At the risk of over-generalization, some observations may be hazarded concerning the place of the Ayyubids in Egypt’s medieval history. By the middle of the twelfth century, the Fatimid empire - at one time the last Islamic empire to retain numerous late antique imperial features - had lost much of its ideology of universal rule and the bureaucratic organization of its economy and military power. Its internal stability and ability to project power beyond the Nile valley were gone. It was thus at a loss to deal with the two expansionist forms of state organization of the high medieval period, the Franco-Norman states of Europe and the Muslim military patronage states of central and western Asia.
When the attention of the crusaders shifted to Egypt, the country became something of a frontier state. Egypt’s politics were now marked by the weak institutions, ever-shifting alliances, and struggles over revenue sources seen in other examples of the penetration of the organizational mode of the frontier into the agrarian regions of the Middle East. Drawn into Egypt by the crusades, their politics shaped by the continuing contest between Muslims and crusaders, the Ayyubids thus brought the country into what, for lack of a better term, might be termed high medievality. Egypt now shared a number of characteristics with both the post-Saljuk Muslim military patronage states and the Franco-Norman states of Europe. Like these states, its political economy was marked by a relatively weak bureaucracy and ruling establishment, partial control of land revenue by horse warriors and religious leaders, indirect rule through religious and military magnates, and parcelized and derived sovereignties. With its wealth from agriculture and trade now tied to new forms of military power and political organization, Egypt regained its hegemony in the region. But Ayyubid rule was not imperial, even in the attenuated later Fafimid sense, and its political practices were no longer predominantly bureaucratic or institutional.
As we have seen, the combination of affective household ties with the politics of revenue assignment penetrated rulership, military organization, diplomacy, urban administration, education, land tenure, the administration of justice, and bureaucracy. This is why beneath their surface formality and functional differences these domains appear to be so similar. In time - in some cases not until the later Mamluk period - these domains were to acquire a limited autonomy and predictability. But throughout the period under consideration the politics of Egypt and its provinces remained those of a new frontier region in flux.
184-85, 277, 299-301, 309, 343; Maqrizi, Khitat, II: 374; 3: 378; Ibn al-Athir, Al-Bahir, 156; M. Sobemheim, “Karakush,” Elz.
World History
