Mamluk-Kipchak was a

Kipchak language Cuman or Kuman (also called Kipchak, Qypchaq or Polovtsian, self referred to as Tatar () in Codex Cumanicus) was a West Kipchak Turkic language spoken by the Cumans (Polovtsy, Folban, Vallany, Kun) and Kipchaks; the language was similar to tod ...

that was spoken in

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

and

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

during the

Mamluk Sultanate The Mamluk Sultanate (), also known as Mamluk Egypt or the Mamluk Empire, was a state that ruled Egypt, the Levant and the Hejaz from the mid-13th to early 16th centuries, with Cairo as its capital. It was ruled by a military caste of mamluks ...

period.

Classification

The Mamluk-Kipchak language belongs to the Cuman-Kipchak group of Kipchak languages. Other Cuman-Kipchak languages include Kumyk, Karachai-Balkar, Crimean Tatar.

History

Since most of the

Mamluk Mamluk or Mamaluk (; (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural); translated as "one who is owned", meaning "slave") were non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-so ...

rulers were monolingual Turkic speakers, several dictionaries were complied to enable communication between Arabic speaking population of the empire and its rulers. The language was also used as

literary language Literary language is the Register (sociolinguistics), register of a language used when writing in a formal, academic writing, academic, or particularly polite tone; when speaking or writing in such a tone, it can also be known as formal language. ...

and several Arabic and Persian works have been translated to Kipchak by Mamluks. It was written in

Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic (Arabic alphabet) and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin script), the second-most widel ...

. Mamluk-Kipchak lost its ground as the dominant Turkic language to

Oghuz Turkic The Oghuz languages are a sub-branch of the Turkic language family, spoken by approximately 108 million people. The three languages with the largest number of speakers are Turkish, Azerbaijani and Turkmen, which, combined, account for more ...

among the ruling

Burji dynasty The Burji Mamluks () or Circassian Mamluks (), sometimes referred to as the Burji dynasty, were the rulers of the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt from 1382 until 1517. As with the preceding Bahri Mamluks, the members of the Burji Mamluk ruling class we ...

Literature

* ''Kitab al-'idrak li-lisan al-'atrak'' (كتاب الإدراك للسان الأتراك) 'Aspects of the Turkic language
archive (in Arabic)

Ibn Hayyan Abū Marwān Ḥayyān ibn Khalaf ibn Ḥusayn ibn Ḥayyān al-Andalusī al-Qurṭubī () (987–1075), usually known as Ibn Hayyan, was an Arab Muslim historian from Al-Andalus Al-Andalus () was the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Pen ...

. * «At-Tufhat-uz-zakiya fil-lugat-it-Turkiyya» «Valuable gift to Turkish language»

References

Agglutinative languages Extinct languages of Asia Extinct languages of Africa Kipchak languages Medieval languages Turkic languages Mamluk Sultanate {{Turkic-lang-stub