Battle of Ain Jalut (1260): Mamluks Halt the Mongol Advance

The Battle of Ain Jalut was fought on 3 September 1260 in the Jezreel Valley in Palestine between the Mamluk army of Egypt and a Mongol force sent by Hulagu, the conqueror of Baghdad. The Mamluks under Sultan Qutuz and his general Baybars won a decisive victory and killed the Mongol commander Kitbuqa. Ain Jalut saved Egypt from invasion, ended Mongol rule in Syria and set the frontier between the Mongol Ilkhanate and the Mamluk Sultanate for decades.

Background: the Mongol storm in the Middle East

In February 1258 the Mongols under Hulagu sacked Baghdad and killed the last Abbasid caliph there (see Siege of Baghdad). Hulagu’s brother, the Great Khan Möngke, had instructed him to bring the whole of the Middle East as far as Egypt under Mongol rule.

In 1259 Hulagu invaded Syria, ruled by the Ayyubid prince an-Nasir Yusuf. Aleppo was stormed in January 1260 after a short siege and its people suffered heavy losses. Damascus surrendered without a fight in March 1260, and Mongol detachments raided south as far as Gaza. Several Syrian princes and the Christian rulers of Armenian Cilicia and Antioch submitted to the Mongols and fought on their side.

Egypt under threat

Egypt was now the only major Muslim power left in the region. It had been ruled since 1250 by the Mamluks, former slave soldiers who had seized power from the Ayyubid dynasty (see Mamluk Sultanate). In November 1259 the Mamluk officer Qutuz had deposed the boy sultan al-Mansur Ali and made himself sultan, citing the need for strong leadership against the Mongols.

Hulagu sent envoys to Cairo with a letter demanding surrender in threatening terms. Qutuz had the envoys executed, a deliberate act that made war unavoidable.

Why the Mongol army was reduced

Then events far away changed the balance. Möngke had died in August 1259 while campaigning in China. When the news reached Hulagu in 1260, he withdrew the bulk of his army to Azerbaijan. Reasons included the coming succession struggle between his brothers Kublai and Ariq Böke, tensions with the Golden Horde to the north, and perhaps the difficulty of feeding large herds of horses in Syria’s summer pastures.

He left his trusted general Kitbuqa, a Naiman Mongol and a Nestorian Christian, in command in Syria. Kitbuqa’s army is usually estimated at 10,000 to 20,000 men, including Mongols and Turkic troops as well as Georgian and Armenian contingents and some local Syrian forces.

The Mamluk campaign

Qutuz gathered an army in Egypt that included the Bahri Mamluks, Ayyubid soldiers who had fled Syria, Turkmen and Bedouin troops. Its size is uncertain; estimates commonly range from about 15,000 to 20,000, though some historians suggest the Mamluks may have had a numerical advantage. Before the campaign Qutuz reconciled with Baybars, a leading Bahri officer who had been in exile in Syria and who returned to Egypt with his followers.

In July 1260 the army left Egypt. Baybars commanded the vanguard and drove a small Mongol garrison out of Gaza. The Mamluks then marched north along the coast through crusader territory. The barons of Acre, the capital of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, debated an alliance but in the end stayed neutral, allowing the Mamluks to pass and buy supplies near the city.

From Acre the Mamluks turned inland into Galilee. Kitbuqa, hearing of their advance, crossed the Jordan to meet them.

What happened: the battle on 3 September 1260

The two armies met in the morning of 3 September 1260 (25 Ramadan 658 in the Islamic calendar) near the spring of Ain Jalut, below the slopes of Mount Gilboa. The detailed course of the battle is known only from Mamluk and a few Persian and Christian sources, which differ in detail.

According to the main accounts, Baybars’s vanguard first engaged the Mongols and then fell back, drawing them on. The Mongol charge was fierce and broke the Mamluk left wing. At the critical moment Qutuz is said to have thrown off his helmet so his men could recognise him and to have rallied them with the cry “Wa Islamah!” (“O my Islam!”), a scene recorded in Mamluk chronicles.

The Mamluks counter-attacked and the Mongol line gave way. A contingent of Syrian Ayyubid troops under al-Ashraf Musa of Homs, who had been fighting with the Mongols, is reported to have deserted during the battle. Kitbuqa fought on and was killed, either in the fighting or after being captured and brought before Qutuz.

The pursuit

Surviving Mongol troops fled east and tried to make a stand near Baysan (Beth Shean), where they were defeated again. Mamluk detachments pursued them across Syria. Within weeks Damascus and Aleppo were back in Muslim hands, and the Mongol garrisons withdrew beyond the Euphrates.

The chronicles also mention that the Mamluks used midfa, small hand-held devices with gunpowder, to frighten Mongol horses. The meaning of this word in the 13th century is debated, and it is not certain that true firearms were used.

Key people

• Qutuz (died 1260): Mamluk sultan of Egypt from 1259, said in some sources to be a captive of Khwarazmian royal descent. He organised the campaign and led the army at Ain Jalut.
• Baybars (c. 1223–1277): commander of the vanguard, later sultan and the main architect of the Mamluk state (see Baybars).
• Kitbuqa (died 1260): experienced Naiman general and Nestorian Christian who commanded the Mongol forces in Syria.
• Hulagu (c. 1217–1265): founder of the Ilkhanate, who had withdrawn most of his army before the battle.

Consequences

The victory had immediate political effects in Egypt. On the march home Qutuz was murdered on 24 October 1260 by a group of emirs including Baybars, who had expected to be given Aleppo. Baybars was proclaimed sultan and used the prestige of Ain Jalut to build a strong and lasting state.

Hulagu sent a new army into Syria later in 1260, but it was defeated by local Muslim forces at the first Battle of Homs on 10 December 1260. Thereafter the Euphrates became the approximate frontier between the Mamluks and the Ilkhanate. Hulagu was also drawn into war with his cousin Berke of the Golden Horde, a Muslim convert who allied with the Mamluks.

The battle also mattered for the crusader states. Their neutrality had helped the Mamluks win, but the victors soon turned against them. Over the next thirty years the Mamluks captured the crusader castles and cities one after another.

Ain Jalut in memory

In the Arab world Ain Jalut has long been remembered as one of the great victories of Islamic history, often paired with Saladin’s victory at Hattin in 1187. Mamluk historians such as al-Maqrizi presented it as proof that the new regime had been chosen to defend the faith, and later sultans used the memory of the battle to justify their rule.

The battlefield itself left few physical traces. The spring of Harod, traditionally identified with Ain Jalut, is now a national park in northern Israel, and historians reconstruct the fighting mainly from written sources rather than archaeology. Modern scholars, especially Reuven Amitai, have stressed that the result depended as much on Mongol politics far away, above all Möngke’s death and Hulagu’s withdrawal, as on the skill of the Mamluk commanders on the day.

Myths and facts

“Ain Jalut was the first time the Mongols were ever defeated.” This is not true. Mongol armies had lost battles before, for example at Parwan in present-day Afghanistan in 1221. What made Ain Jalut different was its lasting strategic effect.

“Ain Jalut ended the Mongol threat for good.” The Ilkhanate invaded Syria again several times. The Mamluks won at Homs in 1281 but lost at Wadi al-Khazandar in 1299, after which the Mongols briefly held Damascus. Only after the Mamluk victory at Marj al-Saffar in 1303 and a peace around 1322–1323 did the war end.

“A vast Mongol horde was crushed.” The Mongol army at Ain Jalut was only a fraction of Hulagu’s original force, and the Mamluks were probably at least as numerous. The battle was a hard-fought victory between armies of similar size, not a triumph against overwhelming odds.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1258, 10 February: Baghdad surrenders to Hulagu.
• 1259, August: Great Khan Möngke dies in China.
• 1259, November: Qutuz becomes sultan of Egypt.
• 1260, January: The Mongols storm Aleppo.
• 1260, March: Damascus surrenders to the Mongols.
• 1260, July: The Mamluk army leaves Egypt; Baybars takes Gaza.
• 1260, 3 September: Battle of Ain Jalut; Kitbuqa is killed.
• 1260, 24 October: Qutuz is murdered; Baybars becomes sultan.
• 1260, 10 December: First Battle of Homs; another Mongol force is defeated.

Why it matters

Ain Jalut decided that Egypt, and with it North Africa and the holy cities of Arabia, would stay outside the Mongol Empire. It established the Mamluk Sultanate as the leading power of the Arab Middle East and fixed a frontier that shaped the region for the rest of the Middle Ages.