Baibars seizes the Mamluk sultanate

1260

Two months after Ain Jalut, the Bahri Mamluk commander Baibars murdered Sultan Qutuz on a hunting trip and took the throne himself. A former Turkish slave of the Crimea, he would prove the ablest Muslim warrior of the century and the terror of the Frankish states. His seventeen-year reign saw the systematic dismantling of Crusader castles and the construction of a postal system rivaling the Mongols'.