“Part 1: Early Islam to Pre-Colonial Era”

Week 5: The Household Harem: Egypt 18th C.

The Mamluks: Origins - History• Abbasid Caliph: 750 – 1258

• First Mamluk Dynasty: ‘Tulunid’ (Egypt-Syria) 868-905

c. 950

The Mamluks: Origins - History• Built up independent army:

• ‘multi-ethnic’ – included Turkish slaves (Central Asia), Sudanese Slaves, Greek mercenaries

• Towards end of dynasty, ‘slave soldiers’ largely in control

• Abbasids re-established power 905

The Mamluks: Origins - History• Remain ‘self-aware’ military elite within Caliph:

• speak their own Turkish language as well Arabic

• Continue to replenish numbers with new recruits from the central Asia, the Caucasus.

• 1250: Mamluk general takes control again in Egypt with assistance of black palace guards (slaves)

• 1258: Baghdad sacked by Mongols

The Mamluks: Origins - History• Mamluks under ‘Baybar’ defeat Mongols as they

attempt to take Palestine, Egypt:

• Has sultan killed, army declares him ruler

• Rules ‘in name of’ Abbasids – fiction maintained by successors

• In fact, independent military regime: wealth drawn from Red Sea trade

• Remains in place until Ottoman defeat by Selim I (1517)

The Mamluks: Origins - History• Mamluks under the Ottomans:

• Served Ottoman regime as disciplined, skilled administrators and soldiers

• Established provincial capitals in Baghdad and Cairo

• From 1749 de facto rulers of Baghdad

• Built up autonomous power in Egypt: beyond control of Ottoman appointed governors by 18th century

• Retained until 1811 (Egypt); 1839 Baghdad

The Mamluks: Origins - History

Ottoman Empire c. 1700 – Mamluks in Egypt and Baghdad

The Mamluks: Origins - History• Readings this week: Hathaway and Fay

• Draw attention away from Mamluks as purely military society

• Hathaway argues for role of ‘household’ in understanding dynasty: questions degree to which it is purely ‘slave’

• Fay explores role ‘harem’ within household: argues for insights to be gained by looking not only at role of male slaves but female slaves

The Mamluks: Origins - History• Hathaway: ‘context’ for study of Mamluk Harem

• Using soldiers’ salary registers as source, argues that they were identified in terms of ‘patron’ – who they followed –rather than slave status

• Cannot assume all entourages, ‘households’ made up of mamluks (slaves)

• Argues to contrary: Egyptian so-called military households actually followed model of provincial households elsewhere in Ottoman empire

The Mamluks: Origins - History• “Ambitious local figures sought favor with the

imperial center by joining the households of imperial functionaries in Cairo; imperial figures in turn injected their clients into the households of local grandees; local grandees even channeled members of their households into elite households in Istanbul.

• In this respect, the household served as a nexus between center and province.”

The Mamluks: Origins - History• Easy to suggest that resurgence mamluk power 18th

century ‘throwback to’ (or culmination of) late MamlukSuntanate (14th century): ‘military society’

• Argues against this: new practice 1720s of officers promoting their ‘clients’ to status of ‘Bey’ (traditionally ‘chieftain’, by 18th c. -- ‘lord’)

• Foremost was Ibrahim Kahya al-Qazdaglh*, kahya of Janissary corps: established family hegemony, de facto control over Egypt from 1748 to 1754

*Qazdughli household in Fay

The Mamluks: Origins - History• “The acquisition of mamluks was for the Qazdaglhs

and other ambitious grandees of the 18th century not so much a program of ethnic consolidation or the implementation of a slave ethos as it was a strategy for expeditious household building.

• Notes presence of former mamluks of Chief Black Eunuch in Istanbul

• Large numbers of Georgians – not because of ‘traditional Mamluk ethnicity’ but because neighbouring Safavid empire had been defeated and held large numbers of Georgian mamluks now ‘available’

• Ottomans acquired political control Georgia 1724-1733

The Mamluks: Origins - History• “ The autonomous governors of Ottoman Baghdad

took aggressive advantage of this new supply of manpower to cultivate an entourage of Georgian mamluks -- one is inclined to believe that Egypt was inspired by the Baghdadi example.”

• Hathaway argues it is only in this context that the household begins to lose its ‘mixed’ characteristic and appear more like Baghdad’s mamluk society

• In reality, Egypts ‘grandee families’ striving for viable households rather than exclusively mamluk-based: attention needs to be paid to economic base as well as military

The Mamluks: Origins - History• Most important: “the household supplies the context

for basic features of elite life -- notably elite marriages and elite residences. |

• Marriages that linked two households or that absorbed otherwise rootless clients were a key strategy of any household head”:

• increased household's membership • forged political alliances • gave household access to new sources of wealth.

The Mamluks: Origins - History• “It was primarily through marriage that a household

head's wives, concubines, and daughters exercised influence and contributed to the household's fortunes”:

• most visible feature was the house or building that served as a place of assembly, political power.

• High-ranking officers, beys, officials established entourages - including wives, concubines - in palatial residences

The Mamluk Household•

The Mamluks who stayed behind built lavish houses for themselves to mark their status as the source of power in Egypt. This is one such house, Bayt al-Razzaz, now in ruins

[Source:http://www.laits.utexas.edu/cairo/history/ottoman/ottoman.html ]

The Mamluk Household

Mashrabiyya screens such as this were used to provide privacy to the harem while allowing breezes to circulate, as well as allowing the occupants to see out.

[Source:http://www.laits.utexas.edu/cairo/history/ottoman/ottoman.html ]

The Mamluk Household

Life in a Mamluk Harem(Cairo)John Frederick Lewis19th. c

The Mamluk Household• Houses of allied grandees clustered in elite neighborhoods: mid-18th century southern shore of pond known as Birkat al-Azbakiyya in western Cairo dominated by houses of the Qazdaglls and their allies

• By the late 18th century, the houses of the leading Qazdagll grandees had displaced the governor's council, or diwan, in the citadel as loci of political power

[Source:http://www.laits.utexas.edu/cairo/history/ottoman/ottoman.html ]

The Mamluk Houshold• Fay’s ‘The Harem Unveiled’: what makes the Mamluk

harem in Egypt different from what we have already come to know?

• Not ‘Imperial’ but shares many features

• Shaped by Islamic laws concerning slavery (especially concubines)

• Equated with ‘seclusion’, issues of ‘private/public’

All discussed in context of Abbasid and Ottoman case studies

The Mamluk Household• Fay “The Harem Unveiled”: argues two key points

• Mamluk system of household politics reproduced itself through the enslavement and manumission of men and women

• Mamluk women crucial to the household’s construction, reproduction, stability and continuity: how?

The Mamluk Houshold• “Slave Soldier” heritage: while Hathaway cautions not

to assume ‘typical’, unchanging mamluk character –Fay asks us to see how it has affected women in household

• Argument draws attention to two aspects of process:

• Significance of slave (as distinct from free) women

• Role of manumission – creation of freed slaves

The Mamluk Houshold• The ‘Freed Slave’: for both men and women has

unusual significance in mamluk household

• For men: integral to building mamluk military/administrative system, ‘entourage’

• Adopted as process for constructing household and harem – required women

• Slave women preferred as not only as concubines (as seen elsewhere) but as wives

• Required that they be manumitted (Islamic law)

The Mamluk Houshold• The ‘freed’ woman acquired same legal rights and

responsibilities as ‘free’ women:

• Marriage (not concubinage) core of Mamluk household

• ‘freed’ women inherited: mamluk widows accumulated wealth, acquired some autonomy

• frequently remarried: ‘marriage’ alliances/networks underpinned mamluk elite class

The Mamluk Houshold• ‘freed’ women controlled property:

• commonly ‘endowed’ it as waqf

• provided women with personal, independent support during their lifetime

• protected family wealth for heirs

• permitted public, charitable contributions (as we have seen with Imperial Harems) – but as equivalent of Free women, not as haseki or valide sultans

The Mamluk Houshold• “Story of Khadija”: reflects essence of process

• Source used to piece story together: endowment documentation [main source of most of research]

• Legal name registered: ‘Khadija Qadim bint Abd Allah al-Bayda ma’tuqat wa zawjat al-marhum al-Amir Ahmad Kathuda Ta’ifat Mustahfizan al-Qazdughli’

• Embodies geneaology, history of her life

The Mamluk Houshold• ‘Khadija Qadim bint Abd Allah al-Bayda ma’tuqat

wa zawjat al-marhum al-Amir Ahmad KathudaTa’ifat Mustahfizan al-Qazdughli’:

• ‘daughter of the servant of God’ (rather than ‘father’): slave

• ‘white’ (to distinguish from black or ‘African’)

Fay pieces together early history: know only that she was 13 or 14 when brought to Cairo from Central Asia (Circassia?), found her way into Ahmad Kathuda’shousehold (directly? As ‘gift’ from ally?)

The Mamluk Houshold• ‘Khadija Qadim bint Abd Allah al-Bayda ma’tuqat

wa zawjat al-marhum al-Amir Ahmad KathudaTa’ifat Mustahfizan al-Qazdughli’:

• ‘freed slave’ (manumitted by master) and ‘wife of ….’(then married to him)

• ‘marhum’ (meaning husband was deceased, Khadijawas widow)

• Husband had been ‘mustahfizan’ – high ranking Janissary

• Of powerful and wealthy ‘Qazdughli’ family

The Mamluk Houshold• The waqf: registered in 1780

• House near “Bab Zuwayla”

[major ‘gate’ of city, commercial area, represented ‘wealth of black Africa’]

The Mamluk Houshold• The waqf: registered in 1780

• House near Bab Zuwayla [major ‘gate’ of city, to south; commercial area, represented ‘wealth of black Africa’]

• mill (for crushing lentils)

• shop (in commercial important complex)

• house in important quarter of city – ‘Elephant lake’ (noted in photo of Monday’s lecture) – description indicated it was large, valuable

Value: sufficient to provide for her for life, for her heirs, for numerous charitable organizations/causes

The Mamluk Houshold• Khadija epitomized value of female slave in Mamluk

household:• While serving as concubine, it was as manumitted/freed

slave that Khadija became ‘important’ to the household

• She had her children as ‘wife’ not concubine

• As equivalent of ‘free woman’, Islamic law allowed her to inherit, accumulate property …

• AND: exploit it as ‘waqf’

Centrality of these features of Mamluk harem distinguished it from others

The Mamluk Household• Last aspect to explore:

• Patronage (‘grandees’, allies) and marriages: how system of raising clients to ‘beys’, ‘amirs’ intersected with slavery and emancipation (e.g. life story of Khadija) in society

• Fay develops intersecting stories of three women:

Amina Khatun [freeborn daughter, wife]Shawikar Qadin [slave concubine, manumitted wife]Nafisa al-Bayda [slave concubine, manumitted wife]

The Mamluk Household• Focus of Friday Discussion:

• By examining these ‘stories’ and the nature of their intersections, will try to determine more about what made Egypt’s 18th century Mamluk Harems ‘distinctive’

• Equally importantly: we will try to understand even more about why Fay makes the argument that the harem was the core of Mamluk society and explains in ways studies of the military administration cannot – how and why ‘Mamluks’recovered power and wealth in the 18th century