To the Editor:
David Mamet's op-ed "Sorry, Billionaires—There's No Escape" (Aug. 7) establishes that, come the apocalypse, no amount of money will help the ultrarich reach safety because their aides will revolt and take over.
To emphasize his point, Mr. Mamet includes a colorful sentence about historic Middle Eastern military slavery: "The Ottoman Turks raised enslaved Mamelukes to the status first of guards and then of administrators, and all was well until the 'Lukes did the math and realized they didn't need the Turks."
I hate to seem pedantic, but the Journal's reputation for accuracy impels this author of the book Slave Soldiers and Islam (1981) to correct the record. Yes, rebellions by enslaved soldiers occurred in several places – especially Egypt, Iraq and India – but not so in the Ottoman Empire. There in 1826, Sultan Mahmud II decided to disband his slave soldier corps, known as Janissaries, and establish a modern army. His turn on them, known as the "Auspicious Incident," successfully disbanded the four-century-old Janissaries.
In other words, the ruler did the math and realized he didn't need the slaves.
Daniel Pipes
Middle East Forum
Philadelphia
Aug. 11, 2025 addendum: Add France to where a Mamluke turned on his master along David Mamet's lines: that would be Roustam Raza (1783-1845). Of Armenian origins, Raza served as a slave soldier in Egypt. Gifted by his owner to Napoleon in 1798, Raza served the French leader for sixteen years as bodyservant and bodyguard, only to desert him just before the emperor's 1814 abdication and banishment to Elba. This act outraged Napoleon and scandalized French aristocrats; even the New York Times in 1911 called it "a shameless case of abandonment."
Jonathan North, the translator of Raza's memoirs into English, explains the shocked reaction:
Inevitably, in a society that so valued rank and duty over family, the selfish act of a valet would be seen as an aberration by a literate elite which, itself, relied on such servants. In addition, Roustam seems to have been subject to a form of bizarre orientalism in which a slave was supposed to stay loyal to his master, even unto death. Public perception of oriental servants was that they were faithful to the point of allowing themselves to be killed and buried with their masters. But Roustam had preferred a soft life with his family, and Napoleon had gone into exile alone.
For Bonapartists, Roustam's behavior was that of an ungrateful wretch, a man who had been lavished with preferment and who should have remained loyal come what may.
