From Slave to Sultan: The Career of al-Mansur Qalawun and the Consolidation of Mamluk Rule in Egypt and Syria (678-689 A.H./1279-1290).

• Author: SCHULTZ, WARREN C.
• Position: Review

From Slave to Sultan: The Career of al-Mansur Qalawun and the Consolidation of Mamluk Rule in Egypt and Syria (678-689 A.H./1279-1290). By LINDA S. NORTHRUP. Freiburger Islamstudien, vol. 18. Stuttgart: FRANZ STEINER VERLAG, 1998. Pp. 349. DM 128.

In the introduction Northrup argues that "Qalawun's reign deserves more profound treatment" (p. 21) than it has heretofore been given. This it certainly receives at the author's hands. Her tome offers a dense and detailed study of the life and times of al-Mansur Qalawun, the second major Mamluk sultan. Against the backdrop of the numerous challenges and problems--Mongols, Crusaders, and fierce internal factionalism, to name but a few--faced by the early Mamluks, Northrup's main thesis is that Qalawun should be considered the consolidator of both Mamluk rule over Egypt and (especially) Syria, and of the Mamluk system of government and administration that had been established by his colleague and predecessor as sultan, al-Zahir Baybars. Northrup thus places Qalawun in the center of the process by which the governmental apparatus ruling Egypt and Syria became more militarized, centralized, and "mamlukized" (p. 162).

Northrup identifies four primary purposes of this work: the establishment of the corpus of Arabic sources for Qalawun's life and reign; an examination of his policies; the illumination of the evolution of structural institutions of the sultanace; and a limited characterization of the man himself (p. 22). The book addresses these goals via thirteen chapters spread across four major subsections. Part one (chs. 1-3) discusses the source material available. In addition to establishing the necessary context for studying Qalawun's life, chapter one in particular serves as a useful case study of the myriad problems and themes of Mamluk historiography. Although identifying the documentary evidence takes only the one page of chapter two, it is important to point out that one of the strong points of Northrup's study is the close analysis of the few surviving documents, as well as the "copies" of other documents preserved in the literary sources (cf. pp. 167-71). On the topic of sources, it should be noted that the sur viving coins of Qalawun--especially the silver dirham--are not as rare as Northrup asserts (p. 61). In her defense, however, until recently there were relatively few published specimens available for easy study. Part two (chs. 4-6) provides a tripartite narrative of Qalawun's life...