The Mamluk Sultanate

Carl F. Petry is the Hamad Ibn Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Middle East Studies and Professor of HIstory at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Civilian Elite of Cairo in the Later Middle Ages (1982), Twilight of Majesty: The Reigns of al-Ashraf Qaytbay and Qansuh al-Ghawri in Egypt (1993), Protectors or Praetorians? The Last Mamluk Sultans and Egypt's Waning as a Great Power (1994), The Criminal Underworld in a Medieval Islamic Society: Narratives from Cairo and Damascus under the Mamluks (2012) and is the Editor of The Cambridge History of Egypt: Islamic Egypt, 640-1517 (1998). His research has been supported by the J. S. Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study, the American Research Center in Egypt, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

• Introduction; 1. Synopsis of events; 2. Ethos of the 'slave-soldiers' regime; 3. The mamluk sultanate from a global perspective; 4. Vocational classes: Bureaucrats, magistrates, scholastics, clerics; 5. The political economy; contexts of innovation; 6. The cultural legacy; patronage, audience, genres, historiography; 7. The rural environment, gender issues, minority communities, sufi practice; Reflections; Bibliography; Index.

'The wait is over - at last we have a true grand narrative of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt and Syria, a fascinating episode in world history. Encyclopedic in scope, full of insights, with riveting storytelling, Carl F. Petry's tour de force will remain the definitive tome on the subject for a long time to come.' Li Guo, University of Notre Dame