Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom

David Ayalon Professor of the History of the Islamic Peoples at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• The early use of firearms in the Mamluk kingdom; terms used for firearms and gunpowder in contemporary sources - why firearms were called naft, the mukhula and the midfa, the cannon and the manjaniq; the attitude of Mamluk military society toward the use of firearms - firearms in the last decades of Mamluk rule, the casting of cannon under al-Ghawri, the renewal of traditional military training and of furusiya exercises, the creation of a unit of arquebusiers, the black slaves as arquebusiers, the fifth tabaqa, Tumanbay's desperate effort, Ibn Zunbul on the Mamluk attitude toward firearms, other obstacles to the adoption of firearms, socio-psychological antagonism to firearms weighed against other factors, firearms as a decisive factor in shaping the destiny of Western Asia and Egypt; appendices.