State formation and the structure of politics in Mamluk Syro-Egypt, 648-741 A.H./1250-1340 C.E

Owing to the dichotomy drawn in Western thought between modern society as the result of industrialization and historic society as the product of militarization, pre-modern Middle Eastern states have been viewed as functionally military, largely devoid of principles of social organization and process and suited only to the militarized discipline of Oriental Despotism. Such historicism has found its apotheosis perhaps in the study of the late medieval Syro-Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate (1260-1517/658-922). By describing the Mamluk state entirely in terms of its externalized military organization, scholars have obfuscated the internal sociopolitical structures which actually integrated and sustained it. Consequently, scholars have been unable to interpret the social conflict (fitnah) for which the Mamluks have become so notorious, projecting instead an image of the Mamluk state as a state of nature, a reflection of the violent anarchic tendencies of the Mamluks themselves. Yet, how could a society in the grip of chronic anarchy have persisted for almost three centuries as the premier central Islamic state between the fall of the 'Abbasid High Caliphate and the rise of the Ottoman World Empire?;The purpose of this dissertation is to address this central paradox of early Mamluk state formation by developing a systems analysis of Mamluk politics. By maintaining a circular flow of communication--a feedback loop--the Mamluks were able to convert constantly the internal stress of competition for resources into a dynamic equilibrium preservative of state structure. Mamluks actively inhibited resort to mass violence and resolved conflict among themselves through an informal process of grievance redress aimed at an equitable distribution of resources and rotation of power based on seniority. Grievance was communicated through structured violence and resolved through negotiation; dissidents, though often sanctioned, were usually rehabilitated as role partners. These microsocial processes, based on symbolic interaction and exchange, were affected in turn by macrostructural concepts of moral economy (haqq) and constitutional order (nizam). By structuring social power in this way, creating a certain role complementarity between regime and opposition, the Mamluks were able to reduce the cost of their politics and preserve state structure.