A Strange Discussion on Indian Weapons

[Rivkin]

[QUOTE=ham]

Originally Posted by Rivkin

What Aqtai probably meant that until 1517 Mamluk could not have an arabic name - only turkish (independent of his origins). After 1517 in order to "ottomonize" them their were required to take arabic names, so we have Ali-Bey etc.

Respectfully Rivkin, I doubt very much whether that is what Aqtai meant; it is patently untrue. Mamluks regularly took Arabic names from the time they were brought to Baghdad under the Abbasid sultans in the bloody ninth century, to say nothing of the fact that literally every Egyptian Mamluk Sultan had an Arabic name as well. And as far as giving a Mamluk an Arabic name in order to Ottomanize him...? You'll have to explain that one.

Not pretending to be a specialist, and being too lazy to go to the library and pick up the book:

Concerning the names, I can't say I remeber "literally every" Sultan, but from the names I remember : Baybars, Qutuz, Qautbay, Barsbay, Tumanbay, Qalawun, Yilbay, Temur-Buga, semi-sultan Khairbek do not sound to me anything like arabic names. Is Inal an arabic name ? I'm sure they had long, arabic titles and aliases, al-rachman, al-malek, al-dawla something (did they Abdallah to signify their way to Islam ?) and that's may be even the way ulema called them, here I'm at complete ignorance, but I don't remember, may be to my shame, any sultan who would have an explicitly arabic name.
As far as I remember the point was specifically that even Circassians (and their names are very unturkish) always took a turkish (atrak) name when becoming a mamluk. Btw it's a surprise for me that you say they used ottoman, I always thought they used more "classical" turkish.

P.S. may be I was not exactly correct in phrasing my statement - not that they could not have arabic names, titles and aliases, but one of the main symbols of being mamluk was being given a turkish name during the process.

P.P.S. After writing this I went through my books and indeed found Muhammed ibn-Qalawun. No turkish name, only arabic. Interesting, did he go through a traditional mamluk education ?