 According to historian Michael Winter, "Turkishness" was the distinctive aspect of the Mamluk ruling elite, for only they knew how to speak Turkish and had Turkish names.While the Mamluk elite was ethnically diverse, those who were not Turkic in origin were Turkicized nonetheless.As such, the ethnically Circassian mamluks who gained prominence with the rise of the Burji regime and became the dominant ethnic element of the government, were educated in the Turkish language and were considered to be Turks by the Arabic-speaking population.