821 AH, 05/09:
It was announced to the soldiers of the ḥalqa that there would be an inspection by the sultan and they were presented to him on Friday 06/09. The inspection started with the ones of them serving amirs, and they were given the choice between staying in the troupes of the ḥalqa and leaving the serving of the amirs or being in the service of the amirs and giving up their ʾakhbaz was abandoned, and some of them chose one thing and others the other. Those that wanted to stay in the service of the amirs, left their ʾiqṭāʿ, and those that wanted to keep their ʾiqṭāʿ abandoned the service of the amirs. Some of them complained about the little income they obtained for their ʾiqṭāʿ and this was augmented. This was a good measure. It had been the custom that the army of Egypt in this Turkish state was composed of three sections, a section called the ʾajnād al-ḥalqa, who were in the service of the sultan, and everybody of them had an ʾiqṭāʿ, that was called khubz.The equivalent of those in the day of the caliphs were the ʾahl al-ʿaṭāʾ and the ʾahl al-dīwān. The second section was called the mamālīk al-sulṭān
They received a salary that was assigned every month, daily meat and foot rations and every year clothing. The third section was called the mamālīk al-ʾumarāʾ, and they were those that served the amirs. They received a part of the ʾiqṭāʿ of the amir, in a proportion that had been determined for them. Because of this the numbers of the armies of Egypt were big.
Then, in the days of al-Ẓāhirī Barqūq and his successors, this changed and the amirs started to take the ʾiqṭāʿs of the ḥalqa in name of their mamluks and their eunuchs. The soldiers of the ḥalqa started to serve with them and the mamluks of the sultan also received an ʾiqṭāʿ in addition to their salary. And the number of men diminished, the income of the people multiplied and the numbers of those who did not had an income from an ʾiqṭāʿ diminished.