Mamluks seize power in Cairo

1250

A clique of Turkic slave-soldiers murdered the young Ayyubid sultan Turanshah at a riverside banquet and hoisted one of their own, Aybak, onto the throne. The Mamluks, formerly palace guards, would rule Egypt and Syria as sultans for more than two and a half centuries. Their paradoxical system, in which slaves ruled free men, produced some of the most effective military governance the medieval Islamic world had seen.