Al-Zahir Baybars

Al-Malik al-Zahir Rukn al-Din Baybars al-Bunduqdari was the true founder and greatest military sovereign of the Bahri Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria. A Kipchak Turk born on the Eurasian steppes, Baybars was captured into Mongol slavery as a boy and sold in Damascus before being purchased by the Ayyubid Sultan As-Salih Ayyub for his elite royal Mamluk guard.

Tall, blue-eyed with a cataract in one eye, and possessing ferocious military ability, Baybars commanded the vanguard that defeated King Louis IX of France at Mansurah in 1250 during the Seventh Crusade. On September 3, 1260, at the historic Battle of Ain Jalut, Baybars led the vanguard that lured the supposedly invincible Mongol army into a devastating ambush, halting the Mongol conquest of the Middle East. Assuming the sultanate in Cairo, Baybars waged seventeen victorious campaigns, capturing the formidable Crusader fortresses of Krak des Chevaliers and the Principality of Antioch in 1268. He established an efficient rapid courier post connecting Cairo and Damascus in four days, and built the magnificent Mosque of Sultan Baybars in Cairo.