Salahadin's army

[Aqtai]

I didn't know this thread had been started, otherwise i would have posted here rather than the movie thread.

Any way here's my two cents worth, or should that be two fils?

Many Islamic states used slave warriors or mamluks from very early on. The 'Abbassid Khalifas were using Turkish mamluks in the 9th century, Ahmad ibn Tulun was himself the son of a Turkish mamluk. Nur-ed-din Mahmud's father Emad-ed-din zenki was originally a mamluk in the Seljuq army. However these mamluks were usually relatively few in number and acted as a body guard to the ruler. The exception was the Fatimids who had large numbers of Nubian slave infantrymen and the later Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt. Salaheddin had a bodyguard of several hundred mamluks called the halaqa, i.e. ring.

The rest of Salaheddin's army was a mixture. he disbanded most of the old Fatimid army after he seized power in Egypt because their loyalty to him was suspect. His light cavalry would have been made of up Turcoman horse-archers who had settled in Syria and Northern Iraq. His heavy cavalry was made up of Kurds, free Turks who had settled in the cities of syria and Northern Iraq for one or two generations, sons of mamluks and a small number of Arabs from the bedouin tribes of Syria, Palestine and Egypt. he would have had some Arab heavy infantry from the Syrian cities as well as bedouin infantry.

Now the days when I was fascinated with Islamic history are long behind me so I can't produce quotes, and all my books are still at my parents house, i can't see my wife agreeing to me filling our house with dusty old books on Islamic history.

However I do remember this, Turks dominated later Islamic armies because they were seen as a loyal, martial and warlike people, more so than the Arabs. the rulers of later Islamic states like Nur-ed-din Mahmud and the Seljuqs were also Turkish. They trusted their fellow Turks more than the Arabs. Salaheddin started his career as an officer in Nur-ed-Din's army.

Settled Arabs in the cities of Egypt and Syria acted as an intellegensia, they made up the civil service, the judiciary and of course the imams, and preachers were all Arab. The bedouins were of course fine infanry and cavalry but they were rightly seen as unreliable as their primary loyalty was always to their clan and tribe, not to Turkish and Kurdish rulers who they viewed as usurpers.

There were of course exceptions to this, the tiny Emirate of Shayzar, which is where Usama ibn Munqidh was from had a mainly Arab army.