Rivkin, that is exactly what I meant
.
Mamluks during the Mamluk period used Turkish names like Baybars, Qalawun, Khushqadam, Qaitbay and Tumanbay. As Rivkin said this even carried on after
mamluks were no longer Turkish and recruited from the Caucasus. I assume it was some kind of tradition. Indeed
mamluks actually spoke the Qipchaq dialect, for example Sultan Qansuh El-Ghuri, who was of Circassian erigin, commissioned a Turkish translation of the Shah-nameh so that other
mamluks could understand it! BTW this Mamluk shahnameh remains a useful source of information on the appearence of
mamluks. During the Ottoman period, as Rivkin pointed out, the
mamluks started using Arabic names.
With regards to Muhammad ibn Qalawun, the children of
mamluks who were born and brought up in Egypt always had Arabic names and were excluded from military careers, although they may have been allowed to join the
halaqa in the early Mamluk period. Yusef Ibn Taghri-birdi and Mohammed Ibn Ahmed Ibn Iyas were sons and grandsons of
mamluks. However children of
mamluks were entitled to a state pension, which is probably why these two had the time to become historians, they also had access to many
mamluk emirs and even the sultan himself. AFAIK the only two mamluk sultans of mamluk origin, not the sons of a previous sultan, who didn't have Turkish names I can think of are Sultan Barquq (which means plum) and Sultan Al-Mu'ayyad Sheikh.
Ham, thanks for letting me know about the research carried out on Mamluk and Ottoman armour. Is any of it being published in English or available to the public?