List of illustrations; Preface; Part I. Mamluk Rule and Succession: 1. Literary offerings: a genre of courtly literature P. M. Holt; 2. Rank-and-file Mamluks versus amirs: new norms in the Mamluk military institution Amalia Levanoni; 3. Mamluk amirs and their families and households Donald S. Richards; 4. Joseph's law - the careers and activities of Mamluk descendants before the Ottoman conquest of Egypt Ulrich Haarmann; Part II. Mamluk Households: Coherence and Disintegration: 5. The re-emergence of the Mamluks following the Ottoman conquest Michael Winter; 6. 'Mamluk households' and 'Mamluk factions' in Ottoman Egypt: a reconsideration Jane Hathaway; 7. Personal loyalty and political power of the Mamluks in the eighteenth century Thomas Philipp; 8. The Mamluk beylicate of Egypt in the last decades before its destruction by Muhammad 'Ali Pasha in 1811 Daniel Crecelius; Part III. Mamluk Culture, Science and Education: 9. Mamluk astronomy and the institution of the Muwaqqit David A. King; 10. The Mamluks as Muslims: the military elite and the construction of Islam in medieval Egypt Jonathan P. Berkey; 11. The late triumph of the Persian bow: critical voices on the Mamluk monopoly of weaponry Ulrich Haarmann; 12. Concepts of history as reflected in Arabic historiographical writing in Ottoman Syria and Egypt (1517-1700) Otfried Weintritt; 13. Cultural life in Mamluk households (late Ottoman period) Nelly Hanna; Part IV. Mamluk Property, Geography and Urban Society: 14. The residential districts of Cairo's elite in the Mamluk and Ottoman periods (fourteenth to eighteenth centuries) André Raymond; 15. Patterns of urban patronage in Cairo: a comparison between the Mamluk and the Ottoman periods Doris Behrens-Abouseif; 16. Notes on the early nazar al-khass Donald P. Little; 17. Coptic festivals of the Nile: aberrations of the past? Huda Lutfi; 18. Marriage in the late eighteenth-century Egypt Afaf Lutfi Al-Sayyid Marsot; Index.