History of the Crusades

the Crusades Episode 100 Baybars.

Like, did I just say episode 100?

1 hundred?

Whoa!

Whoa! 100. We have a lot to get through this episode so put the cork back in champagne bottles and

we'd better press forward. So, where am I?

Here we go.

Hello again. Last week we saw the Egyptian Mamluks defeat the

Mongols in the Battle of Aien-J-Lud. Now it's hard to overstate the historical importance of this battle.

The Egyptians were victorious and their victory meant that the Mongol invasion was driven back, with its western borders now

lying in Persia.

Egypt then occupied all of Syria, and the Egyptian Mamluks went on to establish a power base

which would see them prevail as the dominant Muslim force in the Middle East

until the rise of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East until the rise of the Ottoman Empire in the 1400s.

What would have happened if the Mongols won the Battle of Ainjalud. Well, it's difficult to speculate, but Stephen Runsaman in the third book of his

trilogy on the Crusades states that had the Mongols won the Battle of Ainjaloud, they no doubt

would have pressed their advantage and gone on to conquer Egypt, meaning there would have been no great Muslim power remaining in the Middle East.

The closest Muslim country would have been Morocco, far to the west in North Africa.

Kitbuka, the Mongol commander, defeated at A. Jalut was an historian Christian. Had he prevailed in battle, it's likely that the native Christians

in the Middle East may have, for the first time, risen to power under the Mongols.

With the subversion of Islamic rule in the Middle East, it's also likely that the

...