But the Mamluk system was also a closed loop of perpetual foreignness. A Mamluk could never pass his status to his son. His son would be born a free Muslim—and thus not a Mamluk. To renew the elite, they had to keep importing new slaves, who then overthrew the old guard, generation after generation. The system was a circulatory system of violence. It ended in 1517 when the Ottoman Sultan Selim the Grim marched into Cairo, hanged the last Mamluk sultan, and claimed the title "Servant of the Two Holy Sanctuaries."
It is to be, in other words, a ghost who doesn't know he's dead. I asked an old Lebanese antique dealer in Hamra Street about "Mamluqi 1958." He was cleaning a rusted Ottoman-era yatalaghan sword. He paused. mamluqi 1958
1958, in contrast, was the year of ideology. Nasser was not a slave-king; he was a prophet of the masses. He spoke on the radio. He mobilized the poor. But the Mamluk system was also a closed
They didn't care about Arab unity. They cared about waqf (endowments), land deeds, and the ancient art of switching loyalties at the right moment. To renew the elite, they had to keep
The conspiracy dissolved. But the name stuck.
But did it lose?
In late August 1958, rumor spread through the Sursock Palace in Beirut that this "Mamluqi" faction was planning to stage a preemptive coup to prevent Lebanon from joining the UAR. The coup would have dissolved parliament, suspended the constitution, and installed a military council of "neutralist" (i.e., pro-American) generals.