New Book: Cairo of the Mamluks

Egypt Daily Star News (Michaela Singer)

Cairo of the Mamluks by Doris Behrens-Abouseif, American University in Cairo Press

The trajectory of Cairo’s history has always resembled a struggle for self-immortalization. Lest their memory became a muffled gulp from the depths of the mighty Nile, sultans and presidents, invested, immured and consecrated themselves in brick and stone, as if these architectural regalities might transcend the limits of their own brief existence.

In the case of the Mamluks, as manifested in the prolific and most admirable work of scholar Doris Behrens-Abouseif’s latest book “Cairo of the Mamluks,” the compulsion for ‘legacy building’ was perhaps, alongside their historic defeat of the crusaders, the most distinguishing domestic feature of their rule.

As Behrens-Abouseif explains, the architectural monuments of the Mamluks were not fueled by some misled roman-esque urge for self-deification, but rather for a more rooted and time-based function: legitimization.