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Nomen Est Omen: David Ayalon, the Mamluk Sultanate, and the Reign of the Turks

This essay presents a survey and careful re-reading of some of David Ayalon’s work, with a particular focus on his 1990 “Baḥrī Mamluks, Burjī Mamlūks — Inadequate Names for the Two Reigns of the Mamlūk Sultanate”. It aims to explore the wider dimensions of Ayalon’s discussions and to reflect on the meanings of naming patters in particular for understandings of this polity’s dynamic history. It endeavors to show how —contrary to common assumptions— even from Ayalon’s longstanding work it already transpired how the Mamluk sultanate was far more complex than its current name suggests. This is also suggested by Ayalon’s finding that the name which contemporary sources almost generically used to refer to this polity was that of Dawlat al-Atrak, the Rule of the Turks. This essay ends by suggesting that Rule of the Turks was a complex signifier that cannot simply be exchanged for any other name: it refers to meaningful perceptions and representations of the identity of late medieval Syro-Egyptian political elites, along socially constructed and inclusive rather than simply mamlūk or ethnic lines.