Sold as a captive boy, Baybars rose to rule Egypt and Syria
Baybars began life among the Kipchak nomads north of the Black Sea. Fleeing the Mongols, his tribe was caught up in their invasion of Bulgaria, and he was sold at the slave market of Sivas. Less than two decades later he was sultan of Egypt and Syria, and among the most feared commanders of his age.
His rise ran through the Mamluk system of enslaved soldiers. An Egyptian official bought him in Hama and brought him to Cairo, and when that master was arrested in 1247 the sultan As-Salih Ayyub took over his slaves, Baybars included. The surname al-Bunduqdari comes from that first owner. In 1250, at Al Mansurah, he is credited with a trap: opening a gate so crusader knights rushed into an apparently empty town, only to be surrounded. The crusade of Louis IX of France ended with the king captured.
In 1260 Baybars led the vanguard at Ain Jalut, where Mamluk forces handed the Mongols their first major defeat. Soon afterwards Sultan Qutuz was killed on a hunting trip, reportedly with Baybars involved after Qutuz denied him the governorship of Aleppo, and Baybars took the throne.
He moved quickly to shore up legitimacy. The Mongols had ended the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad in 1258, so when an Abbasid refugee reached Cairo in 1261 Baybars had him proclaimed caliph and received investiture from him. After that caliph died on a failed attempt to retake Baghdad, another Abbasid was installed, founding a line of Cairo caliphs that lasted until 1517. Most Muslims saw them as the sultans' instruments, but they lent the regime prestige.
Contemporaries described a tall man with olive skin, blue eyes, a booming voice and a cataract in one eye. He used a panther as his emblem on coins and buildings; on a bridge near Lod it plays with a rat, possibly meant as his crusader enemies. He captured Antioch in 1268, allied with the Golden Horde, and pushed into Nubia in 1276. Nicknamed Father of Conquests, he died on 30 June 1277.
Source: Baybars
