Ayyubid Sultanate

  General Description   The Ayyubid Sultanate was established in Egypt by Saladin (Ṣalāḥ-al-dīn), a member of the Kurdish Ayyubid family who had risen to prominence in Syria in the service of a local ruling dynasty, the Zangids. ^[1] In 1168-69 CE, the Zangid prince Nur al-Din placed Saladin’s uncle, Shirkuh, in command of a military expedition to Egypt (at that time under Fatimid rule) to take control of the country and expel the invading Frankish Crusaders. ^{[2] [3]} Saladin accompanied him and was appointed vizier of Egypt by the Fatimid caliph when Shirkuh died in 1169. ^[1]
Saladin, however, did not have the local dynasty’s interests at heart. He immediately set about undermining its power and the Ismaili (Shi’a) Islam professed by its elite in favour of a new Sunni order, in theory loyal to the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad. ^[4] We begin our Ayyubid Sultanate polity in 1171, when the last Fatimid caliph, Al-Adid, died and Saladin progressed from vizier to sultan in Egypt. ^[5] He nevertheless suppressed his ambitions until his old Zangid overlord Nur al-Din died in 1174, after which he launched a successful campaign of military expansion into the Levant and Upper Mesopotamia, as well as a brief ’holy war’ on the Crusader states along the Levantine coast. ^{[6] [7]}
A succession crisis followed Saladin’s death in 1193, and a devastating famine in 1200 reduced parts of the population to cannibalism. ^[8] However, Saladin’s brother, al-’Adil, declared himself sultan in 1200 and managed to impose some degree of internal stability on the empire, ^[9] which was split into the kingdoms of Egypt, Damascus, Aleppo and Mosul. ^[10] The reign of al-’Adil’s son, al-Kamil, from 1218 to 1238 CE, was also a relatively stable and prosperous period in Egypt, ^[11] although he faced opposition from Ayyubid princes in Syria and Palestine. ^[12]
As-Salih Ayyub, the sultan who came to power in 1240 CE, ^[13] attempted to enhance his power at the expense of other Ayyubid princely lines by purchasing many more Turkish Mamluks (high-ranking slave soldiers) than his predecessors. ^[14] They served him as a military and governmental elite. ^{[7] [14]} The Mamluks’ increasingly powerful position proved to be the downfall of the Ayyubid Sultanate when, after Salih-Ayyub’s death in 1249, one faction (the Bahriyya Mamluks) assassinated his son Turanshah and seized the throne. ^[15] The Ayyubid dynasty hung onto power in Syria until 1260, when the Mamluks defeated the invading Mongols at ’Ayn Jalut and gained popular recognition of their right to rule as ’saviours of Islam’. ^[16] However, we end our Ayyubid period with the assassination of Turanshah, the last Ayyubid sultan of Egypt.
Population and political organization
The Ayyubids made use of the pre-existing Fatimid bureaucratic system to administer Egypt, ^[17] and ruled via a Turkish and Kurdish ’military aristocracy’, including some slave (Mamluk) regiments. ^{[10] [18]} This was funded by the distribution of iqta’s ‒ rights to tax revenue from estates of land ‒ in exchange for military and administrative services. ^[19] Saladin and his successors also promoted Sunni Islam in the empire by sponsoring law schools (madrasas) to serve as centres for the teaching of Sunni law. ^[19]
The Ayyubid Sultanate was never particularly centralized: it has been described as a ’family confederation’, meaning that male members of the ruling dynasty were given principalities across the realm and allowed to govern them with substantial political autonomy. ^[7] Kinship ties determined relationships between different princes, so that, for example, two brothers ruling different regions would have less authority over each other than a father would over his son. ^[7] However, the sultan of Egypt was usually successful in asserting his suzerainty over the other kingdoms. ^[19]
It is difficult to find substantiated estimates for the population of the entire Ayyubid Sultanate, but there were about 2.4 million people in Egypt under Saladin. ^[20]

[1]: (Humphreys 1987) R. S. Humphreys. 1987. ’Ayyubids’, Encyclopӕdia Iranica III/2, pp. 164-67; an updated version is available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ayyubids (accessed 24 February 2017).

[2]: (Lev 2010, 218) Yaacov Lev. 2010. ’The Fatimid Caliphate (358‒567 / 969‒1171) and the Ayyūbids in Egypt (567‒648 / 1171‒1250)’, in The New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 2. The Western Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries, edited by Maribel Fierro, 201-36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[3]: (Lapidus 2002, 290) Ira M. Lapidus. 2002. A History of Islamic Societies, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[4]: (Lev 2010, 210-11) Yaacov Lev. 2010. ’The Fatimid Caliphate (358‒567 / 969‒1171) and the Ayyūbids in Egypt (567‒648 / 1171‒1250)’, in The New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 2. The Western Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries, edited by Maribel Fierro, 201-36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[5]: (Lev 2010, 210) Yaacov Lev. 2010. ’The Fatimid Caliphate (358‒567 / 969‒1171) and the Ayyūbids in Egypt (567‒648 / 1171‒1250)’, in The New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 2. The Western Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries, edited by Maribel Fierro, 201-36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[6]: (Lyons and Jackson 1982, 201) Malcolm Cameron Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson. 1982. Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[7]: (Humphreys 1987) R. S. Humphreys. 1987. ’Ayyubids’, Encyclopӕdia Iranica III/2, pp. 164-67; an updated version is available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ayyubids (accessed 25 February 2017).

[8]: (Lev 2010, 226) Yaacov Lev. 2010. ’The Fatimid Caliphate (358‒567 / 969‒1171) and the Ayyūbids in Egypt (567‒648 / 1171‒1250)’, in The New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 2. The Western Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries, edited by Maribel Fierro, 201-36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[9]: (Humphreys 1977, 125-26) R. Stephen Humphreys. 1977. From Saladin to the Mongols: The Ayyubids of Damascus, 1193‒1260. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

[10]: (Lapidus 2002, 291) Ira M. Lapidus. 2002. A History of Islamic Societies, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[11]: (Werthmuller 2010, 48) Kurt J. Werthmuller. 2010. Coptic Identity and Ayyubid Politics in Egypt, 1218‒1250. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press.

[12]: (Hamblin 2005, 753) William J. Hamblin. 2005. ’Egypt: Ayyubid Dynasty, 1169-1250’, in Encyclopedia of African History, volume 1: A-G, edited by Kevin Shillington, 752-54. New York: Fitzroy Dearborn.

[13]: (Keenan 1999, 287) James G. Keenan. 1999. ’Fayyum Agriculture at the End of the Ayyubid Era: Nabulsi’s Survey’. Proceedings of the British Academy 96: 287-99.

[14]: (Levanoni 1990, 124) Amalia Levanoni. 1990. ’The Mamluks’ Ascent to Power in Egypt’. Studia Islamica 72: 121-44.

[15]: (Levanoni 1990, 137) Amalia Levanoni. 1990. ’The Mamluks’ Ascent to Power in Egypt’. Studia Islamica 72: 121-44.

[16]: (Northrup 1998, 248) Linda S. Northrup. 1998. ’The Baḥrī Mamlūk Sultanate, 1250‒1390’, in The Cambridge History of Egypt, Vol. 1: Islamic Egypt, 640‒1517, edited by Carl F. Petry, 242-89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[17]: (Lapidus 2012, 246) I. M. Lapidus. 2012. Islamic Societies to the Nineteenth Century: A Global History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[18]: (Lev 2010, 210, 213) Yaacov Lev. 2010. ’The Fatimid Caliphate (358‒567 / 969‒1171) and the Ayyūbids in Egypt (567‒648 / 1171‒1250)’, in The New Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 2. The Western Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries, edited by Maribel Fierro, 201-36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[19]: (Lapidus 2002, 291, 877) Ira M. Lapidus. 2002. A History of Islamic Societies, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[20]: (Dols 1977, 149) M. W. Dols. 1977. The Black Death in the Middle East. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.