Qansuh II al-Ghawri, the Mamluk sultan, is said to have had knowledge of several languages. In one source, the sultan enumerated the languages he had knowledge of. To refer to 'Kurdish' as a linguistic entity was rare in the Mamluk period. What may explain this development? Kurdish, as a linguistic entity, would usually be put under other generic labels prior to and during the Mamluk era. What may explain the departure in this source is that it's matching the elite representation of the Mamluk Sultanate. So why is al Jarkasi, al Kurdi and Asi mentioned? These groups were overrepresented in elite circles, which led to the specification of the languages spoken by them, and the interest of the sultan to learn the different languages of the elite despite the absence of a long & popular written tradition for some of these languages:
Firstly (the sultan understood) Arabic, secondly the Persian language, thirdly the Turkish language (lisān al-turkī), fourthly Kurdish (al-kurdī), fifthly Armenian (al-armanī), sixthly Circassian (al-jarkasī), seventhly Abkhazian and Ossetic (Asī).
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