The enthronement of al-Malik al-Muʿizz ʿIzz al-Din Aybak the Turkman in Egypt (1) after the Ayyubids—this was the beginning of Turkish rule.

When the Bahri emirs and other members of the Ṣāliḥiyya killed their master’s son, al-Muʿaẓẓam Ghiyāth al-Din Turanshah ibn al-Ṣāliḥ Ayyub ibn al-Kāmil ibn al-ʿĀdil Abū Bakr ibn [Najm al-Din] (2) Ayyub—whose reign after his father had lasted only two months, as was previously [explained and] clarified—and once his affair (3) ended in his death, they cried among themselves, “No harm, no harm!” They then summoned from their midst the emir ʿIzz al-Din Aybak the Turkman, set him over them as ruler, swore allegiance to him, and styled him al-Malik al-Muʿizz. After that they rode to Cairo.

Five days later they installed for themselves a ten-year-old boy of the Ayyubid line, al-Malik al-Ashraf Muẓaffar al-Din Mūsā ibn al-Nāṣir Yūsuf ibn al-Masʿūd (4) Aqsis ibn al-Kāmil, and appointed al-Muʿizz as his atabeg. Thus the sikka (coinage) and the khuṭba (Friday sermon invocation) (5) bore both their names. They wrote to the emirs of Syria about this, but the matter did not succeed for them there; it slipped from their hands, and their sovereignty settled only over the Egyptian territories (6).

All (7) of this took place by order of the khātun Shajar al-Durr, Umm Khalil, the favored consort of al-Ṣāliḥ Ayyub. She married al-Muʿizz, and the khuṭba and the sikka were in her name (8): she was invoked on the pulpits on Fridays in Egypt and its provinces, and coins were struck with her name, Umm Khalil. Her seal and signature appeared on decrees and official letters, all in her own handwriting and name, for three months [before al-Muʿizz] (9). Thereafter her affair ended, as we shall relate, in humiliation and death.

Account of the seizure of Damascus by al-Nāṣir ibn al-ʿAzīz ibn al-Ẓāhir (10), lord of Aleppo (11):

When the Egyptian emirs murdered al-Muʿaẓẓam Turanshah ibn al-Ṣāliḥ Ayyub, the people of Aleppo joined forces with them (12)