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Originally Posted by Jens Nordlunde
Hi Rivkin,
No it was not wrong of you to offer your oppinion, and in a way there can be some truce in it. Most mamluks were of low rank, but there were some which held a high/very high rank in the Sultans army, so they would have had very elaborate swords - only they might not have been Egyptian swords, not even the type, and a sword given to the Sultan of India for a gift, must have been something very special, or you may end up in jail or some place less pleasent - when it came to gifts, they did not joke much those days  . |
I have to strongly disagree. The records of slave auctions suggest that (taking one dinar to be approximately equal to 13 dirhams, and taking in mind that the weight of dinars and dirhams varied greatly over time, especially during the economical crisis of late years):
The cheapest slaves were pagans (kafir) captured in masses during military campaings - like the lowest class of slaves, hindus. Their price was 2-10 dirhams.
Quality Black male slave would cost about 100-300 dirhams (depending on skills, endurance, age etc.)
In the beauty market non-whites costed far less than whites, especially beautiful blonde boys and girls - the range was from 10 to 300 dirhams for a black woman to 10,000 dirhams for exceptional (mostly white blonde) beaties, with the majority of really attractive black women being sold for 500-1000 dirhams .
Eunuchs costed 4 times more than normal males, because only 25% on average survived castration.
Now to the military slaves - average turkish soldier costed 500 dirhams in Mosul, a little more in Cairo. Good turk fighter costed 1000 dirhams.
The price for very good soldiers was about 10,000 dirhams. Later the prices started to grow - caucasian mamluks wanted to have caucasians under their command, which dictate sometimes completely exorbitant prices, but 10,000 dirhams seems to be a good estimate for quality "mamluk-commander".
Concerning their weaponry, during napoleonic campaigns, the body of a mamluk (with his weaponry) was bringing to founder 15,000 francs (something like three year salary for a ranking officer).
In short I seriously doubt that sultan's mamluks (which were of better quality than mamluks of local leadership), every one of them costing like 250 hindus would carry inferior quality swords.
P.S. why they were so expensive ? Couple of things you had to pass to be a Mamluk:
Riding a horse in between of two lines of targets. Chopping the targets down. Horse should go as fast as to come in between of 3 targets in 1.5 seconds. All targets should be destroyed.
Similar test in archery.
References: as usual, would start with Nasidze, Lewis, "Muslim Slave System
in Medieval India" by Lal etc.