685/1286) spent several years in Egypt.¹ In his description of Cairo Ibn Saʿīd observes that he found the city ‘particularly welcoming for the poor’ (al-faqīr), a term that clearly includes Sufis: The ...

In a recent article dedicated to the Ninth Crusade, we explained that the English prince and future king Edward I landed in Acre in the spring of 1271, ready to confront the Egyptian Mamluks under ...

Beit Seheimi, with its garden courtyard and steam bath, was constructed in 1648 by a sheikh of Al-Azhar, Abdel Wahab al-Tablawi, in the rich style of the Mamluks who ruled Egypt from the 13th to ...

In 1347 slave traders from the Black Sea brought with them something far deadlier than a cargo of future Mamluk warriors: the Black Death. Plague infested the whole of the known world, but nowhere ...

A large Mamluk-era Quran manuscript from the late 1470s is among the artifacts to be auctioned at Sotheby's today.

Under Mamluk administration ... of Dimashqi from 1327 and the detailed encyclopaedic reference compiled by the Egyptian polymath Al Qalqashandi (1346- 1418). These were in essence: 1) The Balqâ ...