The Knights of Islam The Wars of the Mamluks

The Knights of Islam The Wars of the Mamluks

 

This title analyses the Mamluks-Mongol War and the reasons for the Mamluks' extended victory. It reveals their remarkable contribution to military theory and practice. It sheds light on the deadly conflict between Christendom and Islam. The Mamluks were, at one distinct point in history, the greatest body of fighting men in the world and the quintessence of the mounted warrior - reaching near perfection in their skill with the bow, lance and sword. They were slave soldiers, imported as boys into the Islamic Empire from the pagan Steppes, but they became its saviour, bringing defeat to the Mongols and forming the machine of jihad that ultimately destroyed the Crusader Kingdoms of Palestine and Syria. They entered the Islamic world as unlettered automatons and through a total application to the craft of the warrior they became more than soldiers.

 

After a bloody seizure of power from their masters, the descendants of Saladin, they developed a martial code and an honour system based on barracks brotherhood, a sophisticated military society that harnessed the state's energies for total war and produced a series of treatises on cavalry tactics, martial training, mounted archery and scientific and analytical approaches to warfare that more than compare to SunZi's Art of War, the Western Codes of Chivalry and the Bushido in their complexity, beauty of language and comprehensive coverage of the bloody business of war. Their story embraces many of the great themes of medieval military endeavour: the Crusaders and the deadly contest between Islam and Christendom, the Mongols and their vision of World Dominion, Tamerlane the Scourge of God and the rise of the Ottoman Empire whose new slave soldiers, the Janissaries, would be the Mamluks' final nemesis.

 

James Waterson

Hardcover 272pp

Book Code:  AW0544

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