MAM'ELIIKES, MAMLOURS, or MEINILooNs, an Arabic word signifying slaves, the name given in Egypt to the slaves of the boys, brought from the Caucasus, and who formed their armed force. When Genghis Khan desolated great part of Asia in the 13th c., and carried away a multitude of the inhabitants for slaves, the sultan of Egypt bought 12,000 of them, partly Mingrelians and Tcherkesses, but mostly Turks, and formed them into a body of troops. But they soon found their own power so great that, in 1254. they made one of their own number sultan of Egypt, founding the dynasty of the Baharites, which gave place to another Mameluke dynasty, that of the Borjites, in 1382, The Causasian element predominated in the first dynasty, the Tartar element in the second. In general, they formed able and energetic rulers, and Egypt under their sway anived at a degree of pros perity and power to which she had been a stranger from the days of Sesostns. Selim I.,
who overthrew the Mameluke kingdom in 1517, was compelled to permit the continuance of the 24 Mameluke beys as governors of the provinces. This arrangement subsisted till the middle of the 18th c., when the number and wealth of the Mamelukes gave them such a preponderance of power in Egypt that the pasha named by the porte was reduced to a rnerely nominal ruler. The number of them scattered throughout all Egypt was between 10,000 and 12,000 mcn. Their number was kept up chiefly by slaves. brought from the Caucasus, from among whom the beys and other Officers of state -were exclusively choaen.
Their last brilliant achievements were on the occasion of the French invasion of Egypt, and during the time immediately following the retirement of the French. At this time Ilifurad Bey stood at their head. But in 1811 they were foully massacred by Mohammed Ali (q.v.), afterwards viceroy of Egypt.