An experiment in state-building during the medieval Islamic period, the Sultanate emerged in consequence of a junta by Mamluk slave-soldiers against their patron, the Ayyubid ruler al-Salih (647/1249). A junta participant, al-Zahir Baybars (r. 658/1260-676/1277), consolidated the coup into a stable government. His successor, al-Mansur Qalawun (r. 678/1279-689/1290), sustained the regime, but it was Qalawun’s son, al-Nasir Muhammad (3rd r. 709/1310-741/1341), who oversaw the Sultanate’s halcyon era. Egypt, Syria and the Red Sea were united as the leading imperial power of the central Arab lands. Al-Nasir terminated rivalry from the Sultanate’s main opponent, the Mongol Il-khanate in Iran. His descendants presided over the Sultanate as a quasi-dynasty until an officer of Circassian origin, al-Zahir Barquq (r. 784/1382-801/1399) restored the rule of 1st-generation Mamluks. Barquq and his prominent successors, al-Muʾayyad Shaykh (r. 815/1412-824/1421)and al-Ashraf Barsbay (r. 825/1422-841/1438) upheld the regime’s sovereignty against resistance from insurgents in Syria and eastern Anatolia, while enhancing its role as a key participant in commerce with South and East Asia via the Red Sea. They also initiated policies of extraction and monopolies over lucrative commodities that met the fiscal demands of the military hierarchy but compromised the economy long-term. The Sultanate’s final rulers: al-Ashraf Qaʾitbay (r. 872/1468-901/1496) and Qansawh al-Ghawri (r. 906/1501-922/1516) continued these policies until the regime’s defeat by the Ottomans.

Research has proliferated on several topics that have invited new methodological approaches: the rural setting, gendered relations between men and women, communal status of minorities (Christians and Jews), and religious diversity among Muslims, in particular among those who identified as Sufi mystics. New sources and revisionist interpretations of them continue to transform the field of Mamluk Studies. Yet in many instances, findings on these subjects are confined to discoveries of information on discrete conditions or isolated events that do not lend themselves to comprehensive analysis. They often depend on a single source or fragmentary data set, and require imaginative speculation to formulate hypotheses that apply to questions about their broader contexts in society. The chapter will outline the state of research on these subjects and their potential to open new lines of inquiry by highlighting examples that have influenced revisionist interpretations.