Turkic and Circassian between Ethnonym and Socionym. The Linguistic and Ethnic Dimensions to Mamluk Identity as a Discursive Construct.

The Mamluk Sultanate was a regime that ruled over medieval Egypt and Syria, in which the power over the Arabic populace lay with a Turkic- or Circassian-speaking elite that hailed from Central Asia. The research rethinks the linguistic and ethnic dimensions of this elite’s identity as discursive constructs, hereby fusing the historica land the sociolinguistic approach.