Mameluke

[mam-uh-look]

noun

1. a member of a military class, originally composed of slaves, that seized control of the Egyptian sultanate in 1250, ruled until 1517, and remained powerful until massacred or dispersed by Mehemet Ali in 1811.

2. Archaic.,  mameluke. (in Muslim countries) a slave.

Mameluke

/ ˈmæmluːk, ˈmæməˌluːk /

noun

1. a member of a military class, originally of Turkish slaves, ruling in Egypt from about 1250 to 1517 and remaining powerful until crushed in 1811

2. (in Muslim countries) a slave

Word History and Origins

Origin of Mameluke¹

First recorded in 1505–15; from Arabic mamlūk literally, “slave,” noun use of past participle of malaka “to possess”

Word History and Origins

Origin of Mameluke¹

C16: via French, ultimately from Arabic mamlūk slave, from malaka to possess

Example Sentences

Someone shot it off in a moment of idle desecration—some say it was Mameluke Turks, others, Napoleonic soldiers.

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His forebears had fled to Egypt following the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258, and had for centuries been paraded on state occasions to legitimate the rule of Egypt’s Mameluke sultans.

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They have stolen an entire minbar, or pulpit, from a Mameluke mosque near Cairo’s Citadel, as well as beautiful brass details, marble plaques and wood inlays from some of the city’s most splendid mosques.

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There’s also gold Mameluke jewelry, Ottoman-era ceramics, Persian carpets, marblework, stonework and mosaics.

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Amid the rumbling of heavy machinery clearing out the police headquarters across the street, other restorers diligently pieced together another badly damaged wooden mihrab, dating to the Fatimid era of the 10th to 12th centuries; a Fatimid chair of ornate inlaid ivory and ebony; and a Quran box of painted wood from the 13th-to-16th-century Mameluke era.

Read more on New York Times