Awlad al-Nas (sons of the people, in the Mamluk army)

The mamluk upper class formed an exclusive society. Only a person born a non-Muslim, brought as a child-slave from abroad, converted, freed after military training, and usually bearing a non-Arab name could belong to it. The upper class was therefore a non-hereditary nobility, and the sons of mamluks and mamluk amirs, who were Muslims and free by birth, bore Arab names, and were born within the sultanate, were automatically excluded from it. ¹

They were joined to a unit of non-mamluks called the halka, which was socially inferior to the pure mamluk units. Within the halka the sons of amirs and mamluks formed the upper stratum, known as Awlad al-Nas, "children of the people", that is "of the best people, of the gentry", since the "people" meant the mamluks. Apart from a few exceptions they attained no higher rank than amir of ten and amir of forty. ¹

Occasionally the awlad al-nas were favoured for political reasons. Sultan al-Nasir Hasan (748-752 AH, 1347-1351) preferred amirs from among them to mamluk amirs. This was exceptional, and their chances of key positions were limited. In time they declined with the halka: their pay was reduced, their fiefs were sold, exemptions from campaigns were bought with cash payments, and tests in archery were used to show that they were badly trained. Toward the end of the mamluk era the halka fell into disuse, while the title awlad al-nas became very common. Many of them, like the rest of the halka, inclined to piety, left military service and became theologians or fuqaha. ²