Mamlouks: 1250–1517, on view at the Louvre Museum in Paris from 30 April to 28 July 2025, was a timely and significant exhibition. It has since traveled to the Louvre Abu Dhabi, where it was on display from 17 September 2025 until 25 January 2026. Featuring 258 objects from a significant number of museums and collections around the world, including beautifully calligraphed and illuminated manuscripts, metalwork, woodwork, ceramics, glass, ivory, stone and marble, and carpets and textiles, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, the Paris exhibition marked the second major exhibition in the Western world commemorating and celebrating the study of Mamluk art and evoking the splendor of the Mamluk court. The first was Renaissance of Islam: Art of the Mamluks, a traveling exhibition of 130 objects organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and curated by the late Esin Atil, which opened on 15 May 1981 at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, and ran through 19 July 1981. The 2025 exhibition therefore successfully bridged a forty-four-year hiatus in major Western exhibitions devoted to Mamluk art, and resulted in an authoritative, peer-informed, and thematically organized catalog, under review here.

Rather than following a chronological framework, the catalog is organized thematically, like the exhibition, with essays exploring the diverse facets of Mamluk art and society alongside the exhibited objects, which are beautifully photographed and elegantly presented, and closely engaging with them to allow the material culture of the Mamluk world to emerge with clarity and depth. Exhibited pieces are assigned a catalog number (CAT.), whereas items included for comparative purposes are identified by a figure number (FIG.). The contributors include renowned senior scholars specializing in the Mamluk world and junior Mamlukists, which renders the catalog insightful and pedagogical. The commissioned scholars are trained in political science, economics, social history, urban history, religious studies, and the art of the Mamluk world. The result is of great value, and the editor of the volume is to be commended. To comprehend the richness of Mamluk material culture, an interdisciplinary approach is indeed necessary. Given the remarkable breadth of contributing scholars, it is not possible to name all of them here; instead a selection will be highlighted.

In between the prologue and the epilogue, there are five sections contextualizing everything Mamluk: “Qui étaient les Mamlouks?” (Who were the Mamluks?); “La société mamlouke” (Mamluk society); “Des cultures en dialogue” (Cultures in dialogue); “Un Orient connecté” (an interconnected East); and “Un art mamlouk” (Mamluk art). In each of these sections, the different contributors portray, in their concise pieces, the artifacts as layered objects with devotional, social, intellectual, and political functions.

Throughout the first section—Who were the Mamluks?—Julien Loiseau, Nasser Rabbat, and Mathieu Eychenne, among others, elucidate for the reader the geopolitical and economic contexts of the Mamluk world and the making of their great urban centers and architecture, especially Cairo. The catalog in its entirety answers Loiseau’s timely question of why we give the rich material culture of the period under discussion the label “Mamluk.” His essays simply and eloquently guide the reader through Mamluk political and military history, referencing the catalog numbers of objects when sultans are named. Loiseau’s explanation of the origins of and the logic governing Mamluk emblems and the trajectory of emir Qawsun al-Nasiri’s career and wealth is also helpful. The only caveat is that one of the exhibited pieces (CAT. 19), “Dosseret du minbar de la mosquée de l’émir Qawsun,” from the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, WW.122.2008, was mistakenly attributed to the original date of the mosque circa 1330 by its home museum, when it seems to be a nineteenth-century reproduction. The overall design, the arches framing the mihrab, and the arabesque scrolls and candlesticks carved in the wooden panel do not belong to the Mamluk artistic repertoire and have no known parallels with it.

Whereas the operational details of governing the Mamluk empire—from its administrative divisions to the communication system—are succinctly and accurately synthesized by Eychenne, the lived experience of the capital city, Cairo, emerges in Rabbat’s description. The highlight of the urban space of the city center is the complex of Qalawun (parts of which are photographically reconstructed in the gallery and encountered as the visitor moves through the exhibition space), which is described in the catalog by Iman Abdulfattah.

The second section on “Mamluk society” weaves together ethnicities, gender roles, and agency, in addition to non-Muslim communities and their artistic productions. Eychenne presents a detailed picture of the various ethnicities and professional vocations that composed Mamluk society. From his depiction one can see that Mamluk rule produced a complex, hierarchal society characterized by cultural exchange, the professionalization of religious and administrative elites, vibrant urban economies, and shifting dynamics of inclusion, patronage, and confessional coexistence. All these demarcations of status fade within the realm of the spiritual life practiced in Khanqas, where art also was produced. The best example of art produced in this spiritual context is CAT. 37, produced by Ahmad al-Isfahani, ostensibly an Iranian Sufi, in the complex of Sultan Barquq in Bayn al-Qasrayn. Kristof D’Hulster’s contribution complements Eychenne’s picture of this vibrant cosmopolitan world, pointing out the manuscripts of Persian epics written both in Persian, such as CAT. 43, and in Turkish, produced in Aleppo, rather than in Iranian or Turkish lands. Although he highlights this linguistic cosmopolitanism, Eychenne rightly emphasizes the need to study the place of Persian in the Mamluk linguistic environment, a topic that remains underresearched. Both contributions effectively demonstrate that the Mamluk Sultanate was deeply interconnected through the movement of people, goods, and ideas, overcoming ethnolinguistic and political boundaries.

The essays of Souraya Noujaim and Carine Juvin highlight objects, monuments, and inscriptions as crucial evidence of women’s agency, as well as objects from Qurʾans to jewelry that assert piety, status, and presence. Juvin brings to light the manuscript Kitab Taʿbir al-Ruʾya, CAT. 51, with an ex libris from the library of Sultan Jaqmaq’s granddaughter. The manuscript constitutes an important and previously unidentified contribution to the study of women’s library collections. Referencing additional manuscripts and objects commissioned by women that were not part of the exhibition would have significantly enhanced the analysis of women’s status in Mamluk society, especially the pieces associated with Khawand Baraka (d. 1372), the mother of Sultan Shaʿban. Examples of her known published endowments include Qurʾans in the National Library of Egypt (Rasid 6), and the wooden table (inv. no. 449) and wooden Qur’an box (inv. no. 452) in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo. Nevertheless non-Muslim communities, especially Christians, are highlighted with great clarity and care. The authors, Camille Rouxpetel, Julien Auber de Lapierre, Juvin, and Alice Croq, argue successfully, using the objects on display, especially CATs. 53–54, 55, and 58, that a simplistic view of Christian communities as minorities would be misleading, because the permeability of religious and cultural boundaries in the Mamluk world are apparent in material culture. A shared artistic production and stunning manuscript culture was the result of a common spiritual base, and the negotiation of coexistence, conflict, and patronage.

“Cultures in dialogue,” the third section of essays and artifacts, commences with a discussion on furusiyya (horsemanship) and hunting, referencing the literature undergirding both practices, a key facet of the sultanate. The subsequent contributions, however, engage mainly with manuscripts and appear loosely connected to this initial point of departure. Agnès Carayon and Juvin critically show the roots of the Mamluk theory and practice of warfare and the artistic manifestation of the hunt, respectively. The world of books, which should have been a section in itself, includes essays by Thomas Bauer, emphasizing that the level of literacy in urban populations had reached unprecedented levels. Bauer perfectly weaves the narrative of literati education with the thriving literature of the Mamluk period, driven by broad access to education and prolific patronage. This account, combined with the effective integration of objects, mostly manuscripts, portrays Mamluk literary culture as innovative, socially inclusive, and intellectually rich. Doris Behrens-Abouseif’s excellent piece on the use of poetry on metalware, focusing on CATs. 81 and 82, is especially valuable in this context. Little is known of the cut paper techniques in Mamluk bookcraft, and Boris Liebrenz’s contextualization of CAT. 83, a manuscript whose text is cut through the pages, that is, “written with air,” is a great addition.

Mamluk illustrated manuscripts, always dismissed as of secondary importance to all other arts produced in the Mamluk period on account of their lesser technique, are summarized well by Anna Contadini as the tradition that combined Abbasid and Ayyubid legacies with Coptic, Syriac, and Seljuk traditions, while selectively assimilating Persian and East Asian elements, producing innovative ways of relating text and image through conceptual spatial organizations. In his contribution, Noah Gardiner highlights the broad reach of Sufism, with mystics, saints, and their miracles shaping religious life and attracting disciples to Mamluk lands. He uses the manuscripts on display, such as CAT. 99, to reinforce the centrality of saints’ baraka (blessing) in people’s lives. Ziyara (visitation) and mawlid (literally means birth, in this context it refers to a celebration of a saint’s birth or death) celebrations were increasingly popular in Mamluk culture among elite groups who patronized theologians, jurists, and Sufi masters. Mystical poetry and devotional works, especially those honoring the Prophet Muhammad, circulated largely in public and private lives, and Gardiner particularly references the renowned panegyric al-Burda of Imam al-Busiri, CATs. 96, 97, and 172. Although he incorrectly states that al-Busiri is buried in the Qarafa in Cairo (whereas in reality he is buried in Alexandria beside his shaykh, Abu al-ʿAbbas al-Mursi, in Maydan al-Jawamiʿ, where both are frequently visited), Gardiner sheds light on some of the sultans interested in Sufism and their affiliations to the Sufi shuyukh (shaykhs), and occasionally highlights the connection between Sufism and calligraphers (CATs. 93 and 171).

The hall dedicated to the Qurʾan manuscripts in the exhibition was a delight to visit, because the manuscripts on display are among those of the highest quality in the world. Adeline Laclau provides an excellent summary of their illumination programs, thoughtfully incorporating in the discussion Qurʾans from collections not on display, which prove highly informative. However, some details identifying the manuscripts or their patrons were not correct. When referring to the collection in the National Library of Egypt the collection’s title is Rasid and not Rashid (the letter sad instead of shin). It was a great addition to discuss Rasid 11, a monumental production from the fourteenth century, but it was misidentified as a production for the emir Faris al-Khazindar, who was active a bit later, and was the patron of another Qurʾan now at the Chester Beatty Library (Is 1503). Another name was incorrect on the label and in the text of the essay, CAT. 33, that of the renowned calligrapher Khattab ibn ʿUmar al-Danjawi, not al-Danhiji as stated across the catalog.

The last part of this section is dedicated to the sciences and the occult. Noujaim’s piece challenges the long-standing view that the period lacked scientific innovation. She demonstrates that through extensive patronage and charitable institutions operated via the waqf system, Cairo and Damascus became major centers for research, education, and applied science. Objects displayed argue for developed astronomical models, medical practices, and mechanical technologies. Here, Gardiner’s contribution adds important depth to our understanding of the sciences of the period, showing that the science of letters blended with Sufism, astrology, and Neoplatonic thought was widely practiced across social and religious groups. Esoteric knowledge for the purposes of healing is reflected clearly in the material culture on display, particularly CAT. 114, a magic cup that carries talismanic engravings imparting their healing powers on the liquid served in it, and its symbols and inscriptions are analyzed with exceptional insight by Finbarr Barry Flood.

Section four, “An interconnected East,” stands out, as its essays are highly complementary, closely interconnected, and exceptionally informative. It brings together a cohesive group of essays that effectively convey a cosmopolitan and multilayered network of international relations, which is reflected in the objects presented. Together, they demonstrate a network of intercultural interactions of remarkable complexity and open up fantastic opportunities for future research. For instance, Juvin accurately stresses that neighboring powers, the Ilkhanids, the Ottomans, and the Turkmen states, profoundly shaped Mamluk material culture due to the movement of people and objects. A case in point is the splendid Sahih al-Bukhari, CAT. 125, arguably gifted to Bayezid I in Bursa. Stéphane Pradines and Noha Sadek focus on the relations of the Mamluk Sultanate with the world of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, respectively. Pradines masterfully reconstructs the vast commercial networks that sustained the Mamluk economy, highlighting the role of the Karimi merchants and bringing much needed light to the forgotten port Qusayr al-Qadim on Egypt’s southern Red Sea coast. Sadek’s study describes the Rasulids of Yemen actively shaping artistic and political exchanges with Cairo. Read in tandem, both essays offer remarkable insights into the vivid and nuanced interconnectedness of the Mamluks and the powers around the Red Sea. The African connection, east or west, focused on by Amélie Chekroun and Hadrien Collet, and Vera-Simone Schulz, was maintained through pilgrimage, scholarship, diplomacy, trade, and the circulation of people and objects. These ties materialized, as compellingly demonstrated, in Mamluk objects in Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Ghana. A brilliant example of this is a metal basin (CAT. 139). Mariam Rosser-Owen expounds on the relations with al-Andalus, tracing connections through the movement of embassies, gifts, scholars, and luxury goods between the Nasrid court in Granada and the Mamluk Sultanate, influencing the visual language of both empires. The analysis of the openwork ivory boxes, CATs. 144 and 146, she carries out with Juvin highlights the material and technical ambiguities that emerge from a shared Mediterranean sphere, making objects agents of cross-cultural exchange.

Clément Moussé’s essay on pilgrimage opens a fresh perspective on interreligious exchange. The hajj was celebrated and instrumentalized with symbols like the mahmal (caravan) and prestigious objects such as illustrated pilgrimage certificates. A rare and notable example naming Maymuna ibnat ʿAbdallah al-Zardali, highlighting female agency, is CAT. 147. The Jewish Florence Scroll, CAT. 149, discussed by Rachel Sarfati, also offers a rare, richly illustrated Jewish itinerary through Mamluk lands, fusing local views and the pilgrim’s own engagement with biblical history. These artifacts are the result of sacred geographies shared by Muslims, Christians, and Jews, which were constantly nourished and embellished by the Mamluk state. This multifaith society emerges as a recurring theme in many of the essays in the catalog.

The last part of this section focuses on the Mamluks and Europe, describing how this era laid the groundwork for the emergence of a modern and globalized economy. Damien Coulon and Élodie Vigouroux explain that the Mamluk Sultanate had to weave fiscal interests into treaties with Genoa, Venice, Aragon, and later Florence, turning the state into a hub of diplomacy, trade, and artistic exchange with Europe. Control of slave trade routes and spice routes assisted a rich artistic exchange and the movement of textiles, glass, ceramics, metalwork, and carpets in both directions. Silks like CAT. 121, inspired by the Ilkhanids, were sent to Europe and ostensibly went into manufacturing garments for the elites in Europe, such as CAT. 152. Other refined objects (examples include CATs. 122 and 205) were kept in religious institutions and used as reliquaries. Some were especially made for an export market targeting the European audience, including CATs. 155–160. Workshops in Europe, especially Italy, sprouted to copy Mamluk objects, especially textiles, and eventually surpassed the Mamluks. The fascination with the Mamluk court on account of the flow of people and objects also informed Venetian painters and their visual repertoire.

The last and fifth section of the catalog, entitled “Mamluk art,” approaches the objects by discussing their aesthetic features. Behrens-Abosueif opens with a reminder that what survives from this world is only a small fraction of a much richer courtly material culture, an important note amid such an impressive and extensive exhibition. Gilded horse trappings, tents, palaces, hippodromes, and princely treasuries, many of which have been lost through use, political upheaval, and Ottoman spoliation can be partially resurrected from Mamluk historiographical texts and documents. The best of artistic creations under Mamluk rule was their calligraphy, as brilliantly illuminated by Juvin in her essay. She recounts the Egyptian and Syrian calligraphic tradition, grounded in dense theoretical writing and linked to the religious class, and clearly highlights the calligraphic chains of transmission of the period. Very importantly, she stresses the trans-media nature of calligraphic styles, which extended from manuscripts to monuments and metalwork, especially through the magnificent epigraphic script known as thuluth. The role of geometry in Mamluk design is expounded on by Omniya Abdel Barr, who emphasizes that geometry-vegetal synthesis reached its zenith under the rule of Qaytbay (r.1468-96); anonymous artisans followed rigorous procedures to produce patterns of harmony and originality. The maturity of geometry in Mamluk design is clearly explained in Alison Ohta’s essay on bindings, exemplified in CATs. 177 and 193. Of particular value are the intercultural exchanges in techniques and motifs, as are the sultans who patronized the surviving works. Geometry once again emerges as the protagonist of Mamluk design in Miriam Kühn’s discussion of woodwork, elucidated by examples like CATs. 195–198. She explains that Mamluk woodworkers perfected a compartmentalized panel-and-frame system that combined structural stability with elaborate geometric designs in woods, ivory, and bone. Religious institutions had a plethora of glass lamps decorating and illuminating them; examples include CATs. 199 and 208. Glass manufacturing was one the most important industries in the Mamluk Sultanate, and Rachel Ward draws attention to the different techniques and decorative details that adorned much of Mamluk glass. Marbled, gilded, and enameled glass were in vogue, and Ward successfully traces the impact of Ilkhanid and Chinese imports on the motifs. Like Mamluk illustrated manuscripts, Mamluk ceramics were always viewed as secondary to other arts. This unfair and unnuanced view has been rectified by objects chosen by Juvin. Her expansive description emphasizes that Mamluk fine ceramics display great technical and stylistic variety, which can be reconstructed through fragmentary finds from Egypt and Greater Syria. Innovations such as Mamluk sgraffito and Chinese celadon or blue and white imitations emerged in response to imports and metalwork models (CATs. 225–227). A key facet to the essay is the focus on the local Ghaybi al-Tawrizi workshop (CAT. 228).

Mamluk art suffers from a dearth of surviving examples from the world of textiles and carpets. The essays of Maria Sardi, Shireen Ellinger, Gwenaëlle Fellinger, and Noujaim together support the notion that Mamluk textile arts were not ancillary but central to articulating hierarchy, piety, diplomacy, and cross-regional exchange, and must be read in dialogue with the broader Afro-Eurasian circulation of designs and techniques. The most important dialogue is the one between Mamluk and Ilkhanid productions, in which the line of identification often can be blurred. Mamluk carpets, only surviving from the fifteenth century, are perfectly exemplified in CAT. 246, the Louvre Abu Dhabi three-medallion carpet, which presents the synthesis of knotted pile carpets with star designs and a rich and saturated colour palette perfected by Qaytbay-era patronage. It is technically sophisticated, rooted in Egyptian geometrical designs, yet inflected by Turkoman and Persian weaving techniques.

Juvin’s contribution on metalwork is equally impressive and carefully curated. She highlights copper-alloy metal pieces with silver, gold, and red-copper inlay, originating in Khurasan and Mosul. These became prestige goods for the elites and the urban middle classes. Mamluk metalware production centers sprung up in Damascus and Cairo in the fourteenth century. By the late fifteenth century, during Qaytbay’s reign, a revival took place, and export style emerged victorious, confirming that Mamluk workshops continued to innovate for both the local and European markets. The pièce de résistance of the exhibition, encountered as visitors conclude their visit, and the epilogue and perfect finale to the catalog, is CAT. 257, or the Baptistère de Saint Louis. An icon for the study of cross-Mediterranean exchanges and collecting practices, it represents inlaid metalware from the Mamluk period as both a luxury object and, later, as a traditional baptismal font for French kings. The basin is exquisitely exhibited, with detailed video projections, and eloquently interpreted by Juvin.

This collection of fifty-four expertly curated scholarly essays, some of which are written by the editor herself, woven around the 258 objects, is nothing short of a tour de force, deserving the highest praise. Although the thematic division is nuanced and adds texture, particularly when contributors contextualize objects chronologically, the absence of an overarching chronological framework poses challenges for nonspecialist readers of Mamluk art, who arguably require a more explicitly chronological mode of presentation, even with the inclusion of a timeline at the end of the catalog. That being said, and despite the tension between the chronological and thematic approaches, the thematic organization does best serve our understanding of the multilayered and complex nature of Mamluk culture. Producing a traditional, full catalog entry for each object would have been a colossal and time-intensive undertaking given the presence of the fifty-four essays, and likely impractical, but the inclusion of individual entries does afford readers a comprehensive exposition of each object. The absence of such entries precludes details such as a full transcription of the Arabic inscriptions on the object, a full discussion of the production, and a full comparative analysis with aesthetically related objects. It also obviates a discussion of provenance that might have been accommodated in such entries.

Although it is difficult to fault such an authoritative undertaking, I would be remiss not to note that the prologue was a disappointment. The two short essays seem forced on the catalog. The exhibition opens with the story of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, which occurred nearly three hundred years after the demise of the Mamluk Sultanate. The prologue mirrors this beginning, presenting an undoubtedly Eurocentric vision. It is anachronistic and misleading to equate the soldiers and leaders of the Ottoman army in Egypt in 1798, who happen to be called mamluks because of their slave origin, with those of the Mamluk Sultanate (1250–1517). The assumption by an eighteenth-century colonial power that these groups were identical because they were manumitted slave soldiers and some were Circassian reflects a historical shortcoming of the colonial power and its racialized assumptions that should not be perpetuated today. Including the fictitious genealogical treatise of Ridwan Bey, a leading Mamluk bey of the Ottomans in seventeenth-century Egypt and de facto ruler of the country, linking himself to the great Circassian Mamluk sultans of the fifteenth century is also irrelevant, because it has no bearing on the governance or art of the period from 1250 to 1517. Ridwan Bey was appropriating the cultural and political greatness of previous rulers of Egypt. Using him is selective historiography aimed at justifying the decision to open the exhibition with the French invasion of Egypt, framed around their encounter with the Mamluk beys of Ottoman rule, only a few of whom were Circassian. Actually the Qazdughlis, the de facto rulers of Egypt and the principal leading military household meeting with Napoleon’s army in 1798, originated mostly from Anatolia and Georgia. Regardless of their ethnicities, these military groups belonged to and operated under the Ottoman Sultanate, not the Mamluk Sultanate.

As an authoritative undertaking, this catalog has successfully broadened awareness and understanding of Mamluk art by highlighting its geographic and cultural spread while opening avenues for rich academic dialogue. It is an invaluable pedagogical tool for anyone engaged in teaching Mamluk history and material culture. Carine Juvin deserves congratulations and commendation for curating a significant contribution to the field.