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PROTECTORS OF PRAETORIANS? THE LAST MAMLUK SULTANS AND EGYPT'S WANING AS A GREAT POWER. By CARL F. PETRY. (Suny Series in Middle East History). Albany, New York, 1994. 280 pp.
Mamluk studies have flourished in recent years. The seeds laid by scholars such as David Ayalon, Claude Cahen (to whose memory this book has been generously dedicated), Abd al-Latif Ibrahim All, Hans Robert Roemer, Donald Little and Peter Holt are bearing rich fruit. Important narrative sources hitherto known only as intriguing entries in Brockelmann's Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur have been edited, treasure troves of documents have been opened up, providing a counterpoise to the chroniclers' disclosure, and important first attempts have been made to understand, in a wider, universal context, both the Mamluk system of government and the society which these outlandish, pagan-born 'praetorians' ruled for more than a quarter of a millennium. The field has become so popular (and densely populated) that a specialized journal on Mamluk studies and a 'permanent' Mamluk bibliography (both in the care of Bruce Craig, University of Chicago) have been inaugurated.
Carl Petry has here undertaken the daring and onerous task of analysing the last half century of Mamluk history (1468 1516), or, more precisely, the rule of the two sultans Qaytbay (1468-96) and Qansawh al-Ghawri (1501-16). He leaves out the short, albeit crucial, final chapter in Mamluk history, Tumanbay's sultanate of a few months (1516-17), after Qansawh had succumbed to the Ottomans), and the not so brief interlude from 1496 1501 which notably includes the sultanate of Qaytbay's heir Muhammad, an unconventional, inventive and cultured young ruler whose reign was comparatively long and successful for a son of a sultan in a non-hereditary system.
Petry does not write histoire evenementielle. What he has compiled, in evidently many years of painstaking readings of chronicles and documents, on the vitae of the two rulers has been relegated to a far less ambitious and intriguing companion volume, previously published (Twilight of Majesty: The Reigns of the Mamluk Sultans al-Ashraf Qaytbay and Qansuh al-Ghawr, Seattle, 1993). This bisection of a project originally conceived as one has been felicitous. It helps the reader of the present work to concentrate on the central issues of Mamluk history in its final phase.
The study falls...