Modern Mamlouks and Arab Counter-Revolution

Abstract

Jean-Pierre Filiu adopts a broad historical view by drawing a comparison between today’s military regimes in Egypt, Syria, Algeria and Yemen, and the ‘Mamluks’ who ruled Egypt and Syria from 1250 to 1516. According to Filiu, the brutal way in which the ‘neo-Mamluk’ regime in Algeria derailed the political transition in Algeria from 1992 onwards set the ‘counter-revolutionary’ pattern which similarly conjured regimes in Egypt, Syria and Yemen followed in dealing with the 2011 uprisings and their aftermath. This goes a long way in explaining why the only country where the bases of a democratic political order were successfully established is non-Mamluk Tunisia.