The conflicts that permeated the history of the medieval Near East, from the Crusades to the Mongol invasions, necessitated the presence of warriors at the heart of power. The Mamluks, military slaves, freed to access the title of emir, ruled Egypt and Syria, from 1250, with the title of sultan, and were among those who defended the Muslim world against the perils of time. The uniqueness of Mamluk society lies not only in the fact that former slaves, captured as children in the plains of Central Asia and in the Caucasus, became political leaders, but also that the society concerned was made up of two elite groups. complementary: on the one hand, the Mameluks, Turkish-speaking Arabic, converted to Islam, holding political power and constituting the armed forces; on the other hand, the ulemas, Arabic speakers, Muslims by birth, literati holding religious functions, those of the judiciary and the transmission of knowledge. In this lies the difficult challenge of this work: to grasp, as finely as possible, beyond the distinction and relations of domination, the modalities of this long coexistence, and to study, understand and restore the complexity of the interactions and relations that Mamluks and civil and religious elites have been able to |