as-Salih Salih

Al-Malik as-Salih Salah ad-Din Salih ibn Muhammad ( Arabic الملك الصالح صلاح الدين صالح بن محمد, DMG al-Malik aṣ-Ṣāliḥ Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Ṣāliḥ b. Muḥammad ; * around 1338 ; † after 1354 ) was Sultan of the Mamluks in Egypt from 1351 to 1354 .

After the first deposition of an-Nasir al-Hasan , in August 1351, Salih, another, not even fourteen-year-old son of an-Nasir Muhammad I, was made Sultan. As-Salih Salah ad-Din Salih was especially popular among the Syrians, as he was the maternal grandson of Saif ad-Din Tankiz al-Husami (the rebellious vice-regent and "uncrowned king" of Damascus between 1312 and 1340). Soon after Salih's accession to the throne, the royal equerry and favorite of his predecessor al-Hasan, Mughultay, was interned in Alexandria . The three emirs of the new junta , Taz an-Nasiri, Schaychun and Sarghitmisch, wanted to put their power on a broader basis and therefore released the two imprisoned powerful emirs of the previous government, Manchak and Baybugha. Baybugha was even appointed Vice Regent in Aleppo . He disappointed this trust, however, by allied with Eastern Anatolian Turkic tribes and moved south from Aleppo to Damascus, whose suburbs he plundered. However , an army dispatched from Cairo forced him to retreat and after the betrayal of his Turkish ally, Baybugha was caught together with him and executed in 1354.

The rebellion in Syria was still being exploited by the Upper Egyptian Bedouin tribes in 1351 to revolt against the government in Cairo, whose power in the south of the country was already more formal than de facto. Ultimately, the Mamluk regime had no choice but to administer Upper Egypt together with the Bedouin tribes in the future. The lack of control over the south and its grain deliveries should remain a major problem for the government in Cairo in the future.

In the meantime , the Copt Alam ad-Din ibn Zunbur, who had converted to Islam and, at the end of al-Hasan's first sultanate, was bribed to the vizier's office , experienced a rapid rise and fall: under the new Sultan al-Salih, Ibn Zunbur united the vizier's dignity the two powerful offices of the "overseer of the Sultan's possessions" (nāẓir al-ḫaṣṣ) and of the "overseer of the army finances" (nāẓir al-ǧaiš) , which meant an unprecedented concentration of administrative and fiscal power. However, Ibn Zunbur apparently made no distinction between possession of the state and his own. He owned 25 sugar cane factories, flocks of sheep with a total of 50,000–70,000 animals and around 700 boats that transported molasses , olive oil, honey, lead, copper, sulfur and many other goods to his shops and warehouses on the Nile . He hid some of the wealth he had acquired in this way in a marble column of his palace and other treasures were kept by friends of the emir as a secret "provision for the future". Now, however, the Sarghitmisch, who belonged to the new “Emir Triumvirate ”, was not only a successful entrepreneur himself, but was also known for his fanaticism of faith. When he took action against the vizier in 1352 - for business or religious reasons - Shaychun, a rival of Sarghitmisch, was unable to protect his friend Ibn Zunbur. Alam ad-Din was deposed, his wealth confiscated, and he and his family were tortured to discover other hiding places of his treasures. Not only were one million dinars confiscated from the state, but Ibn Zunbur also accused Sarghitmisch of being a sham convert. He was exiled to Qus , where he died in 1353. The following year the campaign against Ibn Zunbur sparked anti-Christian turmoil in the Muslim majority population and, under public pressure, Sultan al-Salih and his emirs were forced to pass strict, Christian-discriminatory laws and for a time, not only were Christians, but also dismiss converts from all offices.

At the beginning of 1354 it became apparent to the outside that the triumvirate of the emirs Taz an-Nasiri, Shaychun and Sarghitmisch no longer cooperated with each other. Taz and Sarghitmisch fell apart more and more, with the former failing in an attempt to win Shaychun on his side. Eventually Shaychun and his 700 Mamluks allied themselves with Sarghitmisch. While Taz stayed in autumn 1354 in Upper Egypt, staged in Cairo Sarghitmisch a coup and captured the citadel of Taz 'followers. When Taz himself returned to the capital a little later, there was still street fighting, but Taz ultimately had to be content with the post of governor of Aleppo as compensation for his loss of power. Shaychun and Sarghitmisch demonstrated their victory by sending Sultan al-Salih back to his mother and fetching an-Nasir al-Hasan from the harem in order to put him back on the throne (October 1354).

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. 139-142.

predecessor	Office	successor
an-Nasir al-Hasan	Sultan of Egypt ( Bahri Dynasty ) 1351–1354	an-Nasir al-Hasan