Bahriyya

The Bahriyya, or Bahri Mamluks, were the first Mamluk dynasty to rule Egypt and Syria from Cairo, holding power from 1250 to 1382. Mostly Kipchak Turks bought as slave soldiers and manumitted, they took their name, meaning ‘of the river’, from their barracks on Roda Island in the Nile.

In 1250 they murdered Turanshah, heir of the Ayyubid sultan as-Salih Ayyub, and seized the sultanate, and in 1260 Qutuz and Baybars shattered the Mongols at Ain Jalut. Baybars installed a puppet Abbasid caliph in Cairo in 1261 and took Antioch in 1268; Qalawun recaptured Tripoli in 1289 and his son Khalil took Acre in 1291.

The Qalawunid line dominated, including al-Nasir Muhammad, sultan in 1337, whose reign ended in 1341. The Black Death of 1349 and succession crises weakened the regime. In 1382 the Circassian emir Barquq deposed the last Bahri sultan, Hajji II, establishing the Burji order after his return to power in 1390.