Rulers in Baghdad from 1749 to 1831.
The Mamluks emerged under Hasan Pasha (1704 - 1724) and his son Ahmad Pasha (1724 - 1747), both wali (provincial governor) of Baghdad. Hasan Pasha's intent was to strengthen his personal base of power by creating a group of disciplined military and civil functionaries committed uniquely to him and not to the government at Istanbul or the Arabs of Baghdad. A page corps was formed, originally recruited from local families but later composed almost exclusively of slaves (mamluks) imported from the Caucasus and Georgia. These slaves were instructed in reading and writing, but also horse-manship and swimming, a combination of martial and bureaucratic virtues making them superior to Turks and Iraqis as civil servants. Their training emphasized a sense of interdependence and "esprit de corps." They were made to feel that they owed their privilege to their master and to the Mamluk institution. They dominated the power elite, but as an alien force, and were merciless to any suspected rival to their authority. A close disciplined fraternity, and the only effective civil and military organization within the country, the Mamluks provided their pashas with the power of an independent monarch. Nevertheless, Mamluk pashas at no time renounced allegiance to the sultan of the Ottoman Empire. They defended Iraq from the Wahhabis and Persians but did not war on neighbors within the empire.
The first Mamluk pasha, Sulayman Abu Layla (1750 - 1762), came to power two years after the death of Ahmad Pasha, following an unsuccessful attempt by the Sublime Porte (the Ottoman government) to check Mamluk power by naming nonlocal candidates as pasha of Baghdad. He was followed by Ali Agha (1762 - 1764) whose obscure Persian birth may have contributed to his fall. The reign of Umar Pasha (1764 - 1775), while peaceful, was feeble and characterized by ever-lessening authority. His deposition by the sultan introduced in interregnum (1775 - 1780) during which a number of mostly alien pashas (Abdi Pasha, 1775; Abdullah Pasha, 1775 - 1777; Hasan Pasha 1778 - 1780) reigned briefly and without much influence. Sulayman Agha (1780 - 1802), known as "the Great," restored the dominance and institutions of the Mamluks with such success that his period is known as the zenith of the Mamluk era. His immediate successors, Ali Pasha (1802 - 1807), Sulayman the Little (1808 - 1810), Abdallah Pasha (1810 - 1813), and Saʿid Pasha (1813 - 1817), all died violently after brief reigns. The last of the Mamluk rulers, Da'ud Pasha (1817 - 1831), confronted Ottoman resolve, ignited by his failure to provide suitable remissions in the desperate circumstances of the sultan's war with Russia, to end the century-long independence of Iraq and to bring the province once again firmly into the imperial fold. Plague and flooding helped weaken the Mamluk regime and Da'ud ultimately capitulated to the sultan in 1831. He and his family were exiled to Bursa. He was subsequently recalled to service and held a number of important posts throughout the empire before dying in 1851.
Bibliography
Longrigg, Stephen Hemsley. Four Centuries of Modern Iraq. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925.
Nieuwenhuis, Tom. Politics and Society in Early Modern Iraq:Mamluk Pashas, Tribal Shaykhs and Local Rule between 1802 and 1831. The Hague and Boston: M. Nijhoff, 1982.
— ALBERTINE JWAIDEH
