Ayyubid dynasty

The Ayyubid dynasty was a ruling house founded in 1171 CE, with its capital at Cairo. ¹ It governed Egypt until 1250 CE. ²

Al-Maqrizi says that Saladin Yusuf ibn Ayyub took the kingdom of Egypt after the Fatimid state had ended. ¹

He says that Cairo became a city of residence after having been a fortress, that the rulers after Saladin lived there, and that al-Kamil moved from Cairo to the Citadel. ³

He says that the Ayyubid rule in Egypt ended in 648 AH, after eighty-one years and seventeen days, and that eight of its rulers reigned. ⁴

Hasan Ibrahim Hasan also dates the Ayyubid era to 567–648 AH. ⁵

This record covers Egypt only, so the 1341 CE date that Wikidata gives is not used here: it has no local check.

The Ayyubids took their name from Ayyub b. Shadhi, of Kurdish origin, born in Armenia near Dvin and of the Rawwadi clan of the Hadhbani tribe. At the start of the sixth/twelfth century Shadhi and Ayyub served the Shaddadid dynasty, which the Saljuq sultan Alp Arslan had set up in the region; when Dvin fell in 524/1130, Shadhi entered the service of Bihruz, governor of Takrit, who made him governor of the town. Ayyub earned the gratitude of Zangi, master of Mosul and Aleppo, who crossed the Euphrates with his help. In 532/1138 Ayyub entered Zangi's service; his brother Shirkuh followed Zangi's son Nur al-Din, who gave him Hims. Shirkuh was sent to Egypt at the request of the wazir Shawar, and after his death in 564/1169 his nephew Salah al-Din succeeded him as wazir and founded the dynasty. ⁶

In 566/1171 Salah al-Din ended the Fatimid Caliphate and restored Egypt to the 'Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad. The Encyclopaedia divides the history into three periods: Salah al-Din's own reign, the formative period of organisation under his successors, and the long decline. His power rested on the Kurdo-Turkish army inherited from Nur al-Din and developed with Egyptian resources; in 577/1181 the Egyptian army numbered 111 amirs, 6,976 cavalrymen with full equipment and 1,153 of a second grade, besides Arab frontiersmen. A Syro-Jazirian contingent of some 6,000 men could be called up under the treaty of 1174-1183. With almost his entire force of some 12,000 horsemen he won the victory of Hattin in 583/1187, and in the following months most of the Christian territories fell. He also built up a Mediterranean fleet on Fatimid lines and ran offensives against the nearest Frankish ports. Finance was his weak point: he and al-Aziz lived on loans from merchants and amirs that were never repaid, and the coinage was debased. The Third Crusade ended his plans to expel the Franks, and he died in 589/1193 a few months after the peace. ⁷

Until about the later years of al-Kamil the Ayyubid state was a semi-feudal family federation: the territories were distributed to princes of the blood as appanages, with wazirs, atabegs and ustadh-dars running their courts. Al-Adil, who had been a diplomat and administrator under Salah al-Din, was the eldest of the family; in 597/1200 he proclaimed himself sultan in Cairo, distributed the governments of Damascus and the Jazira among his sons and reduced the other princes to vassals. Al-Kamil, supported by his brothers during the Fifth Crusade, dealt with the Franks by diplomacy: in 1204 al-Adil had restored the coastal places to them, and al-Kamil later handed Jerusalem to Frederick II on condition that it remain unfortified and that freedom of worship be kept. The Ayyubids took Diyar Bakr (604/1207), Amid and Hisn Kayfa (631/1233), while Mesopotamian politics were disturbed by Jalal al-Din Khwarazmshah, who took Akhlat in 1229 and was crushed near Erzincan (628/1230). Their conflicts with the Saljuqs of Rum over the Arab plains and Diyar Bakr led to an unsuccessful attack in 1233 and to the loss of Amid in 1241. ⁸

Egypt kept a more centralised administration than the Asian territories, which preserved Zangid institutions. The three great diwans were the diwan al-jaysh (army and iqta), the diwan al-mal (finance and the treasury) and the diwan al-insha' (chancery); the Fatimid heritage of al-Fadil, the chancery's director, was important. Each diwan had a mushidd, an amir who supervised the civil administration with his own troops. The military iqta was a grant of the revenue of a land to the holder, who had to maintain a stated number of men; the army was divided into corps named after their founders (asadiyya, salahiyya, adiliyya, kamiliyya, ashrafiyya), whose rivalries shaped the succession quarrels. The Ayyubids were orthodox Sunnis: they founded madrasas for the four rites, khanqahs for the mystical orders, and they worked with the caliphs' envoys; the Sons of the Shaykh, of Khurasanian origin, held posts in all three branches of the administration. The Yemen, under Ayyubid princes, was brought back to Sunni Islam until the Rasulids took power there in 629/1232. Egypt's economy stayed partly state-run, in mining, forests and metals, and al-Kamil's care for irrigation, sugar and the Fayyum survey is attested. ⁹

Al-Kamil died in 635/1238. He had left Hisn Kayfa to his eldest son al-Salih Ayyub and named his youngest son al-Adil as successor. Al-Salih Ayyub fought his way to the throne and restored the unity of command, not only against his brother but against most of the Ayyubids of Syria. He had relied on Turkish slave troops and on the Khwarazmians, whom he settled in Diyar Mudar, and whose devastation of the Jazira and Syria was great; when he no longer needed them he had them destroyed by his cousins. The Franks were drawn into the quarrels, as al-Salih Isma'il and al-Nasir Dawud of Karak fought al-Salih Ayyub and the Khwarazmians, which ended in disaster for both sides. The article's third section, on the period from al-Kamil's death, continues beyond the part read here. ¹⁰

Al-Salih Ayyub was the last true Ayyubid. His son Turanshah was murdered a few months after his accession by his own troops, and although child puppets carried the dynasty's name for a time, the Mamluk regime is dated from 647/1249. Al-Salih was its real creator: its army of Turkish slaves, the Bahriyya, named from the barracks on an island in the Nile, was the arbiter of the situation. When Turanshah died, the Bahriyya raised the Turkoman Izz al-Din Aybak to power, first as atabeg and then as sultan; the "Kurdish" dynasty was succeeded by the "Turkish" régime, in the words of contemporaries. ¹¹

The Northern Ayyubids lasted a little longer, but without success. Their last years were spent under the shadow of the Mongols, between submission and armed resistance. Al-Nasir of Aleppo became the standard-bearer of the Ayyubid cause; in 1258 Baghdad fell, and in 1260 Aleppo, Damascus and Mayyafariqin were taken or capitulated. Al-Nasir, who unlike the others did not dare to seek refuge in Egypt, was captured and, well treated at first, was put to death when news came of a Mongol defeat by the Mamluks at 'Ayn Jalut later that year. In Baybars's conquest of Syria the principality of Karak was subdued, Aleppo and Hims disappeared of their own accord, and Hama, made illustrious by its prince and writer Abu l-Fida', survived until 1342. A branch near Hisn Kayfa survived for more than two centuries under the Mongols and their successors, drawing its strength from the Kurdish tribes, and finally succumbed to the Ak Koyunlu. ¹²

The article's bibliography lists the archival documents (in Sinai, Florence and Venice, and private papers from the Cairo Geniza), the letters of al-Qadi al-Fadil, and the narrative sources: Imad al-Din al-Isfahani's al-Barq al-Shami, known through Abu Shama's al-Rawdatayn; Ibn al-Athir's al-Kamil; Ibn Wasil's Mufarrij al-kurub; Sibt Ibn al-Jawzi's Mir'at al-zaman; Ibn al-Furat; Maqrizi; and the Yemen sources of al-Khazraji and al-Mudjawir. The modern studies by Cl. Cahen, H. A. R. Gibb, and G. Wiet are the main general accounts; no full biography of Saladin existed. ¹³