Content area
Full text
Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-llkhanid War, 126(1281. By Reuven Amitai-Preiss. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Illustrations. Maps. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xiv, 272. $59.95.
In Mongols and Mamluks, Amitai-Preiss's aim is to write a political and military history of the understudied Mamluk-Ilkhanid war from the battle of Ayn Jalut in 1260 to the second battle of Homs, Syria, in 1281. It is the author's contention that this conflict between the Mamluks of Egypt and the Mongol Ilkhanid state in Iran and Iraq is essential to understanding both the Mamluk and Ilkhanid states and that the early history of the Mamluk sultanate in particular is inextricably bound up with the Mongols.
Amitai-Preiss makes good use of secondary sources on Mamluk and Ilkhanid history as well as histories of the Crusades. He uses specialized studies such as A. P. Martinez's of the Ilkhanid army, the recent biography of the Mamluk Sultan Baybars by P. Thorau, and a preliminary study of the Mamluk-Ilkhanid war by F. H. Ashtur. The author also employs contemporary or near contemporary sources, including chronicles and biographies in Arabic, Persian sources consulted in French and English translations, and "Frankish" or European Christian sources. As Amitai-Preiss notes, the majority of the sources available are pro-Mamluk Arabic works. This may account for the fact that his book ends up being more a history of the early Mamluk state and its relations...