The Mamelukes/Mamluks were a slave warrior caste, directly slaves of the state/sultan. In the Egyptian case, the Mamelukes of Egypt overthrew the Ayyubid (descendant of Saladin) dynasty and directly ruled Egypt in 1250. The famed Mameluke sultan (the Egyptian pronunciation is closer to "soldan") Baibars defeated the Mongols at Ain Jalut in 1260 and Baibars and his immediate successors destroyed the last Crusader states and conquered the Levant in the 1270s-1290s. Under Mameluke rule, membership in the Mameluke soldier slave caste became a quite favorable position indeed...while a slave of the sultan, you were also superior to everyone else in society. A fairly profitable market developed in prisoners of war from the steppe captured by the Golden Horde sold into slavery to the Genoans at Kaffa who would ship them down to Alexandria and sell them to the Egyptians to become new Mamluk slave-soldiers. The Mamluks, while "slaves" of the state, ended up superior in rank to everyone else in Egypt. Even after the Ottomans conquered Egypt, the local Mameluke power structure remained in power as the Ottomans let them govern Egypt pretty much by their own devices.