A Turning Point in Mamluk History: The Third Reign of Al-Nasir Muhammad Ibn Qalawun (1310-1341)
The Mameluk army was the first to be confronted with these changes,
whose impact on the social and political life of the Mameluk elite
was already felt during al-Nasir's lifetime. This text follows
the developments to the end of autonomous Mameluk rule and reveals
the transformation they wrought in the Mameluk code of values and
political concepts. A final chapter deals with the overall economic
decline of the Mameluk state and establishes the link of its
various causes - demographic decline, monetary crises, the collapse
of agriculture and industry - with Mameluk government misrule. The
conclusion is reached that it was al-Nasir's expenditure policy
and its repercussions on the economic reform which reveal his reign
as a point of no return.
'"This book is a welcome additon to the growing corpus of Mamluk-era scholarship...Although this study is likely to be of interest mainly to scholars of the Mamluks and other aspects of medieval islamic history, it is accessible to the nonspecialist willing to skip over the transliterated Arabic...This book will be a good and useful acquisition for institutional libraries."' Warren C. Schultz, "International Journal of Middle East Studies", 1997.
Amalia Levanoni, Ph.D. (1990) in Islamic History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, teaches Medieval Islamic History at the Department of Middle Eastern History, University of Haifa. Her publications deal extensively with Mamluk history, which is her special field of interest.
