---
node: mamluk
type: period
slug: mamluk_egypt
title: "Mamluk Sultanate"
lead: "The Mamluk Sultanate (1250–1517) was Egypt under mamluks, elite soldiers of slave origin, who defeated the Mongols at Ain Jalut in 1260 and made Cairo a great metropolis of the Islamic world. It fell to the Ottoman sultan Selim I in 1517."
published: 2026-07-10
updated: 2026-07-10
---

## Overview

From 1250 to 1517 Egypt was ruled by mamluks, elite soldiers of slave origin — largely Turkic (Kipchak), later Circassian — trained in Egypt. The sultanate is divided into the Bahri period (1250–1382) and the Burji period (1382–1517).

## Key developments

In 1260, at the Battle of Ain Jalut in Palestine, the sultan Qutuz and the general Baibars defeated the Mongols — among the first major defeats to halt the Mongol advance in the region. Baibars (r. 1260–77) rolled back the Crusader states, taking Antioch in 1268 (Acre fell to a successor in 1291), and installed a surviving Abbasid as a figurehead caliph in Cairo. Cairo peaked as a metropolis of the Islamic world: a center of the spice trade between Asia and Europe, of scholarship — Ibn Khaldun taught and served as a judge there — and of architecture, from the mosque of Sultan Hasan to Qaitbay's monuments.

## End and transition

From 1348 the Black Death repeatedly devastated Egypt's population and economy, and the Portuguese discovery of the Cape route around 1500 undercut the spice trade — contributing pressures on the sultanate. In 1517 the Ottoman sultan Selim I defeated the Mamluks and made Egypt an Ottoman province. The mamluks survived as a local ruling class under the Ottomans.