The ''wāfidiyya'' were troops of various ethnic backgrounds who came into the military service of the Mamlūk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria in exchange for asylum. The term is a

collective noun In linguistics, a collective noun is a word referring to a collection of things taken as a whole. Most collective nouns in everyday speech are not specific to one kind of thing. For example, the collective noun "group" can be applied to people (" ...

formed from the singular ''wāfid'', meaning "one who comes, makes his way, in a delegation or group". The ''wāfidiyya'' were predominantly

Mongols Mongols are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, China ( Inner Mongolia and other 11 autonomous territories), as well as the republics of Buryatia and Kalmykia in Russia. The Mongols are the principal member of the large family o ...

Kurds Kurds (), or the Kurdish people, are an Iranian peoples, Iranic ethnic group from West Asia. They are indigenous to Kurdistan, which is a geographic region spanning southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northeastern Syri ...

, Khwarazmians and other Turks. The

Mamlūk 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-soldi ...

s, themselves mostly Turkish, regarded the Mongols as co-ethnics. Large numbers of Kurds and Khwarazmians fled the Mongol conquest of Khwarazmia and took refuge in Mamlūk Syria. This preceded the first major influx of Mongol ''wāfidiyya'' that took place in the aftermath of the first Mongol invasion of Syria in 1260, during the reign of Sultan

Baybars Al-Malik al-Zahir Rukn al-Din Baybars al-Bunduqdari (; 1223/1228 – 1 July 1277), commonly known as Baibars or Baybars () and nicknamed Abu al-Futuh (, ), was the fourth Mamluk sultan of Egypt and Syria, of Turkic Kipchak origin, in the Ba ...

(1260–77). The bulk of the ''wāfidiyya'' were settled in the devastated parts of Syria and Palestine, while only their leaders were allowed to settle in Egypt. Another large influx of 10–18,000 Mongol ''wāfidiyya'' from the

Ilkhanate The Ilkhanate or Il-khanate was a Mongol khanate founded in the southwestern territories of the Mongol Empire. It was ruled by the Il-Khans or Ilkhanids (), and known to the Mongols as ''Hülegü Ulus'' (). The Ilkhanid realm was officially known ...

took place under Sultan al-ʿĀdil Kitbughā (1295–97), himself an Oirat Mongol. Baybars was purportedly frightened by the sudden influx of soldiers seeking asylum and sought to disperse ethnic Mongols throughout the army. He did allow some to join the elite Baḥriyya regiment. He was said to have appointed ''wāfidiyya'' up to the rank of "emir of a hundred" (''amīr miʾa''), but only one Khwarazmian ''wāfid'', related to Baybars by marriage, is known to have attained this rank. There were between 113 and 300 leaders among those who sought asylum from Kitbughā in 1296. Their supreme leader, Ṭurghāy, received the rank of "emir of forty" (''amīr arbaʿīn''), perhaps because he was a son-in-law of the

Ilkhan Il Khan (also ''il-khan'', ''ilkhan'', ''elkhan'', etc.), in Turkic languages and Mongolian, is a title of leadership. It combines the title ''khan'' with the prefix ''el/il'', from the word ''ulus'' – 'tribe, clan', 'the people', 'nation', ' ...

Hülegü. Kitbughā favoured the Oirat ''wāfidiyya'' and this led in part to his downfall. The Oirats remained politically important at the start of the reign of al-Nāṣir Muḥammad ibn Ḳalāwūn (1309–40), but by 1333 some had been reduced servants (''atbāʿ'') of the Mamlūks. This represented a complete inversion of their original statuses. The Sultan Kitbughā and the regent Sayf al-Din Salar, both Oirats, had entered Egypt as slaves and risen through the Mamlūk ranks to the highest positions, whereas the Oirat ''wāfidiyya'' had entered Egypt as free men and been reduced to servile status within a generation or two.

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* * * * * {{refend Mamluk Sultanate Arabic words and phrases Military history of Egypt Defectors Refugees in Egypt