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Rh She even had coins struck in her name and had herself mentioned in the Friday prayer.

Her former master the caliph addressed a scathing note to the amirs of Egypt: 'If you have no man to rule you, let us know and we will send you one'. They chose her Turkish commander-in-chief, Aybak, sultan and she salvaged a remnant of glory by marrying him. Aybak crushed the legitimist Ayyubid party of Syria, who considered themselves entitled to rule Egypt, and concentrated on eliminating potential rivals, but he overlooked Shajar-al-Durr. On hearing that Aybak (i 250-1 257) was contemplating another marriage, the queen had him murdered at his bath after a ball game. Her turn then came. Battered to death with wooden shoes by the slave women of her husband's first wife, her body was cast from a tower in the citadel of Cairo.

Aybak was the first of the Mamluk sultans. This unusual dynasty was drawn from the Ayyubids' slave bodyguard, a military oligarchy in an alien land. When one of them died, often it was not his son who succeeded him but a slave or a mercenary of his who had won distinction and eminence. Thus the bondman of yesterday would become the army commander of today and the sultan of tomorrow. For almost two and three-quarter centuries the slave sultans dominated by the sword one of the most turbulent areas of the world. Generally uncultured and brutal, they nevertheless endowed Cairo with some architectural monuments of which it still rightly boasts. Two other services to the cause of Islam were rendered by them: they cleared Syria of the remnant of the Crusaders and they definitely checked the redoubtable advance of the Mongol hordes of Hulagu and of Timur (Tamerlane). Had they failed to do so, the entire sub- sequent history of south-western Asia and Egypt might have been different.

Originally purchased in the slave markets of Moslem Russia and the Caucasus to form the personal bodyguard of the Ayyubid al-Salih, the first Mamluks started a series Rh