and when Hūlāgū took Aleppo, its citadel held out, and inside it was this al-Muʿaẓẓam. He defended the fortress, then surrendered it under a guarantee of safety, being unable to keep it; he lived only a few days thereafter.

He died in the closing days of Rabīʿ al-Awwal⦗1⦘, 658 AH, at the age of eighty-one, and was buried in the vestibule of his residence.

258 – al-Ẓāhir Ghāzī b. al-ʿAzīz Muḥammad b. al-Ẓāhir Ghāzī

Al-Malik al-Ẓāhir Ghāzī, son of al-Malik al-ʿAzīz Muḥammad, son of al-Ẓāhir Ghāzī, brother of the ruler of Syria al-Malik al-Nāṣir Yūsuf. He bore the honorific Sayf al-Dīn and was al-Nāṣir’s full brother.

He was brave, generous, handsome, noble in character, and exceedingly dear to his brother. A group of the Azīzī emirs once sought to seize al-Nāṣir and make Ghāzī sultan instead, but the sultan discovered their plot and estrangement followed.

At the beginning of 658 AH the reign of al-Nāṣir came to an end. Ghāzī separated from his brother, and in Gaza the Baḥrī mamluks rallied to him and invested him with the sultanate. Hūlāgū then struck them. Afterwards the two brothers came together again, entered the wilderness, and set out side by side toward their doom.

Ghāzī left behind an exceedingly handsome son named Zubāla, and a slave-girl named Wajh al-Qamar. She married first Aydaghdi the Azīzī and later al-Baysarī. Zubāla died young in Egypt, while Ghāzī was executed with his brother in Azerbaijan. Ibn Wāṣil relates that Hūlāgū summoned al-Nāṣir and his brother and said: “You claimed, ‘There is no one left in the land, and whoever remains is in your obedience…’”