Bahri Mamluk Sultan of Egypt. (Kipchak, Turkestan 1223, Damascus 1277)
Baybars, or Bibars - el-Malik el-Zahir Roukn ed-Din el-Salihi el-Baybars (born around 1223 north of the Black Sea - died 1 July 1277 in Damascus, Syria) was Bahri Mamluk Sultan of Egypt from 1260 to 1277. He is sometimes nicknamed "the crossbowman".
He was born in Kipchak in Turkestan around 1223 and was sold as a slave in Damascus after the Mongol invasion in the 1240s. Sent to Egypt, he entered the service of the Ayyubid sultan Malik al-Salih Ayyoub as a bodyguard, who given military training. He actively participated in the coup that overthrew the Ayyubid dynasty and resulted in the assassination of Touran Shah, the son of el-Salih, in 1250. In the service of the Mamluk Sultan Qutuz, he won the victory over the Mongols. 'Ain Djalout, in 1260, who saved Egypt from the massive destruction that Baghdad had just suffered. On his return to Cairo, he overthrew Sultan Qutuz, who refused him the post of governor of Syria, proclaimed himself sultan and welcomed el-Moustansir Billah, one of the survivors of the Abbasid family, of whom he made a puppet caliph. , but which gives it additional legitimacy. An efficient administrator, he created a navy, a standing army, restored the roads and organized a remarkable postal service.
His main objective, during the rest of his reign, was the destruction of the Crusader States, or at least what remained of them, and for this he obtained the neutrality of the Byzantine Empire, of the Seljuk Sultanate of Roum. He launched an offensive in 1261 and seized Caesarea (February 1261). Then Baybars successively seized the Templar fortress of Safed (July 1266), Jaffa (March 1268) and finally the famous krak des Chevaliers on February 8, 1271. The Crusaders obtained the alliance of the Mongols, which forced Baybars to sign a ten-year truce. He took the opportunity to seize Masyad, the fortress in northern Syria, in the hands of the sect of assassins (1272), as well as Caesarea in Cappadocia, taken from the Seljuks. A true architect of Muslim recovery in the Middle East in the face of the Mongol threat and the remnants of the presence of the Crusaders, he became the hero of a novel of chivalry, very popular in the Arab world, Sirat el-Malik el Zahir.
Baybars died of poison in Damascus in 1277, but failed in his attempt to make the sultanate hereditary in his family.