II. 2. XXXVII. AND THE INVASION OF DONGOLA 179

XXXIV The geographer Yakut Hved about the same time as Abu

Salih and supplements the latter's information in some details: he

tells us, e.g. that Suakin was peopled by blacks of Bega race, who were Christians^. Ibn Sa'i'd (1214-1287) calls them "partly Christian and partly Muhammadan^."

XXXV In 1250 the rule of the 'Ayyubites ended and that of the

Bahrite Mamluks began. The political isolation of the Arabs was if anything increased by the change. Military power was the only standard of influence and the Arab levies had proved themselves in war after war to be quite inefficient as compared with the standing army of trained Turks and negroes which formed a military oligarchy of foreigners among a subject population^.

The Arabs were not disposed to accept this state of affairs without

a struggle. About 1253 those in Upper Egypt broke into revolt and mustered some 12,000 horse as well as a large force of infantry. The movement spread to the Delta, but the Mamluks, in spite of inferior numbers, speedily repressed it, and henceforwards the Arabs were

a negligible factor of opposition in Egypt, and it is only in the extreme south and in Nubia that their fortunes can be followed*.

XXXVI In 1260 Baybars, the great organizer of the Mamluk system, succeeded to the Sultanate^. In his time and that of his

successors the Mamluk chiefs were "granted more and larger fiefs in the spoliated land of Egypt, and also drew great revenues from the

exorbitant transit dues on the European trade with India, which

necessarily passed through Alexandria®"; and it was probably these revenues alone which stood between the Egyptian taxpayer and utter

ruin.

Beybars, too, by a masterstroke of policy, revived at Cairo the old 'Abbasid Khali'fate overthrown at Baghdad by Hulagu two years

before, and so made Egypt the premier state of Islam '^.

XXXVII In 1275-6 the Governor of Kus invaded Nubia as far south as Dongola because the king, Daud, had failed to pay his tribute

^ Vol. Ill, p. 182.

* Quoted by Ibn Khaldun (ed. ar. Vol. 6, p. 199, Bk.iii; ed. de Slane, Bk. 11,

P- 105).

' Cp. Lane-Poole, Hist. p. 253. * Ibid. pp. 259, 260.

* His diploma from the Khalffa appointed him "Sovran of Egypt, Syria, the Hegaz, the Yemen, and the banks of the Euphrates and all lands plains or mountains which you may henceforth subdue." With his accession the title of Sultan appears on the coinage (Lane-Poole, Quart. Rev. April 1915).

* Lane-Poole, loc. cit. p. 536.

' Ibid. p. 540. The Khalif at Cairo was restricted to spiritual functions, and though technically he remained the head of Islam he was really no more than a puppet until the 'Othmanli Sultans assumed the office in 1538 a.d. (ibid. p. 530, and Hist. p. 265, note).