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Originally Posted by Rivkin
Arab cities does not mean arab armies (the cities always remained arab, even under mamluk sultanate).
Most of the western sources seem to refer to him as "seljuk" leader, de-facto conquering Egypt from local rulers. While there can be some misunderstanding of this on my part, and to be honest - I've never seen an exact and detailed description of Salahadin's army (and among people I asked - no one seems to be able to quote one), so I personally believe that one should rely on indirect things, like the quote above - 50,000 Nubian slave (mamluk) soldiers of Cairo garrison seem to contradict "The only mamluks in Saladins army were his personal bodyguards. The rest of the army mainly came from barracks in Damascus, Aleppo and Cairo, all arab cities".
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Nowhere have I read that the Seljuks were ever the de-facto rulers of those cities, they were only the De-facto rulers of Baghdad. The Nubian slave guards were not called mamluks. These were simply called guards, mainly used for garrisons and were mostly infantry, the real mamluks were the turkish slave horsemen. There is an excellent book entitled "Mamluks" by Al-Baz Al Areeni, I believe translated into arabic from turkish, contains info from more that 20 arab sources (even primary) and more than 30 european sources. It contains info from the beginning of the mamluks, until their end in 1517, covers everything, from daily life, to food, to the barracks they lived in, to the time when the mamluks graduate from the tibaq as professional 'fursan'. No where does he include nubian guards as mamluks, yes they are mentioned, and mentioned alot, along with khwarazmians, but not as mamluks.