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American Mamlukes
M. Shahid Alam draws a fascinating parallel between the Islamic empires of old and the US of today
It is a fact little known in the West, outside the circle of historians of Islamicate societies, that Islamicate states often employed soldiers and bureaucrats who were "slaves" of the king or emperor.Commonly, these "slaves" were recruited as young boys: they were taken from the ranks of the ruler's Christian subjects or bought as "slaves" from areas outside the Islamicate world. They were converted to Islam, tested, sorted by aptitude, and given an education that prepared them for employment in the service of the sovereign. The smartest "slaves" could became generals or rise to the highest ranks in the civilian bureaucracy.
We call these members of the emperor's household "slaves" because they were the property of the emperor: in Arabic, mamlukes. But how appropriate is this description? Aside from the manner in which they were recruited, however, these mamlukes had little in common with the slaves who worked the plantations in the Americas. More appropriately, they were life-time employees in the service of the emperor. Ernest Gellner has drawn attention to the parallels between these "slaves' and today's wage workers.
These "slave" soldiers were first employed by the Abbasids, but with time their use spread to other states. In Egypt, these "slaves" captured power in 1250, but continued their reliance on other mamlukes. This institution was put to its best use by the Ottomans, the longest enduring empire in Islamic history.
How did the institution of mamlukes come to form the mainstay of several states in Islamic history?
M. Shahid Alam is Professor of Economics at Northeastern University. He is author of Challenging the New Orientalism (IPI: 2007).
