They stirred up riots and rebellion and hastened the fall of
the effete caliphate.

Under the Eyyubite dynasty in Egypt, which Saladin founded
about 1174, the same practice was followed with the same
results. The Eyyubites were strangers in Egypt, and welcomed
the support of foreign myrmidons. Slave dealers bought
children of conquered tribes in Central Asia, promising them
great fortunes in the West. These children, together with
prisoners of war from the eastern hordes, streamed into
Egypt, where they were again bought by the rulers, who thus
unwittingly prepared the way for their own destruction. The
military body created by Saladin, called mamelukes
("slaves;" literally "the possessed"), obtained ascendency
in the manner here related by Muir.

The thousands who, with uncomely names and barbarous titles, began to
crowd the streets of Cairo, occupied a position to which we have no
parallel elsewhere. Finding a weak and subservient population, they
lorded it over them. Like the children of Israel, they ever kept
themselves distinct from the people of the land--but the oppressors,
not, like them, the oppressed. Brought up to arms, the best favored
and most able of the mamelukes when freed became, at the instance of
the Sultan, emirs of ten, of fifty, of a hundred, and often, by rapid
leaps, of a thousand. They continued to multiply by the purchase of
fresh slaves who, like their masters, could rise to liberty and
fortunes.

The sultans were naturally the largest purchasers, as they employed
the revenues of the state in surrounding themselves with a host of