The term "Mamluk" is used to refer to the white slaves who were taken prisoners of war or who were bought in slave markets in Caucasus, Asia Minor, Persia, Turkistan, Transoxiana and some European countries. The Tulunids were the first to recruit the Mamluks to serve in Egypt, and the Ayyubids bought a great number with them. Under the Ayyubids the Mamluks were well fed and highly trained, so that they could assume the highest posts in the state.

The Mamluks continued the Ayyubids' fight against the Crusaders until they successfully expelled the Crusaders from the Levant. They also succeeded in staving off the grave danger of the Mongols who devastated Baghdad and toppled the Abbasid Caliphate in 1258. The Mongols continued their advance toward the Levant, occupying Damascus and reached Palestine. There the Mamluks fought off their attacks at the Battle of Ain Jalut (the "Eye of Goliath") which took place in 1260 A.D. Mamluk sultans subsequently founded a vast empire that subsumed Egypt, the Levant, Al-Hijaz, Yemen and Cyrenaica. They sought to legitimize their rule by reviving the Abbasid Caliphate in Cairo, as well as by building mosques and establishing waqfs to endow them and through many for such mosques and for various acts of charity. The National Archives of Egypt holds a number of sultanic waqf deeds covering a wide range of urban and rural real estate properties and land. Among the greatest waqf endowers were Sultan Al-Nasser Mohammed Ibn Qalawun and As-Sifi Qaytbay Ibn Abd-Ellah.

Toward the end of the fifteenth century, the Mamluk state began to deteriorate economically, partly as a result of the outbreak of deadly epidemics, resulting in famines and general economic impoverishment, partly as a result of the incessant political crises. The situation deteriorated further as a consequence of the development of an international trade route between the East and West that by-passed Egypt and went from Europe to Asia via the Cape of Good Hope. But the actual demise of the Mamluk state came at the hands of the Ottoman army. The Ottoman sultan, Selim I, defeated the Mamluk sultan, Qansuh Al-Ghouri, in the battle of Marj Dabiq on 24 Augest 1516 in a field north of Aleppo. Al-Ghouri was killed in the battle and Selim advanced toward Egypt where he defeated Touman-Bay at the Battle of Raydaniyah outside Cairo in 1517. Egypt thus became an Ottoman wlayah or province.