#mamelukes

Mamelukes in French service, Napoleonic wars, plate by Fred & Lilian Funken

1 - Officer

2 & 3 - privates

Two stucco figures from a medieval Persian palace (11th-12th centuries).

No, these are not ladies. They’re just fabulous, gay and badass. These guys were the ghilman (singular: ghulam, later also known as mamelukes), the class of pages and elite bodyguards of the rulers. They were originally Turkic slaves, highly trained in archery and horseback riding in particular, and formed the most skilled special forces in medieval Persian armies. The ghilman occupied high positions in medieval Persian society, similar to the Praetorian Guard in Ancient Rome. The most skilled of them were given governorships or even emirates upon manumission–sometimes, as in the case of the Mameluke dynasty of Egypt, they even seized the throne and became rulers themselves.

Note that the smooth faces may suggest these fellows were eunuchs, as that was not at all uncommon among the ghilman–in any case, they were not allowed to marry until retirement, thus developing a highly homoromantic subculture among themselves. They were famous for their beauty, bravery and strength, and in medieval Persian poetry, the ghulam lover came to symbolise the height of human beauty, often woven into imagery that allowed the lover to contemplate the beauty of God himself through his beloved page or warrior youth. In fact, a typical medieval Persian love poem would have been addressed to one of these guys instead of a lady (or, to protect the lady’s honour, she was described as a youth instead). In the famous case of Caliph al-Amin, he was so besotted with his ghilman that the queen mother started to dress pretty slave girls as pageboys to trick him into producing an heir with at least one of them–this led to a pageboy fashion at court (ghulamiyya, or page-girls), women going around in drag dressed as these guys because they were so admired women didn’t have a chance.

And they could kick arse as well–there were no warriors more feared than the ghilman, what with the accuracy of their archer skills, their advanced weaponry (it was through ghilman troops that curved swords were brought into the Islamic world from Turkic and Indian lands) and, oh… that thing where they’d wear padded armour and set themselves on fire as they rode into battle.

Just. You know. Casually. Setting themselves on fire and returning home for some snuggles with their homeboys.

Read the whole article and the extensive footnotes on the Met’s page for the first guy–it’s really fascinating stuff (they just left out the gay bits, as does the Wikipedia article). But, JSYK, there was a class of guys who were basically gay ninjas in medieval Persia.