During the Middle Ages, the Mamluk Sultanate was a Medieval Islamic dynasty that ruled over Egypt, the Levant, and Hejaz. It lasted from the end of the Ayyubid dynasty in Cairo in 1250 until the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517. Yet, after its conquest, the Mamluks remained an elite class of Egypt whilst becoming an administrative division or a province (Vilayet) to the Ottoman Empire, ushering in a new chapter of Egyptian history known as the Eyalet of Egypt. The Mamluks remained the ruling class for almost three centuries until their violent demise in a bloody massacre called the Citadel Massacre at the behest of Mohammad Ali Pasha in 1811.

The term Mamluk is an Arabic word that literally denotes “one who is owned” or “slave.” However, a distinction was made from another Arabic word for slave called ʿabd. The former referred to “white slaves” of ethnically diverse backgrounds employed in the Muslim military serving the ruling Arab dynasties in the Muslim world, whereas the latter is typically associated with household or labor slaves, usually of African descent.

The Mamluks were slave soldiers captured as children from different parts of the Eurasian steppe and other regions, converted to Islam, then manumitted, and made to serve in the Muslim Army and key government positions under several Muslim rulers of multiple Islamic dynasties.

These slave soldiers gained enough power and influence in Muslim courts, subsequently comprising a soldier caste that rose to influential prominence, eventually assuming power and establishing their own dynasties, such as the aforementioned Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt and the Levant, and also the Mamluk Dynasty in India, the Ghaznavids and Khwarizmians in Persia. The Mamluks of Egypt and Syria seized power under the first Mamluk sultan and first female sovereign of Islamic Egypt, Shajar Ad-dur.

Historians have traditionally split the era of Mamluk rule into two periods, one covering 1250–1382 (the “Baḥrī” period) and the other 1382–1517 (the “Burjī” period), named after the ruling dynasties of the respective eras. Modern sources also refer to the same divisions as the “Turkish” and “Circassian” periods to stress the change in the ethnic origins of most Mamluks. The term “Mamluk Sultanate” is a modern historiographical term. The sultanate’s ruling caste was composed of Mamluk soldiers, predominantly of Cuman-Kipchaks (from Crimea), Circassian, Abkhazian, Oghuz Turks, Albanian, Slavic, Greek, Armenian, and Georgian slave origin.

Though it declined towards the end of its existence, at its height, the sultanate represented the zenith of medieval Egypto-Levantine political, economic, and cultural glory in the Islamic Golden Age. To consolidate their position in the Islamic world, the Mamluks revived the caliphate, which the Mongols had destroyed in 1258. They installed a caliph under their surveillance in Cairo, where he was accorded respect but no power, reduced to a mere titular figurehead “caliph”. 

After the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans, the Ottoman conquest of the Mamluks was the final stage of their attempts to fully dominate the region by redirecting the seat of the caliphate from Cairo to Istanbul and securing a grip on the greater Mediterranean and the major trading routes.

The dissemination of Turkic/Central Asian influences and culture in Egypt and the Arab East truly began to materialize during the Mamluks. A lot of the nomadic Central Asian styles of fitted coats and riding jackets, as well as headwear, became the official dress of the ruling elites. After the conquest of the Mashriq (Arab East) by the Ottoman Turks in 1517, costumes underwent further development as the ruling élite and urban classes absorbed and adapted Turkish/Ottoman fashions. Starting from the late 16th century until the dismantlement of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century, Istanbul became the trendsetter and arbitrator of high fashion across the provinces under Ottoman rule.

As a consequence of the Ottoman annexation of Egypt and other parts of the Middle East, travel became safer. Sultan Selim I protected French traders and pilgrims, and then, when the printing press was invented in the mid-15th century, details and images of travelers became more widely dispersed, encouraging more people to make the voyage to Egypt. The facilitated ease of travel between East and West paved the way for European painters and travelers to visit the Mamluk-ruled provinces and Constantinople, bringing for the first time, the figural and hyperrealistic artistic style of the West, instead of the abstract and vague style of the East.

These paintings are enormously helpful in distinguishing the types of apparel worn by the Mamluks. Also, at the end of the 18th century, the world witnessed the French campaign of Egypt and Syria led by Napoleon Bonaparte, which helped bring a new fascination and interest in Egypt’s history, which undoubtedly helped shed some light on the otherwise foggy history of these places, but in turn paved the way for the establishment of Western colonial projects in these regions.

Several important trends became prominent in the Islamic vestimentary system during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Among these are: (a) the diffusion of new garments from outside the system, (b) increasing social stratification reflected in clothing, and (c) the rigidification of the dress code for the dhimmi subject population. The Turkish military dynasties that controlled one part or another of the Middle East from the late eleventh/fifth to the early sixteenth/tenth centuries brought with them many Central Asian styles, particularly in the military and ceremonial attire. These, however, were, in the beginning, the distinguishing costumes of the military feudal élite. The fashion of dress of the native Arab population was little affected at first.

Mikhail Viktorovich Gorelik, the renowned author in the history of pre-modern warfare, has attempted to distinguish between two broad complexes of dress throughout the Arab East at this time—the Western, based on the fusion of Arabian styles with those derived from Hellenistic Mediterranean prototypes, and the eastern, derived from Iranian, Turkish, and Inner Asian styles. Syria and Iraq during this period fell generally into the latter category, while Egypt, with the exception of the military, fell into the former.

However, as already noted in the preceding chapter, this fusion of vestimentary systems was already taking place as early as the Umayyad period and had gained even more momentum under the Abbasids. The only difference now was that the Central Asian styles were becoming ever more dominant in Syria and particularly in Iraq. 

In the Bahri army, there were at least five main ethnic groupings, and three divisions, each with a distinctive dress, which was fiercely protected, as well as a special uniform for attending the sultan, and another for royal processions. At least six different types of military qaba are named, but none can be securely assigned to the various military garments shown in late-thirteenth-century depictions.

The sharbush and the sarajuq, favorite military headgear until the late thirteenth century, were replaced by the kalawta or small fabric cap, sometimes costing almost two months of a doctor’s salary, worn with or without a turban cloth. Army and court officers were allowed to display their own blazon (rank) on their belongings, whether shoes, pen cases, or servants’ clothing; several, made of appliqué felt, have survived.

Unfortunately, the descendants of Mamluk amirs never kept the magnificent suits of their ancestors as family souvenirs, and incredibly little has survived. Although considerably scarce, the Mamluk period, compared to other medieval Islamic empires, is by far the most prolific in terms of surviving extant full garments. An undercoat, two pairs of trousers, a hat, and a few caps; that is all that can be definitely identified as belonging to the period and country under review.

A) Undergarment in the Mamluk periods

Unisex

1- Qamjūn قمجون

The Qamjun replaced the qamis, and according to Mayer, it was a short tunic with short sleeves, made of Jukh (broadcloth) without lining or cloth facing. Women wore this qamjun chemise as well. An account of a group of mamluks who conspired with two odalisques of the great judge, Shams ed-din al-badri al-mazlaqi, to murder their master by disguising themselves as women and successfully taking his life. Upon the group’s arrest, one odalisque was captured wearing her intimate garments (libsiha al-khas), which were a taqiyya (cap) with pearls, a gold earring, a red qamjun (chemise) under an intimate white kibr (rough cloak), and the taqqiya was removed from her head and was donned with the tartur al-masakhir (elongated cap of ridicule).

Women

1- Miʾzar & sirwāl مئزر وسروال

The Miʾzar in the Mamluk era were knee-length (sirwāl) underpants, unlike the usual full-length ones. Several historical reports show that Mamluk women of all social hierarchies wore sirwāls. Al-Maqrizi mentions that Shajar Ad-dur had only a sirwāl (drawers or underpants) and a qamiṣ (chemise) on her when she was killed. Mayer argues that it is doubtful whether the wearing of either of these two kinds of drawers was universal, although numerous arguments for and against could be invoked.

The fact that lists of women’s trousseaux in marriage contracts of the Mamluk period make no mention of drawers or, what is far more important, the luxurious trouser-bands (tikka) may be quoted as an argumentum ex silentio against the assumption that drawers were very popular.  But the value of this evidence is much restricted by the scarcity of such contracts.  On the other hand, the fact that sometime later during the Circassian period the usual word for drawers was libas, i.e., dress kat’ exochen, seems to indicate its popularity at that time.

Arabic chroniclers and European travelers noted that women of the élite during the first two centuries of the Mamluk period sported luxurious drawers, brocaded with gold and silver thread or studded with jewels. The wives of amirs and viziers sometimes possessed enormous collections of drawers in their wardrobes. The wife of the vizier Shams al-Dīn Mūsa was reported to have owned no less than 400 pairs (a medieval parallel to the shoe collection of Imelda Marcos), and the amir Aqbughā’s wife’s collection was sold off for 200,000 dirhams.

A fourteenth-century Italian pilgrim, Simone Sigoli, relates that he was told by his Muslim guide that the adornment of luxurious drawers could cost as much as 400-500 ducats (He, of course, would have no opportunity to actually see an upper-class woman’s underdrawers). Even the tikka, or drawerstring, could be bejeweled, or saturated with musk. During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, it became fashionable among some women to wear their underpants low, with the top drawn down well below the waistline. This—together with revealing, tightly fitted clothing—shocked the prudish Māliki jurist Muhammad b. al-H̱ājj al-ʿAbdarī. 

The elaborate and costly decoration of the sirwal legs worn by Cairene and Alexandrian ladies in the late 14th century was known to “… cost 400 ducats each, and even 500 ducats, so many are the pearls and precious stones with which they are pleated. Then they wear chemises all worked in silk and gold and silver, so that they cost 200 gold ducats and more, and the said chemises reach to the knee and are very wide; the sleeves, reaching to the elbow, are a good braccio (cubit) of our measure.” 

Arnold Von Harff, in his travelogue, commented that he witnessed Cairene women in “leather trousers with underskirts“. These underpants were referred to as libās. The word libās in Arabic generally refers to clothing or a garment, yet in the Egyptian vernacular, it denotes undergarments. 

Peasants working in the field are sometimes shown bare-chested and wearing only knee-length britches (either long tūbbān or short sirwāl). The Arab poet al-Quṭāmī (died 728/110) specifically mentions the Nabateans (that is, the Aramaic-speaking peasantry) as being able to stand up to the heat of the sun wearing only their tūbbān.

2- Qamis/qamjūn قميص

Together with the underdrawers, the undershirt, qamiṣ or “qamjūn” as referred to in this period, was also the basic element of female attire in the Mamluk period, as per usual. The qamiṣ was normally long and ample and ranged from light and gauzy to more substantial weight.

“Then they wear chemises all worked in silk and gold and silver, so that they cost 200 gold ducats and more, and the said chemises reach to the knee and are very wide; the sleeves, reaching to the elbow, are a good braccio (cubit) of our measure.“

3- Bahṭalah بَهطلة

The Bahṭalah was a shirt that was in vogue in the Mamluk period during the first half of the fourteenth/eighth century. The shirt had a long train that trailed on the floor and had very long and wide sleeves, three ells wide, which were emphasized to great advantage by the short-sleeved baġlūṭāq coat (originally a male, military garment) that was popularly worn over it. This shirt was so highly coveted that it drove the vizir Saif Ad-din Minjik, serving in office (1347- 1351 C.E.), to issue a law banning these extravagant shirts and went as far as to imprison women who didn’t comply with the law. One shirt is said to have cost more than one thousand dirhams (silver coins).

4- kamšabġāwiyyah الكَمْشَبْغَاوِيَّة

A type of shirt that was prevalent during the Mamluk era, named after the emir Kumushbugha, the sultan’s viceroy in Egypt in 1390 C.E. The shirt was characterized by having long, ample sleeves.

5- Qandūra قندورة/كندورة

During the eighth/fourteenth century, a shorter chemise, the qandūra, that only went down to the knees, came into vogue. Unlike the Andalusian and Maghrebi sleeveless chemise by this name, this one had elbow-length sleeves, which the Italian Sigoli describes as “a good braccio” (approximately two feet) in width.

Interestingly, just as such very long qumṣān with ostentatiously trailing trains and enormous sleeves had aroused conservative sensibilities because of their inordinate length, so did the qanādīr because of what was perceived to be their immodest brevity. Like other contemporary feminine fashions, this too was condemned by the strait-laced Ibn al-H̱ājj. The qandūra in the modern age refers to a wide variety of outer gowns and tunics worn by men and women in different parts of the Middle East and North Africa.