Mamlüks were white slave-soldiers who ruled Egypt for centuries

Evidence

Banbah discerns from Kab al-Khayr's long complaint that she is jealous, and really is interested in Abü Rida. Her comment on Kab al-Khayr’s dislike of Nubians, that “she prefers one of the Mamlüks” employs a common nineteenth-century epithet for the ruling class of Ottoman Egyptians, descendants of the slave-soldiers taken, as children, from Anatolia, the Balkans, and later the Circassian region, and who rose as military leaders and ruled Egypt from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. Banbah ironically contests any desire of Ka`b al-Khayr either to perceive herself as a marriageable peer to the white “Mamlüks” (who had real social power) or to distance herself as a black slave from the social caste of other Nubians. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 403

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the Mamlük ruling caste of Ottoman Egypt: enslaved children from Anatolia, the Balkans, and Circassia who became military rulers from the 12th to 16th centuries.