This paper focuses on the sons of the Mamluks (awlad al-nas) and their social role in the Mamluk Sultanate of Cairo (1250–1517). The awlad al-nas have been often neglected in recent scholarship, in part because of a restrictive conception of Mamluk society. Based on accounts of the well-known historians of the Mamluk Sultanate, such as al-Maqrizi, al-Qalqashandi, al-Sakhawi and others, modern interpretations have suggested that it was a static system that allowed only limited social mobility, and that it renewed its political and military elite exclusively by the purchase, training and subsequent manumission of military slaves born outside the Islamic world. This perception has endured in western research in part because, as a formally not dynastically organized system, this version of the Mamluk social structure offers a tempting contrast not only to other Islamic systems of rule, but also to pre-modern European ones. In this version of Mamluk society, the awlad al-nas had no chance of obtaining any influential positions in administration or military. However, a survey of the biographical dictionaries of the age (e.g. al-Maqrizi, al-Safadi, al-Sakhawi and Ibn Taghribirdi) indicate that the awlad al-nas could in fact hold influential positions. Skimming through the rich biographical literature of the age enables us to follow careers of scholars or commanders in detail for the entire Mamluk period. These texts show that – in practice – it was possible for the awlad al-nas to hold influential positions in society, as well as in the ruling system in various ways. Their short biographies reveal that several of the awlad al-nas held positions in the military, acted in leading administrative roles or helped to shape society as judges, religious scholars or Sufis. As such, they often acted as mediators between the ruling elite and the local population. This paper will explore the careers of some of these awlad al-nas. Referring to these case studies, this paper examines how they gained access to the elitist, and thus the ruling and influential, classes of the Mamluk Sultanate. Which careers could they pursue? What agency did they possess? How could they influence a ruler – or even become Sultans themselves?