Mamluqi 1958 < PREMIUM 鈼� >

There are phrases that float through history like fragments of a broken mirror. They catch the light just enough to blind you, but not enough to show a clear reflection. "Mamluqi 1958" is one of those phrases.

But within the officer corps, there was a shadow faction. These were not young, radical, Nasserist colonels. These were older officers鈥擟ircassian and Turkish-descended men from the old Ottoman-Mamluk families of the Levant. Their families had served as military slaves for empires for centuries: first the Mamluks, then the Ottomans, then the French Mandate, then the Lebanese Republic. mamluqi 1958

1958, in contrast, was the year of ideology. Nasser was not a slave-king; he was a prophet of the masses. He spoke on the radio. He mobilized the poor. There are phrases that float through history like