conversus
Rosanne said:
When, exactly was a Mameluk, Doge of Venice?
CED
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The Mamluks and the Venetian connection
When, exactly was a Mameluk, Doge of Venice?
CED
Teheuti
I was curious about that too.conversus said:When, exactly was a Mameluk, Doge of Venice?
CED
I have the "Men Playing Cards" image but am delighted to get more information about it. Thanks, Rosanne.
Debra
I did a quick check of Venetian doges for two centuries on a kwik 'n e-z site on-line and don't see a Mamluk-ish entry. It's an intriguing idea.
Rosanne
Mameluk Dynasty 1250-1517- then absorbed into the Ottoman Empire.
The last Mamluk Doge was Francesco Foscari ( 1423–57).He was also the longest reigning Doge.
The earliest was, I believe a Guy called Ziani 1350?? Doge Ziani of Venice. Will check the dates when I can find my travel book. I was following the Visconti/Sforza possibilities last year and read about the mamluk Doges in Venice.
It is an interesting idea about the Venetian imput. Especially towards the Visconti deck. I am following the suggestion that Francesco Sforza had some Mamluk soldiers in his army. Translation is slow work for me!
Dating the cards arrival is hard, but I am happy with the decade 1360-1370.
It's fast spread reminds me of how fast the rubric cube travelled around the world.
~Rosanne
The last Mamluk Doge was Francesco Foscari ( 1423–57).He was also the longest reigning Doge.
The earliest was, I believe a Guy called Ziani 1350?? Doge Ziani of Venice. Will check the dates when I can find my travel book. I was following the Visconti/Sforza possibilities last year and read about the mamluk Doges in Venice.
It is an interesting idea about the Venetian imput. Especially towards the Visconti deck. I am following the suggestion that Francesco Sforza had some Mamluk soldiers in his army. Translation is slow work for me!
Dating the cards arrival is hard, but I am happy with the decade 1360-1370.
It's fast spread reminds me of how fast the rubric cube travelled around the world.
~Rosanne
kapoore
Hi Rosanne,
I wanted to share my source on the cards entering Europe during the Pax Mongolian era--that is, after the burning of Baghdad and the control of central Asia by the Mongolians. My reference is a book called The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin.
"The strength and the unity of the vast Mongol Empire had opened, had kept open, and had protected the European overland passage to India and China. During these years, sometimes called the Mongol Century, when some Europeans came eastwards, some Chinese also went westward. Homeward bound Westerners and traveling Chinese carried with them playing cards, porcelain, textiles, motifs in art, style in furniture, which shaped the every day life of the European upper classses...
"In the Sung and the Mongol eras complicated card games were being played with what they called "sheet dice" all across China."
Boorstin seems to be working here off travel diaries, and I tried to find some translations to see if I could see where he got his information on playing cards. Unfortunately, though, playing cards do not rank very high in the minds of most historians and so the passages translated said nothing. So, I am not sure where he got his information and why it seems to be different than the card historians.
Of course, it's possible that playing cards did get to Europe but never became popular. (As travel diaries may have reported) But they didn't become popular until the Mamluk style cards.
Also, it's interesting in the picture of 'men playing cards' that it belongs to the Arthurian tales, which have similarities in symbolism with the sword, cup, lance, and ring (metal). Good luck on your translations...
I wanted to share my source on the cards entering Europe during the Pax Mongolian era--that is, after the burning of Baghdad and the control of central Asia by the Mongolians. My reference is a book called The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin.
"The strength and the unity of the vast Mongol Empire had opened, had kept open, and had protected the European overland passage to India and China. During these years, sometimes called the Mongol Century, when some Europeans came eastwards, some Chinese also went westward. Homeward bound Westerners and traveling Chinese carried with them playing cards, porcelain, textiles, motifs in art, style in furniture, which shaped the every day life of the European upper classses...
"In the Sung and the Mongol eras complicated card games were being played with what they called "sheet dice" all across China."
Boorstin seems to be working here off travel diaries, and I tried to find some translations to see if I could see where he got his information on playing cards. Unfortunately, though, playing cards do not rank very high in the minds of most historians and so the passages translated said nothing. So, I am not sure where he got his information and why it seems to be different than the card historians.
Of course, it's possible that playing cards did get to Europe but never became popular. (As travel diaries may have reported) But they didn't become popular until the Mamluk style cards.
Also, it's interesting in the picture of 'men playing cards' that it belongs to the Arthurian tales, which have similarities in symbolism with the sword, cup, lance, and ring (metal). Good luck on your translations...
Rosanne
Thank you kapoore!
Everyone has different dates, Art historians all disagree lol.
The Arthurian romance is a Manuscript in the british Museum and the Library catalogue places it between 1352- 1362.
It has 357 miniatures some by later less skilful artists. It is thought that the card players are later. The pretigious Art Journal places the playing card image between 1330-1350. Art critics place it at the close of the century- one places it at 1377. The same hand apparently did a joust sequence and something to do with who was at the joust or the flags dates it 1362.
Much like all the different dates for your sheet dice. It is like you said...
Now to the Mongolian connection.
Most travellers left for the East from Venice (the Polos for example) Now politics comes into play. The things bought back by travellers had to be declared as Venice had a tax exempt deal going down. So if these sheet dice were popular- they probably were...whats the word??? suppressed as Venice Merchants would not make any money from them. Mamluk cards or similar would have been encouraged as they were Venice's own coming from Mamluk enterprises. It is like the glass- Venetian glass was red- not because of science but blue dye was not yet in the hands of Mamluk influence- until they took Sidon- then blue dye for the glass came in to it's own. I guess protection of trade was paramount. I am betting that was more of the story than possibly popularity of sheet dice.
Aghhhh translations..thanks for the encouragement.
~Rosanne
Everyone has different dates, Art historians all disagree lol.
The Arthurian romance is a Manuscript in the british Museum and the Library catalogue places it between 1352- 1362.
It has 357 miniatures some by later less skilful artists. It is thought that the card players are later. The pretigious Art Journal places the playing card image between 1330-1350. Art critics place it at the close of the century- one places it at 1377. The same hand apparently did a joust sequence and something to do with who was at the joust or the flags dates it 1362.
Much like all the different dates for your sheet dice. It is like you said...
Unfortunately, though, playing cards do not rank very high in the minds of most historians and so the passages translated said nothing..
Now to the Mongolian connection.
Most travellers left for the East from Venice (the Polos for example) Now politics comes into play. The things bought back by travellers had to be declared as Venice had a tax exempt deal going down. So if these sheet dice were popular- they probably were...whats the word??? suppressed as Venice Merchants would not make any money from them. Mamluk cards or similar would have been encouraged as they were Venice's own coming from Mamluk enterprises. It is like the glass- Venetian glass was red- not because of science but blue dye was not yet in the hands of Mamluk influence- until they took Sidon- then blue dye for the glass came in to it's own. I guess protection of trade was paramount. I am betting that was more of the story than possibly popularity of sheet dice.
Aghhhh translations..thanks for the encouragement.
~Rosanne
Teheuti
Here's what I found:Rosanne said:Mameluk Dynasty 1250-1517- then absorbed into the Ottoman Empire.
The last Mamluk Doge was Francesco Foscari ( 1423–57).
"The cordial relations between Venice and the Mamluks may be gauged from the fact that Francesco Foscari, Venice’s longest reigning (1423-57) ruler—locally known as doge—was born in Mamluk Egypt."
It seems his father, from an ancient noble Venetian family, was exiled to Egypt and didn't return to Venice until Francesco was 18. That doesn't make Foscari a Mamluk. The point was that the Venetians had open trade with the Mamluks. Pope John XXII granted Venice alone the license to trade with the infidel Mamluk.
It does raise the likelihood that some Mamluk cards ended up in Venice but until there is some kind of evidence we'll just have to keep looking. As sometimes happens, an artifact of this sort could have entered through Venice but not found root - but instead have been picked up by someone passing through who adapted it elsewhere to what became an early European playing card deck.
From the Encyclopedia Brittanica:
"Belonging to a prominent Venetian family, Foscari headed the Council of Forty (1401) and the Council of Ten (1405–13), Venice’s ruling bodies, during the city’s wars for territorial expansion. Soon after his election as doge in 1423, he made an alliance with Florence and began a war against the duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti. The Venetians won Brescia in 1426, and a peace was reached in 1427. War resumed in 1431, and the subsequent Peace of Ferrara (1433) failed to settle the balance of power. A war with Bologna ended in a treaty in 1441 that increased Venetian territory, to which Ravenna was added shortly thereafter.
"In 1443 he resumed the war with Milan. Even after Filippo Maria died, Foscari pursued the war. The greater part of northern Italy was ravaged, and no member of its complex system of alliances emerged as a clear victor. Finally, in 1454 the Peace of Lodi ended the hostilities, and the Italian League, including Venice, Florence, and Milan, was formed."
Rosanne
Hi Mary!
That is what I thought until I got to Venice and when reading about the Foscari family- it was said they were Mamluks. Sometimes it is hard to find the proof or the correct information (the truth). The Ullman and Konemann hefty book on Venice it's Art and Architecture has two different views by historians within the same book??? I suppose it is nt beyong the realm of possibility that a Venitian in Egypt was chosen because of his mamluk ancestry?
In the book Sprezzatura by D'Epiro and Pinkowish (which is about Italian Genius shaping our world) They say that during the Mamluk era at it's height, 36,000 seaman made their living aboard Venetian merchant vessels and warships. They passed their time dicing,card playing, and other gambling activities. It is through them that I think the cards spread- gambling was not apparently illegal in Cairo at that time.
~Rosanne
That is what I thought until I got to Venice and when reading about the Foscari family- it was said they were Mamluks. Sometimes it is hard to find the proof or the correct information (the truth). The Ullman and Konemann hefty book on Venice it's Art and Architecture has two different views by historians within the same book??? I suppose it is nt beyong the realm of possibility that a Venitian in Egypt was chosen because of his mamluk ancestry?
In the book Sprezzatura by D'Epiro and Pinkowish (which is about Italian Genius shaping our world) They say that during the Mamluk era at it's height, 36,000 seaman made their living aboard Venetian merchant vessels and warships. They passed their time dicing,card playing, and other gambling activities. It is through them that I think the cards spread- gambling was not apparently illegal in Cairo at that time.
~Rosanne
Teheuti
That's very interesting for a city where the noble families were all listed in a book that tracked them extremely carefully. Do you think a Mamluk Egyptian family managed to get Francesco's name inserted into the book with a fake lineage that was accepted by the other families as having a "long lineage"? What a story - a whole city conspiring to fake a Muslim family as an old Catholic Venetian one so that the Muslim Turks could take over Venice. Wow! I don't mean to be sarcastic, but it would be an incredible feat - to have a Turkish/Egyptian Muslim boy of 18 come to Venice and by 50 be elected doge of a city with perhaps the most rigorous laws regarding family and inheritance that ever existed - and have his Venetian lineage accepted as fact.Rosanne said:Hi Mary!
That is what I thought until I got to Venice and when reading about the Foscari family- it was said they were Mamluks.
Still, this does make clear where the idea of a Mamluk doge comes from.
Here's an article on an exhibition and book about Venice and the Islamic World: http://www.iosminaret.org/vol-2/issue10/passage_to_venice.php
kapoore
Hi,
That was an interesting article on trade relations, and the story about glass making was really eye opening. However, I wonder why they didn't mention another lucrative product that was traded throughout this period of Venice dominance in the seas and that was the human cargo. I believe it was on Venetian ships that the Mamluks were carried from their homes around the Black Sea. The Mamluk military structure was a one of a kind institution where military slaves (mostly taken from the Black Sea area and before that from Turkish tribes) formed the private army of the Kings. These peoples were not traditionally into sea travel (land lovers) and so they formed this relationship to Venice because Venice had the ships. The intimate relationship between a slave and the boat that brought him from his home was a deep one in that the ship crew knew where he had come from. Strangest of all was that even after the Mamluks seized power they continued to have private armies of Mamluks, and continued the one generational rule. The whole idea behind the one generational rule was that a Muslim could not enslave another Muslim, so the Mamluk slaves (a little redundant there) didn't become a Muslim until after he was finished with his military duty. I guess much later ruling Mamluks allowed their Muslim sons to rule but that was later.
Maybe the reason that the Mamluks were particularly close to the Venetians was that they were strangers in the Arabic lands they occuppied. This lack of connection with the native Arabic population proved disasterous during the plague years. Mamluks didn't take Arabic names but took on Turkish names, even though most were not Turkish. The Turkish tribes converted en mass to Islam early on in the Middle Ages, and so the Islamic rulers had to move into non-Muslim areas to collect their slaves.
Apparently the whole system turned out to be disasterous for the great cities of the east which were essentially ruled by private armies. Also, a life as a military slave wasn't to the liking of all and I read in one diary that the cities along the Italian coast were filled with runaway slaves.
So, although the article was interesting it sort of washed out the darker side to the whole business. But I can see how a former Mamluk would be eager to work for the Venetians or for a merchant family because this must have been better than working as a slave.
Hope this isn't too off topic...
That was an interesting article on trade relations, and the story about glass making was really eye opening. However, I wonder why they didn't mention another lucrative product that was traded throughout this period of Venice dominance in the seas and that was the human cargo. I believe it was on Venetian ships that the Mamluks were carried from their homes around the Black Sea. The Mamluk military structure was a one of a kind institution where military slaves (mostly taken from the Black Sea area and before that from Turkish tribes) formed the private army of the Kings. These peoples were not traditionally into sea travel (land lovers) and so they formed this relationship to Venice because Venice had the ships. The intimate relationship between a slave and the boat that brought him from his home was a deep one in that the ship crew knew where he had come from. Strangest of all was that even after the Mamluks seized power they continued to have private armies of Mamluks, and continued the one generational rule. The whole idea behind the one generational rule was that a Muslim could not enslave another Muslim, so the Mamluk slaves (a little redundant there) didn't become a Muslim until after he was finished with his military duty. I guess much later ruling Mamluks allowed their Muslim sons to rule but that was later.
Maybe the reason that the Mamluks were particularly close to the Venetians was that they were strangers in the Arabic lands they occuppied. This lack of connection with the native Arabic population proved disasterous during the plague years. Mamluks didn't take Arabic names but took on Turkish names, even though most were not Turkish. The Turkish tribes converted en mass to Islam early on in the Middle Ages, and so the Islamic rulers had to move into non-Muslim areas to collect their slaves.
Apparently the whole system turned out to be disasterous for the great cities of the east which were essentially ruled by private armies. Also, a life as a military slave wasn't to the liking of all and I read in one diary that the cities along the Italian coast were filled with runaway slaves.
So, although the article was interesting it sort of washed out the darker side to the whole business. But I can see how a former Mamluk would be eager to work for the Venetians or for a merchant family because this must have been better than working as a slave.
Hope this isn't too off topic...
