d after the burg, or citadel, where their
quarters originally were), succeeded one another from 1250 to 1517, it
will be seen that their average reign was but three and a half years.
The throne, in fact, belonged to the man with the longest sword.

The bravest and richest generals and court officials surrounded
themselves with bands of warrior slaves, and reached a power almost
equal to the reigning sultan, who was, in fact, only _primus inter
pares_, and on his death--usually by assassination--they fought for his
title. All were alike slaves by origin, but this term implied no
degradation. Any slave with courage and address had the chance of
becoming a freedman, rising to influence, and climbing into his master's
seat. Every man was every other man's equal--if he could prove it; but
the process of proving it often turned Cairo into a shambles.

The Mamluks were physically superb, a race of born soldiers, dashing
horsemen, skilled leaders, brilliant alike in battle and in all manly
sports. They were at the same time the most luxurious of men, heavy
drinkers, debauched sensualists, magnificent in their profusion, in
their splendid prodigality in works of art and luxury, and in the
munificence with which they filled their capital with noble monuments of
the most exquisite Saracenic architecture. Most of the beautiful mosques
of Cairo were built by these truculent soldiers, all foreigners, chiefly
Turks, a caste apart, with no thought for the native Egyptians whose
lands they received as fiefs from the sultan; with no mercy when
ambition called for secret assassination or wholesale massacre; yet
fastidious in dress, equipment, and manners, given to superb pageants,
laborious in business, and fond of music and poetry. Their orthodoxy is
attested not only by their innumerable religious foundations and
endowments, but by their importing into Cairo a line of Abbasid
caliphs--_faineants_ indeed, but in a manner representative of the great
caliphs of Baghdad, extinguished by the Mongols in 1258--and in
maintaining them till the Ottoman sultan usurped their very nominal
authority as Commanders of the Faithful.

The greatest of all the Mamluks was Beybars (1260-1277). He it was who
had charged St. Louis's knights at Mansura in 1249, and afterwards
helped to rout the Mongol hordes at the critical battle of Goliath's
Spring in 1260; and he was the real founder of the Mamluk empire, and
organised and consolidated his wide dominions