Rise of the Slaves:

Here are some excerpts from al-Ghitani’s book, Zayni Barakat, which I hope may shed some more light on the rise of Mamluk Egypt.
Eldar.

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Sir William Muir once wrote in his book, The Mameluke or Slave Dynasty of Egypt (London, 1896, p3):

For several generations the Caliphs of Baghdad had fallen into the dangerous habit of attracting to their capital thousands of slaves… from Turcoman and Mongol hordes. These they used both as bodyguards and also as contingents to countervail the overweening influence of the Arab soldiery, whom in the end they superseded altogether. From bondmen, they became the masters of the Court, fomented riots and rebellion, and hastened the fall of the effete Caliphate. The same habit, with the same eventual result, was followed by the Fatimide Caliphs; and after them likewise by the Eyyubite dynasty who, being strangers in the land, were glad of the support of foreign myrmidons. Conquered tribes in Central Asia were nothing loth to sell their children to the slave-dealer who promised them prosperity in the West; and the tidings which spread from time to time of fortune to be gained in Egypt, made his task an easy one. It was thus that not only prisoners of war, but children of the Eastern hordes, kept streaming to the West, where they were eagerly bought, sometimes at enormous prices, both by Sultans and Emirs.

Farouk Abdel Wahab, who translated Gamal al-Ghitani’s book, Zayni Barakat (Cairo. AUC Press, 1988) writes:

The Mamluks of Egypt stand out, however, because they maintained their hold on the Near East for such a long time and because, although they were a military ruling elite, they made major unwarlike contributions to learning and more especially to art and architecture.

The Mamluk rulers have traditionally been divided into two dynasties: the Bahri Mamluks (1250-1390), so named because they were settled in barracks on an island in the Nile (bahr is Arabic for ‘sea’ and is also used colloquially for ‘river’); and Burji Mamluks (1382-1517), so named because they were housed in the towers of the Citadel (burj is Arabic for ‘tower’). The foundation for the first dynasty was laid in 1250 when Shajar al-Durr widow of the Ayyubid king al-Salih, one of the last descendants of Salah al-Din (Saladin) to rule Egypt, reigned as sultana for a few weeks after the murder of her stepson . Rather than suffer the ridicule of the whole Muslim world for being ruled by a woman, the late king’s warrior slaves elected one of their own, Izz al-Din Aybak, to be sultan. Shajar al-Durr married the new sultan, who spent most of his time during the following few years trying to subdue the remnants of the Ayyubids still reigning in parts of Syria and Palestine. When she heard that Aybak was considering taking another wife, Shajar al-Durr arranged for him to be murdered in his bath. Soon after she herself was killed by the slave women of Aybak’s first wife. Another Mamluk, Qutuz (1259-60), stepped in, fist as regent and then, after deposing Aybak’s son, as sultan.