Mamluk Dynasty (Iraq)
Culture | Defunct
1704 CE to 1831 CE
The Mamluk dynasty of Iraq is a dynasty that rules over Iraq in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
In the Ottoman Empire, Mamluks are freed slaves who convert to Islam, are trained in a special school, then assigned to military and administrative duties.
Such Mamluks preside over Ottoman Iraq from 1704 to 1831.
The Mamluk ruling elite, composed principally of Georgian officers, succeedsin asserting autonomy from their Ottoman overlords, and restores order and some degree of economic prosperity in the region.
The Ottomans overthrow the Mamluk regime in 1831 and gradually impose their direct rule over Iraq, which will last until the First World War, although the Mamluks will continue to be a dominant socio-political force in Iraq, as most of the administrative personnel of note in Baghdad are drawn from former Mamluk households, or comprise a cross-section of the notable class in Mamluk times.
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The reemergence in Iraq of the Mamluks, who begin asserting authority apart from the Ottomans in the early eighteenth century, temporarily reverses the cycle of tribal warfare and of deteriorating urban life in Iraq that had begun in the thirteenth century with the Mongol invasions.
Extending their rule first over Basra, the Mamluks eventually control the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys from the Persian Gulf to the foothills of Kurdistan.
The Mamluks are able administrators for the most part, and their rule is marked by political stability and by economic revival.
The greatest of the Mamluk leaders, Sulayman Pasha the Great (1780-1802), makes great strides in imposing the rule of law.
The last Mamluk leader, Dawüd Pasha (1816-31), initiates important modernization programs that include clearing canals, establishing industries, training a twenty-thousand-man army, and starting a printing press.
Iraq's Mamluk period ends in 1831, when a severe flood and plague devastates Baghdad, enabling the Ottoman sultan, Mahmud II, to reassert Ottoman sovereignty over Iraq.
Ottoman rule is unstable; Baghdad, for example, will have more than ten governors between 1831 and 1869.