the majority of his army; he preferred them to the Kurds, put them in command, admitted them to his inner circle and the precincts of his private quarters, and called them the Bahriyyah.

I say: the reason for this name is that merchants had brought them by sea from the land of the Qipchaq.

Ibn Wāṣil relates: Ḥusām al-Dīn Ibn Abī ʿAlī told me that, for all their might and arrogance, these mamluks were the people who feared the Sultan most. Whenever he appeared they would quake before him, and never, even in his anger, did an ugly word escape his lips; the harshest thing he would say was, “You laggard!”

He had a powerful appetite, yet by the end of his life he kept only two wives: one was Shajar al-Durr, the other the daughter of al-ʿĀlimah, whom he married after she had been the concubine of his mamluk al-Jukandār. Whenever he heard music he would not so much as stir, nor would anyone else in his gathering. No senior official in his realm dared take an independent decision; petitions were submitted together with those of the servants, and he himself would write the decrees that the chancery clerks then endorsed.

He loved people of learning and religion, and inclined to solitude and seclusion, though he was passionately fond of polo and of erecting monumental buildings.

It was said that no one dared to address him first. It was also said that he was eloquent, engaging in conversation, and immensely awe-inspiring. He fell ill; a malignant sore developed in his thigh, followed by dysentery, and he died on the night of the fifteenth of Shaʿbān in the year 647 AH, in the palace at al-Manṣūrah while on garrison duty. His death was concealed and it was announced that he was merely sick until his son, the exalted King Tūrānshāh, was brought from the fortress of Hisn Kayfa. The body was then transferred and buried in his mausoleum in Cairo.

The sons of Shaykh al-Shuyūkh had risen high under him and shared power in the kingdom. He had once been angry with Fakhr al-Dīn Yūsuf for a time, but later freed him and appointed him viceroy because of his nobility and consummate leadership. Fakhr al-Dīn was generous and beloved of the people, though he drank wine.

When the Sultan died, Fakhr al-Dīn was nominated for the throne, but he lost heart ⦗1⦘ and took upon himself the burdens