The Near and Middle East (1252–1395 CE): Mamluk Power, Ilkhanid Persia, and the Gulf Thalassocracy

From the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates to the incense ports of Dhofar and the high walls of Cairo, the Near and Middle East in the Lower Late Medieval Age was a region of simultaneous devastation and renewal. Mongol armies and Black Death epidemics reshaped cities and frontiers, yet new centers of learning, commerce, and maritime enterprise rose from the wreckage, linking Iran, Syria, and Arabia in an intricate web of faith and exchange.

The Ilkhanate, founded in 1256, drew together Iran, Iraq, Armenia, and Azerbaijan under Mongol sovereignty. Its rulers—Ghazan (r. 1295–1304) and Öljeitü (r. 1304–1316)—converted to Islam and built monumental capitals at Tabriz and Sultaniyya, where Persianate administration and Mongol military discipline fused into a new imperial synthesis. Agrarian restoration followed: tax reforms, irrigation repairs, and standardized coinage encouraged recovery from the Mongol onslaughts of the previous century. When the dynasty collapsed after 1335, its fragments—the Jalayirids of Baghdad and Tabriz, the Chobanids of Azerbaijan, and the Muzaffarids of Fars and Isfahan—carried forward the artistic and bureaucratic legacy of the Ilkhans until Timur’s armies swept across the plateau in the 1380s and 1390s, subduing both Jalayirid Baghdad and Muzaffarid Shiraz by 1395.

In Syria, Egypt, and the Levant, the Mamluks—a military elite of Turkic, Circassian, and Kurdish origin—repelled the Mongols at ʿAyn Jālūt in 1260 CE and built an empire that stretched from Nubia to Anatolia. Under Sultan Baybars I (r. 1260–1277), a chain of fortresses secured the desert marches; the Crusader states fell one by one—Antioch in 1268, Tripoli in 1289, Acre in 1291—ending two centuries of Latin presence on the Syrian coast. Cairo, revitalized under the Qalawunid and later Circassian lines, became the pivot of a Sunni revival. Its madrasas, hospices, and waqf foundations endowed a new urban piety, while the Qalawun complex and the minarets of al-Nasir Muhammad defined the city’s skyline. In Jerusalem and Damascus, restoration of shrines and caravanserais followed, binding pilgrimage, scholarship, and trade into a single sacred geography.

Beyond the northern frontier, Cilician Armenia, long a crusader ally, succumbed to the Mamluks in 1375; Georgia and Armenia endured Mongol and later Timurid incursions but maintained resilient ecclesiastical traditions. On northeastern Cyprus, the Lusignan dynasty preserved a Latin outpost. Its ports of Famagusta and Kyrenia sustained Mediterranean commerce even as crusader dreams faded. There, Venetian and Genoese merchants turned to sugar cultivation, importing enslaved labor from the Black Sea and Africa—a precursor to Europe’s later plantation economies.

To the east, the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula entered a maritime renaissance. Along the coast of Fars, the island kingdom of Hormuz relocated its capital offshore about 1301, evolving into the dominant Gulf thalassocracy. From its island fortress, Hormuz taxed all shipping between India, Iran, and Arabia, exporting horses, pearls, and dates while importing Indian cottons, pepper, and spices. The Nabhani dynasty held the interior of Oman, while the Mahra sultans ruled the eastern Yemeni littoral and Socotra, policing the monsoon routes. In Hadhramaut, the oases of Shibam and Tarim prospered under Rasulid overlordship from Taʿizz and Zabīd, producing dates and jurists alike; the Bā ʿAlawī families of Tarim fused Sufi sanctity with mercantile enterprise, laying the foundation of the later Hadhrami diaspora that would link Arabia, India, and the Malay world. In Dhofar, frankincense groves continued to yield the aromatic resin that had perfumed temples since antiquity, while Socotra’s dragon’s-blood and aloe maintained niche trades to Gujarat and Calicut. The dhow fleets of al-Shihr and Mirbat rode the monsoons between Hormuz, Malabar, and the Swahili coast, tying the Gulf to the wider Indian Ocean.

Meanwhile, on the Nile’s southern frontier, the Mamluk intervention in Nubia after 1276 CE ended the independence of Christian Dongola. Arab tribes—Beja, Jaʿalin, and Juhayna—migrated southward, intermarrying with Nubian nobles and spreading Islam through commerce rather than conquest. By the fourteenth century, Arab-Nubian Muslim dynasties ruled the valley, while the nomadic Juhayna ranged between the Nile and the Red Sea hills. Conversion, commerce, and intermarriage rather than war defined this gradual Arabization of the Sudanese corridor. Southward migrations of Luo and other Nilotic peoples followed, diversifying the upper Nile’s cultural landscape.

Throughout the region, plague and climate tested resilience. The Black Death (1347–1351) decimated populations from Tabriz to Cairo, emptying markets and caravanserais, yet irrigation and trade revived quickly where canal and qanāt systems endured. In Iran and Mesopotamia, the Tigris–Euphrates canal tracts and Fars orchards continued to yield grain, dates, and cotton. Syrian iqṭāʿ-holders restored orchards and olive groves; artisans in Aleppo and Damascus revived the glass, textile, and metal industries that made them famous from Genoa to Samarkand. The overlapping networks of merchants, Sufi orders, and urban guilds maintained a measure of stability when dynasties faltered.

Religiously, Islam’s geographic breadth encouraged plural expression. The Ilkhanids’ conversion sanctioned a synthesis of Persian bureaucratic culture and Mongol political forms. The Mamluks enshrined Sunni orthodoxy through law colleges and endowments; the Suhrawardi and Kubrawi Sufi orders crossed linguistic frontiers, linking Khurasan to Cairo. Christian and Jewish communities—Armenian, Georgian, Nestorian, Coptic, and Rabbanite—remained active in manuscript art, translation, and trade. The multicultural workshops of Tabriz and Damascus produced illuminated Qurʾans and Gospel codices alike, hallmarks of a cosmopolitan Middle East.

By 1395 CE, the region had re-formed into a constellation of complementary powers. Mamluk Syria and Egypt stood as guardians of Sunni learning and Mediterranean commerce; Jalayirid Baghdad and Muzaffarid Shiraz sustained Persianate art until Timur’s armies imposed a new imperial order. Hormuz ruled the Gulf as an island empire of merchants, while the Hadhrami and Dhofari coasts linked Arabia to India and Africa. Cyprus remained Latin and commercially vibrant, the last echo of crusader Christendom. Along the Nile, Arab-Nubian fusion gave rise to new societies that would shape the Sudan for centuries.

The fourteenth century thus closed not in decline but in transformation—a world of rebuilt capitals, re-channeled rivers, and re-charted seas, where Persian administrators, Egyptian Mamluks, Gulf mariners, and Hadhrami saints together forged the polycentric Middle East that would carry its traditions into the early modern age.

Middle East (1252 – 1395 CE): Ilkhanid Persia, Mamluk Syria, Caucasian Frontiers, and the Persian Gulf Thalassocracy

Geographic and Environmental Context

The Middle East includes Iraq, Iran, Syria, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, eastern Jordan, most of Turkey’s central and eastern uplands (including Cilicia), eastern Saudi Arabia, northern Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, northeastern Cyprus, and all but southernmost Lebanon.

• Anchors: the Tigris–Euphrates basin, the Iranian plateau with Azerbaijan–Tabriz, the Caucasus (Armenia–Georgia–Azerbaijan), the Cilician uplands and Syrian plains, the Persian Gulf rim (Hormuz, al-Ahsa, Bahrain, Oman), and northeastern Cyprus as a crusader–Mamluk frontier node.

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Climate and Environmental Shifts

• Transition from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age (~1300) brought more variable rainfall: steppe margins and uplands suffered droughts, but irrigated zones (Khuzestan, Tigris–Euphrates alluvium, northern Syria, Fars) remained productive with careful canal upkeep.

• Plagues, especially the Black Death (1347–1351), devastated urban populations in Tabriz, Baghdad, Aleppo, and Damascus, undermining tax bases and military manpower.

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Societies and Political Developments

• Ilkhanate and Successor States:

  • Founded in 1256, the Ilkhanate encompassed Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and eastern Anatolia.

  • Under Ghazan (r. 1295–1304) and Öljeitü (r. 1304–1316), Islam became the state religion, reforms standardized taxes, and monumental capitals rose at Tabriz and Sultaniyya.

  • Collapse after 1335 led to regional successor dynasties: the Jalayirids (Baghdad–Tabriz), Chobanids (Azerbaijan), and Muzaffarids (Fars–Isfahan). By the 1380s–1390s, Timur’s invasions shattered them, culminating in victories over Jalayirids and Muzaffarids by 1395.

• Mamluk Syria and Cilicia:

  • Mamluks defeated Mongols at ʿAyn Jālūt (1260) and absorbed the Syrian coast, toppling the Crusader states: Antioch (1268), Tripoli (1289), and Acre (1291).

  • Cilician Armenia, long allied with crusaders, fell to the Mamluks in 1375, ending the kingdom.

  • Northeastern Cyprus remained in Latin hands under the Lusignan dynasty, serving as a crusader–commercial outpost until Ottoman advance.

• Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan):

  • Georgia endured Mongol suzerainty and fragmentation; Timurid raids (from 1386) devastated Kartli and Kakheti but church culture persisted.

  • Armenia was divided between Ilkhanid and Turkmen spheres, later overrun by Timur.

• Eastern Jordan and Eastern Arabia:

  • Bedouin and tribal emirates balanced between Ilkhanid, Mamluk, and local suzerainty.

  • In al-Ahsa and Qatif, the Jarwanids (14th c.) controlled pearls and trade.

• Oman and Hormuz:

  • The Nabhani dynasty held the Omani interior; coastal ports came under Hormuz, which relocated to an island base c. 1301.

  • By the 14th century Hormuz had become the preeminent Persian Gulf thalassocracy, taxing Gulf trade and controlling routes between India, Iran, and Arabia.

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Economy and Trade

• Agriculture:

  • Mesopotamia’s canals supported dates, wheat, and flax when maintained.

  • Fars, Isfahan, and Azerbaijan produced cotton, silk, and fruit.

  • Syrian plains yielded grain, olives, and fruits under iqṭāʿ assignments.

• Maritime trade:

  • Hormuz dominated Gulf tolls, channeling Indian pepper, cottons, and spices northward, and exporting Arabian horses, pearls, and dates.

  • Omani and Bahraini ports linked fisheries and pearl-beds to wider circuits.

• Overland caravans:

  • Tabriz–Sultaniyya–Rayy–Khurasan remained Silk Road arteries, routing Chinese silks and Central Asian horses westward.

  • Aleppo and Damascus linked the Indian Ocean–Persian Gulf circuits with Mediterranean trade (Genoese, Venetian).

• Currency: Ilkhanid monetary reforms under Ghazan stabilized coinage; Mamluks minted dīnārs and dirhams; Hormuz issued its own copper and silver for Gulf trade.

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Subsistence and Technology

• Hydraulics: canal dredging on the Tigris–Euphrates, qanāt networks in Iran, water-lifting wheels in Syria and Fars.

• Military: steppe cavalry and mamluk armies; siege artillery and early gunpowder bombs appeared in late-14th-century warfare.

• Craft industries: Syrian glass and textiles, Persian inlaid metalwork and miniature painting, Armenian manuscript arts.

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Movement and Interaction Corridors

• Silk Road trunks: Tabriz ⇄ Baghdad ⇄ Aleppo ⇄ Damascus; branches to Sultaniyya and Khurasan.

• Persian Gulf: Hormuz ⇄ Basra ⇄ Wasit and Hormuz ⇄ Oman ⇄ India, timed to the monsoon.

• Caucasus passes: Darial and Derbent funneled steppe nomads and caravans.

• Cilicia–Levant routes: Sis ⇄ Aleppo–Damascus for trade and crusader/Mamluk conflicts.

• Northeastern Cyprus: Lusignan harbors (Famagusta, Kyrenia) tied to Genoese and Venetian networks.

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Belief and Symbolism

• Islam:

  • Ilkhanid Islamization fused Persianate culture with Mongol rulership; Sufi orders (Suhrawardiyya, Kubrawiyya) proliferated.

  • Mamluks institutionalized Sunni madrasas and waqf endowments in Damascus, Aleppo, and Jerusalem.

• Christianity:

  • Armenian and Georgian churches endured under Mongol, Mamluk, and Timurid pressures.

  • Northeastern Cyprus and Cilician Armenia hosted Latin cathedrals and monasteries.

• Judaism: thriving communities in Baghdad, Damascus, and Tabriz engaged in scholarship and commerce.

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Adaptation and Resilience

• Political layering: successor dynasties (Jalayirids, Muzaffarids) maintained irrigation and caravan routes after Ilkhanid collapse.

• Route redundancy: if Levantine ports faltered, trade diverted via Hormuz–Tabriz or the Black Sea (Trebizond).

• Urban–Sufi–guild networks: mediated crisis during plague years, sustaining social cohesion.

• Maritime resilience: Hormuz’s dominance ensured Gulf commerce continued despite upheavals inland.

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Long-Term Significance

By 1395, the Middle East had reconfigured into polycentric powers:

• Mamluk Syria consolidated Sunni legitimacy and Mediterranean trade.

• Jalayirids and Muzaffarids carried Ilkhanid legacies until Timur’s conquests.

• Hormuz anchored the Persian Gulf as a global maritime crossroad.

• Armenia, Georgia, and Cilicia suffered fragmentation and invasion but preserved ecclesiastical traditions.

• Northeastern Cyprus remained Latin, a final outpost of crusader Christendom.

This constellation — Persianate successor courts, Mamluk Levant, Gulf thalassocracy, and Caucasian frontier polities — defined the region’s transition into the 15th century under Timurid shockwaves and the oncoming Ottoman challenge.

Bitter conflicts among the various regional and ethnic groups in Lebanon and Syria characterize the thirteenth century.

The Crusaders, who come from Europe, the Mongols, who come from the steppes of Central Asia, and the Mamluks, who come from Egypt, all seek to be masters in the area.

In this hard and confused struggle for supremacy, victory comes to the Mamluks.

The Mamluks are a combination of enslaved Turkmen from the area east of the Caspian Sea and enslaved Circassians from the Caucasus Mountains between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea.

They are brought in by the Muslim Ayyubid sultans of Egypt to serve as their bodyguards.

One of these slaves, Aybak, assassinates the Ayyubid sultan, Al Ashraf Musa, in 1252 and founds the Mamluk sultanate, which will rule Egypt and Syria for more than two centuries.

Shi'a Muslims migrate during the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries from Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninula to the northern part of the Beqaa Valley and to the Kasrawan Region in the mountains northeast of Beirut.

They and the Druzes rebel in 1291 while the Mamluks are busy fighting European Crusaders and Mongols, but after repelling the invaders, the Mamluks crush the rebellion in 1308.

To escape from repression and massacres by the Mamluks, the Shi'as abandon Kasrawan and move to southern Lebanon.

The Near East (1252–1395 CE): Mamluk Dominance and Cultural Integration

From the Nile’s fertile floodplains to the sandstone escarpments of Arabia and the ancient valleys of Nubia, the Near East in the Lower Late Medieval Age stood as the strategic and spiritual heart of the Islamic world. It was a region where power flowed through the twin arteries of the Nile and the Red Sea, where pilgrimage and trade converged, and where a dynamic synthesis of cultures, faiths, and technologies gave the region a renewed unity after the turmoil of Mongol and Crusader invasions.

Following the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258, Egypt emerged as the new center of Islamic authority under the Mamluks, a military aristocracy of Turkic, Circassian, and Kurdish slave origins who rose from regimental ranks to the sultan’s throne. The Mamluks decisively halted Mongol expansion at the Battle of ʿAyn Jālūt in 1260, securing Syria and Egypt under their protection. Sultan Baybars I (r. 1260–1277) fortified desert roads, reorganized the postal network, and absorbed the remaining Crusader territories. The final Latin strongholds—Antioch, Tripoli, and Acre—fell by 1291, restoring full Muslim control over the eastern Mediterranean for the first time since the early Abbasid centuries.

Under Qalawun (r. 1279–1290) and his successors, Cairo became the empire’s beating heart. The Qalawun complex, with its mosque, hospital, and madrasa, stood among many new foundations that transformed the city’s silhouette. Al-Nasir Muhammad’s long rule (1293–1341) brought stability and wealth through the restoration of irrigation canals and expansion of the Nile Delta’s estates. Alexandria’s port revived as Mediterranean merchants—Genoese, Venetian, and Catalan—returned for pepper, sugar, and textiles. In Damascus and Aleppo, artisans of glass, brass, and silk created luxury goods exported across the Islamic world. The Mamluk system of waqf endowments sustained these urban economies, while networks of Sufi hospices, madrasas, and caravanserais provided spiritual and social infrastructure for travelers and the poor.

Across Palestine and Syria, the Mamluks rebuilt cities devastated by war. In Jerusalem, new mosques, schools, and fountains framed the Ḥaram al-Sharīf, affirming the city’s sacred status within the rejuvenated Sunni order. Pilgrimage flourished once more: caravans from Cairo and Damascus converged annually toward Mecca and Medina along fortified desert routes. ʿAyn Jālūt, once a battlefield, now marked the secure border between Egypt’s dominions and the Mongol successor states of the Middle East.

The Mamluk administrative system, a fusion of military discipline and bureaucratic oversight, endured despite plague and political intrigue. The Black Death (1347–1351) struck heavily—killing perhaps a third of Egypt’s population—but the state’s granaries, irrigation, and guild networks hastened recovery. Plague memorials and endowments became acts of piety; scholarship at al-Azhar, long dormant under earlier dynasties, revived into one of the leading intellectual centers of Islam.

Beyond the Nile’s southern cataracts, the Nubian kingdoms underwent transformation. Arab tribes migrating from the north and east intermarried with Beja and Nubian peoples, fostering a slow and voluntary Islamization. When the Mamluks intervened in 1276, they installed a Muslim ruler in Dongola, reducing the ancient Christian kingdom to a vassal. By the fourteenth century, the Jaʿalin and Juhayna tribes dominated the middle Nile, the former settling as cultivators, the latter roaming the steppes between the river and the Red Sea. Conversion offered tax advantages and social mobility, and the resulting Arab–Nubian synthesis laid the foundation of modern Sudanese identity.
The disintegration of the medieval Nubian Christian states also set in motion a long southward demographic ripple. As Arabization and Islamization advanced along the Nile, communities displaced from Nubia and the surrounding savannas moved into the upper reaches of the White Nile and the Great Lakes region. This process, often described as the Nilotic expansion, included the gradual migration of the Luo and related groups, whose movement fostered extensive ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversification across eastern and central Sub-Saharan Africa.

To the east, the Red Sea connected Egypt and Arabia with Yemen, Aden, and India. Qus and Qift in Upper Egypt supplied caravans that crossed the Eastern Desert to ʿAydhāb and Suakin, where goods from the Indian Ocean—pepper, spices, cottons, and pearls—were unloaded for the Nile convoys to Cairo. Southward, Aden and Jiddahbecame twin portals for pilgrims and commerce. From the harbors of Yanbuʿ and Jiddah, ships sailed to East Africa, while the overland pilgrimage roads converged on Mecca and Medina, maintained by the Mamluks as both religious trust and geopolitical necessity. The flow of pilgrims sustained markets for leather, grain, and livestock along the route; wells and forts dotted the Hijaz, inscribed with the names of sultans who had endowed them.

On Cyprus, the Lusignan monarchy survived the Crusader collapse, its ports of Famagusta and Kyrenia becoming commercial waystations between Latin Europe and Mamluk Syria. Venetian and Genoese merchants established sugar plantations that drew enslaved labor from the Black Sea and Africa—an early prototype of the plantation economies that would later expand across the Atlantic world. Religious tension accompanied this economic vigor: the papal Bulla Cypria (1260) sought to impose Latin rites on Orthodox Cypriots, but Greek Christianity endured, shaping a resilient island culture under Latin rule.

Through all these transformations, the region remained an integrated crossroads of belief. In Cairo, Damascus, and Jerusalem, jurists of the four Sunni schools codified law; Sufi saints and philosophers interpreted divine unity through poetry and ritual; Jewish and Christian communities contributed to scholarship, finance, and trade. Cairo’s synagogues and Aleppo’s Armenian quarters stood within sight of mosques and madrasas, the product of a long coexistence that survived even epidemic and invasion.

By the late fourteenth century, Mamluk Egypt and Syria stood as the strongest Sunni power between the Maghrib and the Oxus. To their east, the Jalayirids and Muzaffarids inherited Ilkhanid traditions until Timur’s conquests reshaped Iran. To their south, Arab–Nubian and Nilotic societies prospered along the Nile; to their west, Cypriot and Venetian traders sustained Mediterranean exchange; and to their east and south, the Red Sea and Indian Ocean routes ensured that the spice and pilgrimage trades continued to flow through Cairo’s customs houses.

Thus by 1395 CE, the Near East had re-emerged from a century of turbulence as a unified religious and economic sphere—Sunni in its orthodoxy, cosmopolitan in its cities, and global in its maritime reach. Cairo’s minarets, Jerusalem’s sanctuaries, and Mecca’s shrines anchored a civilization that, even in the shadow of plague and invasion, continued to harmonize faith, learning, and commerce across the meeting point of Africa and Asia.

Understanding the history of Egypt during the later Middle Ages requires the consideration of two major events in the eastern Arab world: the migration of Turkish tribes during the Abbasid caliphate and their eventual domination of it, and the Mongol invasion.

Turkish tribes had begun moving west from the Eurasian steppes in the sixth century.

As the Abbasid Empire weakened, Turkish tribes began to cross the frontier in search of pasturage.

The Turks had converted to Islam within a few decades after entering the Middle East.

The Turks had also entered the Middle East as mamluks (slaves) employed in the armies of Arab rulers.

Mamluks, although slaves, are usually paid, sometimes handsomely, for their services.

Indeed, a mamluk's service as a soldier and member of an elite unit or as an imperial guard is an enviable first step in a career that opens to him the possibility of occupying the highest offices in the state.

Mamluk training is not restricted to military matters and often includes languages and literary and administrative skills to enable the mamluks to occupy administrative posts.

A new wave of Turks had entered the empire as free warriors and conquerors in the late tenth century.

One group had occupied Baghdad, taken control of the central government, and reduced the  Abbasid caliphs to puppets.

The other had moved west into Anatolia, which it conquered from a weakened Constatntinople.

The Mamluks have already established themselves in Egypt and are able to establish their own empire because the Mongols destroy the Abbasid caliphate, putting to death the last Abbasid caliph in Baghdad in 1258.

The following year, a Mongol army of as many as one hundred and twenty thousand men commanded by Hulagu Khan crosses the Euphrates and enters Syria.

Meanwhile, in Egypt the last Ayyubid sultan had died in 1250, and political control of the state had passed to the Mamluk guards whose generals have  seized the sultanate.

Soon after the news of the Mongol entry into Syria reaches Egypt in 1258, the Turkish Mamluk Qutuz declares himself sultan and organizes the successful military resistance to the Mongol advance.

The decisive battle is fought in 1260 at Ain Jalut in Palestine, where Qutuz's forces defeat  the Mongol army.

An important role in the fighting is played by Baibars, who shortly afterwards assassinates Qutuz and is chosen sultan.

Baibars I (1260-77) is the real founder of the Mamluk Empire.

He comes from the elite corps of Turkish Mamluks, the Bahriyyah, so-called because they are garrisoned on the island of Rawdah on the Nile River.

Baybars I establishes his rule firmly in Syria, forcing the Mongols back to their Iraqi territories.

At the end of the fourteenth century, power passes from the original Turkish elite, the Bahriyyah Mamluks, to Circassians, whom the Turkish Mamluk sultans had in their turn recruited as slave soldiers.

Nubia's indigenous people absorb Arab migrants who settle among them in some instances, as among the Beja.

Beja ruling families will later derive their legitimacy from their claims of Arab ancestry.

Although not all Muslims in the region are Arabic-speaking, acceptance of Islam facilitates the arabizing process.

There is no policy of proselytism, however, and forced conversion is rare.

Islam penetrates the area over a long period of time through intermarriage and contacts with Arab merchants and settlers.

Exemption from taxation in regions under Muslim rule also proves a powerful incentive to conversion.

Traditional genealogies trace the ancestry of most of the Nile Valley's mixed population to Arab tribes that migrate into the region during this period.

Even many non-Arabic speaking groups claim descent from Arab forebears.

The Jaali and the Juhaynah are the two most important Arabic-speaking groups to emerge in Nubia are.

Both show physical continuity with the indigenous pre-Islamic population.

The former claim descent from the Quraysh, the Prophet Muhammad's tribe.

Historically, the Ja'alin have been sedentary farmers and herders or townspeople settled along the Nile and in Al Jazirah.

The nomadic Juhayna comprise a family of tribes that includes the Kababish, Baqqara, and Shukriya.

They are descended from Arabs who migrate after the thirteenth century into an area that extends from the savanna and semidesert west of the Nile to the hill country east of the Blue Nile.

Both groups form a series of tribal shaykhdoms that succeed the crumbling Christian Nubian kingdoms and that are in frequent conflict with one another and with neighboring non-Arabs.

Jews suffer persecution in both Egypt and Muslim Spain in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Some Muslim countries enforce rigid ghetto systems for Jews with restrictions on the sizes of houses and doors.

The Mamluk Bahri dynasty has ruled Egypt and Syria since 1250, its rulers having been mostly of Turkish ethnic origin, but in 1377 a revolt had broken out in Syria and spread to Egypt, and the government has been taken over by the Circassians Barakah and Barkuk.

Barkuk is proclaimed sultan in 1382, ending the Bahri dynasty.

From this point, the majority of the Mamluk rulers will generally be of Circassian origin.