»4 Egypt
was at first a servile militia, then a military caste, and
finally a ruling class, was introduced by the Saracens
when at the height of their power under Saladin, and was
afterwards imitated by the Turks in their Janissaries.
Slavery had indeed been from the earliest days of Islam
the short cut to power, and Saladin himself, like many of
the early Sultans, began life as a slave. But in Egypt we
find one of the most extraordinary examples of a body
of alien slave-guards becoming a governing aristocracy
simply through not assimilating or even associating with
the native population. Already in 1250 the Mamelukes
were strong enough to murder the Fatimite Sultan, and
nominate future Sultans from among their own chiefs.
That the Mamelukes were able to maintain their alien
authority over Egypt for no less than five centuries was
due to their regularly recruiting their ranks from the pick
of emancipated slaves belonging to the white races of
the Caucasus, than which there are no finer types in the
world. The majority were Georgians, and f< Gorz," the
Egyptian word for their regime, is clearly a corruption of
"Grouz," their name in their own language. They
married invariably women of their own race, but this
would not alone have saved their type and tyranny with-
out fresh blood. For their families, like those of all other
Aryan races in Egypt, degenerated and died out in the
second or third generation. Thus, though they acquired
a semi-feudal, semi-fiscal hold on the land, they never
became a hereditary class, while their alien authority and
their association with the no less alien Turks fused in a
common subjection the Egyptian Arabs, Nubians, and
even Copts, in spite of differences of race and religion.
Taxation of the fertile soil of Egypt and of the sub-
missive fellaheen, supplemented by toll-takings from the
transit trade between Europe and Asia, produce4 enough