the majority of the Mamluk ranks were made up of Circassians from the North Caucasus region, whose young males had been frequently captured for slavery.

Vasco da Gama in 1497 sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and pushed his way east across the Indian Ocean to the shores of Malabar and Kozhikode.

There he attacked the fleets that carried freight and Muslim pilgrims from India to the Red Sea, and struck terror into the potentates all around.

Cairo's Mamluk sultan Al-Ashraf Qansuh al-Ghawri was affronted at the attacks around the Red Sea, the loss of tolls and traffic, the indignities to which Mecca and its port were subjected, and above all for losing one of his ships.

Mameluk Egyptian sultan Al-Ghawri was charged by Selim I with giving the Persian envoys passage through Syria on their way to Venice and harboring refugees.

In 1798, the ruling Directory of the Republic of France authorised a campaign in "The Orient" to protect French trade interests and undermine Britain's access to India.

Despite multiple victories and an initially successful expedition into Syria, mounting conflict in Europe and the earlier defeat of the supporting French fleet by the British Royal Navy at the Battle of the Nile decided the issue.

On 14 September 1799, General Jean-Baptiste Kléber established a mounted company of Mamluk auxiliaries and Syrian Janissaries from Turkish troops captured at the siege of Acre.

in June the rival parties concluded an agreement by which Muhammad Ali, (appointed as governor of Egypt on 26 March 1806), was to be removed and authority returned to the Mamluks.

However, the economic strain of sustaining the military manpower necessary to defend the Mamluks's system from the Europeans and Turks would eventually weaken them to the point of collapse.

[53] On 1 March 1811, Muhammad Ali invited all of the leading Mamluks to his palace to celebrate the declaration of war against the Wahhabis in Arabia.

According to contemporary reports, only one Mamluk, whose name is given variously as Amim (also Amyn), or Heshjukur (a Besleney), survived when he forced his horse to leap from the walls of the citadel.

The Pasha's forces received the submission of the Kashif, dispersed the Dunqulah Mamluks, conquered Kordofan, and accepted Sennar's surrender from the last Funj sultan, Badi VII.

According to Eric Chaney and Lisa Blades, the reliance on mamluks by Muslim rulers had a profound impact on the Arab world's political development.

They argue that, because European rulers had to rely on local elites for military forces, lords and bourgeois acquired the necessary bargaining power to push for representative government.

From 1747 to 1831 Iraq was ruled, with short intermissions, by Mamluk officers of Georgian origin[22][56] who succeeded in asserting autonomy from the Sublime Porte, suppressed tribal revolts, curbed the power of the Janissaries, restored order, and introduced a program of modernization of the economy and the military.