28mm Painted Napoleon Bodyguard Mameluk Roustam Raza.

.....the only napoleonic figure (from Wargames Foundry) I own now from a previous foray into 28mm napoleonics and my favourite.

Napoleon formed his own Mamluk corps, the last known Mamluk force, in the early years of the 19th century, and used Mamluks in a number of his campaigns. Even his Imperial Guard had Mamluk soldiers during the Belgian campaign, including one of his personal servants. Napoleon's famous bodyguard Roustam Raza was a Mamluk who had been sold in Egypt.


Throughout the Napoleonic era there was a special Mamluk corps in the French army. In his history of the 13th Chasseurs Colonel Descaves recounts how Napoleon used the Mamluks in Egypt. In the so-called "Instructions" that Bonaparte gave to Kleber after departure, Napoleon wrote that he had already bought from Syrian merchants about 2,000 Mamluks with whom he intended to form a special detachment.

Roustam was born in Tbilisi, Georgia to Armenian parents. At thirteen Roustan was kidnapped and sold as a slave in Cairo. The Turks gave him the name Idzhahia. The sheikh of Cairo presented him to General Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798. Roustam served as a bodyguard of Napoleon until 1814, when he married Mademoiselle Douville in Dourdan, France and refused to follow the Emperor in his exile to Elba.On 7 December 1845, Roustam died in Dourdan.

More information here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamluk#Under_Napoleon

Roustam Raza