Al-Nasir Muhammad became sultan of Egypt three separate times
At eight years old, al-Nasir Muhammad was placed on the Mamluk throne of Egypt as a figurehead. He was pushed aside, recalled, sidelined again, and only on his third reign, beginning in 1310, truly ruled. By then he had spent years watching powerful emirs run the country in his name.
Born in 1285 in Cairo's Citadel of the Mountain, he was the third son of Sultan Qalawun, a Kipchak Turk, and of a Mongol noblewoman. His father heard of the birth while besieging a Crusader fortress on the Levant coast. Al-Nasir grew up wearing his hair long in Mongol fashion until an illness in 1315 prompted him and his followers to shave their heads.
When his brother, Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil, was killed in December 1293, emirs installed the boy with Kitbugha, of Mongol origin, as regent. The regent and the vizier were bitter rivals, and within a year Kitbugha, warned that al-Nasir might one day avenge Khalil, took the throne himself and packed the ten-year-old and his mother off to the desert fortress of al-Karak.
After Kitbugha and his successor Lajin both fell, the emirs brought al-Nasir back in 1299 to cheers in Cairo. He was 14 and again a nominal ruler, with the real power held by the Oirat Mongol Salar and the Circassian Baybars al-Jashnakir. That year his army met the Ilkhanate ruler Ghazan at Wadi al-Khazandar and lost, and Damascus briefly submitted to the Mongols before they withdrew. In 1303 a Mongol force of about 50,000 approached again, and the sultan's army faced it at Marj al-Saffar.
After a second loss of the throne to Baybars, he returned for good in 1310 and ruled until his death in 1341. This time he had Baybars executed, promoted loyal non-Mamluks to senior commands, removed officers he doubted, scrapped taxes that had enriched emirs at commoners' expense, and set up a justice chief to tackle corruption.
Source: Al-Nasir Muhammad
