The Ottomans and the Mamluks: Imperial Diplomacy and Warfare in the Islamic World

Abstract

CIHAN YUKSEL MUSLU, The Ottomans and the Mamluks: Imperial Diplomacy and Warfare in the Islamic World (London & New York: I. B. Tauris, 2014). Library of Ottoman Studies, vol. 36. Pp. 376. $ 95.00 cloth.Over the past few years, with ever-increasing interest in interstate relations in the medieval and early modern periods, studies have considered various aspects linked to diplomatic relations (mainly politics, economy, and diplomatics). It is thus not surprising that the field of Islam is witnessing a marked upsurge of interest in similar issues, but if there is a discrepancy between Europe and Islam, it certainly lies in the nature of the historian's choice morsels, i.e., the documents. As a consequence, most publications devoted to questions of diplomacy have been mainly concerned with periods and areas where documents have been preserved in greater number, that is, primarily from the seventeenth century onwards. For the Middle East, umpteen analyses of interstate relations exist for the Ottomans, on the one hand, and the Safavids and Qajars, on the other. In national archives, both in the Middle East and Europe, for events that took place roughly after 1600, there are more of the kinds of sources that give historians the instrumental grist to interpret the nature of the relationships between two states: original documents, instructions released to and reports written by the ambassadors. Anyone interested in earlier periods must rely on a narrower range of sources where original documents are scarce, which generates various shortcomings, not the least the question of reliance.The researcher who nevertheless takes that risk with full cognizance and a carefully weighed approach to the sources can reach exciting results. Such an approach must undoubtedly consider aspects ruling over the political and ideological discourse between two powers that may appear imperceptible or negligible to a modern eye. In the case of a study devoted to diplomatic relations between two Muslim powers in the premodern period, it would be inconceivable to pay no heed to the issue of diplomatics, which hinges, among other things, on the conventions, protocols, and formulae widely used by those who composed the documents that were the vehicles of the leaders' political and ideological language. In recent years, this discipline also has witnessed a renewed attraction, seeding hopes that the works of the pioneers of the 1960s and 1970s, including S.M. Stern, J. Wansbrough, H. Busse, A. Zajaczkowski, V. Stojanow, and L. Fekete, will not remain in vain or unchallenged.Considering all that precedes, the book under review is a most welcomed contribution to the field of diplomatic studies in terms of both diplomatic interstate relations and diplomatic protocol. It encompasses the diplomatic exchanges between the Ottomans and the Mamluks from the emergence of the former as an Anatolian principality up to its transformation into an empire and the progressive waning of the latter until its fall under the blows of what was once a provincial entity. The chronological window starts with the first attestations of diplomatic relations established between these two powers in the 1360s and ends with Selim's ascent to the throne (1512). The author justifies the decision to neglect the five years that separate Bayezid II's abdication from the conquest of Egypt by the fact that they would have required another volume (22). Yuksel Muslu also firmly believes that the nature of the relations between the two powers was not only warmongering and that study of the beginning of Selim's rule would have been counterproductive given the military events that preceded the conquest. In this, she is probably correct as she tries to demonstrate that focus on the moments of conflict distracts from the richness of the long-term interactions between the two powers.Yuksel Muslu sets the stage for her topic with a presentation of the tools of diplomacy. Here she details the various steps followed by the respective chanceries when preparing a diplomatic mission: selection of the envoy (the author uses indifferently the terms ambassador, envoy, and messenger without mentioning the words used by her sources, e. …