Baybars: Mamluk Sultan and Conqueror of Crusader Castles

Baybars (c. 1223–1277), known by his royal title al-Malik al-Zahir Rukn al-Din Baybars, was a former slave soldier who became Mamluk sultan of Egypt and Syria from 1260 until his death. He fought the crusaders at Mansurah and the Mongols at Ain Jalut, then spent his reign capturing crusader castles and defending Syria against the Mongol Ilkhanate. Historians see him as the real founder of the Mamluk Sultanate, the state that ruled Egypt until 1517.

Early life: from the steppe to Cairo

Baybars was born around 1223–1228 among the Kipchak Turks of the steppe north of the Black Sea. When the Mongols overran the region around 1240, he was captured and sold into slavery. Medieval writers describe him as tall, fair-skinned and blue-eyed, with a cataract in one eye, which at first lowered his price.

He was bought by an emir named Aydakin al-Bunduqdar, which gave Baybars his surname al-Bunduqdari. He then passed to the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt, as-Salih Ayyub, and joined the Bahri Mamluks, the sultan’s elite regiment based on an island in the Nile.

Rise to power

Baybars first became prominent during the Seventh Crusade of Louis IX. At Mansurah on 8 February 1250 he was among the Mamluk commanders who trapped and destroyed the crusader vanguard of Robert of Artois in the town’s streets. In May 1250 he took part in the murder of Sultan Turanshah, the event that brought the Mamluks to power.

In 1254 the Mamluk ruler Aybak had the Bahri leader Aqtay killed. Baybars and other Bahris fled to Syria and spent several years serving rival princes. In 1260, with the Mongols advancing, he reconciled with the new sultan Qutuz and returned to Egypt.

Ain Jalut and the murder of Qutuz

Baybars led the vanguard in the campaign that ended in the Mamluk victory over the Mongols at Ain Jalut on 3 September 1260. On the way back to Egypt, on 24 October 1260, he and a group of emirs killed Qutuz during a hunt. The emirs accepted Baybars as sultan. He took the title al-Malik al-Zahir, “the Victorious King”.

Building the Mamluk state

Baybars inherited a fragile regime and turned it into a durable state. He enlarged the army and bought large numbers of new mamluks, fixed the hierarchy of emirs and ensured troops were paid through land revenues. He rebuilt the fortifications of Syria that the Mongols had destroyed.

To speed up communications he created the barid, a mounted relay postal service linking Cairo and Damascus in about four days, supported by carrier pigeons and signal fires. A network of informers kept him aware of events in both Mongol and crusader lands.

In 1261 he welcomed to Cairo a member of the Abbasid family who had survived the sack of Baghdad and installed him as caliph. The caliph then formally invested Baybars with authority. This gave the Mamluk sultan religious legitimacy as protector of Sunni Islam and of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

Wars against the crusaders

Baybars treated the remaining crusader states as allies or potential allies of the Mongols. From 1263 he launched almost yearly campaigns along the coast:

• 1265: He took Caesarea and Arsuf.
• 1266: He besieged and took the Templar castle of Safed in Galilee; the garrison surrendered on terms but was then executed.
• 1268: He took Jaffa in March and Antioch in May. Antioch, a crusader principality for 170 years, was sacked and much of its population was killed or enslaved.
• 1271: He captured Krak des Chevaliers, the great Hospitaller fortress in Syria, after a siege of about a month, as well as other castles.

An attempt to attack Cyprus by sea in 1271 failed when his fleet was wrecked. He also made truces when they suited him, including with the lords of Acre and Tyre.

Wars against the Mongols and diplomacy

The Ilkhanate of Iran remained Baybars’s greatest enemy. He defended the Euphrates frontier and raided the Mongols’ Christian ally, Armenian Cilicia, in 1266. To weaken the Ilkhanate he allied with Berke, khan of the Golden Horde, a Muslim and a rival of Hulagu. He also maintained relations with the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII and with rulers in Italy, which protected the flow of new Kipchak slave recruits through the Black Sea.

In April 1277 he invaded Anatolia, defeated a Mongol and Seljuk army at Elbistan and briefly entered Kayseri, before withdrawing to Syria.

Character and methods

Contemporary chroniclers, among them his secretary Ibn Abd al-Zahir, who wrote an official biography, describe Baybars as energetic, suspicious and tireless. He travelled constantly between Egypt and Syria, often in disguise or with little warning, to inspect officials and troops in person. He was ruthless towards rivals: several leading emirs who were suspected of plotting against him were arrested and died in prison.

He also used religion and law to strengthen his rule. In 1265 he reorganised the courts of Cairo so that each of the four Sunni schools of law had its own chief judge, an arrangement that lasted for centuries. He banned wine and closed taverns at times, and he supported the pilgrimage to Mecca, sending a richly decorated covering for the Kaaba and a ceremonial litter with the pilgrim caravan.

His wars were fought with careful preparation. Before major sieges he stockpiled timber and stone for catapults, recruited miners and engineers, and raided the countryside to cut off supplies. Many crusader fortresses surrendered on terms rather than face a long assault, although he did not always honour those terms. In the south his armies intervened in the Christian kingdom of Makuria in Nubia in 1276, installing a ruler who accepted Mamluk overlordship.

How historians judge Baybars

Modern historians generally agree that Baybars was one of the most capable rulers of the medieval Middle East, while also noting his brutality. His destruction of Antioch and the killings at Safed were harsh even by the standards of the time. His achievement was less a single victory than a system: an army, an administration and a set of alliances that allowed the Mamluk state to survive the deaths of its founders.

Death and legacy

Baybars died in Damascus on 1 July 1277. Some medieval reports claim he drank poisoned kumis by mistake; the cause is not known for certain. He was buried in the Zahiriyya madrasa in Damascus. His sons briefly succeeded him but were soon pushed aside by the emir Qalawun, whose family then ruled for most of a century.

His reign left a lasting imprint. He sponsored mosques, schools and bridges, including the large Mosque of al-Zahir Baybars in Cairo, completed in 1269. In popular culture he became the hero of the Sirat Baybars, a long folk romance told by storytellers in Cairo and Damascus for centuries. Western writers remembered him more darkly as the destroyer of crusader Antioch and the castles of the Holy Land.

Timeline

• c. 1223–1228: Baybars is born among the Kipchak Turks.
• c. 1240s: He is sold as a slave and joins the Bahri Mamluks.
• 1250, 8 February: Fights at the Battle of Mansurah.
• 1260, 3 September: Commands the vanguard at Ain Jalut.
• 1260, 24 October: Qutuz is murdered; Baybars becomes sultan.
• 1261: Installs an Abbasid caliph in Cairo.
• 1268, May: Captures Antioch.
• 1271, April: Takes Krak des Chevaliers.
• 1277, 1 July: Dies in Damascus.

Why it matters

Baybars turned a group of rebellious slave soldiers into the rulers of a stable empire. His campaigns crippled the crusader states, held back the Mongols and made Cairo the centre of the Arab Muslim world for more than two centuries.