ANST - FW: Musing on July 31st -- Mamluks in Kneeboots

j'lynn yeates jyeates at realtime.net
Tue Aug 1 10:12:37 PDT 2000


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


- -----Original Message-----
From: Ellsworth Weaver [mailto:astroweaver at yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2000 09:28
To: 2thpix at surfari.net
Subject: Musing on July 31st -- Mamluks in Kneeboots


Dear Folk,

On this day July 31, 1291 an army made of former slaves took Beruit
and
put an end to the Crusader presence in Palestine and Syria. These
soldiers were called Mamluks (or Mameluks or Mamelukes) and they are
the reason we still have Islam.

The Mamluks were first recruited (bought, if you will) by the
Ayyubids
caliphs of Egypt. They were a mixture of Euro and Asian dudes brought
up from birth to be fighters. Not just gladiators, these guys learned
to fight in formation and to be the ones standing when all the
cutting
was done. So the caliphs raised up kiddies as bodyguards, gave them
weapons, trained them, fed them, and what do you think those
ungrateful
children did? Well, what would you have done?

Exactly, they threw of the silken shackles and became what they most
despised, the master.  One of these slaves, Muez-Aibak, assassinated
the Ayyubid sultan, Al Ashraf Musa, in 1252 and founded the Mamluk
sultanate, which ruled Egypt and Syria for more than two centuries.

These were not effete Egyptians, remember. They were the first bunch
of
troops ever to defeat the Mongols in open combat when in 1260, the
Mongols moved against Palestine and Egypt. Alerted by a chain of
signal
fires stretching from Iraq to Egypt, the Mamluks were able to marshal
their forces in time to meet, and crush, the Mongols at 'Ayn Jalut
near
Nazareth in Palestine. It was their stopping the Mongols which saved
Islam.

Since the Mamluks had been brought into the fold of Islam, they felt
a
deep commitment to that religion. This was reflected in intensive
building in Jerusalem, which has left its mark on the Old City to
this
day, particularly around the Temple Mount.

Even though they whipped the crusaders, the Mamluks indirectly
fostered
relations between Europe and the Middle East even after the fall of
the
Byzantine Empire. The Europeans, loving those luxury items from the
Middle East, had a bad thing for both its raw materials and its
manufactured products, and the people of the Middle East wished to
exploit the lucrative European market. It was sort of like China and
the Coca-Cola Bottling Company. Beirut, smack in the middle of
everything, became the center of intense trading activity. Despite
religious conflicts among the different communities in Lebanon,
intellectual life flourished.

The Mamluks were not just a temporary, steroid-boosted bunch of
bully-boys. They retained control of Egypt until the Ottoman conquest
in 1517. It is said that the Egyptians welcomed the Ottoman Turks
into
their country as a relief from the Mamluks. Thought it would be
better.
They were, of course, wrong. But that is another story. Mamluks were
still around in Egypt as late as the 1800s.

Oh, wanted to tell you a quick story about a guy named Ignatius. He
was
a GQ sort of dude, took good care of his appearance. While he was
helping his Spain defend against the French, a cannon ball shattered
his leg. Now he was strong and did recover but there was this bone
which stuck out beyond the end of his leg (just below the knee.) That
made it hard to wear those slinky long boots that he favored. So he
had
the surgeons saw the bone off. It was a major, major painful
operation
but he hung with it. He lived on thirty-five years after that. Spent
most of his time being a pious ascetic. You may have heard of the
group
he founded: The Society of Jesus. We mostly call them Jesuits. They
became the Catholic Church bureau of internal affairs, watching out
for
heresy and infiltrators. Smart folk, the Jesuits. He was Ignatius
Loyola and he died on July 31, 1556, aged sixty-five.

What have we learned from all of this? Slaves should not be armed and
trained to kill? Wars may be based on a lot of different things but
commerce wins the day? Vanity can lead us to do all sorts of painful
things to ourselves? Sometimes it takes a shattering experience to
put
us on another path? Maybe, you can roll a pebble down the
mountainside
but never know what landslide you are causing. Yep, thanks to the
perceived need for bodyguards, the Europeans got kicked out of the
Holy
Land and we still have Islam.

Forward to whomever but leave the name and sig attached.

Piously keeping my leg bones to myself,
J.  Ellsworth Weaver

SCA – Sir Balthazar of Endor
AS – Polyphemus Theognis
TRV – Sebastian Yeats


=====
SmileWeavers Astrology Charts & Interpretations
Modern & Medieval (but always discreet)
If you are interested, contact me at
astroweaver at yahoo.com or 805.473.8867

Read back issues of Musings at
http://www.thereadersvine.com/~Jennifer_deTocqueville/sebastiansmusing
s.html

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Kick off your party with Yahoo! Invites.
http://invites.yahoo.com/

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP Personal Privacy 6.5.3
Comment: public key for jyeates at realtime.net at certserver.pgp.com

iQA/AwUBOYYH5s50zdvN3Vp0EQKIUgCeMAt2Ai3ZEJDQ4XP9KqpVu3yaZswAoP2B
c3yU7g4Vvl0xCjaK2B4AYflA
=r5h1
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.



More information about the Ansteorra mailing list