This paper engages with the organization of the leadership of the Syro-Egyptian sultanate in the long ninth/fifteenth century, focusing particularly on the case of the court position of ‘the Chief Head of the [sultan’s] Guards’ (raʾs nawbat al-nuwab). It explores narrative source reports to identify the sultanate’s sixty ‘Chief Heads’ and to reconsider what they did in this capacity. Through the analytical categories of the court, social infrastructures and military entrepreneurialism, this paper furthers understandings of how these military leaders were all constitutive participants in the era’s complex processes of resource accumulation, violence-wielding, courtly reconfiguration, and state formation.

本文涉及漫长的九世纪/十五世纪叙利亚-埃及苏丹国的领导层组织，特别关注“[苏丹] 卫队总司令”（raʾs nawbat al-nuwab）的宫廷职位). 它探索了叙事来源报告，以确定苏丹国的六十位“首脑”，并重新考虑他们以这种身份所做的事情。通过宫廷、社会基础设施和军事企业主义的分析范畴，本文进一步理解这些军事领导人如何在这个时代的资源积累、使用暴力、宫廷重组和国家形成的复杂过程中都是构成性参与者。