Guns and Giraffes: Looking at Processes of Material Transfer between the Mamluk Sultanate and Europe

Albrecht Fuess of Philipps-Universität Marburg examines the circulation of material culture and technical knowledge between Europe and the Mamluk Sultanate in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Opening with how artefacts and manuscripts travel across borders, including the Egyptian manuscript collection acquired in Cairo by Ulrich Jasper Seetzen for Gotha, the lecture concentrates on two case studies of transfer in opposite directions: firearms and battlefield tactics moving from Europe to the Middle East, and Mamluk dress, emblems and animals entering Italian painting.

The first part traces the adoption of handguns and the Wagenburg, the chained wagon fortress invented by the Czech Hussites in the 1420s, adopted by the Hungarians, and copied by the Ottomans for their Janissaries. Fuess follows the Mamluk encounter with Ottoman firearm units during the war of 1485 to 1491 over Dulkadir and Cilicia, Sultan Qaytbay's creation of rifle units, the recruitment of Italian specialists and soldiers of Cypriot origin, and the arming of black slave units because horsemen could not load early firearms on horseback. He argues that the Mamluks did not reject firearms out of chivalric ethos, noting their construction of wagon fortresses between Marj Dabiq in 1516 and Ridaniya in 1517.

The second part follows Mamluk material culture into Florence and Venice after Qaytbay's 1487 giraffe embassy to Lorenzo de' Medici. Fuess shows how Filippino Lippi, Vittore Carpaccio, Giovanni Mansueti and Gentile Bellini depicted Mamluk architecture, emblems, the red zamt hat, and the horned na'ura turban. A short question-and-answer session addresses handguns and Mamluk references to naphtha and Greek fire.