The Lion of Egypt
Al-Zahir Baybars
July 1223 – July 1277
4TH MAMLUK SULTAN
Baybars was a Kipchak Turk, from a family of unnotable lineage, born in the steppe region north of the black sea in what constitutes modern-day Ukraine. His tribe, the Barli, pre-emptively fled the invading armies of the Mongols towards Bulgaria, but their efforts ended up for naught, as the Mongols reached it in 1242 shortly after they’d settled. Baybars witnessed the massacre of his family when he was just a boy, and was subsequently captured and sold into slavery. He eventually ended up in the markets of Hama, Syria, where he was purchased by an Egyptian nobleman.
Baybars would grow into a physical specimen to be reckoned with. He was described as tall, broad, with fair hair, light eyes, and a powerful voice. He was tough, never backed down from a fight, and loved the Quran. Due to his physical prowess, innate courage, and charisma, he naturally was placed as his owner’s personal guard.
One day however, his owner was arrested and jailed after angering the Sultan As-Salih Ayyub (grand-nephew of Saladin), and his riches and slaves were confiscated. Overnight, Baybars became the slave of the Ayyubid Sultan.
Baybars, recognized for his talent and strength, was enrolled in the Bahri Mamluks, rising through the ranks in just a couple of years to become a commander at the level of a contemporary he’d meet again later – Saif ad-Din Qutuz, a fellow Turk from Persia.
In 1250, the Seventh Crusade commenced, and King Louis IX of France took his forces to the city of Mansurah in Egypt to ease their attempt to conquer Jerusalem again. His first chance to allow his military genius to shine, Baybars had the idea of letting the Crusader knights into the town and trap them. The result was the extermination of all but five Templars in total. The second battle at Fariskur led to the capture of King Louis, granting a poor, whimpering end to the Seventh Crusade. Shortly after, Baybars would assist in a coup in Egypt against as-Salih Ayyub’s young son Turan Shah, replacing him with the concubine-turned-wife of his father, Shajar al-Durr. Shajar would marry Aybak and pass the throne to him, who then killed Faris ad-Din Aktai, commander of the Mamluks. Baybars, who was under his direct command, took a company of his men and fled to Syria where they stayed under the protection of the last Ayyubid prince, al-Nasir Yusuf.
Eventually, the old acquaintance of Baybars, Saif ad-Din Qutuz, would take over from the Ayyubids in Egypt as Sultan in 1259 after the sack of Baghdad to deal with the Mongol threat – and thus welcomed Baybars and his company back and reinstated them in the army. Just a few months after Baybars was reinstated, now the right-hand man of Qutuz, the Mongols advanced further into the Levant, culminating in the momentous Battle of Ain Jalut, where Baybars won his most famous victory.
Due to spending years in the Levant as a fugitive and being familiar with how the Mongols employed their vicious strategies firsthand, he laid out a plan to use their own tactics against them. With his cavalry, he performed multiple hit-and-run attacks on segments of the Mongol army until they’d grown so frustrated they were lured deep into the valley of Goliath’s Spring. Suddenly they found themselves surrounded on all ends, and that’s when Baybars sent out the full extent of his forces to decimate them. Sultan Qutuz was so moved by the sight, he tossed his helmet away and rode down the fields to his men, shouting “Wa Islamah! Ya Allah, ansur abdak Qutuz! (Oh my Islam! Oh Allah, grant victory to your servant Qutuz!). The Mongols were defeated shortly after, their first real defeat.
Unfortunately, after this great victory, tensions boiled over between Qutuz and his commanders, leading to his assassination. Baybars was the popular successor, and the following decades were filled with one victory after the other against the remaining Crusaders in the Levant, the Mongols in Persia, their allied Armenian Christians, and even the Ismaili Assassins. As well as leading all these campaigns directly as Sultan, he made many internal reforms that benefitted both Islam and the general well-being of his people. He overhauled the infrastructure of his cities and harbors and was the first ruler in Egypt to make sure that they always had chief justices of all four Islamic Schools of Law present in the government. This reform would spread across the Islamic world and soon became customary in all Urban Muslim centers.
From the life of a tormented slave, bought and sold like cattle, Baybars rose through the ranks through his will & faith in Allah and inherited the spiritual legacy of the greats like Saladin whom he admired, remaining one of Islam’s greatest heroes to this day.