Fachr ad-Din Yusuf

Fachr ad-Din Yusuf ibn Sheikh asch-Schuyuch , also called Fahraddin (* before 1211; † February 8, 1250 in the Battle of al-Mansura ) was a diplomat and emir of the Mameluke Guard of the Ayyubid sultans of Egypt .

The emperor's crusade

Fachr ad-Din was sent for the first time by Sultan al-Kamil on a diplomatic mission to Sicily to the court of Emperor Frederick II in the autumn of 1226 in order to prevent him from a planned crusade to the Holy Land . The emperor, however, insisted on carrying out his crusade. At the same time, the sultan had promised an imperial delegation in Egypt the surrender of Jerusalem to the emperor, but this failed because of the objection of his brother al-Mu'azzam of Damascus , to whom the city belonged.

In the spring of 1227 Fachr ad-Din traveled again to Sicily, this time to invite the emperor to a joint alliance with his master against al-Mu'azzam in Palestine . During the negotiations in Sicily, Fachr ad-Din became a personal friend of the emperor, with whom he shared an interest in science and philosophy. He was even knighted personally by the emperor .

In November 1227 al-Mu'azzam died and al-Kamil allied with his other brother, al-Ashraf , against their nephew, an-Nasir Dawud . Al-Kamil conquered Jerusalem and took up the siege of Damascus. At the same time, Emperor Friedrich II reached Palestine with his crusader army. Fachr ad-Din was once again sent to the emperor by his sultan in order to dissuade him from continuing the crusade, since al-Kamil believed he could conquer Palestine single-handedly without having to cede territories to the emperor. But the latter did not think about it and carried out minor attacks on Muslim positions that the Sultan could not counter as he was still busy with the siege of Damascus. Therefore, the sultan decided to make a formal peace with the emperor. On February 18, 1228, Fachr ad-Din was one of the two negotiators of the sultan who signed the peace treaty with the emperor in Jaffa , in which Jerusalem, along with other cities in Palestine, was handed over to the Christians.

The crusade of St. Louis

→ Main article : Sixth Crusade

In 1247 Fachr ad-Din was the commander of the troops of Sultan al-Salih Ayyub during his campaign through Palestine. In June he conquered Tiberias and in October Ascalon , whose city fortifications he destroyed.

In 1248 the French King Louis IX sat down . (the saint) moving towards the Orient with a large crusade army . At the beginning of June 1249, this army landed, surprisingly for Sultan al-Salih, on the coast of Egypt near Damiette ; King Ludwig had kept his goal a secret until the end. At the head of an army, Fachr ad-Din rushed towards the crusaders, but could no longer prevent them from landing on the beach. After a losing battle, he withdrew with his warriors upstream to the provincial capital Achmoum-Tanah, where Sultan al-Salih camped with the main army. This discouraged the Damiette garrison from the Arab tribe of the Banu-Kinānah so that they evacuated the city and also withdrew upstream to the main army. The next day the crusaders noticed that Damiette had been evacuated and occupied the city almost without a fight on June 6, 1249.

Fachr ad-Din fell out of favor with his sultan and was to be executed, whereupon the Mameluke warriors subordinate to him planned a palace revolt. But he held her back out of loyalty to the Sultan, for which he rose again in his favor. When the Sultan died on November 23, 1249, Fachr ad-Din took supreme command of the troops and agreed with the dead sultan's favorite slave, Schadschar ad-Dur , to keep his death secret, in order to lead the government with her until the Sultan Turan Shah from Syria should arrive. At the same time, the crusaders advanced towards Cairo and on December 21, 1249 reached the city of al-Mansura , from which they were only separated by a branch of the Nile .

Death in the battle of al-Mansura

Fachr ad-Din moved with a newly formed army to ál-Mansura and took over the command of the city defense there. On February 8, 1250, the crusaders crossed the Nile. Their vanguard under Count Robert I of Artois reached the opposite bank first and immediately attacked the camp of the Egyptian army, which was located in front of the city walls. Fachr ad-Din is said to have just taken a bath when he suddenly heard the noise of battle. He quickly dressed and placed himself at the head of his troops without armor. He rode with them to meet the enemy, but was overpowered by them and finally killed.

Because of his death, the troops fled. As a result, the Count of Artois felt encouraged to attack the city directly, since its gates were still open. There, however, the subordinate, Rukn ad-Din Baibars , set a trap for him by locking the gates behind the crusaders' backs and killing most of them all in street fighting.

The historians Ibn Wasil and al-Maqrīzī reported on Fachr ad-Din, among others . The latter reported that on the news of the death of Fachr ad-Din Yusuf on the night of February 8, 1250, the city gates of Cairo were opened in his honor.

literature

• Steven Runciman : History of the Crusades. (1952)
• Kenneth M. Setton, Robert Lee Wolff, Harry W. Hazard, Norman P. Zacour, Marshall Whithed Baldwin: A History of the Crusades. (2005)
• Francesco Gabrieli : Arab historians of the Crusades. (University of California Press, 1978)
• Robert Irwin: The Middle East in the Middle Ages. The early Mamluk Sultanates 1250-1382. Part 2 (Routledge, 1986)

footnote

1. ↑ During the fighting on the coast of Egypt, the biographer and crusader Jean de Joinville identified Fachr ad-Din as a "sultan" who wore golden armor that gleamed in the rays of the sun. According to Joinville, the Crusaders explained the evacuation of Damiette by the Saracens through the death of the "Sultan" after an illness. - Joinville , II, §7; ed. Ethel Wedgewood (1906)