The Mamluks

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Mamluks, who ruled Egypt and Syria from about 1250 to 1517. Originally slave soldiers who managed to depose their masters, they went on to repel the Mongols and the Crusaders to become the dominant force in the medieval Islamic Middle Eastern world. Although the Mamluks were renowned as warriors, under their rule art, crafts and architecture blossomed. Little known by many in the West today, the Mamluks remained in power for almost 300 years until they were eventually overthrown by the Ottomans.

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Guests

• Amira Bennison 10 episodes
  Reader in the History and Culture of the Maghrib at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Magdalene College
• Robert Irwin 4 episodes
  Former Senior Research Associate in the Department of History at SOAS, University of London
• Doris Behrens-Abouseif No other episodes
  Nasser D Khalili Professor of Islamic Art and Archaeology at SOAS, University of London

Reading list

• Renaissance of Islam: Art of the Mamluks
  Esin Atil (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981) Google Books →
• Cairo of the Mamluks
  Doris Behrens-Abouseif (I B Tauris, 2007) Google Books →
• The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo
  Jonathan Berkey (Princeton, 1992) Google Books →
• Soldiers of Fortune: The Story of the Mamluks
  John Glubb (Stein and Day, 1973) Google Books →
• The Age of the Crusades: The Near East from the the Eleventh Century to 1517
  P. M. Holt (Longman, 1986) Google Books →
• The Middle East in the Middle Ages: The Early Mamluk Sultanate 1250-1382
  Robert Irwin (Croom Helm, 1986) Google Books →
• Qur'ans of the Mamluks
  David James (Thames and Hudson, 1988) Google Books →
• Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages
  Ira M. Lapidus (Cambridge University Press, 1987) Google Books →
• A Turning Point in Mamluk History: The Third Reign of al-Nasir Muhammad Ibn Qalawun (1310-1341)
  Amalia Levanoni (Brill, 1995) Google Books →
• The Mamluks 1250-1517
  David Nicolle (Osprey, 1993) Google Books →
• Protectors or Praetorians? The Last Mamluk Sultans and Egypt's Waning as a Great Power
  Carl F. Petry (State University of New York, 1994) Google Books →
• The Lion of Egypt: Sultan Baybars I and the Near East in the Thirteenth Century
  Peter Thorau (Longman, 1992) Google Books →
• The Knights of Islam: The Wars of the Mamluks
  James Waterson (Greenhill Books, 2007) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b03bfmlh

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03bfmlh

Auto-category: 956.01 (History of Egypt and Sudan during the medieval period)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. The Sultan Hassan Mosque in Cairo is widely regarded as one of the most impressive Islamic monuments in Egypt.