1.1 The Contingent Stabilization of Leadership ties, 782–923/1380–1517

References in contemporary historiographical texts provide information about sixty high-ranking amirs who, between the late eighth/fourteenth and early tenth/sixteenth centuries, were identified as performing the position of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’.¹⁴ This performance was rather short-lived if not ephemeral for most of these amirs; many periods of service were shorter than the mode average of two years and a few months, and some individuals served for as little as less than a single month (see the green columns in table 1). Only twenty of these sixty amirs served for longer than the mode average (see the orange columns in table 1). The first of these long-serving ‘Heads’ was the amir Qardam al-ḤasanÄ« (1), who held the directly related office of ‘Second Head of the Guards’ between 784/1382 and 790/1388, and the last such individuals were the amirs Ṭarabāy al-SharÄ«fÄ« (58) and SÅ«dÅ«n al-DawādārÄ« (59), who held the office of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ more than a century later, between 906/1501 and 922/1516.¹⁵

In fact, a historical process of stabilization of the sultanate’s leadership appears from these twenty more enduring cases (also exemplified by the prominence of shorter green columns in the lower half of table 1, and of longer orange ones in the top half). After sixteen amirs who followed in Qardam al-Ḥasanī’s footsteps between 790/1380 and 815/1412 (table 1, numbers 2 to 17), a quick succession of no fewer than ten amirs (18 to 27) performed the senior court office of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ during the reigns of Sultan al-Muʾayyad Shaykh and his immediate successors (815–25/1412–22), and another set of three amirs (28, 29, 30) succeeded each other in this office during the first years of Sultan al-Ashraf Barsbāy’s reign (825–31/1422–8). Eventually, in September 1428 (Dhū l-Ḥijja 831) Timrāz al-Qirmishī (31) emerged as the first to remain in office for an entire decade, until September 1438 (Rabīʿ al-Awwal 842) and the quick dissolution of both Barsbāy’s court and that of his son and successor. This feat of long tenure was then repeated by the amir Timurbāy al-Timurbughāwī (33), who remained in office for most of the reign of Sultan al-Ẓāhir Jaqmaq (842–57/1438–53), from March 1439 (Shawwāl 842) until Timurbāy’s death in April 1449 (Ṣafar 853). Timurbāy’s tenure was then continued by Asanbughā al-Nāṣirī al-Ṭayyārī (34) until he also passed away, in March 1453 (Rabīʿ al-Awwal 857) in the course of the dissolution of Jaqmaq’s court. The amir Qurqmās al-Ashrafī al-Jalab (35) thereupon appeared on the scene, performing the office of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ during the entire reign of Sultan al-Ashraf Īnāl (857–65/1453–61), from March 1453 (Rabīʿ al-Awwal 857) until February 1461 (Jumādā l-Ūlā 865). During Sultan al-Ẓāhir Khushqadam’s reign (865–72/1461–7), the amir Timurbughā al-Ẓāhirī (38) performed the office of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ between October 1461 (Dhū l-Ḥijja 865) and May 1465 (Ramaḍān 869), whereupon the amir Uzbak min Ṭuṭukh al-Sāqī (39) took over and remained in office until October 1467 (Rabīʿ al-Awwal 872). Out of eight amirs (42–9) who performed the office of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ during the very long reign of Sultan al-Ashraf Qāyitbāy (872–901/1468–96), four stayed in office for longer than average periods, including notably Timrāz al-Shamsī (45) (July 1473–December 1481/Ṣafar 878–Shawwāl 886), Barsbāy Qarā (46) (January 1482–February 1488/Dhū l-Qaʿda 886–Rabīʿ al-Awwal 893) and Uzbak al-Yūsufī (48) (March 1489–November 1495/Rabīʿ al-Ākhir 894–Ṣafar 901). Only two amirs, finally, performed the office of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ during the reign of Sultan Qāniṣawh al-Ghawrī (906–22/1501–16): the afore-mentioned Ṭarabāy al-Sharīfī (58) from February 1501 (Rajab 906) until his death in April 1511 (Muḥarram 917), and Sūdūn al-Dawādārī (59) from May 1511 (Ṣafar 917) until October 1516 (Ramaḍān 922).

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number of months in office/amir (784–923 AH, [grouped per sultanic reign]) (average: 27 months; green: ≤ 27 / orange: > 27)

Citation: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 65, 5-6 (2022) ; 10.1163/15685209-12341583

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From the 1420s and the reign of al-Ashraf Barsbāy onwards, therefore, fourteen amirs appear most prominently on the courtly stage in the capacity of its ‘Chief Head of the Guards’. Before the latter four and two (44, 45, 46, 48; 58, 59) who dominated the 1470s to the 1490s and the period from 1501 to 1516 respectively, eight amirs (28, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35, 38, 39) performed this office in an almost continuous succession between the 1420s and the 1460s. Among these eight, the careers of Timrāz al-Qirmishī (31) and Timurbāy al-Timurbughāwī (33) in this court office stand out, given that after four unstable decades of almost thirty predominantly short terms in office (2–30), these amirs managed to remain in office for a decade each, from 1428 to 1449. Their tenures thus marked a rapid stabilization of amirs’ connections with this office that in general continued until the end of Uzbak min Ṭuṭukh’s term (39) in 1467, and then resumed during the reign of Qāyitbāy and again during that of Qāniṣawh.

At the same time, however, as the latter two breaks in this stabilizing sequence—between 1467 and 1469 (40–43) and again between 1495 and 1501 (49–57)—also indicate (as does the return of two sequences of green columns in the top half of table 1), these stabilizing relationships of leadership represent a more haphazard and contingent process than a generalizing overview suggests. The transition from Timrāz to Timurbāy in 1438–9, including the short tenure of Qarājā al-ḤasanÄ« (32) between September 1438 and March 1439 (Rajab-Shawwāl 842), coincided with, and was in fact caused by, the violent circumstances of the dissolution of Barsbāy’s old court and political order (dawla) and the installation of Jaqmaq’s new one. The same happened in 1453, with the transition to Īnāl’s reign and the accession of Qurqmās al-AshrafÄ« al-Jalab (35) to the position of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’. A radical and violent re-shuffling of senior court positions in 1461 similarly marked the end of Qurqmās’ tenure and, after the brief passage in this office by two other amirs (36–7), the investiture of Timurbughā al-ẒāhirÄ« (38) in October 1461. When Timurbughā was transferred to the court position of ‘Amir of the Council’ (amÄ«r majlis) in May 1465, the amir Uzbak min Ṭuá¹­ukh al-SāqÄ« (39) took over as ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ for the remainder of Khushqadam’s reign, until late October 1467 (RabÄ«Ê¿ al-Awwal 872), when after Khushqadam’s demise he was made the sultan’s representative (nāʾib al-salá¹­ana) in Damascus. At that time, at the start of the short-lived reign of Sultan al-Ẓāhir Yilbāy, the amir (and soon to be sultan) Qāyitbāy (40) was made ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ for only the briefest period, from 9 November to 4 December 1467 (11 RabÄ«Ê¿ al-Ākhir to 7 Jumādā l-Ūlā 872). During the subsequent similarly short-lived reign of Sultan (and former ‘Chief Head of the Guards’) al-Ẓāhir Timurbughā, the amir KhushkaldÄ« al-BaysaqÄ« (41) performed the court position of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’. This tenure lasted less than two months, from 6 December 1467 to 30 January 1468 (9 Jumādā l-Ūlā - 7 Rajab 872), when KhushqaldÄ« fled the court, after the aborted attempt by his companion al-ʿĀdil Khayrbak to secure sultanic authority, and the enthronement of Sultan al-Ashraf Qāyitbāy. This total disruption of the sultanate’s leadership and this rivalry between different leadership groups in the later 1460s only slowly subsided in the course of the first two years of Qāyitbāy’s reign.¹⁶ During these and subsequent years, and after the quick succession of another two amirs (42–3) who both held the position for just a handful of months each, tenure of the office of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ again stabilized, with two sequential appointees each holding office for a longer than average period of time. Amir Īnāl al-Ashqar (44) was appointed to the position in December 1469 (Jumādā l-Ākhira 874), and upon his transfer to the court office of ‘Amir of Arms’ (amÄ«r silāḥ) in July 1473 (á¹¢afar 878) he was succeeded by Timrāz al-ShamsÄ« (45), who, as mentioned, remained in office for more than eight years. The similarly disruptive and violent times that marked the transition from Qāyitbāy to Qāniá¹£awh at the end of the century took even longer to settle down.¹⁷ The unsuccessful attempts of four sultans, including Qāyitbāy’s son al-Nāṣir Muḥammad (r. 901–3/1496–8), to establish their authority between 1496 and 1501 (901–6) again also manifested in the relatively quick succession of eight amirs (50–7) in the position of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’, until in February 1501 (Rajab 906) Ṭarabāy al-SharÄ«fÄ« (58) was appointed and remained in office during the first decade of Sultan Qāniá¹£awh’s reign.

As we examine this list of the sixty ‘Chief Heads of the Guards’ more closely, we see that the stabilization of tenure of this office was tied less to any process of ninth/fifteenth-century institutionalization than to the repeated successes of the disruptive reconstruction of leadership ties and claims around a handful of the century’s different sultans. After the highly unstable decades that marked the turn of the century, the social practice of ninth/fifteenth-century Syro-Egyptian leadership ensured that every time the violence and disruption of a transitional phase receded, those ties and claims settled down around a new sovereign courtly order and its performers. The leadership ranks of these closely tied performers obviously included the ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ and the other “Lords of the Offices”, and their ranks and ties stabilized in the consolidation of a new sultan’s rise to central power. Timrāz al-Qirmishī thus performed the position of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ in the formation of Sultan Barsbāy’s court; Timurbāy and, after his death, Asanbughā did the same at Jaqmaq’s court, as did Qurqmās at Īnāl’s, and Timurbughā and Uzbak min Ṭuṭukh at Khushqadam’s. Between 1469 and 1496 Īnāl al-Ashqar, Timrāz, Barsbāy and Uzbak al-Yūsufī succeeded each other as ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ at Sultan Qāyitbāy’s longstanding court; and between 1501 and 1516 Ṭarabāy and, after his death, Sūdūn similarly contributed to the formation of Qāniṣawh’s court.

In this process of the repeated formation of the court and political order of six sultans, social infrastructures such as that of the court office of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ obviously mattered. In fact, seen from the perspective of the ninth/fifteenth-century Syro-Egyptian leadership’s social profile, these infrastructures appear as very visible markers, and even conduits, of the stabilization of particular sets of social ties and leadership claims. The direct parallels between the recurrent stabilization of the office of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ in the hands of particular individuals on the one hand and of wider courtly orders on the other hand suggest how the performance and constitution of such infrastructures were indeed highly social phenomena, closely related to the formation and empowerment of particular social groups. The court office of the ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ and the other “Lords of the Offices” identified, distinguished, and ‘produced’ individuals as leading members not only of the court in general, but also of a particular close-knit courtly group of strongmen. Once this group’s ties and claims to power stabilized, competition between its members was minimized by the shared concern for the maintained performance of the courtly order that best served their interests, as suggested by, and as resulting in, equally stabilizing and long office tenures.

1.2 The Contingent Survival of mamlūk Peers, 782–923/1380–1517

Any of these strongmen’s violent and then also performative rises to courtly distinction and leadership stability evidently represented only one set of ties, claims, and experiences amidst many others. The further study of these ties, claims, and experiences and of this leadership’s social profile more in general lies beyond the scope of the current paper.¹⁸ Nevertheless, the changing profiles of the sixty senior amirs who performed the court office of the ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ already allow certain inferences that may inform more general inquiries across the entire range of groups of strongmen. On the one hand, as has already been observed in various earlier publications on ninth/fifteenth-century Syro-Egyptian politics, differences in mamlÅ«k origins of successive ‘Chief Heads of the Guards’ suggest that successive groups of strongmen also belonged to different generational cohorts.¹⁹ On the other hand, parallels and shifts in previous leadership experiences suggest that membership of these small groups of strongmen was defined along more than mere generational lines.²⁰

The most important generational breaks occurred in the middle of the century, with the installation in 857/1453 of sultan Īnāl and his courtly order, and at the turn of the century, with the stabilization of leadership from 906/1501 onwards around Sultan Qāniá¹£awh. Prior to 857/1453, almost all ‘Chief Heads of the Guards’ shared several years of mamlÅ«k service in the royal households of Sultan BarqÅ«q during the 1380s and ‘90s, or of his son Faraj during the opening decade of the ninth/fifteenth century.²¹

After 857/1453, and for most of the remainder of the century, almost all ‘Chief Heads of the Guards’ had arrived in Egypt in the 1420s, ‘30s and ‘40s, as mamlÅ«k members of the royal households of Barsbāy and, especially, Jaqmaq. Indeed, while sultan Īnāl’s ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ Qurqmās (35) started his career in mamlÅ«k service to sultan Barsbāy,²² the most important ‘Chief Heads’ during and after Khushqadam’s reign in the 1460s had been mamlÅ«ks of Jaqmaq.²³ This was also true for the later Sultan Qāyitbāy (40), who briefly acted as ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ in RabÄ«Ê¿ al-Awwal-Jumādā l-Ūlā 872/November-December 1467, during the short-lived reign of Sultan Yilbāy. Qāyitbāy allegedly arrived in Egypt in 839/1435–6, when he was in his late teens. He then appears to have been acquired as a mamlÅ«k for Sultan Barsbāy, only to be manumitted a handful of years later while he was in Sultan Jaqmaq’s royal service.²⁴ Similar connections of mamlÅ«k service to Sultan Jaqmaq continued to mark most ‘Chief Heads of the Guards’ during the long reign of Sultan Qāyitbāy.²⁵ The continuity of this association, from the 1460s to the 1490s, with Jaqmaq’s royal household is also attested by references to continued marriage ties with Sultan Jaqmaq’s family. Uzbak min Ṭuá¹­ukh al-SāqÄ« (39), ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ between 869/1465 and 872/1467, was said to have married one (or two) of Jaqmaq’s daughters during his term of office.²⁶ Timrāz al-ShamsÄ« (45), originally a mamlÅ«k of Sultan Barsbāy and manumitted by his son al-Ê¿AzÄ«z YÅ«suf, is reported to have married one of Jaqmaq’s granddaughters shortly after his accession to the position of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ in July 1473/á¹¢afar 878.²⁷

After 901/1496, finally, a third and final clear generational shift occurred. By that time, at the accession of the sultanate’s penultimate Sultan Qāniá¹£awh, most ‘Chief Heads of the Guards’ had started to share origins in the dense ranks of Sultan Qāyitbāy’s former mamlÅ«ks, the majority of whom had been acquired and manumitted in the 1470s and ‘80s.²⁸ This was also the case for Sultan Qāniá¹£awh (54) himself, who briefly performed the position of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ in 905/1500, and who, as Carl Petry in his biographical study concluded, “was purchased for military service and imported into Egypt during the early years of Qāytbāy’s reign”.²⁹

1.3 The Contingent Careerism of Veteran Strongmen, 782–923/1380–1517

Broadly speaking, all ‘Chief Heads of the Guards’ can be situated within one of three different generations of mamlÅ«k peers that originated especially in the royal households of BarqÅ«q and his son, of Jaqmaq, and of Qāyitbāy. In addition to these three major generational continuities and breaks, and to the aforementioned interlocking overarching processes of stabilization and repeated courtly reconfiguration, the group of ‘Chief Heads’ is also marked by parallel careers that display remarkably synchronous micro-chronologies. A long time separates Qāniá¹£awh’s purchase and import “during the early years of Qāytbāy’s reign”, around 1470, and his brief appearance as ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ in 1500. This substantial gap of several decades between arriving in Egypt as a young mamlÅ«k and rising to courtly distinction actually marks the career of most prominent ‘Chief Heads of the Guards’. The biography of Qāyitbāy, who arrived in 1435–6 and was briefly ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ in 1467, offers another case in point, as does that of Timrāz al-ShamsÄ« (45), who arrived in Egypt in 836/1432–3 and was manumitted by sultan al-Ê¿AzÄ«z YÅ«suf b. Barsbāy in 842/1438, but only rose to courtly distinction and the office of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ in 878/1473, during those same “early years of Qāytbāy’s reign”.³⁰ Several decades as well as changes of leaderships and courts similarly separated the appointments of Timrāz al-QirmishÄ« (31) and Timurbāy al-TimurbughāwÄ« (33) to the position of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’, in 1428 and 1439 respectively, and their mamlÅ«k origins in the 1390s and the 1400s.³¹ What these many years of military and related service and gradual empowerment actually looked like for many of these amirs is illustrated by the well-known cases of, again, Qāyitbāy and Qāniá¹£awh. Their modern biographer Carl Petry aptly summarizes how the latter “was already forty” when he

received his first significant office in Dhū’l-QaÊ¿da of 886/December 1481–January 1482, when Qāytbāy named him inspector (kāshif) of Upper Egypt. […] Nothing more was said about al-GhawrÄ« until he was promoted to the rank of amir of ten in RabÄ«Ê¿ II 889/April–May 1484, and designated to ride in the abortive Ottoman expedition of that year. Soon thereafter, he began an extended tour of duty in Syria and southeastern Anatolia when Qāytbāy assigned him the governorship over the march town of ṬarsÅ«s. From this time on we hear more of al-GhawrÄ«, who appears to have been a reliable, if somewhat ruthless, provincial administrator.³²

Unlike Qāniá¹£awh’s “extended tour of duty in Syria and southeastern Anatolia”, which included also further terms of office as chamberlain in Aleppo and as royal representative in Malaá¹­ya before “being recalled […] to Cairo” to become ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ in 905/1500,³³ Qāyitbāy’s career prior to his rise to the position of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ in 872/1467 was a far courtlier affair throughout. As Carl Petry again summarized, Sultan Jaqmaq promoted Qāyitbāy

to the office of third executive secretary (dawādār thālith). Following Jaqmaq’s decease and Īnāl’s succession [in 857/1453] […] he was advanced to the rank of amir of ten. Īnāl’s successor, Khushqadam, promoted Qāytbāy to an amirship of forty and granted him the superintendancy of royal provisions (shādd al-shurābkhānāh). Soon thereafter [in 868/1464], Qāytbāy received the ultimate rank of an officer’s career, the commandership of a thousand MamlÅ«ks (taqaddimat alf) [sic], and thereby entered the ruling oligarchy.³⁴

These two careers of service on the peripheries and at the center of the sultanate were not just unusually successful, crowned as they both were by accession to sultanic authority, but also exemplary for the careers of most amirs who rose to courtly leadership and, especially, the position of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’. Their promotions to high office all followed an “extended tour of duty” in the sultanate’s center or peripheries, which kept most of them—as Petry also noted for Qāytbāy—“noticeably absent from [contemporary chroniclers’] comments on distinctive service or political intrigue”.³⁵ This model of slow leadership-building in the sultanate’s socio-political margins followed by a swift rise to courtly prominence certainly marks the career of Timrāz al-QirmishÄ« (31). Timrāz is reported to have acted for many years as a royal representative at QalÊ¿at al-RÅ«m and then at Gazza before being called to Cairo by sultan Barsbāy in Shawwāl 831/July–August 1428 to become amir commander (amÄ«r muqaddam) and ‘Chief Head of the Guards’.³⁶ This model similarly marks what is known about Timurbāy al-TimurbughāwÄ« (33). His career is reported to have started in the early 1420s with the positions of third and then second executive secretary at the court, accompanied by promotions to the ranks of amir first of ten and then of forty. At the start of Jaqmaq’s reign in early 842/late 1438, the second executive secretary Timurbāy was rewarded for siding with Jaqmaq in the succession struggle and made an amir commander (amÄ«r muqaddam). He was then sent away to act as the sultan’s new representative in Alexandria, only to be recalled to Cairo in Shawwāl 842/March 1439 to assume the position of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ at Jaqmaq’s court.³⁷ This career model of slow leadership-building in the slipstream of the sultanate’s successive courts in Cairo appears as the default pattern for the majority of the ‘Chief Heads of the Guards’ who preceded or succeeded Timurbughā’s accession in 842/1439.³⁸ The more unusual model of Timrāz and Qāniá¹£awh, marked by an “extended tour of duty in Syria and southeastern Anatolia”, was echoed by the careers of Urkmās al-ẒāhirÄ« (30),³⁹ Īnāl al-Ashqar (44),⁴⁰ and to some extent also of the sultanate’s penultimate ‘Chief Head’ SÅ«dÅ«n al-DawādārÄ« (59). SÅ«dÅ«n occasionally shows up as an amir in contemporary reports of the violent years that led up to Qāniá¹£awh’s accession to the sultanate in 906/1501. Subsequently, however, he remained almost unnoticed during his “tour of duty” as a royal representative in Safed and Tripoli until being called to Egypt in 917/1511.⁴¹

The case of the ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ clearly suggests that the chains of leadership ties, claims and experiences, whereby time and again memberships of successive groups of generational peers were whittled down to the limited but effective size of the so-called “Lords of the Offices”, tended to be very long ones. It also suggests that the majority of these chains must have had loose ends. Many from the royal households of BarqÅ«q, Jaqmaq and Qāyitbāy as well as from their likes must have embarked on “tours of duty” in the sultanate’s socio-political margins. Few, however, are known to have eventually risen to courtly prominence, and even fewer survived the era’s repeated searches for new socio-political stability and the formation of new courtly orders, when—just as the contemporary chronicler Ibn Iyās remarked for the transitional years between the reigns of Qāyitbāy and Qāniá¹£awh—“the circumstances of the senior amirs (al-umarāʾ al-muqaddamÄ«n) tended to be extremely volatile due to the occurrence of all kinds of clashes and killings […]”.⁴² As demonstrated (see table 1), from the sultanate’s sixty ‘Chief Heads of the Guards’ only twenty veteran amirs sufficiently managed to align their interests with those of their courtly peers so to remain in office for substantial periods of time. And of these twenty, only fourteen stood out as the major ‘Chief Heads’ of the long century’s six main sultans, from Uzbak al-ẒāhirÄ« (28) at Barsbāy’s court to SÅ«dÅ«n al-DawādārÄ« (59) at Qāniá¹£awh’s.

At the same time, the majority of those who made it to the position of ‘Chief Head’ did so not only after long careers, but also when their individual circumstances of leadership had stabilized enough for them to remain in positions of power, even when their term of office as ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ ended. Half of all the known end-of-term cases in fact concerned a ‘Chief Head’s transfer to another office, mostly to another courtly position of leadership within the small group of the “Lords of the Offices”, and occasionally to Syria to rule one of its major towns.⁴³ In the other half of cases a ‘Chief Head’s term ended in violence, capture or even death. However, almost all terms of office that ended in a ‘Chief Head’s capture occurred before the stabilization that came with the long tenure of Sultan Barsbāy’s ‘Chief Head’ Timrāz (30) from 831/1428 onwards.⁴⁴ The majority of lethal cases furthermore appears to have been age- and health-related, often naturally ending long careers of leadership.⁴⁵

The general pattern that therefore emerges is one of extremely powerful veteran survivors of decades of service and political transformation, who—if and when their courtly position as ‘Chief Head’ stabilized in the wake of a sultan’s empowerment—monopolized, together with their colleague “Lords of the Offices”, the sultanate’s main leadership ties and claims in a collaborative configuration that remained largely unchallenged until the end of their sultan’s reign. Seen from the perspective of the ninth/fifteenth-century Syro-Egyptian leadership’s social profile, social infrastructures such as that of the ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ (as well as, by association, that of the sultan) appear therefore not just as conduits for the stabilization of particular collective sets of social ties and leadership claims, but also as highly valued ultimate prizes to be won by only a very happy few, after long and winding individual careers as fighters, royal agents, and courtiers in the many shadows of the sultanate’s limelight.

2.1 The Blurred Boundaries of Courtly Duties and Privileges

Senior court offices such as that of the ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ did not only top long careers of service, reward fortunate political choices, award courtly distinction, and confirm individual membership of the dominant leadership group. As social infrastructures, they also canalized wider opportunities and constraints into the endless process of the stabilization of that group’s membership. Ninth/fifteenth-century manuals of court protocol are very explicit in listing the specific set of opportunities and constraints that in their view belonged to the court office of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’.⁴⁶ Understandings of this court office in modern scholarship have therefore all been primarily informed by descriptions in these manuals, and they have all tended to stress the fact that the ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ was responsible, with other ‘Heads of the Guard’ of lower rank, for maintaining discipline, law, and order among the sultan’s mamlÅ«ks.⁴⁷ This information was especially derived from al-Qalqashandī’s (d. 1418) multi-volume á¹¢ubḥ al-AÊ¿shā, completed in the early 1410s and well-known to modern scholarship since its publication in the early twentieth century.⁴⁸ More detail and nuance were added to this rather limited picture from al-Saḥmāwī’s (d. 1464) al-Thaghr al-Bāsim, completed in the 1440s and more widely accessible only following the publication of its scholarly edition in the early twenty-first century. Picturing the ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ as an effective intermediary between the sultan and his mamlÅ«ks, al-SaḥmāwÄ« also lists an interesting range of courtly privileges that were specific to this position.

He was the first to enter with the ruler at the time of the audience session, the one to capture anyone whose capture had been ordered, and the one to sprinkle with sand when the royal signature was taken […] The financial administration over the ShaykhÅ«niyya, the á¹¢arghitmishiyya, the Ḥijāziyya, the green mosque, etc., was vested in him.⁴⁹

According to these scribal descriptions, the veterans who performed the office of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ were supposed to mediate the sultan’s relationship with his personal mamlūks, to act in the sultan’s name against those who lost his favor, to manage particular religious infrastructures in Cairo with major waqf estates, and to benefit from ceremonial privileges that confirmed their priority status in the sultan’s entourage.

When we compare contemporary narrative reports of what the century’s sixty ‘Chief Heads of the Guards’ actually did to this list of what—in these two court scribes’ views—they were supposed to do, it becomes apparent that their most prominently described task of mediation between the sultan and his mamlÅ«ks remains remarkably underrepresented in the historiographical record. In fact, the hundreds of ‘Chief Head’-related references include only two mediation reports.⁵⁰ In both cases, however, the ‘Chief Heads’ dealings with the sultan’s mamlÅ«ks—which were anything but successful—also involved mediation by other “lords of the offices”. Similar impressions of a lack of historiographical interest as well as of greater practical complexity and more collective involvement are left by a handful of reports that relate to al-Saḥmāwī’s statement that the ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ was “the one to capture anyone whose capture had been ordered”. Again, only four such cases have been recorded that involved a ‘Chief Head’.⁵¹ Three of these reports merely concern the transfer of prominent prisoners to Alexandria, and all mention the equal involvement of various amirs and “lords of the offices”. In general, this handful of reports about moments of mediation and arrest also connect with a few very particular references to two ‘Chief Heads’ direct involvement in legal rulings (ḥukm) beyond any courtly or military milieu.⁵² Rather than identifying the specific duties and privileges of a ‘Chief Head’ these sparse references again appear to have to do with a more collective practice that marked the wider group of “Lords of the Offices” for most of the long ninth/fifteenth century, and that related to their all but straightforward direct involvement in the maintenance and enforcement of social, economic, and legal order.⁵³

When we consider contemporary narrative reports of what the century’s sixty ‘Chief Heads of the Guards’ actually did, we find that there is both a practical complexity of continuously blurred boundaries between the courtly duties and privileges of different “Lords of the Offices” and a general absence of any real historiographical interest in what they were supposed to do.⁵⁴ In fact, most historiographical reports—even by historians who were courtly insiders—turn out to prioritize other, non-courtly types of social action. Rather than with any courtly duties or privileges, these more widely recorded types of action align more with the practice of maintaining, and enforcing, social, economic, and legal order. They materialized in the form of a strong entanglement with the sultanate’s exploding number of waqf endowments and of an even stronger organization of that social action around the sultanate’s region-wide politics of violence wielding and resource accumulation.

2.2 The waqfization of the Sultanate’s Leadership Formation

The only set of duties and privileges from al-Saḥmāwī’s list that is mentioned somewhat more extensively in contemporary narrative reports concerns the administration of particular religious infrastructures in Cairo and of their waqf estates in Egypt and Syria. In all, fifteen historiographical references have so far been identified that confirm this formal connection between the court position of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ and what al-SaḥmāwÄ« identified as “the administration over the ShaykhÅ«niyya, the á¹¢arghitmishiyya, the Ḥijāziyya, the Green Mosque, etc.”. No fewer than five of these references concern the amir Uzbak al-ẒāhirÄ« (28), who was ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ in the early days of the formation of sultan Barsbāy’s court, from 824/1421 until 827/1424.⁵⁵ Similar references recur for other ‘Chief Heads of the Guards’ throughout the entire period. In DhÅ« l-QaÊ¿da 820/December 1417, the amir—and later sultan—Ṭaá¹­ar (23), who briefly was ‘Chief Head’ at al-Muʾayyad Shaykh’s court in 820–1/1417–8, “was appointed to the position of administrator of the ShaykhÅ«niyya”, the contemporary historian al-MaqrÄ«zÄ« reported, tellingly adding the explanation that such an appointment was “the usual practice for the Heads of the Guards.”⁵⁶ Several ‘Chief Heads’ are indeed recorded to have preceded Ṭaá¹­ar in being appointed, including Bashbāy min BākÄ« (13), identified as administrator of the á¹¢arghitmishiyya in 809/1406 and of the ShaykhÅ«niyya at the time of his death in office in 811/1408,⁵⁷ as well as SÅ«dÅ«n al-Ashqar (18) in 815/1412⁵⁸ and both SÅ«dÅ«n al-ḤamzāwÄ« (11) and SÅ«dÅ«n al-MāridānÄ« (10) in and before 805/1403 respectively.⁵⁹ Successors of Ṭaá¹­ar who were similarly referred to as administrators of, especially, the ShaykhÅ«niyya, include Sultan Jaqmaq’s longstanding ‘Chief Heads’ Timurbāy (33) and Asanbughā (34), Qānim al-Tājir (36) at the start of the brief reign of Sultan Īnāl’s son Aḥmad, Barsbāy Qarā (46) as one of Sultan Qāyitbāy’s ‘Chief Heads’, and Sultan Qāniá¹£awh’s last ‘Chief Head’ SÅ«dÅ«n al-DawādārÄ« (59).⁶⁰

Appointment to the position of administrator (nāẓir) of a religious infrastructure meant that one was awarded the responsibility for the management of the flows of resources that were tied to the infrastructure’s maintenance and organization via one or more religious endowments (waqf). The general growth of endowments in the sultanate’s political economy from the mid-eighth/fourteenth century onwards—also referred to as a waqfization process—has been well attested, as have been some of the profound changes that this process generated in the course of the ninth/fifteenth century.⁶¹ Daisuke Igarashi has recently surmised that these changes included a growing competition over waqf administratorships as well as the practice of linking the administration of some of the sultanate’s religious infrastructures and their endowments to the courtly positions of the “Lord of the Offices”.⁶² This resonates with some of the reports about appointments of ‘Chief Heads’ to the position of administrator, which represent them as part of wider occasions that involved the parallel appointments of their courtly peers to similar positions of waqf administrator.⁶³ These connections between courtly positions and waqf administratorships appear therefore to have become an intrinsic, well-known component of these positions’ privileges and duties. These connections actually stabilized over time around the fixed links between particular high-profile waqf estates and particular court offices, so that, as Igarashi concluded, “these administratorships became a sort of perquisite of the posts which the appointees would acquire”.⁶⁴

As both these general insights and the above-mentioned specific source references suggest, appointments to the ninth/fifteenth-century position of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ regularly seem to have involved subsequent appointments to positions of financial administrator (naẓar) of the ShaykhÅ«niyya and the á¹¢arghitmishiyya, two major religious infrastructures on Cairo’s á¹¢alÄ«ba street originally constructed in the mid-eighth/fourteenth century.⁶⁵ The direct connection between these two administratorships and the ‘Chief Headship’ was rooted in the careers of the QalāwÅ«nid grandees who founded these infrastructures as well as in the managerial conditions stipulated by these founders in the original endowment deeds.⁶⁶ It is only from the early 800s/1400s onwards, however, that this connection became more stable and prominent, or at least more explicitly referenced in the extant narrative source material.⁶⁷ The historian al-MaqrÄ«zÄ« suggests that these early years of the ninth/fifteenth century actually witnessed a substantial break in the administration of the ShaykhÅ«niyya, and of many other endowed infrastructures in Cairo, involving appropriations by sultan al-Nāṣir Faraj and substantial losses of income.⁶⁸ It is therefore not unlikely that the direct connection between the position of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ and the administration of the ShaykhÅ«niyya, the á¹¢arghitmishiyya and their like emerged as part of the wider transformation and stabilization processes that defined the sultanate’s new leaderships in the decades that followed sultan Faraj’s disastrous reign.

In his study of land tenure in Egypt and Syria during the long ninth/fifteenth century, Igarashi referred especially to practical reasons for the emergence of these direct connections between the sultanate’s leading court officials and its major endowment estates. The extensive military and administrative capacities of these officials’ entourages would have positioned them best to deal with two major challenges: the continuously unstable relationships between Cairo and these endowments’ main assets in the sultanate’s rural areas on the one hand and on the other, the substantial and unwieldy sizes of these endowments’ estates and their administrations.⁶⁹ At the same time, however, Igarashi also acknowledges that assuming this task was a potentially highly profitable business. “An administrator was usually the highest paid official among the staff who received salaries from the waqf.” Moreover, given the fact that the major waqfs’ income tended to “exceed the running expenses of the religious institutions they supported,” administrators “could access the interests the wāqif had garnered from the waqf while living” and benefit directly from these surplus resources.⁷⁰

Amidst a general process of waqfization, these quickly stabilizing direct connections between specific administratorships and the court’s “Lords of the Offices” provided a secure, unchallenged and legitimate access to some of the sultanate’s most important resource flows for these “Lords”, including for the ‘Chief Head of the Guards’. Whereas the actual details of these arrangements eluded contemporary historians, they were clearly considered among the more relevant duties and privileges that court scribes such as al-Saḥmawī associated with the position of ‘Chief Head of the Guards’. They tied the ‘Chief Heads’, their peers and their personal entourages collectively and directly to the management of all the major religious infrastructures and endowment estates that were set up in the course of the later seventh/thirteenth, the eighth/fourteenth and the early ninth/fifteenth centuries, and they allowed them to tap into their urban and rural resource flows throughout their terms of office.

2.3 The Politics of Organized Violence and Resource Accumulation

What seems to have mattered even more to chroniclers and their audiences than these fixed administratorships was a type of social action that did not appear at all in al-Saḥmawī’s and his colleagues’ descriptions, and that is directly related to the senior military position of “amir commander of 1,000 [troopers]” (amÄ«r muqaddam alf) that was the default rank for a ‘Chief Head’ and his peer “Lords”. Indeed, the action that is most extensively recorded in contemporary chronicles concerns ‘Chief Heads’ active involvement in a variety of military campaigns at the sultanate’s frontier zones. In all, we have retrieved some one hundred and forty references to no fewer than thirty nine cases of violent campaigning that explicitly attest to the active participation in such displays of military force and violence in the sultan’s service by twenty eight ‘Chief Heads’.⁷¹ These cases ranged from the amir NawrÅ«z al-Ḥāfiẓī’s (7) dispatch by Sultan al-Ẓāhir BarqÅ«q to fight the Hawwāra bedouin in Upper-Egypt in 798/1396, to the amir SÅ«dÅ«n al-DawādārÄ« (59), sent out by Sultan Qāniá¹£awh to northern Syria in 920–1/1514–5 as one of the leading commanders of an extensive military force that was to confront Ottomans and Safavids.⁷² Just like in these two cases, these displays of military force and violence mostly concern punitive expeditions as well as elaborate military campaigns against subversive bedouin groups in Egypt and against rebellious amirs and Turkmen leaderships in Syria or eastern Anatolia.⁷³ But they also included those high-profile cases when, in the later 820s/mid-1420s, during the reign of Barsbāy, and again in the mid 840s/early 1440s, during that of Jaqmaq, the ‘Chief Heads’ TaghrÄ«birdÄ« al-MaḥmÅ«dÄ« (29) and Timurbāy al-TimurbughāwÄ« (33) took a leading role in maritime operations against, respectively, Cyprus and Rhodes.⁷⁴

Most importantly, twelve of these twenty-eight campaigning amirs belonged to the ranks of the century’s aforementioned fourteen major ‘Chief Heads’. Their relatively stable terms of office therefore seem to have included not just court service in Cairo, but always also a very active involvement as amirs commanders in the hazardous task of the coercive enforcement of their sultan’s authority in the sultanate’s many peripheries. Furthermore, the century’s two major ‘Chief Heads’ for whom so far no similar information has been retrieved—Uzbak al-ẒāhirÄ« (28) during Sultan Barsbāy’s reign and Timurbughā al-ẒāhÄ«rÄ« (38) during that of Sultan Khushqadam—, certainly were no strangers to campaigns and acts of violence.⁷⁵ In fact, it is very likely that, given their similar military origins and experience, the thirty two other ‘Chief Heads’ were all also at some time in their careers involved in the sultanate’s campaigns, as were most of their peer “Lords”. Qāyitbāy’s first and second ‘Chief Heads’, the amirs Nāniq al-MuḥammadÄ« (42) and SÅ«dÅ«n al-Qaá¹£rāwÄ« (43), were both in office when they were killed in encounters with Turkmen leaderships in eastern Anatolia, in late 872/mid-1468 and late 873/mid-1469 respectively.⁷⁶ Qāyitbāy’s third ‘Chief Head’, the amir Īnāl al-Ashqar (44), participated with many of his colleague “Lords of the Offices” in another major Turkmen campaign in the period 875–7/1470–2.⁷⁷ Eventually, in mid-879/early 1475—after his transfer to the position of ‘Amir of Weapons’ in 877/1473—several months of campaigning against local Bedouin groups in Egypt’s eastern Delta region were cut short by Īnāl’s sudden illness and quick demise.⁷⁸ In late 893/1488, in the course of yet another big campaign on the sultanate’s northern frontier, this time against the Ottomans, another one of Qāyitbāy’s ‘Chief Heads of the Guards’, the amir TaghrÄ« BirdÄ« Ṭaá¹­ar al-ẒāhirÄ« (47), is similarly reported to have passed away.⁷⁹ In general, when we consider the full scope of reported military activities of ‘Chief Heads’ throughout the long ninth/fifteenth century, we see that most of these activities did not prove as lethal as was the case for the amirs Nāniq, SÅ«dÅ«n, Īnāl and TaghrÄ« BirdÄ« Ṭaá¹­ar during the reign of Qāyitbāy. Nevertheless, all of these activities of campaigning, policing, fighting, causing havoc and looting along relatively stable but highly permeable frontier zones appear to have unfolded in similar ways. Whatever the actual levels of violence and physical risk involved, many if not most ‘Chief Heads’ emerge from the extant narrative records as very mobile, active, skilled, and seasoned horsemen and military commanders, who throughout their long careers were occasionally severely affected by the violent circumstances of their regular military services to the sultan.

These century-long similarities furthermore also extended to the ways in which the organization of these campaigns were described in contemporary reports. These reports always recounted the deployment of a combination of forces from Cairo, commissioned by the sultan and under the leadership of several “Lords of the Offices”, irrespective of these “Lords” actual court duties and privileges. In the majority of reported military campaigns involving a ‘Chief Head of the Guards’, he is therefore described almost always as one of several participating senior amirs and, occasionally, also as their chief commander (muqaddam, bāsh or raʾs).⁸⁰ The extant source material furthermore suggests that this composite organization—with one or more “Lords” and other senior amirs, junior amirs, and an anonymous mass of sultanic mamlÅ«ks⁸¹â€”was the norm for all of these campaigns, irrespective of whether they targeted Christian strongholds in the Mediterranean, Turkmen insurgents in Anatolia, Arabic chieftains in Egypt, or more formidable foes such as Ottomans and Safavids. At the same time, there were substantial variations in the sizes of these composite campaign forces. The average number of participating “Lords” and other “amirs commanders of 1,000 [troopers]” was four. However, the six major campaigns that involved a ‘Chief Head of the Guards’, all targeting Turkmen foes in eastern Anatolia, included seven up to sixteen “amirs commanders”, as well as many more junior amirs.⁸² Further details about the actual organization, deployment and movement of these composite troops mostly remain extremely vague. The only additional—but equally vague—references that occasionally feature in chronicle reports in this respect concern these “Lords” and senior amirs’ personal entourages of servants and mamlÅ«ks, mostly identified as their á¹­ulb.⁸³

Of equal, if not more, interest to contemporary historians were the benefits and stipends, including especially an ad hoc stipend (nafaqa, nafaqat al-safar), that all campaigning ‘Chief Heads’ and their peers received from the sultan in return for their military service.⁸⁴ Thus, according to Ibn Iyās, the amount that was paid as a nafaqa to the “eleven amirs commanders of 1,000 [troopers] who had been assigned to the [Ottoman] campaign [of 893/1488]”, to “the amirs of forty and ten [mamlÅ«ks] who numbered about fifty” and to the mamlÅ«k troopers came to about 1,000,000 dÄ«nār. “That was considered highly unusual”, Ibn Iyās explained,⁸⁵ as was the fact that this enormous amount would have included a nafaqa of 15,000 dÄ«nār for the unfortunate ‘Chief Head’ TaghrÄ« BirdÄ« Ṭaá¹­ar al-ẒāhirÄ«.⁸⁶ More usual figures that are mentioned for the nafaqa of the ‘Chief Head’ and his peer “Lords” range from 2,000 dÄ«nār by the end of Sultan Barsbāy’s reign, in 841/1437, to 4,000 dÄ«nār on the eve of the fatal encounter with the Ottomans, in 922/1516, with the commander of the campaign generally receiving 1,000 dÄ«nār more and the other senior and junior amirs as well as the sultan’s mamlÅ«ks gradually less.⁸⁷ In this way, every time a campaign force was set up, each of its main components received its usual due directly from the sultan, so that not just the commanding amir, his peers from the “Lords of the Offices”, and their juniors, but also the sultan’s mamlÅ«ks could prepare at minimal personal cost.⁸⁸

In fact, many probably managed to benefit from these additional occasions to tap the sultan’s resources. At least, as also suggested by Ibn Iyās’ reference to the enormous nafaqa expenditure of 1,000,000 dÄ«nār for the Ottoman campaign of 893/1488, these campaigns put a heavy and constant burden on those resources, and offered many opportunities for campaign participants to maximize their share, in cash via the nafaqa, but also in kind, in the format of gifts of horses, camels, textiles, arms and armor, food, and precious robes of honor (khilÊ¿at al-safar).⁸⁹ Especially during Sultan Qāyitbāy’s long reign, these politics of resource accumulation appear to have spiraled out of control. Just as with TaghrÄ« BirdÄ« Ṭaá¹­ar (47) and his peer “Lords” in the Ottoman campaign, in the Turkmen campaign of 875/1470 Qāyitbāy’s ‘Chief Head’ Īnāl al-Ashqar (44) and his peers reportedly managed to triple the default nafaqa amounts of their predecessors. At that time, all chroniclers explain how Īnāl played these politics of resource accumulation the hard way. When the sultan needed him to leave quickly to northern Syria, Īnāl started negotiating for an appointment to Syrian leadership; more importantly, when Īnāl eventually completed his military preparations, the personal campaign forces and equipments that he presented before the sultan were considered to substantially fall short of the unprecedented resources (“12,000 dÄ«nār”, “a lot of weapons, cloth, camels, horses and grain”, as well as “gold and the like”) that had been made available to him.⁹⁰

This flow of benefits is reported to have continued upon the amirs’ return from these campaigns, when they were rewarded for their military service to the sultan, especially by the gift of a precious robe of honor (khilÊ¿a).⁹¹ These specific occasions of gift-giving are in fact directly related to various other references to resource flows from which ‘Chief Heads’ as well as all other “Lords” and amirs are reported to have benefited. These include first and foremost references to the robes of honor that ‘Chief Heads of the Guard’ and their peers received from the sultan on many other occasions, from their formal investiture as ‘Chief Heads’, to their occasional confirmation in office, and their participation in many of the sultanate’s ceremonies.⁹² These robes represented not just important tokens of both the sultan’s continued favor and a ‘Chief Head’s distinguished status at court, but also valuable gifts and additions to their wealth.⁹³ Other references concern the reception of occasional or more regular gifts, rewards and ceremonial benefits, as well as prebendal iqṭāʿ allotments changing hands.⁹⁴

Just as is the case with the afore-mentioned administration of particular waqf assets and infrastructures, these many references to various ad hoc as well as more regular benefits demonstrate how even in contexts of organized violence the office of the ‘Chief Head of the Guards’ appears above all as one of those valuable organizational platforms that bundled specific arrangements of legitimate opportunities to access the sultanate’s surplus resources, or rather to take part in the endless competition for the sultanate’s assets. This competition materialized first and foremost in endlessly negotiated exchanges of military, economic and other services and benefits between, especially, the sultan and his “Lords” and amirs. It furthermore aligned in very complex ways not with the running of a bureaucratic apparatus of power and its rationalized division of the labor of leadership, but rather with the many contingencies of maintaining and enforcing order in Cairo as well as in the sultanate’s many peripheries. This complex social practice and the social infrastructures it interacted with repeatedly allowed a selection of veteran strongmen to defend, manage and negotiate their own as well as the sultanate’s interests, and to further their material as well as symbolic distinction as the leading makers of their sultan’s court, and therefore as the sultanate’s men of central power and authority.