Ain Jalut 1260: Qutuz, Baibars and the Ambush That Halted the Mongols

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In 1260 the Mamluk sultan Qutuz cut the envoys of the Mongol commander Hulagu in half and mounted their heads on Cairo's Bab Zuweila gate. Hulagu, sent west by his brother the Great Khan Möngke, had already destroyed the Order of the Assassins in Persia, sacked Baghdad in 1258 to end the Abbasid Caliphate, and taken Damascus from the Ayyubids. Qutuz, a ruler risen from a caste of Kipchak Turkic slave soldiers, used the executions to remove any option of surrender from his own emirs. Then Möngke died in China, and Hulagu withdrew most of his army east, leaving his general Kitbuqa in Syria with roughly 10,000 to 12,000 men.

Qutuz marched out of Egypt, his vanguard under Baibars routed a Mongol garrison at Gaza, and the Crusaders at Acre let the Mamluk army pass and offered supplies. In September 1260 the armies met at Ain Jalut, the Spring of Goliath, below Mount Gilboa in the Jezreel Valley. Baibars, who knew the valley from his years as a fugitive, wore down Kitbuqa for hours and then feigned a collapse that drew the Mongols into hidden reserves in the hills. Kitbuqa was killed, but on the road home Baibars murdered Qutuz and took the sultanate. Hulagu's planned revenge never came: his Muslim cousin Berke Khan of the Golden Horde went to war with him, and Hulagu was defeated in 1263.

• Ice core and tree ring data link the 1257 Samalas eruption in Indonesia to the drought that left Syria unable to feed an army of perhaps 400,000 horses.
• Kitbuqa was a Christian of an Eastern church, yet the Crusaders sided with the Mamluks after watching the Mongols raid Sidon.
• Arabic military treatises mention a weapon called the midfa at Ain Jalut, debated as an early hand cannon or a fire lance projecting naphtha.
• When the Mamluk left wing buckled, Qutuz threw off his helmet, shouted "O Islam," and charged into the melee to rally his men.
• Qutuz had promised Baibars the governorship of Aleppo, then told him to wait, a refusal that led directly to his assassination.