Medieval Egypt Was No Stranger to Class War

The Fatimid regime was dismantled in 1171 by the Kurdish warlord Saladin, whose Ayyubid dynasty was in turn overthrown in 1250 by its own Mamluks — Turkic and Circassian slave soldiers who subsequently established a that controlled Egypt, Palestine, and Syria until 1517. Despite the perennial hum of coups and infighting around the sultan’s throne, 250 years of relative administrative continuity lent the regime enough time and resources to build of religious welfare and political legitimacy, patronize a literary renaissance, and organize Egypt as the focal point of Mediterranean and Indian Ocean commerce.military-patronage statetowering institutions

Nevertheless, the limited safety net and trade money were parts of a system far more extractive than the Fatimid state had ever been. Mamluk captains, trying to control a potentially restive population and needing money to keep buying new Mamluks from the slave markets of Crimea, (revenue assignments) among themselves and hoarded supplies to an unprecedented degree. The traditional lines between military and civilian roles blurred as some captains in turn leased their to non-Mamluk administrators, while they themselves lobbied the sultan for lucrative administrative positions, like that of , the office responsible for policing the markets. Compounding disasters then made a bad situation far worse: the black death of the mid-fourteenth century wiped out the rural workforce, dikes and canals silted up (which meant the Nile had to rise higher for a sufficient harvest), and of the Little Ice Age made the river itself far more erratic.parceled outthe effectsiqtaiqtasmuhtasib

Matters came to a head in 1403 during the rule of the teenage Sultan Faraj ibn Barquq, when the Nile once again failed to rise just after the Turco-Mongol warlord Timur had ravaged Mamluk Syria and another wave of the black death approached. Mamluk , or commanders, responded by fighting each other and squeezing their tenants even harder to keep their own ledgers balanced. Faraj and his government, unable to materially solve any problems or admit to their own failures, resorted to massive for rain and crackdowns on supposed expressions of moral decay like alcohol, prostitution, and religious minorities who flouted sumptuary laws. Adam Sabra in that during the 1403–4 crisis, chroniclers made no mention of any state-sanctioned relief efforts, though individual sultans and amirs were typically more generous with their alms whenever they themselves fell sick, hoping God would reward their charity with a cure.amirspublic prayerswritesPoverty and Charity in Medieval Islam: Mamluk Egypt, 1250–1517

The sense of insecurity and trauma brought by calamity and misrule may have encouraged Mamluk-era historians to increasingly supplement their record of events with commentary on the conditions of the wider city and common people. Al-Maqrizi (1364–1442), the among them, opined that the Nile disasters were not merely acts of God or unlucky natural patterns but a product of three human causes: a corrupt government lubricated with bribery, extreme rent-seeking and hoarding behavior by the moneyed and landowning classes, and the reckless policy of flooding the market with low-value, inflationary copper coins.most prolific

“Whoever reflects on this occurrence from its beginning to its end and knows its origin and development realizes that what has befallen the population is caused solely by the malfeasance of the leaders and rulers and their negligence with regard to the public interest,” he wrote in (). “Indeed, wherever the causes are known, it is easy for the knowledgeable person to remedy all conditions, whether significant or insignificant. I seek God’s help in facing both difficult and easy matters; indeed ‘He tells the truth and He shows the way.’”his treatiseHelping the Community by Examining the Causes of Its DistressIghathat al-ummah bi-kashf al-ghummah

The people in the streets had reached the same conclusion on their own. And when the powerful pushed too far, they pushed back.

Al-Maqrizi’s chronicles record the constant protests that emerged in reaction to state depredation. Throughout the Middle Ages and even more frequently during the Mamluk period, ordinary people channeled their frustration through tax evasion, smuggling, blocking the sultan’s or governor’s processions, collective petitioning (shouted or in writing), and, in extreme cases, violence.

Those activities often came hand in hand, with petition typically following demonstration. Protest had no realistic chance of overturning state power (nor was that its purpose) but could apply sufficient pressure on authorities hoping to maintain their government positions and protect their property from physical damage. In pursuit of material reward and social correction, crowds applied violence systematically, indicating that they had a clear sense of a and the wrongness of transgressing it.moral economy

One favored tradition of anti-profiteering protesters was finding the local muhtasib they deemed responsible and stoning him. The Mamluk-era historian Ibn Taghribirdi how in 1435, a crowd in Cairo sent the muhtasib fleeing into the Citadel for protection. Another example of this occurred in 1487, when, amid rising grain prices, the muhtasib of Damascus was found to be mixing his government duties with his private involvement in the grain trade. Shams al-Din ibn Tulun that an organized crowd found him patrolling the market and proceeded to unload its displeasure on him. These two officials may have suffered a nasty shock and some injuries, but they were fortunate compared to the governor and deputy governor of Damietta in 1417, who, as al-Maqrizi records, were “arrested” by the crowd, humiliated, and then struck dead.recordedrecorded

The elite response to such protests was varied. Amina Elbendary in of the fluidity of such crowds and indeed of social categories in general. The protesters, consisting not just of the “structural/permanent poor” but also artisans, shopkeepers, and lower-level clerics, often sought out members of the clerical establishment (), or even a muhtasib they considered to be morally upright, to intercede with the government on their behalf. In the case of the 1417 incident at Damietta, the crowd brought some of their local religious judges to register a case against the same governor they were about to lynch.writesCrowds and Sultans: Urban Protest in Late Medieval Egypt and Syriaulama

These actions sometimes elicited refusal or even more punitive taxes. Other times, the protest and subsequent petition secured localized, temporary alleviation rather than structural reforms. But the broader tradition of protesting economic predation was understood by both rulers and the people as a constant threat or leverage that punished anyone who overstepped the line.

Muslims are instructed by the Qur’an and hadith to and forbid wrong — a commandment that extends beyond personal survival and piety to the proactive pursuit of social justice. Innocent victims of misfortune could be seen as casualties of elite misconduct or, if they bore their suffering patiently, even as martyrs. But a society that accepted unjust rulers and did not rise up against them was itself complicit. Both sides, then, took their case to God. In a crisis, the ruling class organized mass public prayers for rain. Protesters often shouted “God is great” before a demonstration, and chroniclers described such moments by writing that “prayers against the sultan [or governor] increased.”enjoin good

The Mamluk regime did not survive the collapse of its trade revenue, driven by Portuguese naval ambitions, and the Ottoman advance into the Levant and Egypt. Qansuh al-Ghuri, the penultimate Mamluk sultan, regarded by chroniclers as the among the rulers of that period, supposedly died of a stress- and battle-induced stroke on the plains of Marj Dabiq in front of his Qur’an readers.most avaricious

A change in regime, however, did not keep people off the streets whenever greed or misrule threatened their livelihoods. In 1591, not long after the Cairenes “prayed against” him, Awis Pasha, the city’s governor, died of a stroke.