EGYPT IN THE WORLD OF ISLAM 67icked and begun fleeing until a day later when word of the overwhelming
victory arrived. Syria had been saved yet again.
Sultan Qalaoon brought in the first Circassian Mamluks. Prior to this,
they had all been Qipchaq Turks. As time passed, the tribal mixture would
change, and eventually the Mamluks would cease being a homogeneous
ethnic organization. For the moment, however, their army consisted of
29,000 of the finest cavalry the world had ever known.
The string of victories continued as Sultan Qalaoon made use of his
superb fighting machine. In 1291 Acre was taken, and the last crusader
possession on the mainland was forever lost. Only the island base of Cy-
prus remained of the crusader conquests. In 1292 Aleppo was taken from
the Mongols and the Mongol residents received the same treatment they
had given its earlier occupants: the only survivors, the women and chil-
dren, were taken into slavery.
However, the Mongols remained the main enemy of the Mamluks, and
once again the two premier mounted armies of the world faced each other
on December 22, 1299, at the Battle of Wadi al Khaznadar. Five hundred
Mamluks, specifically trained as artificers, took positions in front of the
Mamluk army. On horseback and armed with flaming bombs of naphtha,
they charged the Mongols with liquid fire.
Ghazan, the commander of the Mongols then brought forward a mass
of foot archers, estimated to number 10,000, who poured a cloud of arrows
into the Mamluks. The arrows fell most heavily on the lightly armored
Bedouin allies, who fell back in confusion. The Mamluk left then charged
and broke the Mongol right, chasing them from the field.
The Mongols made one final effort and Khan Ghazan, their commander,
personally led a charge against the Egyptian center, which broke. The
Mamluk army routed and fled the field, deserting the child sultan and
leaving him on the field with only twelve soldiers as his escort.
Glutted with the loot of the Mamluk camp, Ghazan then moved against
Damascus. On December 29, the religious leaders of the city brokered a
deal with the khan whereby the Mongols would enter the city peacefully.
Ghazan promised that no soldier of his would commit any crime against
man or woman and that all religious rights would be respected. Once
inside the city though, his troops went wild, and on January 11, 1300, the
nomads savaged the place, inflicting great loss on the inhabitants.
Torn by internal dissent, the Mamluks had not performed well at Wadi
al Khaznadar. The endless streams of infighting and struggles for the sul-
tanship had begun to tear at the fabric of their cohesiveness. When the
crucial moments came, their discipline and order were insufficient to fight
a foe as dangerous as the Mongols. They were heavily defeated as a result.