While the reign of the penultimate Mamluk ruler Qāniṣawh al-Ghawrī (r. 1501-1516) is relatively well documented in Mamluk and Ottoman historiographical literature and has received ample scholarly attention, the early biography of this influential figure in Mamluk history is largely unknown. Building primarily on unpublished sources that describe the sultan’s birth and childhood in Circassia, his transport to Egypt, his education as a mamlūk and his early military career, this paper examines by means of a case study why and how authors of Mamluk biographical works engaged in discussions of the childhood and early youth of rulers. The paper argues that biographical writings on this topic fulfilled central functions in contemporary political culture, integrated the biographies of rulers into broader and at times decidedly religious frameworks of reference, and expressed notions of what constituted good governance and political failures in the Mamluk context. Moreover, the paper shows that the study of sections on the early lives in the biographies of Mamluk rulers can provide new insights into how biographers worked, where they got their source material from, and in what ways they engaged with other forms of textual production.