Mamluk Egyptian Construction at its Heyday
During the second or late Middle Ages, the visual arts in Egyptian cities flourished like never before. The rapid expansion of the Mamluk dynasty, supported by a strong endowment system, made Cairo increasingly prosperous. The state's income from arable land is regularly used in pious endowments. During the early dynastic period, the Egyptian, Christian, and Jewish communities had devout foundations that supported charities, helped the poor, and funded community structures. The formalization and expansion of the endowment system in the hands of the ruling bloc have invested heavily in supporting the properties of major Islamic institutions across Egypt.
Mamluk architecture was also largely built to maintain authority and legitimacy of power. In fact, like other ruling classes, the Mamluks had to continue to maintain their influence once they came to power, but they had to face several unique problems. The Muruks do not have pure aristocratic blood. In addition, they are not the same as the area they rule in terms of race, language, and culture, so the people will inevitably doubt their rule. Therefore, massive participation in the establishment of public buildings is one of the steps they take to strengthen the legitimacy of their power. The first is to repair and build new forts in various cities. As the key to the defense policy of this period, hundreds of forts were built and repaired during the Mamluk rule.
In 1310, Sultan Qarawin issued a decree instructing the local governor to repair the fortress of Jerusalem. Unlike the fortress of Safed, the fortress of Jerusalem was not in a privileged topographical position, and then he was separated from the rest of the city by high walls and moats open, making it an impenetrable, secluded, and awesome fortress. The centralization of the Waqf system, and the distribution of farmland revenues throughout the empire to support city institutions, especially those in the capital, made it possible to expand significantly in the type, size, and a number of buildings that financed the general good of the community.
By the 14th century, Cairo, as described by Ibn Khaldun, had become the most important university city in the world. Its streets are lined with institutions large and small dedicated to charitable causes, many of whose usufructs are dedicated to the descendants of all or some of the donors. The huge revenues from these donations also supported the extraction of expensive luxury goods from Egypt, such as marble and porphyry, and the controls needed for the long-distance trade of luxury goods, such as marble from Italy and lapis lazuli from the Orient. Beginning in the twentieth century, as Sunni law schools became dominant in Egypt and some families with daughters used the wag system as a means of avoiding property loss, there was a marked increase in buildings donated by women-funded foundations.
Surface treatment in Mamluk architecture includes details of metalworking equipment used in construction. Hinges, corner brackets, metal grilles, and locks are given elegant forms and finished surfaces. A striking example is the bronze medallion graphic on the madrasa door of the Sultan Hassan Mosque. The basic badge design is used to stabilize and secure the wooden plank of the door. However, this emblem is not only carefully crafted, its surface is also inserted with exquisite floral patterns, which can be seen in the architectural aesthetic influence of the Mamluk period.
Mamluk sultans and their emirs marked their buildings and identities with their coats of arms. These emblems identify officers by equipment, color, and type of shield. Some 50 different implements have been identified, ranging from animals to office signs, abstract implements to literal legends. The shield, which serves as the backdrop against which these emblems are displayed, comes in a variety of shapes—circular, square, faceted, oval, etc.—and at different times are single-sided, double-sided, and three-sided. They were the most common motifs in visual works of the Mamluk period.
The rise of the Mongols and Mamluks began around the same time. However, the peak of Ilkhan's rule in Iran was in the first quarter of the 14th century, slightly before the Mamluk Golden Age of Muhammad, and Ilkhan also had an influence on Mamluk art and other aspects of culture. Ayitamish built a mosque in a delta village that is now gone. It has a minaret displaying a "spiral" pattern, which may be a feature of its tile decoration, as can be seen in Iranian examples, where tile decoration in the Ilkhanian style was adopted in various Mamluk buildings in Cairo above, shows that potters must have come to Cairo at that time as well. The influence of Ilkhan is also reflected in the pottery of that period.
During the Mamluk dynasty, Cairo replaced Baghdad as the center of Islamic civilization. The Mamluk rulers were very interested in art, and the Egyptian architecture of this period reached the most splendid peak in history. Mamluk art preserved the artistic traditions of the Fatimid and Sergui dynasties, and the architectural form of the mosque was influenced by it. The Mamluk dynasty absorbed the art of the Berbers who returned to North Africa from Spain.
Saladin used the captured Shiyu Army soldiers as craftsmen to build a huge castle in Cairo following the European style. The shape of the mosque in this period has four side corridors to reflect the four sects, which changed the Fatimid dynasty's focus on Shia. In addition, the architectural art of Mamluk hospitals and mausoleums is also unique. Mosques of this period had spacious courtyards, palindromic fretwork, and minarets with bulbous vaults. In Sharm and Egypt, mosques had vaulted vaults and short battlemented minarets.
Flourishing Mamluk Egyptian Historiography
Generous philanthropy, combined with the well-known mobility of medieval scholars seeking knowledge, and access to authoritative academic figures, made Cairo a scholarly and intellectual magnet, attracting large endowments. Their number and size created a vast academic environment that influenced the production of books and provided opportunities for scholars to study, edit and transcribe books. A large number of books, especially on religious subjects, and many compilations also contain early encyclopedic knowledge. There are sources showing that these books in the Middle Ages were written by hundreds of people under Mamluk rule, such as Maquilzi, and Ibn Hajar. According to statistics, Maquierzi wrote 116 volumes, and Ibn wrote 150 volumes. Their pursuit, collection, and preservation of Islamic knowledge was not limited to religious science, which greatly enriched the cultural field of this period.
At the cultural level, the flourishing of medieval religious school construction, much of it at the expense of dominating the military and class, represented an effort to formalize and control the social channels through which Islamic religious and legal knowledge spread. The Mamluks' interest in religious matters provides an important measure of how well they fit into local Egyptian cultural patterns. However, the Mamluk regime is also associated with international Sunni cultures, including Egypt, Anatolia, and Iran. The Timurid invasions set off a westward migration similar to that seen under the Mongols a century and a half earlier.
