In the Middle East in the thirteenth century, the inhabitants were plagued by endless wars, with crusaders marching from the west to the holy city of Jerusalem, while Mongol cavalry marched westward. And in that time of war, the locals remembered the name of Baibars, who many Arabs considered to be a greater hero than Harun Rashid and Saladin, and a nightmare presence for the Crusaders and Mongol cavalry.
Portrait of BaiBars
Neither Arab nor Persian, Baibars was a Turkic-born in the Chincha steppe, and during the Second Western Expedition of the Mongols, Baibars was captured by the Mongols and sold as a slave to Syria. The Mongols' western expedition completely changed the fate of Baibars, who saw his parents killed by the Mongols and himself sold to the slave market in Syria.
If he had not left the Chincha steppe, Baibars would have lived a life of chasing water and grass like many nomads, and soon after arriving in Syria, Baibars became a Mamluk warrior.
According to historians, Baibars was unusually tall and strong, with fair skin, pale yellow hair and gray-blue eyes. However, a strong figure does not mean that Baibars can become a qualified "slave", the first owner of Baibars was a Syrian nobleman, but this nobleman sold Baibars to others on the grounds that one of His eyes was suffering from cataracts, and ridiculed Baibars for not even being a slave.
Mamluk soldiers
The last master of Baibars was the Sultan Saleh of the Ayyubid Dynasty of Egypt, and Baibars became a Mamluk soldier serving Saleh, who did not care whether a Mamluk had flawed eyes, only whether he had a strong physique and whether he could fight heroically, and these were all possessed by Bybars.
During the period when Saleh's men served, Baibars was highly valued by his master and soon became a nobleman in the Mamluk legions. After Saleh's death, Baibars took part in the war against the Crusaders and followed Kudus in defeating the invincible Mongol Western Expedition at the Battle of Ainjaru.
The victory at the Battle of Ainjaru prevented the Mongol Iron Horse from setting foot in African land, and also allowed Baibars to officially enter the stage of history, Andbas assassinated his superior Kudus after the war, and then declared himself the sultan of the Mamluk dynasty of Egypt.
The Mamluks fighting the Crusaders
After Baibars became sultan, he guarded against the Mongol counterattack while continuing to fight the Crusaders and achieved brilliant victories. After the First Crusades, Europeans established many principalities in the Middle East, and Baibars saw the principalities established by these crusaders as a thorn in his eye and always wanted to conquer them.
The first to be attacked by Baibars was the Principality of Antioch on the border between Syria and Turkey. In May 1268, Baibars personally led the Mamluk legions to attack the city of Antioch, and since the then King of Antioch, Bohemond VI, was not in Antioch, the Crusaders in the city could only elect a general named Simon Mansell as the commander of the defense.
As soon as Baibars arrived in Antioch, Simon Mansell commanded his cavalry in a charge against the Mamluk legions, but the charge ended in failure, killing countless Crusaders and wounding Simon Mansell and capturing them. This reckless charge also ruined the fate of Antioch, because there were not too many defenders in the city itself, and as a result, only four days later, Antiochus fell.
After the fall of Antioch, Baibars conducted an "apocalyptic trial" of the city's inhabitants, with about fourteen thousand inhabitants slaughtered by Mamluk warriors and more than 100,000 being sold to the slave market, resulting in a sharp drop in the price of local slaves, with a boy's price of only twelve dirhams and a girl's price of only five dirhams.
Tell you what I've done, dead people pile up, fire engulfs your palace... Your knights were trampled by our warhorses, your wives and concubines were sold by me for four, and if you saw all this, you would wish you had never lived!
The above passage is a letter written by Baibars to The King of the Principality of Antioch after the fall of Antiochus. In this letter, Baibars used cold language to intimidate Bohemond VI, or rather it was not intimidation, because what happened after the fall of Antioch was even more terrible than what Wasbars described in his letter.