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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Lebanon
Index
The Mamluks were a combination of Turkoman slaves from the area
east of the Caspian Sea and Circassian slaves from the Caucasus
Mountains between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea. They were brought
in by the Muslim Ayyubid sultans of Egypt to serve as their
bodyguards. One of these slaves, Muez-Aibak, assassinated the
Ayyubid sultan, Al Ashraf Musa, in 1252 and founded the Mamluk
sultanate, which ruled Egypt and Syria for more than two centuries.
From the eleventh to the thirteenth century, the
Shia (see Glossary)
Muslims migrated from Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian
Peninsula and to the northern part of the Biqa Valley and to the
Kasrawan Region in the mountains northeast of Beirut. They and the
Druzes rebelled in 1291 while the Mamluks were busy fighting
European Crusaders and Mongols, but after repelling the invaders,
the Mamluks crushed the rebellion in 1308. To escape from
repression and massacres by the Mamluks, the Shias abandoned
Kasrawan and moved to southern Lebanon.
The Mamluks indirectly fostered relations between Europe and
the Middle East even after the fall of the Byzantine Empire. The
Europeans, accustomed to luxury items from the Middle East,
strongly desired both its raw materials and its manufactured
products, and the people of the Middle East wished to exploit the
lucrative European market. Beirut, favored by its geographical
location, became the center of intense trading activity. Despite
religious conflicts among the different communities in Lebanon,
intellectual life flourished, and economic prosperity continued
until Mamluk rule was ended by the Ottoman Turks.
Data as of December 1987
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