the manner here related by Muir.

The thousands who, with uncomely names and barbarous titles, began to
crowd the streets of Cairo, occupied a position to which we have no
parallel elsewhere. Finding a weak and subservient population, they
lorded it over them. Like the children of Israel, they ever kept
themselves distinct from the people of the land--but the oppressors,
not, like them, the oppressed. Brought up to arms, the best favored
and most able of the mamelukes when freed became, at the instance of
the Sultan, emirs of ten, of fifty, of a hundred, and often, by rapid
leaps, of a thousand. They continued to multiply by the purchase of
fresh slaves who, like their masters, could rise to liberty and
fortunes.

The sultans were naturally the largest purchasers, as they employed
the revenues of the state in surrounding themselves with a host of
slaves; we read, for example, of one who bought some six thousand.
While the great mass pursued a low and servile life, the favorites of
the emirs, and specially of the crown, were educated in the arts of
peace and war, and, as pages and attendants, gradually rose to the
position of their masters--the slave of to-day, the commander, and not
infrequently the sultan of to-morrow.

From the first, insolent and overbearing, the mamelukes began, as time
passed on, to feel their power, and grew more and more riotous and
turbulent, oppressing the land by oft-repeated pillage and outrage.
Broken up into parties, each with the name of some sultan or leader,
their normal state was one of internal combat and antagonism; while,
pampered and indulged, they often turned upon their masters. Some of
the more powerful sultans were able to hold them in order, and there
were not wanting occasional intervals of quiet; but trouble and uproar
were ever liable to recur.

The Eyyubite princes settled their mamelukes, chiefly Turks and
Mongols--so as to keep them out of the city--on an island in the Nile,
whence they were called Baharites, and the first mameluke dynasty
(1260-1382) was of this race, and called accordingly. The others, a
later importation, were called Burjites, from living in the Citadel,
or quarters in the town; they belonged more to the Circassian race.
The second dynasty (1382-1517) was of these, and, like the Baharite
dynasty, bore their name. The mamelukes were for the most part
attached faithfully to their masters, and the emirs, with their
support, enriched themselves by ex