The tree of the pearl .. What do you know about the first Sultana in the history of Islam?

The tree of the pearls were skilled in beauty, with opinion, cunning and mind, and they gained happiness as long as no one of the women of their time could attain them, and the good king loved them and depended on them.

(The Golden in "History of Islam")

After the death of Sultan al-Nasir Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi (d.589 AH), the founder of the Ayyubid state and one of the heroes of Islam in the Middle Ages, his sons and relatives took over the reins of power after him in Egypt, the Levant and Yemen, but most of them did not meet the same exceptional leadership characteristics that Saladin enjoyed, and soon There was no conflict between the best sons of Salah al-Din Ali and al-Aziz Uthman, and their just first uncle Abu Bakr bin Ayyub (615 AH) was able to settle it in his favor so that his sons and grandchildren ruled after him, and the Ayyubid state fragmented into rival provinces or kingdoms.

In the midst of this competition, the Ayyubids were plagued by the increase in the Crusader influence, whose pockets and principalities had a measure of influence and power along the Levantine coast, and the Ayyubids witnessed three crusades between the years 615 to 647 AH, the fifth crusade against Damietta in 614 AH, and the sixth crusade that Jerusalem was handed over to Frederick II, the German Emperor on a plate of gold in 626 AH, and the seventh Crusade in the year 647 AH against Damietta, led by the King of France Louis IX and his crusaders in the Levant, which was the campaign in which the importance of the Mamluk forces emerged that the good Ayyub had worked to strengthen and train them Besides the Kurdish forces, Moroccans, Sudan and other elements of the Ayyubid army.

This campaign was not dangerous in the fall of Damietta at the hands of the Crusaders and their arrival to the outskirts of Mansoura in the south. Rather, its danger was represented in the death of the righteous Ayyubid Sultan Ayyub during the battle, which forced the commander of the armies Prince Fakhr al-Din bin Sheikh and Shajar al-Durr, the Sultan’s wife or former slave girl, to conceal the news of the death. In order not to weaken the morale of the army, to collapse the defenses and resistance that had begun to bear fruit with the surprise attack and special operations in the Nile and the storming of the defenses of the Crusaders, which had begun to collapse.

So who are the trees of Durr?

How was it an important factor in the victory of the Ayyubids and Mamluks in this decisive battle over tens of thousands of the Crusaders?

And how did she rise to rule Egypt to become the first sultan in the history of the Middle East ?!

During the 75 days of battles against Louis IX, King of France and the leader of the Seventh Crusade against Egypt, Shajar al-Durr played a decisive and pivotal role in strengthening the home front, as it supported the commander of the army, Fakhr al-Din bin al-Sheikh, and urged the Mamluk factions to defend Mansoura with all force, and they were able to deceive the Crusaders And the killing of them in the streets and alleys of Mansoura and their defeat and the killing of thousands of them by drowning in the Damietta branch of the Nile, and also sent a delegation urgently to bring King Turanshah from the fortress of Kifa, south of Anatolia, to come to Egypt and assume the reins of the Sultanate to succeed his father.

In these three axes, Shajar Al-Durr succeeded, and the Crusaders were defeated overwhelmingly, and thousands of them were killed. Indeed, their king, Louis IX, was imprisoned in his humiliation in the house of the judge of Mansoura Ibn Luqman, and the two sides concluded a humiliating agreement in which the Crusaders paid a dear price, so that after this defeat they did not dare to accept Embarking on new Crusades against the Islamic East until the beginning of the modern era, except for what was on the eastern European fronts in front of the Ottomans later.

Turanshah came, accompanied by a group of his court, to rule Egypt to succeed his father.

But he was not worthy of judgment, nor was he comparable to his father in his intelligence and courage, and instead of Turanshah rewarding the Mamelukes who had proven themselves in the battles of Damietta, Farskor and Mansoura and their aftermath, he would relieve them of their positions, cut off their salaries, treat them with cruelty and ruggedness, and raise his entourage above them. The Mamelukes got rid of it, and Rukn al-Din Baybars, Fars al-Din Aktay and Izz al-Din Ayb al-Turkmani led the assassination operation, which was narrated by the historian Abu Shama al-Maqdisi (d.665 AH) by saying: “In Safar in the year forty-eight and one hundred the news arrived of the killing of the great Turan Shah bin Al-Saleh Ayoub bin Al-Kamil bin Al-Adel In the corridor of the tent, after he had spread the scald (al-Ma'idah), he was struck with a sword, and he was defeated and entered the wood tower and was burned, so he threw himself to the side of the Nile, and he was overtaken and cut into the village of Farskur, and that was from his father’s naval servants. ”[1]

The Mamluks were not satisfied with this renewal and the replacement of the high military command of the army with elements loyal to the great Turanshah who came from Hasankeyf, especially when they saw them less than them in experience, stature and status, as well as their fear of the news that was coming to them that the great wanted to kill them after the completion of the implementation Reconciliation with the Crusaders, and then some senior Mamluk princes agreed to kill him, and before peace was concluded with the Crusaders on handing over Damietta and other conditions, the Mamluks killed the great Turanshah on Muharram 28, 648 AH, and he was less than thirty years old, and the Kurdish princes did not find him al-Qaymariya nor One of the soldiers of the ring from the rest of the Mamluks loyal to his father, and was buried near Damietta, and he only ruled for about three months, and he did not enter the capital of his kingdom, Cairo [2].

The killing of Sultan Turanshah without the presence of a successor from the great Ayyubids in Egypt was the reason for the Mamluks handing over the strongest fronts within the army to the reins of affairs to the slave girl Ayoub Shajar Al-Durr, this woman who proved great wisdom and patience upon the death of her husband, thanks to her concealment of the news of the death of al-Saleh Ayyub preserving the front system And his cohesion before the Crusaders in Mansoura for two months, and thanks to this secrecy, Turanshah was able to take over the reins of power without any obstacles or obstacles.

Shajar Al-Durr was the slave-girl of Sultan Al-Adil Ayyub and the mother of his son Khalil, who died young, and she was the one who stood next to the great prince Fakhr al-Din ibn al-Sheikh in the period between the death of al-Saleh Ayyub and the coming of the great Turanshah, which lasted for seventy-five days, managing with him the matter of the military and the affairs of government [3], All this gave it priority to the military leadership of the Mamelukes and the remnants of the Kurds and Qimariyah in Egypt, to hand over to it the reins of power.

Al-Dhahabi said in his history: “The tree of the pearls was skilled in beauty, with opinion, cunning and intellect, and gained happiness as long as none of the women of her time could attain it, and the righteous king loved her and relied on her, and when he died on Damietta, she hid his death, and she used to mark her handwriting like his mark and say: The Sultan What is good, and prevented them from entering it, and the princes and the khaskiyya respected and obeyed her, and ruled her over them for days. She ruled and sermons to her on the pulpits following the killing of the great Sultan (Turanshah) Ibn al-Saleh ”[4].

Murder of the Sultan, the King (Turanshah)

Shajar Al-Durr accepted the position of the Sultanate in a precedent that did not occur in the history of Islamic politics in the Middle East, and Izz al-Din Aybak al-Salih al-Turkmani was appointed commander of the Egyptian army or Atabek al-Askar [5], but these articulated changes brought about three fundamental problems to the new regime.

As for the first problem, it was represented in the failure of the Ayyubids in the Levant, as well as the senior princes of al-Saleh Ayyub in Damascus, to recognize this new political reality, which does not give power to a woman only, but also gives absolute political and military power to the Turkish Mamluks, and they differ from the structure of the Ayyubid armies that were often formed From the Kurds, Moroccans, Sudan and others.

The second problem was represented in the refusal of the Abbasid Caliphate, headed by the Caliph Al-Mustassim, to this matter and mockery, and then he did not acknowledge what happened, so he did not send a leaflet or a khula, a sword and a turban to the head of the new regime, which are the necessary means to legitimize the new ruler in the eyes of the subjects, but rather he was sent to Egypt says: “If the men are left with you, let us know so that we will walk to you a man” [6].

What means lack of legitimacy for them.

The third problem is the emergence of the Mamluk class to the surface of power and the sudden exercise of politics following a coup against the Ayyubids. This class did not have sufficient experience to complete and stabilize this matter, unlike the Ayyubids of course.

Despite historians ’praise for the period of Shajar al-Durr’s rule that did not exceed three months, during which it tried to gain legitimacy from society itself by undertaking economic reforms, raising unfair taxes, charity to the military elite and increasing their fiefs, the aforementioned three problems were stronger than them, and he decided The Mamluk princes should marry Shajar Al-Durr from her deputy, Prince Izz al-Din Aybak al-Turkmani, and he would be the real sultan behind a young Ayyubid prince, Ashraf Musa, one of the descendants of al-Kamil Muhammad ibn al-Adil al-Ayyubi.

But Shajar Al-Durr, this beautiful slave girl, very intelligent, could not accept that she would give up the dreams of the king and the Sultanate, and she was the one who carried it for a full three months in which she knew the meaning of power, prestige and influence, and the subordination of the necks of men, princes and senior officers to her, and she was the one who “inscribed her name on the dinar and dirham. And the preachers used to say after the supplication to the caliph: Oh God, preserve the righteous side, the king of the Muslims, the infallibility of the world and religion, the mother of Khalil al-Mustasamiyyah, the owner of the sultan, the righteous king ”[7].

Because of this influence and power, Al-Muizz Aybak became like a quarantined one, not making an order except with the advice of Al-Durr trees. Rather, it was treated as if it was the real ruler of the country. Al-Maqrizi says: “The pearl trees were tyrannical with the kingdom’s affairs, not informing him about them, and preventing him from meeting with the mother of his son, and obliging him to divorce her. And she did not show him the relics of the good king. So the king al-Muizz stayed in the scenery of al-Luq (far from the castle) for days until the trees of the horns were sent from him who swore to him. So the castle appeared and the five tree trees were prepared for him to kill him ”[8].

The killing of Aybak was only because the trees of Al-Durr angered her to marry someone else, and that he wanted to exclude her from the Sultanate and its affairs, and it had been seized by its influence, money and men in the corridors of the castle, and she had planned to get rid of him and marry the king of the Ayyubids in the Levant Al-Nasir II, but the Mamluks of Al-Muizz Aybak, with a sword in their head Al-Din Qutuz decided to take revenge, and were able to arrest and imprison her in the Red Tower in the Castle of the Mountain, and when Nur al-Din Ali bin al-Muizz Aybak ascended to the Mamluk Sultanate, his mother decided to get rid of the durr trees, so she ordered and brought her to her, and she ordered her maidservants to hit her with clogs, and she was struck by wooden clogs on her head until She died, and they took her and threw her from one of the towers of the high castle, and so the curtain came down in the year 655 AH on the life of Shajar Al-Durr, a slave girl, fate decreed that she would become the Sultan of Egypt for several months in front of the curtain, and for several years behind the curtain!

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