From Jan Balat through Tuman Bay to Qansuh al-Ghuri, 905–906

After the killing of the king al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qaytbay in the year 904, the Circassian state entered a rapid cycle of coups. The senior amir Jan Balat, a mamluk of Qaytbay who came from the governorship of Syria, overcame the sultan al-Zahir Qansuh, who left the Cairo citadel and gave it up to him. Jan Balat took the throne on the morning of Monday, the second of Dhu al-Qada in the year 905. He reigned for six months and sixteen days, built the Janbalatiyya madrasa outside Bab al-Nasr, and was then deposed, exiled to Alexandria and strangled there ².

After him the king al-Adil Tuman Bay, also a mamluk of Qaytbay, was given the oath of allegiance on the eighteenth of Jumada al-Akhira in the year 906. He reigned for three months and twenty-three days from his oath in the Cairo citadel, built the Adiliyya madrasa and his tomb outside Bab al-Nasr, and was then attacked by the soldiers and killed ³.

Then the throne passed to the king al-Ashraf Abu al-Nasr Qansuh al-Ghuri on Monday, the feast of Eid al-Fitr of the year 906. This was his second reign: he had held an earlier one of about eleven days in the year 902, when the soldiers turned against him, he fled to Gaza, and he disappeared after the battle of Khan Yunis, so that neither his death nor his survival was known at the time ⁴. In this second reign he held power for sixteen years, until the battle of Marj Dabiq, and so he was the last of the Circassian sultans.