Aqqush al-Burli

Aqqush al-Burli († 1269/70) was a Mamluk emir who briefly established an independent rule in northern Syria in 1261 and proclaimed a caliph .

Aqqusch was the commander of the Aziziya Mamluks in the army of the Sultan Qutuz , which defeated the Mongols in the battle of ʿAin Jalūt (September 1260) and then subjugated Syria. Like most commanders in Syria, he recognized the usurpation of the Baibar in October 1260 and rejected the uprising of Sangar al-Halabi in Damascus . In December 1260 the Mongols invaded Syria again, but a coalition of the Ayyubid emirs of Homs and Hama were able to defeat them in a battle near Homs. In March 1261 arrest warrants issued by the Sultan arrived in Damascus, which were directed against several troop leaders, including Aqqush al-Burli. These orders were presumably related to a troop revolt in Egypt that the Sultan had put down a few weeks earlier.

Before he could be arrested, Aqqush sat down in Aleppo, which has meanwhile been vacated by the Mongols . Here he arbitrarily appointed himself governor in the name of the Sultan Baibars, but without having been authorized to do so by his representatives in Damascus. As a result, he asked Baibars several times for recognition in the office he had usurped. Since this was not granted, however, he ruled de facto independently in Aleppo. In order to give himself additional legitimation, he proclaimed the Abbasid al-Hakim I as caliph in June, succeeding the caliphate of Baghdad, which fell in 1258 . In return, the sultan in Cairo appointed al-Mustansir II. His own caliph.

In the following months, Aqqush al-Burli was able to hold out, although he had to recapture Aleppo three times from supporters of the sultan. He successfully cleared the Jazira region of Mongolian hordes. In October 1261, Sultan Baibars personally entered Damascus and set about bringing Syria under his control. Although Baibars' caliph fell against the Mongols on the Euphrates in the following November , Aqqush could no longer assert himself against the sultan's superior military strength. At the turn of the year in 1262 he submitted completely to the sultan, who forgave him and accepted him back into the Mamluks officer corps. He had to drop his caliph.

In the spring of 1262 Aqqush al-Burli withdrew to Egypt with the Baibars. There he fell in the same year in the course of an uncovered conspiracy of several generals again in disgrace with the Sultan, who had him thrown in a dungeon. Aqqusch was not released until his death around 1269/70. His caliph, proclaimed in Aleppo, had also received the recognition of Baibars in November 1262, which established the Abbasid shadow caliphate of Cairo.

literature

• Stefan Heidemann: The Aleppine Caliphate (AD 1261): from the end of the Caliphate in Baghdad via Aleppo to the restorations in Cairo , In: Islamic history and civilization , Volume 6 (BRILL, 1994)