He was born in Egypt and at first served as his father’s deputy. Later he became master of Ḥiṣn Kayfā, Āmid, and the neighbouring districts. When his father gained the throne of Egypt he did not wish his son to come, finding his impetuousness and rashness distasteful. Even so, the emir and gallant horseman Faris al-Dīn Aqtay set out to fetch him, travelling with him while skirting the frontier rulers. They rode with roughly 50 horsemen along the Euphrates and through ʿĀnah, then across the fringes of the Samāwah wilderness, suffering from thirst on the way.

He entered Damascus, which was adorned for his reception, and left it a month later. The rout of the Franks occurred just as he arrived, so the people regarded his coming as a good omen, yet he soon displayed conduct that repelled them. He had left at Ḥiṣn Kayfā his young son al-Malik al-Muwaḥḥid, who lived to a great age; the Mongols later seized the fortress, and the son remained, under their authority, ruler of a small and insignificant domain until sometime after 670 AH.

Tāj al-Dīn al-Fāriqī told me: “He lived on past the eighties, and afterwards his son—al-Malik al-Kāmil, son of al-Muwaḥḥid—died; Ghāzān slew him in 700 AH, and his own son al-Ṣāliḥ was then left with nothing higher than the rank of an ordinary soldier.” The sultan used to say, “Tūrānshāh is unfit to rule.”

Husām al-Dīn ibn Abī ʿAlī kept urging him to summon him, and he would reply, “Shall I bring him only for them to kill him?”—and events unfolded exactly as he had said.

Ibn Ḥammūwayh Saʿd al-Dīn remarked: “When he arrived, every obscure fellow found the courage to wag his tongue …”