At a glance
Era 6- Dates
- c. 1223-1277 CE; ruled 1260-1277 CE
- Who
- Mamluk sultan who fought the Mongols and the crusaders and built a strong state
- Era
- The Mongols & the Mamluks
ProfileAl-Zahir Baibars
Baibars was a Kipchak Turk from the steppe north of the Black Sea, sold as a boy and bought into the Mamluk army of Egypt. He fought at Mansura in 1250 against Louis IX of France and led the vanguard at Ain Jalut in 1260. Soon after the battle he became sultan.
In seventeen years he made the Mamluk sultanate the leading Muslim power of the age. He joined Egypt and Syria, enlarged the army and navy, repaired castles and roads, and ran a fast postal service with relay horses and carrier pigeons. He took crusader strongholds one after another, including Antioch in 1268 and the great castle of Crac des Chevaliers in 1271. He set up an Abbasid caliph in Cairo and allied with Berke, the Muslim khan of the Golden Horde.
He died in Damascus in 1277. In Egypt and Syria he is remembered as a hero.
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