Contemporary research on state violence by political anthropologists suggests that local society, and particularly communities located on “the frontiers”, may act as a more accurate reflection of the potentials, idiosyncrasies, and ultimate character of state systems than the centers of political power. Accordingly, the state consciously engages with local society in a process of give-and-take that results naturally from the dialectical relations between the two bodies. Did the Mamluk state evolve as an imperial body in a similar fashion, nurturing relations with rural communities that were simultaneously coercive and responsive? What can the evolving rule of the Mamluks at the most local level of operation tell us about the Sultanate’s imperial image and operation? We are here concerned with what Mamluk rule “on the ground” can tell us about the kind of imperial system that ultimately emerged and how it functioned on a daily basis. This paper turns to rural society to evaluate the ways the official representatives of Mamluk power normally engaged local communities. It compares the Mamluks’ methods of rule and legitimization in village and non-village tribal communities on its southern, eastern, and northern frontiers, with those closer to the center of imperial power, Cairo, in an effort to identify regional patterns and distinguish between “normative” policies and those “exceptional” ones that may have developed on the frontier. A handful of village and sub-village settlements, identified from textual sources and from on-going archaeological field work, serve as the geographical focus of this study of state-local relations and the imperial mission. The emphasis is the lowest level of administration, where officials met peasants and “Bedu” leaders on a regular basis. A range of sources will be culled for this purpose. Investiture documents and commentaries on local administrators, as pulled from chronicles, will provide a contrast between the ideals of local administration and the reality of it. The chroniclers’ accounts of the rewarding of and retaliation against villages and tribes illustrate the complexities of state objectives in rural areas. A combination of court documents, waqfiyyat, and recent environmental studies suggest ways in which Mamluk imperial methods changed over time, particularly in regards to demographic practices, land management and tenure, and control over natural resources. Finally, a spatial analysis of regional administrative centers and their physical and functional relationships with nearby villages provide a window on the ways Mamluk officials regularly interacted with village communities.

One useful way to examine the category of Empire as applied to the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria is to investigate the nature of its control and influence over peripheral regions. A large variety of political structures have been called empires, a practice that has complicated the problem of definition. The resultant discussion has led scholars to identify a number of characteristic features of empire, not necessarily with unanimous agreement but with some benefit since the concepts mobilized in these discussions are a useful means to understand how things worked, how they changed, and why. In this paper, the view from the periphery allows us to evaluate the Mamluk center’s formal claims of control and to distinguish other modes of power, such as indirect rule and hegemonic influence. The approach to the concept of empire adopted here is limited to three interrelated features: territorial range, political drive, and nested sovereignties. The starting point of this project is to accept that while empires can consist of a carefully arranged and controlled political structure they may also incorporate intersecting, and sometimes contentious, systems of political control. Because this is a dynamic process, it seems more useful to approach the topic of empire in a processual, rather than a structural, way. This may result in a more flexible notion of empire, to the point of achieving conceptual fuzziness rather than clarity, but it should also allow for a more nuanced understanding of Mamluk imperialism. Some attention has been directed at Mamluk rule over peripheral regions, but this has not been done in a comparative way. This project examines the issue of territorial expansion into the regions of Cyprus, Lebanon, and the Hijaz, three distinct geographical units subjugated at different times and in different ways by the Mamluk center. An examination of the Mamluk role in these regions allows us to isolate a number of factors that impelled the Mamluk center to control these regions, the troubles it faced in doing so, and whether, indeed, control of these regions was essential to the existence of the Mamluk Sultanate. In brief, we see the interplay of political legacy, economic expedience, and ideological prestige in shaping the Mamluk project, what might be described as an intermittent empire, capable, in some places, of projecting its hegemony without dominance while, in other places, of extending its dominance without hegemony.

In this paper, I propose to reconsider some basic notions of Mamluk political organisation that underpin most research in Mamluk studies, but that remain too often still premised on awkward, unspoken or even unconscious assumptions about the concept, the nature and the institution of the late medieval Syro-Egyptian Mamluk polity. What exactly do we mean when we refer to 'the Mamluks' and 'Mamluk rulers', to 'the Mamluk state' and 'Mamluk authority', or indeed to 'the Mamluk empire' and 'Mamluk territory' ? How can we avoid vague, static or even anachronistic understandings of the complex late medieval realities for which these terms are being used ? Can we break free from related ideas of the historical exceptionalism of the Mamluk 'slave state', and reconnect with wider late medieval and early modern studies, where debates on state formation have been at the forefront of very rich academic debates? Can we simultaneously reconnect these debates with more genuinely Mamluk Arabic terms, such as kh???a, dawla or tadb?r ? These are some of the key questions that have informed this paper. In considering them, this paper problematises standard assumptions of the relationship between Mamluk elites and the 'state', and it offers one possible alternative model. Informed by ongoing discussions in related fields of history (Weber, Tilly, Reinhard, Bourdieu), by advances in Mamluk studies (Lapidus, Hodgson, Holt, Chamberlain, Clifford, …), and by Ibn Khaldun's historical model of a political organisation's transformation, this paper focuses in particular on the issue of Mamluk state formation, of how elites' monopolies of legitimate violence and resource appropriation were organised over time. In doing so, this paper will develop and present the idea of a 'Flux and Reflux'-model of Mamluk state formation, of Mamluk political organisation's continuous oscillation between and emanation from a set of paradigmatic types, derived from the the basic notion of the Mamluk Military Patronage State. With this new model in mind, this paper will then conclude by reconsidering the above mentioned notions of Mamluk elites, state and empire, and suggest how they may be thought in more meaningful Mamluk ways. In this way, this engagement with historical sociology offers some crucial reflections on the nature of the Mamluk polity, with a specific focus on the dynamics of the relationship between rulers and ruled. This will substantially add to stimulating the application of nuanced ideas about the perceptions and realities of any Mamluk empirial experience.

Imperial Projection Challenged: Espionage and Insurrection as Criminal Threats to the Mamluk Security Blanket The Mamluk Sultanate took pride in its long-term maintenance of order: external with regard to territorial cohesion over Egypt, Syria-Palestine and the Hijaz, and internal with regard to provision of public security and curbing of insurrection in both urban centers and rural hinterlands. Yet in the face of the Sultanate's proclaimed success at upholding order over more than two centuries, the actual roster of events–-as recorded in detail by on-site observers who compiled the lengthy chronicles that are a hallmark of historical writing during the Mamluk period–-deviated sharply from this ideal. This presentation will consider the undercurrent of criticism, and on occasion outright castigation, on the part of the historians who countered the regime's stance as security guardians. Specific examples will include: incidents of espionage, collusion with criminal elements for fiscal gain, and covert support of groups or individuals accused of fomenting religious discord that threatened to provoke riots and violence. The context of motives behind the historians' critical posture will be considered.