Family matters: the 'Family-in-law' impulse in Mamluk marriage policy

The academic debate on the ideas and practices that organized succession to the sultanate of Mamluk Egypt and Syria (1250-1517) is long-standing and vexed. This article adds to this debate by bringing in a novel perspective: the “Family-In-Law Impulse.” First, an empirical identification of whom Mamluk sultans between Barqūq (784 AH/1382 CE) and Ḫušqadam (872 AH /1467 CE) married is presented, suggesting that many of these unrelated sultans were connected nonetheless through marriage. The hermeneutics of this observation are then dealt with, by reviewing the possibilities of what these marital ties might mean. It is argued that they reflect one of many strategies aiming at social reproduction: by marrying into their predecessor’s family, new sultans between 1382 and 1467 married into symbolic capital first and foremost, thus obtaining an an “in-law tie” and “in-law pedigree” to a predecessor. By thus reconsidering the role of Mamluk ladies and of marital ties within the Mamluk mode of succession, two dominant paradigms of Mamluk studies are simultaneously challenged: gendered political space and the Mamluk slave state.The academic debate on the ideas and practices that organized succession to the sultanate of Mamluk Egypt and Syria (1250-1517) is long-standing and vexed. This article adds to this debate by bringing in a novel perspective: the “Family-In-Law Impulse.” First, an empirical identification of whom Mamluk sultans between Barqūq (784 AH/1382 CE) and Ḫušqadam (872 AH /1467 CE) married is presented, suggesting that many of these unrelated sultans were connected nonetheless through marriage. The hermeneutics of this observation are then dealt with, by reviewing the possibilities of what these marital ties might mean. It is argued that they reflect one of many strategies aiming at social reproduction: by marrying into their predecessor’s family, new sultans between 1382 and 1467 married into symbolic capital first and foremost, thus obtaining an an “in-law tie” and “in-law pedigree” to a predecessor. By thus reconsidering the role of Mamluk ladies and of marital ties within the Mamluk mode of succession, two dominant paradigms of Mamluk studies are simultaneously challenged: gendered political space and the Mamluk slave state.A