The Birth of Modern Egypt 25
to maintain the Mamelukes in sufficient strength to
defend their power until the Turks established themselves
in command of the Straits and of an East-European and
West-Asiatic Empire. The last Mameluke Sultan was
hanged by Selirn the Cruel in 1517. But the Ottoman
Sultans only took over the prestige and position of the
Mamelukes in the East, and did not destroy their political
power in Egypt. They merely subordinated that power
to their own Ottoman Pasha, and supplemented the
Mameluke cavaliers with their own slave infantry, the
Janissaries. The Chief of the Mamelukes as Bey of
Cairo soon rivalled the Pasha, and the Divan of Egypt
was composed of the Mameluke Beys of the twenty-four
provinces and of the commanders of the seven corps of
Janissaries. And as the Ottoman power declined, the
Mamelukes reduced the authority of the Pasha of Egypt
to much the same insignificance as that to which the
British later reduced the Khedive. The Mameluke pro-
cedure with an unsatisfactory Pasha was even more sum-
mary than ours. An emissary robed ominously in black
appeared before the Pasha and pronounced the one word,
enzel (get out). And whither the Pasha then went
depended on how long he took in starting. Moreover,
the Janissaries, not being so carefully recruited and segre-
gated, did not keep their moral vigour and military value
as did the Mamelukes.
The Mamelukes represented an alien authority and
administration that it is interesting to compare with our
own. That their rule lasted five centuries and ours only
five decades is due to their having found how to maintain
not merely a garrison and a government, but a whole
ruling class and landed gentry in a country where
white stock cannot take root. The contribution of the
Mamelukes to Egypt was artistic, while ours has been