A Turning Point in Mamluk History deals with the process of decline of the Mamluk state (1250-1517). Its main thesis is that the origins of this process are to be found in the third reign of al-Nāsir Muḥammad Ibn Qalāwūn, more specifically in the changes he effected in the Mamluk system.
The Mamluk army was the first to be confronted with these changes, whose impact on the social and political life of the Mamluk elite was already felt during al-Nāsir's own lifetime. The author follows their course of development to the end of autonomous Mamluk rule and reveals the transformation they wrought in the Mamluk code of values and political concepts.
A final chapter deals with the overall economic decline of the Mamluk state and establishes the link of its various causes—demographic decline, monetary crises, the collapse of agriculture and industry—with Mamluk government misrule. Here it is al-Nāsir's expenditure policy and its repercussions on the economy which reveal his reign as a point of no return.