Legend of the Mamaluks

Translated by Leo Shtutin; Published in Istanbul // Türkiye by Masticadores and miniMAG

Yusuf ibn Ayyub, a Kurd from Tikrit known by the infidels as Saladin, rose to prominence at the court of the Egyptian caliph, seized power, routed the Crusaders, captured Yerushalayim, and met his end, though not before establishing the Ayyubid dynasty; after the mysterious death of As-Salih, that bloody dynasty’s last sultan, the rootless Aybak, first of the Mamaluks, compelled As-Salih’s widow into matrimony, and thereupon became undisputed Ruler. For almost three centuries, the rootless slaves that were the Mamaluks ruled over a vast empire. These slaves morphed into masters. They crushed the Crusaders, halted the Horde, and their Ottoman-serving descendants forced Bonaparte to retreat. Not one of them remembered their progenitors, their tribe, their tongue. This story begins long ago, when the first of them, Aybak, was not yet born. Throughout the Great Steppe, across the Caucasus, in penurious chivalric Europe, in Nubia and Benin, they were purchased by the hundreds alongside horses stolen or seized in battle. Still unproficient in their own tongues, they had not the skill to stay mounted and understood nothing of what was happening. They were no more than five years of age. Slave traders would buy up children. Boys. Cumans, Nubians, Georgians, Cathayans, Slavs, Franks, Saxons, Danes. They were dispatched via endless caravan routes to the Egyptian desert. Hundreds of them did not survive the journey. They died in agony. Cold and heat, disease and hunger claimed their lives. The most resilient survived, their thirst for life carrying them through. A thousand of them gathered in Egypt. A thousand boys, speaking every conceivable tongue and failing to understand one another. The great caliph amassed an all-tribe, all-child army. Every few years, a fresh thousand would be brought to Egypt. How sudden was the birth of this idea in his mind? No one knows. Perhaps his scribes had told him tales of distant ancient Sparta. But his vision was more grandiose than any Sparta. Assemble a thousand five-year-olds, and in a year’s time they would forget their tongues. In two, their parents. In three, they would be horsemen. In five, masters of weaponry. In ten, warriors. In fifteen, the survivors among them would become commanders. And all the while they would remain outsiders. White ones, black ones, yellow ones. Moris Simashko, blessed be his memory, told us a legend about the Mamaluks. They grew up on the drill ground. Fighting was all they knew in childhood; they had weapons for playthings, and their native realm was scorching sunlight. There was nothing in the drill ground but sand that would clog fallen boys’ mouths. And then the caliph ordered the planting of a tree. A tree that would haunt the Mamaluks’ dreams for generations. They now had something to die for. It would be their one love amidst hatred and death, a lone tree on the drill ground. They became commanders. They seized power. They established an unparalleled dynasty, one where the throne was passed down not to offspring but to former Mamaluk slaves. They morphed from warriors into monarchs, from paupers into masters of empire. Their greatness endured for three centuries and more. They were invincible. They dreamed of the tree. One of these bloated rulers had the tree cut down. He had no use for it now. There were orchards full of trees at his disposal. The new generation of Mamaluks began dreaming different dreams. They dreamed of weaponry, the snorting of horses, the enemy’s crimson blood. No longer did they dream of the tree. To the north, the Ottomans were gaining in strength. They routed the Persians and Anatolia. Sultan Selim toppled the Mamaluks. Those who survived entered the service of the Turks. The Mamaluk empire, the empire of slave-kings, crumbled forever. The Mamaluks vanished. Vanished almost as abruptly as they entered the scene. The army of children sank into oblivion. What would have become of them if a well-fed fool hadn’t cut down their tree?..