HAVOC 157David won again. (Incidentally, the Muslims used a new type of weapon
in this battle: the hand cannon, or as we now call it, the gun. This might
have been the first battle in which guns were used to any significant effect.)
Back in Cairo, meanwhile, Shajar al-Durr and her husband somehow
killed each other in the bath-the sordid details remain murky. Baybars,
covered with glory from his victory at Ayn Jalut, came marching into the
confusion and took control, founding the so-called Mamluk dynasty.
A mamluk, as I mentioned, was a slave, usually Turkish, brought to the
palace as a young boy and trained in all the military arts. Quite often in
the history of the middle world, a mamluk had overthrown his master and
launched a dynasty of his own. The one that Baybars founded, however,
was different.
It wasn't a true "dynasty" because the principle of succession wasn't
from father to son. Instead, each time a sultan died, his inner circle of
most powerful mamluks chose one of their own number to be the new sul-
tan. In the meantime, new mamluks kept rising through the ranks on
merit, ascending into the circle of most-powerful mamluks, a position
from which any of them might become the next sultan. Egypt, therefore,
was not ruled by a family, but by a military corporation constantly re-
freshing its ranks with new mamluks. It was a meritocracy, and the system
worked. Under the mamluks, Egypt became the leading nation in the Arab
world, a status it has never really relinquished.
Although the Mongols conquered the Islamic world in a roaring flash,
the Muslims ended up reconquering the Mongols, not by taking territories
back through war, but by co-opting them through conversion. The first
conversion occurred in 1257 CE, a khan named Berke. One of Hulagu's
successors, Tode Mongke, not only converted but declared himself a Sufi.
After that the Mongol ruling house of Persia produced more rulers with
Muslim names. In 1295, Mahmoud Ghazan inherited the Persian throne.
He had been a Buddhist but converted to Shi'ite Islam, and his nobles
soon converted as well; his descendants went on to rule Persia as the
Muslim 11-Khan dynasty.
After his conversion, Ghazan told his Mongol nobles to let up on the
locals. "I am not protecting the Persian peasantry," he assured them. "If it
is expedient, then let me pillage them all-there is no one with more