Ibn Khaldun was no anticlerical radical. A sometime Sufi and an authority on the sayings of the Prophet, he went so far as to condemn philosophers for relying too much on reason. The highest state of human perfection, he believed, was pure mystical faith achieved by “tearing the veil of the senses.” Yet his teachings still offended the prickly orthodox—perhaps because he hinted that human action guided history as much as did the will of Allah, or maybe because he thought faith could not be achieved through reason. Whatever the case, al-Azhar, Cairo’s preeminent college and the world’s oldest university, banned his Prolegomena from its curriculum. The ban lasted 500 years—until the 1920s.
As Europe evolved from Renaissance to Reformation to Enlightenment, Cairo wove itself an Islamic cocoon. Poetry—an art so prized by the Ayyubids that one sultan had his favorite bards sleep in his own bedchamber—was replaced in esteem by calligraphy: in Mameluke Cairo a single illuminated Koran was often more valuable than the sumptuous mosque that housed it. Interest in human medicine—a science so perfected that the Cairene physician Ibn al-Nafis (1213–88) was describing the circulation of blood 350 years before its “discovery” by William Harvey—waned in favor of the veterinary science required by the horse-mad Mamelukes. Cairo’s fifteenth-century artisans created intricate geometric patterns in wood and marble marquetry. Their productions were superbly elegant, but they were also sterile.
The Arabs may have invented algebra and elaborated trigonometry, but when an eighteenth-century governor challenged all seventy of al-Azhar’s professors to solve an unchallenging mathematical puzzle, only one of them could come up with an answer. It was hardly surprising. Since the time of Saladin, the only use al-Azhar had found for mathematics was for calculating divisions of inheritance by Islamic law. In the early twentieth century al-Azhar was still relying on a mathematical text written by Ibn Haytham, the Fatimid scientist, a thousand years before.
Of course, Ibn Khaldun saw things differently. The stature of Cairo as the greatest center of learning in his time, he said, was due to Saladin and his Mameluke successors. The Turkish chieftains of Egypt, he wrote, feared the sultan’s rapacity so much that they endowed schools and other foundations to employ their children. “The result of this is that endowments have multiplied so as to attract men of learning from as far as Iraq and Morocco.” But a mere century later, at the end of the Mameluke era, Leo Africanus was to offer a more critical report. The inhabitants of Cairo were “very kindly people and merry fellows,” he said. “Yet, though they excel at fine speech, they do very little….Many give themselves to the study of laws, but very few to letters. Whereas their colleges are always full of students, very few gain profit from this.”
The “rapacity” noted by Ibn Khaldun was, moreover, to exact its inevitable toll. The Mameluke system was destined to follow the cycle of decline that the scholar’s own theory so brilliantly predicted. His student al-Maqrizi cataloged a litany of fifteenth-century ills due to Mameluke venality: inflation and debasement of the coinage; the degradation of high offices of state; the institution of monopolies and the forced sale of merchandise; corruption; and “the eagerness of officials to hunt down the rich so as to relieve them of their fortunes.”
Finally, the lawlessness of the Mameluke soldiery itself accelerated decline. Over time the rigid discipline and loyalty of these uprooted Northerners had deteriorated. By the late fifteenth century they had become a parasite class who claimed their outrageous privileges as rights and treated the common people with contempt. An example: at one time prankish Mamelukes decreed a tax on baldness, and proceeded to ride about the city knocking off turbans to assess the levy. These splendid archers and riders chafed at the urban confines of Cairo. They became, said al-Maqrizi, more promiscuous than monkeys, more larcenous than mice, and more destructive than wolves. He decried their riotous behavior with the fiercest words he could summon: “They broke into bathhouses and abducted women by force. They carried themselves to excesses that even the Franks, had they been masters of the country, would not have committed.”
ON MAY 18, 1516, the entire Mameluke army mustered in the hippodrome at the foot of the Citadel, kicking up a pall of dust that obscured their sultan’s great castle. Each of the twenty-four chief amirs took charge of his own slave troops, some with a thousand fully equipped cavalrymen, others with a hundred, or forty or fewer. The Sultani Mamelukes, an elite corps clothed in white linen robes and armed with bows, lances, and both short swords and long, were 5,000 strong. The whole great clanking, shuffling army lined up in ranks, until at length Sultan Qansuh al-Ghuri himself descended from the palace. A gray-bearded dilettante of seventy-five whose passions were perfume and flowers, al-Ghuri now gave the signal for the procession to begin.
In file after file the soldiers marched through the heart of the city. The blare of the royal trumpeters and the drill of the kettledrummers, the trample of hooves, and the spine-tingling ululations of the women of Cairo echoed down the length of the Qasaba, clattering off the stone walls of Sultan Hasan’s gigantic mosque and thundering under the high arch of Bab Zuwayla. Three gorgeously caparisoned, silent-footed elephants ambled in the lead. The Mameluke cavalry, resplendent in the battle uniforms of their various houses, stretched thereafter for a continuous mile. The captains of the guard followed in their tall felt hats, succeeded by the drummasters with their forty kettledrummers; then the supreme judges of the four schools of law, the chiefs of the dervish orders with their multicolored turbans, the sheikh of the mendicants, and the headman of the ḥārafish—the organized rabble of the city. And now a great sympathetic cheer greeted the lone figure of Caliph al-Mutawakkil, the last of the Abbasid line but by this time a mere mascot, whose sole duty was to confirm the sultan in office. As the fashion-conscious chronicler Ibn Iyas records, he wore a tasseled Baghdad-style turban and a Baalbek coat with black silk embroidery.
The sultan’s high-stepping led-horses came next, the first pair with tall headdresses shaped like sugar loaves, saddle covers of the royal yellow silk, and side drums; the succeeding pair with gold-edged saddles and gold-embroidered coverings; and the last with saddles of crystal inlaid with gold and studded with agate set in silver. Then came the foot guards, armed with halberds; the sultan’s baggage train, including forty huge illuminated Korans, their cases draped in yellow silk; and incense bearers. The sultan himself followed through the scented smoke, mounted on a spirited bay with gilded saddle and cloth. He wore a simple campaign bonnet (not his usual six-cornered turban of state) and a white riding coat embroidered with a wide band of gold on black silk that was said to weigh 500 mithqāls. On his fingers were rings of ruby, turquoise, emerald, and diamond.
Through the gate the procession marched, and on up the Qasaba past the tombs of previous sultans of Cairo: al-Mu’ayyad, al-Salih Ayyub, al-Mansur Qalawun and his son al-Nasir Muhammad, and al-Zahir Barquq. It passed al-Ghuri’s own lavish and sparkling new funerary complex, between the green-tiled dome of the tomb chamber and the minaret of his mosque across the street. Along the whole route to Bab al-Futuh—the Gate of Conquest—shopkeepers called out prayers for success, while the ladies trilled from upstairs windows.
But in the back streets there were mutterings. The people of Cairo had been taxed to the hilt to pay this army. Even the dung gatherers had been gouged without mercy. Not long since, a raging mob had murdered the chief tax collector. And even so it was said that the army of a generation before had been twice as large; that the campaign bonus paid to each amir had been five times greater. Sultan al-Ghuri himself looked haggard. The Mamelukes had not won a significant victory since their conquest of Cyprus eighty years before. For all their martial skill and finery, their equipment had changed little in two centuries.
By contrast, the army of Ottoman Turks which they were to meet had blasted its way with guns and artillery from triumph to triumph since capturing Constantinople in 1453. Selim I, the Ottoman sultan, had earned the epithet “Selim the Grim” by murdering as many of his male
relations as he could lay hands on, for the purpose of assuring his succession. He was known to be fresh and confident after his latest victory over the Persians (whose shah, provocatively, kept a pet pig called Selim).
A few in the Qasaba crowd may even have heard that the Ottomans had rebuffed al-Ghuri’s peaceful overtures. The Turks had recently overrun a buffer kingdom in eastern Anatolia that was friendly to the Mamelukes. Selim the Grim’s envoy had been welcomed in the Citadel nevertheless—only to hurl before al-Ghuri the severed head of his fallen ally. Indeed, the Ottoman sultan’s provocations knew no bounds. He had humiliated Cairo’s latest ambassador, stripping him naked and forcing him to carry a bucket of manure on his bare head.
Among those who knew of such things, there were rumors that al-Ghuri’s newfangled cannons, on which so much had been spent, had proved immobile and failed to work. Worse, there were whisperings of treachery.
THREE MONTHS LATER the awful news arrived from northern Syria. The Ottoman army had routed the Mamelukes. Selim the Grim’s light field artillery had panicked their horses. His plodding infantry, armed with the arquebus that the Mameluke mounted archers disdained as unmanly, had decimated their thundering cavalry charges. One of al-Ghuri’s commanders had betrayed the Mameluke sultan, pulling the whole left flank of his army out of the battle. The Ottomans had captured the caliph himself, along with the sultan’s Korans, the emblems of the Mameluke state, and the fifty camels laden with gold that the sultan had chosen not to leave behind in the Citadel for fear the treasure would be purloined. As for the great Qansuh al-Ghuri, he had fallen from his charger and died of apoplexy. His body was lost.
To complete the army’s shame, Bedouin marauders attacked the remnants which fled back to Cairo. The stragglers arrived in the city, as the chronicler Ibn Iyas wrote, “in the most pitiful state of nakedness, hunger, and weakness, with their garments opened at the neck….It was a time to turn an infant’s hair white, and to melt iron in its fury.”
By February 1517 Selim the Grim was at the northern gates of Cairo. Again, his artillery smashed the last stand of the Mameluke cavalry. His drunken, beardless troops charged into the city, and for four days they ran amok in rape and pillage. They captured some 800 Mamelukes, beheaded them, threw their bodies in the Nile, and spiked their heads on lances to decorate Selim’s camp. When, some weeks later, the last of the Mameluke generals was betrayed to the invader, Selim had him hung from Bab Zuwayla.
Then began the organized plunder of the city. “The scum and scoundrels of Egypt,” as Ibn Iyas describes them, “would inform the Ottomans of the resources of princesses and ladies, and their costly clothing was carried off. In short, the treasure houses of the land fell into the hands of the Turks…with clothing and weapons, horses and mules, male and female slaves, and everything of value.” The Ottoman soldiery rounded up passersby, “regardless of rank,” and forced them with whips to haul the spoils to the docks. Selim himself divested the palaces of the Citadel of all their furnishings, not sparing priceless manuscripts or carpets, porphyry columns or marble floors, or holy relics such as hairs from the Prophet’s beard and his famed sword Zulfiqar. He ordered the rounding up of all the leading citizens. Nearly 2,000 of the wealthiest merchants, the finest craftsmen, and the most scholarly jurists were then shipped off to Constantinople as hostages. When Selim himself had gone, the Ottoman viceroy he left behind fired the staff of the Citadel palaces—the eunuchs, the cooks, the porters and grooms and cup-bearers. “In short,” lamented Ibn Iyas, “he abolished the entire old system of the Citadel, and introduced the order of the Ottomans, which is the most evil of all orders.”
Caliph al-Mutawakkil, captive in Constantinople and pining for Cairo, surrendered his title as spiritual leader of Sunnite Islam. In exchange, the last Abbasid—fifty-fourth in his line, the descendant of the Prophet’s uncle and of the fabled caliph Harun al-Rashid—was granted a modest stipend and allowed to return to his beloved city by the Nile. Here he died in obscurity.
Cairo’s medieval glory was over. From being the proud seat of a great empire, the fountainhead of Islam, and the marketplace of the Mediterranean, the city tumbled into mediocrity. It became an Ottoman garrison town, a place of lesser significance within a vast empire whose army and fleet marauded from the Danube to the Tigris to the Gulf of Lyons. During 300 years of Ottoman rule, not a single monument was raised that could compete in originality or splendor with the great mosques and colleges and tombs of the Mameluke era.
YET IT WAS not so dire as all that. Cairo did indeed stagnate under the Ottomans. The empire’s distant capital on the Bosporus did draw away talent and tribute. The seafaring skills of the Dutch and Portuguese did choke off transit trade from the Indies. But Cairo remained a large and generally prosperous city, second only to Constantinople in the Ottoman realm. Decline did not set in for real until the empire as a whole began to fall apart.
The Ottomans, quickly satiated by the sacking of Cairo, reformed Egypt’s administration. Fiefdoms were abolished and replaced by a more structured system of tax farming. Personal wealth and inheritance were respected once more, and not so tightly monopolized by the military class. For a time a new commodity—the coffee of Yemen—replaced Indian spices as a source of rich profits. Private individuals built sumptuous town houses and endowed the city with the dozens of public drinking fountains that still dot the Old City. Impressive mosques were raised—such as those of Sinan at Bulaq, of Sulayman Pasha in the Citadel, or of Malika Safiyya off Muhammad Ali Street—although these were mere copies of grander structures in Constantinople. The pleasure quarters around the seasonal lakes at Azbakiyya and Birkat al-Fil expanded; minstrels plied their waters in elegant caïques while parties of ladies picnicked in the surrounding orchards.
If some of the change was positive, much of what remained the same was negative.
The overriding concern of Ottoman governors was to ensure the supply of Egyptian grain and the annual cash tribute to Constantinople. How these were obtained was of little concern. The existence of the Mamelukes—not as rulers but as a self-perpetuating, largely Turkish-speaking warrior class that was eager to keep native Egyptians under heel—suited the Ottomans well. Indeed, in 1521, only a few years after the conquest, the governor had to call in Mameluke irregulars to restore order when his own troops rioted—they were angry because their favorite opium dealer had been executed for pushing his wares during the holy month of Ramadan. The old grandees of Cairo were allowed to continue recruiting fresh Mamelukes. Their choice was, however, less discriminating than in the past. Germans, Hungarians, Sudanese, and Maltese now washed up in Cairo as mercenaries or slave soldiers. Even the sons of Mameluke freedmen, who had traditionally been banned from joining the warrior class, bolstered the households of the leading beys (the term “amir” having vanished with the Mameluke sultanate).
With time, the strength of the Ottoman garrison declined. Its officers grew less interested in the business of governing than in the business of making money. By the seventeenth century, Mameluke beys had come to control every important office in Egypt, and, as Constantinople’s hold loosened, their depredations increased to the point that Ottoman governors relinquished any pretense at authority. With the capital enmeshed in court intrigue and war in the Balkans, the best its agents in Cairo could do was to play off the powerful beys against each other. The city split into two Mameluke-led factions that fought vicious, decades-long turf wars for control of tax-col
lecting privileges, customs duties, and protection rackets. The introduction of carbines and pistols made their feuding far bloodier than it ever had been. Rival houses now sought to annihilate each other by ambush and assassination. Nothing was sacred in these gangland wars: even the tomb of Sultan Hasan served as a platform for rebel artillery when shelling the governor’s residence in the Citadel. The Ottoman garrison itself—underpaid and far from home—tended to join in the hunt for spoils.
Between 1688 and 1755 the Mameluke beys, with their allies in the Ottoman garrison and among Bedouin bandits, deposed no fewer than thirty-four governors. They even instituted a salaried post for an official whose sole task was to deliver the command “Anzil!”—“Step down!”—to the Ottoman sultan’s cringing envoy, whose palace in the Citadel had crumbled into disrepair. By the mid-eighteenth century Cairo was independent of Constantinople in all but name; the annual tribute it sent had fallen from 800,000 ducats at the conquest to a mere 400,000 sequins of a fraction’s value.
In the countryside the Mamelukes’ tax collection degenerated into outright banditry. Not even the capital was safe. Bedouin horsemen raided the city’s cemeteries, kidnapping mourners and carrying them off into the desert. City folk rioted with increasing frequency. They had plenty to complain about: famines, plagues, inflation, and tyranny. Neighborhoods turned into gated fortresses whose inhabitants bolted themselves in at night. The town houses of the rich became castles with high, forbidding walls, baffled entrances, and treasures secreted under their floors. But no place was immune from violence, not even al-Azhar: in 1689 ten students died in a squabble over the university rectorship.