Red Nile: The Biography of the World’s Greatest River (26 page)

The key is in the reference to horsemanship. The Mamluks were, in fact, the mirror image of their one-time oppressors, the Mongols. Many were recruited from the Kipchaks, a Kazakh tribe, some of whom had been driven west by the Mongols to settle in parts of Europe. They were far from the illiterate hooligans certain crusader chronicles have portrayed them as: there is a considerable indigenous Kipchak literature, understandable even now using the
Codex Cumanicus
, a dictionary compiled by later Christian missionaries. The Kipchaks later absorbed their Mongol neighbours, and also provided the first Mamluk rulers of Egypt – Baiburs and Qalawun. Not that all Mamluks were Kipchaks; even before the later reliance on blond Circassians, Albanians and Balkan slaves there were Prussian Mamluks. Any sufficiently warlike tribe seemed able to convert to the military meritocracy practised by the Mamluks.

It has long puzzled historians, the wave after wave of warlike tribes rushing westwards from the Eurasian steppes. The answer is simple enough when you pause to consider it: horses. The steppes, like the American West during its brief tenure under the Plains Indians, were
perfect horse country. The steppe tribes were able to leverage their natural warlike tendencies a hundredfold through mounted assaults on the largely foot-bound western peoples. The Mongols and, in sincere imitation, the Mamluks were masters not only of the mounted attack but also of the mounted attack by massed archers. The methods of controlling a battle were simple – banners carried by each war group were visible to the commander, who could, at a glance, tell how his troops were performing. Add to that a small manual of tactics that revolved around superior horsepower and you have a virtually unbeatable force. The tactics added vastly to the possibilities of battle. Outflanking is easy if your men are so used to fighting on horses that can outrace anyone over any terrain. The fake retreat can even derive from a real retreat when the enemy is being stretched in pursuit, so you never suffer the psychological difficulty of stopping a retreat turning into a rout – that age-old military problem. If you can retreat faster than they can attack, you can regroup and counter-attack when they are slogging up the hill to meet you.

Mongol tactics all derived from the incredible familiarity they had with their horses and their ability to strike from horseback at long range and with great accuracy using their powerful bone, wood and leather bows. Only with the coming of heavy artillery did the Mongol methods finally lose their overwhelming superiority. To find a modern equivalent one might look at how the development of the aeroplane changed every conflict in the second half of the twentieth century. Without air superiority no land battle could be won, whatever the size of the army on the ground.

So, with these military masterminds at Shajarat’s command, she ruled, not easily, but through clever negotiation – for, at that time, large parts of the Arab world would not willingly submit to being ruled by a slave. Bedouin, famously, baulked at such authority, and this required any Mamluk, however powerful, to cloak his abilities in the authority of the Caliphate, the equivalent in some senses to the role played by the Pope in medieval Europe. So even though Mamluk warriors under the supremely efficient leadership of Baiburs and others managed to secure the defeat of Louis IX at Mansoura on the Nile, they could not immediately claim the throne.

In fact they would not have wanted to, since they believed that the Sultan Ayyub was still alive. History really is ‘his’ story when it comes to Shajarat al-Durr, since many of the historians who document the
period are keen to play down the effectiveness of this extraordinary woman and former slave.

Perhaps one should say something about the nature of slavery in those days and in that part of the world. The term had yet to acquire the extreme pejorative nature that developed after the experiences of Afro-Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Employment, as we know it today with all its securities, pensions, health benefits, did not exist. To some extent, slavery, at least for a military or administrative slave, was something similar to employment – providing lifelong security in an uncertain world. One might argue that the slave did not elect to become a vassal; the same argument might be used to explain the powerful social forces that encourage people to seek employment rather than run their own business. Even today, among Bedouin and tribal peoples of the Middle East it is a cause of some shame ‘to sell one’s hours’, employment taking on the same negative overtones as slavery.

These überslaves, the Mamluks, who later would usurp their slavers, could be compared perhaps to the paid executives of a giant multinational, who with their huge salaries and bonuses are eventually able to take a stake in the company themselves; they may start as the office boy but they may end as the owner of at least part of the company.

It is necessary to explain this in order to avoid the errors made in popular literature, where the Mamluks are portrayed as brutalised slaves in the modern sense of the word, avenging themselves on a ‘free’ world of Christians and Mongols. In fact the feudal nature of Christian Frankish life allowed far less social mobility for those of talent than the comparable systems in the Middle East. Indeed only the monasteries allowed talent to flourish, whereas in the East religious universities encouraged native academic talent and Mamluk orders nurtured those with military and administrative gifts.

As a woman, Shajarat al-Durr needed to be very cunning in order not to lose power when her husband died. He was ill when the French invaded and, Shajarat al-Durr knew, could not last long. As he lay dying the Sultan’s hand was guided by his wife’s as he signed over a thousand blank sheets of paper – for orders that Shajarat al-Durr planned to give. As soon as he had died, she exploited the traditions of mummification to ensure that he was embalmed and looked alive, if, one suspects, not quite his usual self. In a scene reminiscent of
Psycho
, Shajarat al-Durr and her two commanders who were in on the deception visited
and tended to the dead and embalmed Ayyub daily. Showing the same nerves of steel that she would later use to hold on to the power she had wrested from her dead husband, Shajarat al-Durr spent each night alone with the embalmed man, sleeping on a couch at the foot of his huge bed. What dreams she must have had! What waking nightmares perhaps? But this was nothing compared to what was to come. Imagine a Lady Macbeth who didn’t go mad.

Her inner circle did not, purposely, include the militarily powerful Mamluks. They could not be trusted to do more at this stage than fight her battles. Her confidants were Fakhr al-Din, the Arab commander of the Egyptian army (a free man), the Vizier, and the chief eunuch, who had authority over the Mamluks.

Of course, word eventually did get out. This brought Turanshah, Ayyub’s eldest son, scuttling over from Syria to claim his throne, but by then plans had been laid. Meanwhile Fakhr al-Din had been killed resisting the ongoing crusader attack that was stopped by the Mamluks at Mansoura. Louis IX was captured and was heard to mention, shortly before this event, in tones of hubris, perhaps, that all he desired now was to have the heart of Turanshah, preferably still beating, brought into his presence. This pronouncement was made when things were going well for the crusaders during the early taking of Mansoura by Robert of Artois.

Shajarat al-Durr’s general, the ‘Bloody’ Baiburs, laid a trap for the French. By leaving Mansoura open he encouraged the crusaders to enter a city they thought they could secure. Of course, Baiburs prepared several secret ways to enter the city after dark. The surprised invaders were driven to the river’s edge and slaughtered, row after row of them, falling ‘like ripe corn’ into the Nile. From here to the sea it was said the Nile was red with the blood of the slain Frenchmen. Further Bahri Mamluk attacks turned into a rout of the French across the wetlands of the delta. Louis IX would live to eat his words.

Bahri Mamluks were so called from
bahr
, meaning ‘river’ or ‘sea’. These were the Nile-based Mamluks whose headquarters were in Cairo on Roda Island. Roda is the site of the Nilometer, a stone-built structure from where one can measure the height of the Nile’s flood. Records have been kept continuously at Roda since early Islamic times when the job of recording was taken over from the Byzantines, the Romans and before that the ancient Egyptians. Since information about the flood’s extent was essential for knowing when to break the levees and
allow water to flood the fields, the Nilometer was a strategically vital place in Egypt (there were other Nilometers further upstream, but the Roda Nilometer was the most important). It was no accident that the Bahri ‘River’ Mamluks chose as their base this centre of power for the Nile.

But though they occupied a power base, the Mamluks had yet to seize power for themselves. Turanshah, elbowing aside his stepmother Shajarat al-Durr, scooped up the lands and Mamluk soldiers indentured to Fakhr al-Din. The Bahri Mamluks grew nervous. Turanshah, like any CEO aiming to make his mark, promoted a new black eunuch as head of the royal household and another was made master of the Royal Guard. The white eunuchs and the Mamluks took note – though there is little evidence that such racial discrimination meant anything more than a preference by Turanshah.

The new ruler was said to be impetuous and of low intelligence. He also liked to drink – some said this was to control the nervous twitch that enveloped his left shoulder and face whenever he was contradicted by someone he feared. It was during a palmwine-soaked evening that he drew out his scimitar of Damascene steel and started lopping the tops off the line of giant tallow candles that illuminated the great tent in Mansoura. ‘So shall I deal with the Bahris!’ he shouted. The scimitar was so sharp it cut the metal holders in two when his sloppy aim missed the candles.

But such sharp weaponry would not keep him from his stepmother and the Mamluks, whom she informed of his vile intentions. To add insult to injury Turanshah demanded back the jewels his late father had given to his stepmother. His death sentence was only a matter of time.

In a master stroke Shajarat al-Durr sought to use the Bahri Mamluks; some said it was Baiburs himself who was behind the attempt. Nevertheless, in a scene similar to the death of Rasputin, Turanshah did not die easily. The first junior Mamluk assailant managed only to chop into his shoulder blade as the youthful Sultan slashed his way out of his tent. Here he met a solid ring of determined Mamluks. When the body of Turanshah fell senseless to the ground the still-beating heart was hacked out of its shell. With macabre humour this heart was presented to that other loser in the story – King Louis IX. Indeed it is recorded that this was done to cheer up Louis, who had been complaining that the ransom demanded for him by Turanshah was too
high. The Mamluks cut a deal and Louis went home. On his deathbed, Turanshah’s father, the Sultan Ayyub, had written to his son advising him to stay off the alcohol and treat the Bahri Mamluks with respect. Good advice, unheeded.

In the resulting vacuum Shajarat al-Durr offered herself as the only possible leader. One can sense the Mamluks as being slightly bemused but willing to take a chance on this, the closest power had ever come to them. Shajarat al-Durr minted coins in her own name. They claimed her authority as Queen of the Muslims by virtue of her being the mother of Ayyub’s son Prince Khalil – though Khalil had died in childhood during his father’s reign. In other words it was a transparent attempt to persuade the public of her authority. The Bahri Mamluks were not sure which way to go. On the one hand, she was a woman, and surely a woman could be easily controlled. On the other hand, despite her credentials connecting her to the former Sultan it was unlikely that the Abbasid Caliphate would endorse her rule. Shajarat al-Durr was not to be dissuaded in her mission. She needed a man to legitimise her rule. But not a powerful man, merely an acceptable one. A man she could control. We know she succeeded because for the next seven years coins were minted in both their names. In a society where women traditionally hid behind veils and
mashrabiya
screens, this was quite an achievement, though not as unusual as might be imagined, as we have seen in the case of mad Caliph Hakim’s sister, Sitt al-Mulk.

The man she chose was not an eminent Mamluk, not even a Bahri Mamluk, but he had been important in her previous husband’s life. His name was Aybak al-Turkomani and he was the old Sultan’s poison taster. He was also married, but such details had never stood in Shajarat al-Durr’s way before.

9
•
Bloody Baiburs’ letter

The person who has a tongue has sins
. Egyptian proverb

If there is a figure who encapsulates the sheer bloodiness of the Nile and the people who have lived there, it must be the leader of the Mamluks, Bloody Baiburs. As an ally of Shajarat al-Durr, Baiburs had saved Mansoura during the Seventh Crusade and imprisoned there Louis IX.

Baiburs was born in Crimea into the Kazakh tribe of the Kipchaks. Then he was captured by the Mongols and sold as a slave in Syria. There are similarities with the rise of Shajarat al-Durr. We are taught that the past was impermeable to meritocratic ascent, that it is only in the modern world that the poor man gets ahead. But here we have the world being carved up by people lower than the poor – slaves.

Baiburs wasn’t even good looking. His first master, the Emir of Hama, feared this fair-skinned short, energetic man with his single occluded eye, a cast covering the green, an evil eye no doubt, and sold him to the Ayyubid rulers of Egypt (for a profit: when Baiburs had first been bought he had the insultingly low price of 800 dirhems, owing to his imperfect face). Despite his odd eye, Baiburs was known for never blinking. He made up for his looks by his fearlessness and his skill at fighting. He soon became the Sultan Ayyub’s main bodyguard.