mameluke

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“
He was shot by a mameluke, Si Smyle, and fell in a thicket, wallowing in his blood.

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Definitions (4)

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  1. Any male servant or slave, usually a Circassian, belonging to the household or the retinue of a bey. In Turkey, it was the custom in the houses of the great to have a number of young men, who in Egypt were called Mamelukes, after that gallant corps had been destroyed. R. Curzon, Monast. in the Levant, p. 58.
  2. [capitalized] A member of a corps of cavalry formerly existing in Egypt, whose chiefs were long the sovereign rulers of the country. They originated with a body of Mingrelians, Turks, and other slaves, who were sold by Jenghiz Khan to the Egyptian sultan in the thirteenth century. About 1251 they established their government in Egypt by making one of their own number sultan. Their government was overthrown by Selim I. of Turkey in 1517, but they formed part of the Egyptian army until 1811, when Mehemet Ali destroyed most of them by a general massacre. And as we come out of the bote we were receyved by ye Mamolukes and Sarrasyns, and put into an olde caue, by name and tale, there scryuan euer wrytyng our names man by man as we entred in the presens of the sayd Lordes. Sir R. Guyl forde, Pylgrymage, p. 16.
  3. Mameluke bey one of the Mameluke rulers of Egypt. The servile rulers known as mameluke beys, and to the Egyptians as ghuzz. R. F. Burton, Arabian Nights, V. 12, note.

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Etymologies (1)

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  1. Formerly also mamaluke, mameluck, mamlouk, mamlock, mamoloke, mamelak, mamelek, memlook, etc.; from French mamaluc, now mameluk = Spanish Portuguese mameluco = Italian mammaluco = Turk, mamelek, from Arabic mamlūk, a purchased slave, a mameluke, from malaka, possess.
 

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