Baybars I, in full al-Malik al-Ẓāhir Rukn al-Dīn Baybars al-Bunduqdārī, or Al-Ṣāliḥī, Baybars also spelled Baibars, (born 1223, north of the Black Sea—died July 1, 1277, Damascus, Syria), most eminent of the Mamlūk sultans of Egypt and Syria, which he ruled from 1260 to 1277. He is noted both for his military campaigns against Mongols and crusaders and for his internal administrative reforms. The Sirat Baybars, a folk account purporting to be his life story, is still popular in the Arabic-speaking world.
Baybars was born in the country of the Kipchak Turks on the northern shores of the Black Sea. After the Mongol invasion of their country in about 1242, Baybars was one of a number of Kipchak Turks sold as slaves. Turkish-speaking slaves, who had become the military backbone of most Islamic states, were highly prized, and eventually Baybars came into the possession of Sultan al-Ṣāliḥ Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb of the Ayyūbid dynasty of Egypt. Sent, like all the sultan’s newly acquired slaves, for military training to an island in the Nile, Baybars demonstrated outstanding military abilities. Upon his graduation and emancipation, he was appointed commander of a group of the sultan’s bodyguard.
Baybars gained his first major military victory as commander of the Ayyūbid army at the city of Al-Manṣūrah in February 1250 against the crusaders’ army led by Louis IX of France, who was captured and later released for a large ransom. Filled with a sense of their military strength and growing importance in Egypt, a group of Mamlūk officers, led by Baybars, in the same year murdered the new sultan, Tūrān Shāh. The death of the last Ayyūbid sultan was followed by a period of confusion that continued throughout the first years of the Mamlūk sultanate.Having angered the first Mamlūk sultan, Aybak, Baybars fled with other Mamlūk leaders to Syria and stayed there until 1260, when they were welcomed back to Egypt by the third sultan, al-Muẓaffar Sayf al-Dīn Quṭuz. He restored them to their place in the army and conferred a village upon Baybars.
Within a few months of Baybars’s arrival, in September 1260, the Mamlūk troops defeated a Mongol army near Nāblus in Palestine. Baybars distinguished himself as the leader of the vanguard, and many Mongol leaders were slain on the field.
Berke Khan was a grandson of Genghis Khan and a Mongol military commander and ruler of the Golden Horde (division of the Mongol Empire)[note 1] who effectively consolidated the power of the Blue Horde and White Horde[note 2] from 1257 to 1266. He succeeded his brother Batu Khan of the Blue Horde (West), and was responsible for the first official establishment of Islam in a khanate of the Mongol Empire.[1] Following the Sack of Baghdad by Hulagu Khan, his cousin and head of the Mongol Ilkhanate based in Persia, he allied with the Egyptian Mamluks against Hulagu. Berke also supported Ariq Böke against Kublai in the Toluid Civil War, but did not intervene militarily in the war because he was occupied in his own war against Hulagu and the Ilkhanate.
Berke Khan converted to Islam in the city of Bukhara in 1252. When he was at Saray-Jük, Berke met a caravan from Bukhara and questioned them about their faith. Berke was impressed with their faith and decided to convert to Islam. Berke then persuaded his brother Tukh-timur to become a Muslim as well.
Berke was present, with several of his brothers, at the inauguration of his uncle Ögedei as Great Khan in 1229.
In 1236, Berke joined his brothers Orda, Sinkur, and Shiban and an assortment of cousins under the leadership of Batu Khan in a vast army, comprising some 150,000 soldiers, which marched from Siberia and into the territory of the Muslim Volga Bulgars and Kipchaks, whom they subdued. Batu and Subutai sent Berke to the country north of the Caucasus to conquer the Kipchaks there. Next they devastated the principalities of Ryazan and Suzdal in 1237, and marched further into Russia. During the winter of 1238–39, Berke defeated the Kipchaks and imprisoned the chief of the Merkits. He afterwards subdued the steppe watered by the Kuma and the Terek west of the Caspian Sea.
Berke further served under his brother during the invasion of Europe, fighting at the Battle of the Mohi, where the Hungarian army was decimated. When Ögedei Khan died, and all the princes of the blood were summoned to return to Mongolia to select a Great Khan, Berke and his brothers joined Batu in the kurultai to elect a new Great Khan.
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