Fatima.Mernessi_The-Forgotten-Queens-of-Islam-EN

Fifteen Queens 93
to be born an infidel; to be brought into the Mamluk Sultanate as a
child or young boy (preferably at the age of puberty); and to be
bought, brought up and manumitted by a patron who was a member
of the military aristocracy. 12
Recruits were required to be born an infidel because in principle
a Muslim cannot be made a slave. 13 This requirement barred many
young children from the Asian steppes whose parents had become
Islamicized, so the parents often had recourse to fraudulent subterfuges
to conceal this fact. Islam, which emphasizes the equality of
all before God, was taken at its word by the Turkish slaves, who
applied it to the letter. They defended Islam against all its enemies,
including the Crusaders and the Mongols, but they did it by installing
themselves comfortably on the thrones and giving themselves all
the titles reserved for the great and powerful. The case of General
'Izz al-Din Aybak, Shajarat al-Durr's second husband, a Mamluk
officer proclaimed sultan by the army of Egypt, is a good illustration
of this political revolution which shook the palaces and the empire
in many regions. It was in the wake of the Mamluk army of India
that Radiyya had taken power in Delhi a few decades before.
Radiyya climbed the ladder to power in quite different circumstances;
unlike Shajarat al-Durr, she was not a slave but the
daughter of a sultan. Her father had arrived in India as a slave, and
his rise to become sultan in an India that lived within a rigid caste
system was excellent propaganda for Islam. Islam appeared as a
democratic religion, a religion that broke down hierarchies, that
toppled the masters and permitted slaves, if they had ability, to
take the place of those who ruled. Having come to Delhi as the
slave of a general of Ghaznah sultans, Iltutmish put all his energy
into planting the Islamic standard on Indian territory. His success
was so rapid that the sultan, Qutb al-Din Aybak, impressed by his
bravery, married him to his daughter. At the death of Aybak in
607/1211, Iltutmish took power and declared himself independent
of the Ghaznah masters. He has a secure place in history as one of
the greatest slave kings who founded Muslim sovereignty in India. 14
Once earthly power had been acquired, the problem of legitimacy
still remained. Muslim democracy has its limits. In order to become
sultan, a slave had to get himself freed by his master. 15 This was
what the 'ulama demanded of Iltutmish. Ibn Battuta describes the
scene in which after the death of his master Iltutmish presented the
document declaring him free, without which he would not have
been legally in a position to take power: