The Amir Yalbugh[a.bar] al-Kh[a.bar]ssak[i.bar], the Qal[a.bar]w[u.bar]nid sultanate, and the cultural matrix of Maml[u.bar]k society: a reassessment of Maml[u.bar]k politics in the 1360s.

• Author: Van Steenbergen, Jo
• Position: Essay

Ever since the dawn of studies on the Syro-Egyptian Maml[u.bar]k sultanate (1260-1517), the senior military commander, or amir, Yalbugh[a.bar] al-Kh[a.bar]ssak[i.bar] (d. 768/1366) has been recognized as a key player on the regime's political scene. Unfortunately, this recognition has traditionally been a negative one, and the picture that prevails in modern historiography is that of "the truly devious emir Yalbugh[a.bar] al-Kh[a.bar]ssak[i.bar]," as one popular Maml[u.bar]k history recently put it. (1) Scrutiny of that historiography reveals, however, that such a judgment is inadequate, and that a reassessment of his role in Maml[u.bar]k history is therefore largely overdue. At the same time, the exercise confirms that the stereotype of Yalbugh[a.bar] as a transgressor of Mamluk sociopolitical norms and values has been given precedence--almost in an "Orientalist" fashion--over what really remains of his historical identity, suggesting that such a reassessment should also address deeper, epistemological issues. Yalbugh[a.bar]'s representation in the historiography of the Maml[u.bar]k sultanate really only reflects, and problematizes, a much larger, dominant research paradigm of long-term Maml[u.bar]k decline from an idealized, late thirteenth-century high point, which persists in obfuscating the many dimensions of continuity and change in the sultanate's long and varied history. (2)

The present reassessment of Yalbugh[a.bar] will therefore focus on the following two issues: the micro-historical roles that Yalbugh[a.bar] played and the macro-historical frameworks in which he operated. It will begin with a detailed account, on the basis of all relevant extant source material, of the life and times of the military slave (maml[bar.u]k) Yalbugh[a.bar] al-Kh[a.bar]ssak[i.bar], who rose to prominence in the later 1350s and dominated the Maml[u.bar]k political arena in the 1360s until his murder in December 1366 (Rabi' II 768) brought his effective rule over the Maml[u.bar]k domains to a sudden end. (3) Furthermore, instead of approaching this from the perspective of Yalbugh[a.bar]'s career as a microcosm of Mamluk decline, his historical role will be assessed within the context of the continuity of 1360s elite politics with past practices. of royal loyalty and wide-ranging patronage--of the Qal[a.bar]w[u.bar]nid sultanate and of the Maml[u.bar]k cultural matrix--as an important stepping stone in the larger process of identifying an alternative paradigm for that of Maml[u.bar]k decline. (4)

1. MAMLI[U.bar]K HISTORIOGRAPHY'S CONTRASTING PERSPECTIVES ON YALBUGH[A.bar]

   Edward Gibbon's eighteenth-century blanket dismissal of the whole Maml[u.bar]k period as one of "rapine and bloodshed" with only a handful of "breathing intervals of peace and order" certainly left its traces in Maml[u.bar]k studies, in judgments of Yalbugh[a.bar] in particular. (5) In the late nineteenth century Sir William Muir followed with an intriguing summary of Yalbugh[a.bar]'s career:

   [Sultan Hasan'si Sultanate is bare of incident.... At last he was attacked by his leading Emir, Yelbogha, to whom he had given offence; and having been cast into prison, was never seen again. Two grandsons of Nasir now succeeded to the Sultanate. [...] Yelbogha ... was at first the dominant Emir; but his atrocities so transcended even the barbarous precedents of the age as to arouse the hatred of the people, who rallied to the support of the young Sultan when Yelbogha rebelled and would have raised another Brother to the throne. The tyrant was defeated. and his head exposed upon a burning torch. (6) It has to be acknowledged that neither early author should be fully blamed for his harsh treatment of Yalbugh[a.bar]. They were, it would seem, following a negative trend that was first set by some fifteenth-century Maml[u.bar]k historiographers. Less than a century after Yalbugh[a.bar]'s gruesome end, the Egyptian chronicler Y[u.bar]suf b. Taghr[i.bar]bird[i.bar] (812-74/1409-70) already moralized this amir's story, claiming that "surely, God Almighty ... had made that Yalbugha was treated by his own maml[u.bar]ks just as he had dealt with his master (ustadh)." (7) A few decades earlier, the equally influential Egyptian scholar Ahmad b. 'Al[i.bar] al-Maqr[i.bar]z[i.bar] (766-845/1364-1442)--today increasingly well known for his embittered personal perspective on Mamluk politics--had similarly put the blame for Yalbugh[a.bar]'s violent downhill on his own behavior, judging that "because God Almighty had wanted it, the amir Yalbugh[a.bar] had become a miser and his morals had been corrupted (sa'at akhl[a.bar]quhu)." (8) This negativism clearly became a popular approach in fifteenth-century Mamluk historiography, as is also discernible in the--admittedly more clement--assessment by al-Magr[i.bar]z[i.bar]'s peer Wall al-D[i.bar]n Ibn al-'Ir[a.bar]q[i.bar] (762-826/1360-1423) that Yalbugh[a.bar] "was a generous and high-minded ruler, who was very benevolent for the scholars in particular, as well as for the people in general. He gave many alms and charitable gifts. Eventually, however, he changed for the worse, his morals were corrupted (s[a.bar]'a khulquhu), and he treated badly those who were around him." (9)

   For many centuries, therefore, the resultant picture of Yalbugh[a.bar] al-Kh[a.bar]ssak[I.bar] that prevailed was of a person of "corrupted morals." Modern studies do not dwell at length on him, but most tend to agree that Yalbugh[a.bar] was an unscrupulous warmonger, who deserves mention only for failing to uphold proper standards vis-a-vis the "Maml[u.bar]k system"--the bonds of loyalty inculcated through military slavery that allegedly formed the backbone of Maml[u.bar]k politics. In this vein, for example, Linda Northrup notes that Yalbugh[a.bar], "having become leader of a faction which resented the favour shown by his master to non-maml[u.bar]k groups, killed al-N[a.bar]sir Hasan in 1361," and became the real Maml[u.bar]k ruler in all but name, "under[taking] the remaml[u.bar]kization of the Mamluk state and military" (10)--after this "felony" and "breaking of a hitherto carefully protected taboo," as Peter Holt described the killing. (11) Amalia Levanoni adds that he "even established an army of his own, previously the exclusive prerogative of the sultan." (12) When, however, by December 1366 that army turned against him and brought his career to a premature end, the implication is that Yalbugh[a.bar] failed miserably to complete this project of re-Maml[u.bar]kization around his personal authority. (13)

   Hence, Yalbugh[a.bar] continues to be (in)famous for his leading involvement in the killing in March 1361 of his own master--the Qal[a.bar]w[u.bar]nid sultan al-N[a.bar]sir Hasan (r. 1347-51; 1354-61) (14)--and his creation and harsh disciplining of his own massive corps of mamluks, ending in his own killing by their hands in December 1366. But in linking these two issues and in reducing the role that Yalbugh[a.bar] has played in Maml[u.bar]k history to their shocking outcome--his head exposed on a burning torch--modern studies of the period still have no more insights to offer than those proffered by Gibbon and Muir and molded by that malignant trend in fifteenth-century Maml[u.bar]k historiography, as exemplified by Ibn Taghr[I.bar]bird[I.bar]'s summary biographical notice:

   Yalbugh[a.bar] al-'Umar[I.bar] al-Hasan[I.bar] al-N[a.bar]sir[I.bar] al-Kh[a.bar]ssak[I.bar] al-At[a.bar]bak[I.bar], master (ust[a.bar]dh) of [sultan] al-Malik al-Z[a.bar]hir Barq[u.bar]q [r. 1382-89, 1390-99], lord of al-Kabsh [near Cairo], the amir Sayf al-D[I.bar]n, manager of the Egyptian realm. Originally, he belomged to the maml[u.bar]ks of al-N[a.bar]sir Hasan. He was the one who killed his master, the sultan Hasan. His own maml[u.bar]ks killed him during the night before Sunday, 10 Rab[I.bar]' al-[a.bar]khir of the year 768 [December 14, 1366]. (15) However, this long-standing trend of approaching Maml[u.bar]k politics. in the 1360s, and Yalbugh[a.bar] in particular, from the singular perspective of tyranny, oppression, and disruptive, even illicit, violence ill suits--in an increasingly awkward fashion--recent findings on the inherent and constructive nature of Maml[u.bar]k tension, conflict, and feuding, and on the dynamic, friction-prone, and generational character of Maml[u.bar]k elites, as the only sensible larger background that may help to explain Yalbugh[a.bar]'s sudden downfall. (16) This widening gap between newly emerging macro-historical appreciations of Mamluk politics and prevailing micro-historical pictures of one of its key players in the mid-fourteenth century clearly demands a reassessment of the latter.

   Guidance on the lines along which such a reassessment may be pursued can be found in some remarkably contrasting perspectives on Yalbugh[a.bar] al-Kh[a.bar]ssak[I.bar]'s wider involvement in the "cultural matrix" of Maml[u.bar]k society, the holistic framework of cultural modes of expression that defined the public representations of all Maml[u.bar]k elites' political and social integration. (17) In the 1980s Robert Irwin could present the following micro-historical impression of Yalbugh[a.bar], which despite its briefness and traditional negativism deserves attention as an atypical reference to Yalbugh[a.bar], since non-political factors were also adduced:

   Yalbugha was a man of a different stamp from Shaykhun and Sarghitmish. He was not cultured and he reared his mamluks in his own image--as fighters rather than public servants. (18) What Irwin meant by this was made clear in his portrayal of these two predecessors of Yalbugh[a.bar], who had dominated Maml[u.bar]k politics in the 1350s:

   Shaykhun and Sarghitmish were perhaps the last of a great generation of mamluks who had been thoroughly educated by al-Nasir Muhammad as a preparation for public service. Shaykhun interfered repeatedly in religious affairs and had been commended for his piety in...