The same system appears in Egypt, about or soon after the time of the celebrated Saladin. Zingis, in his dreadful expedition from Khorasan to Syria and Russia, had collected an innumerable multitude of youthful captives, who glutted, as we may say, the markets of Asia. This gave the conquerors of Egypt an opportunity of forming a mercenary or foreign force for their defence, on a more definite idea than seems hitherto to have been acted upon. Saladin was a Curd, and, as such, a neighbour of the Caucasus; hence the Caucasian tribes became for many centuries the store-houses of Egyptian mercenaries. A detestable slave trade has existed with this object, especially among the Circassians, since the time of the Moguls; and of these for the most part this Egyptian force, Mamlouks, as they are called, has consisted. After a time, these Mamlouks took matters into their own hands, and became a self-elective body, or sort of large corporation. They were masters of the country, and of its nominal ruler, and they recruited their ranks continually, and perpetuated their power, by means of the natives of the Caucasus, slaves like themselves, and of their own race.
"During the 500 or 600 years," says Volney, "that there have been Mamlouks in Egypt, not one of them has left subsisting issue; there does not exist one single family of them in the second generation; all their children perish in the first and second descent. The means therefore by which they are perpetuated and multiplied were of necessity the same by which they were first established." These troops have been massacred and got rid of in the memory of the last generation; towards the end of last century they formed a body of above 8,500 men. The writer I have just been quoting adds the following remarks:--"Born for the most part in the rites of the Greek Church, and circumcised the moment they are bought, they are considered by the Turks themselves as renegades, void of faith and of religion. Strangers to each other, they are not bound by those natural ties which unite the rest of mankind. Without parents, without children, the past has nothing to do for them, and they do nothing for the future. Ignorant and superstitious from education, they become ferocious from the murders they commit, and corrupted by the most horrible debauchery." On the other hand, they had every sort of incentive and teaching to prompt them to rapacity and lawlessness. "The young peasant, sold in Mingrelia or Georgia, no sooner arrives in Egypt, than his ideas undergo a total alteration. A new and extraordinary scene opens before him, where everything conduces to awaken his audacity and ambition. Though now a slave, he seems destined to become a master, and already assumes the spirit of his future condition. No sooner is a slave enfranchised, than he aspires to the principal employments; and who is to oppose his pretensions? and he will be no less able than his betters in the art of governing, which consists only in taking money, and giving blows with the sabre."