Saif ad-Din Qutuz

Saif ad-Din Qutuz (born Mahmud ibn Mamdud) was a Khwarazmian prince of royal blood who was captured by Mongol invaders as a boy after the destruction of his family's realm, sold into slavery in Damascus, and named 'Qutuz' (meaning 'vicious hound' in Turkic for his fierce resistance). Rising through the ranks of the Bahri Mamluks in Egypt, he became vice-sultan and assumed the sultanate of Egypt in 1259 amidst absolute existential peril.

Hulagu Khan's Mongol armies had sacked Baghdad in 1258, slaughtering the Abbasid Caliph, and conquered Aleppo and Damascus. When Hulagu sent envoys demanding the unconditional surrender of Cairo, Qutuz executed the envoys, severed their heads, and impaled them upon the Bab Zuweila gate. Marching into Palestine, Qutuz united rival Mamluk factions. On September 3, 1260, at the Battle of Ain Jalut ('Spring of Goliath'), when the Mamluk lines wavered under ferocious Mongol cavalry charges, Qutuz threw his royal helmet to the ground, charged into the fray, and roared his immortal rallying cry: Wa Islamah! ('O my Islam!'). His counterattack annihilated the Mongol army of Kitbuqa, permanently halting the Mongol advance into Egypt and North Africa. On his return to Cairo, he was assassinated during a hunt.