al-Kamil Shaban I.

Writing utensils from al-Kamil Shaban

Al-Malik al-Kamil Saif ad-Din Shaban (I.) ibn Muhammad ( Arabic الملك الكامل سيف الدين شعبان بن محمد, DMG al-Malik al-Kamil Saif ad-Dīn Šaʿbān b. Muḥammad ; * around 1328 ; † 1346 in Cairo ) was 1345–1346 Sultan of the Mamluks in Egypt .

Shortly before his untimely death in August 1345, Sultan al-Salih Ismail had appointed his brother Shaban, who was around seventeen, as his successor. One of the leading figures during al-Kamil Shaban's reign, which lasted little more than a year, was Arghun al-Alai (al-ʿAlāʾī) , a low-ranking Mamluk from the Jamdariyya Guard Corps. Arghun was not even an emir , but had a reputation for being an efficient administrator. In addition, he had married the mother of as-Salih Ismail and Shaban II after their divorce from Sultan an-Nasir Muhammad I and from then on acted as lala (a kind of tutor) for the two young princes. Despite Arghun's great influence, Schaban had an independent, but not very sympathetic character. He used to say, “My name is not Shaʿbān , but Ṯuʿbān (that is, serpent)” and was later accused of drunkenness, cruelty and indolence by his opponents.

As under Ismail, the court eunuchs remained very influential. In addition, Arghun found himself challenged in his authority by Ghurlu, an emir who specializes in financial management. Since Schaban, like his predecessor, had to struggle with financial problems, Ghurlu decided to sell the tax revenues on army lands to the highest bidder, regardless of whether the buyer was a military himself or not.

In 1346 the Vice-Sultan in Damascus , Yalbugha al-Yahyawi, revolted against the power of the emirs in Cairo and against the arbitrary arrests and executions of some emirs in Egypt. He was strengthened in this rebellion by rumors according to which on the one hand Prince Hajji had rebelled against his half-brother, the Sultan, and on the other hand he himself was supposed to be Shaban's next victim. Yalbugha's revolt in turn prompted Egyptian emirs such as B. Maliktimur al-Hijazi to depose the Sultan. After his dethronement in September 1346, Shaban was hastily imprisoned and Arghun also died in captivity a few years later. In Schaban's place, his half-brother Hajji (I.) was raised to sultan.

literature

• Robert Irwin : The Middle East in the Middle Ages. The Early Mamluk Sultanates 1250-1382. ACLS History E Book Project, New York NY 2008, ISBN 978-1-59740-466-2 , pp. 133-134.

predecessor	Office	successor
as-Salih Ismail	Sultan of Egypt ( Bahri dynasty ) 1345–1346	al-Muzaffar Hajji I.