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The Kipchak connection: the Ilkhans, the Mamluks and Ayn Jalut1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Charles J. Halperin
Affiliation:
Bloomington, Indiana

Extract

In 1260 an army of Egyptian Mamluks, led by Sultan Qutuz, defeated a Mongol army from the Ilkhanate led by Ketbugha, at the battle of Ayn Jalut (Ain Jalut), ‘Goliath's Well’, in Palestine. Because this campaign marked the furthest advance of the Mongols in the Middle East, scholars have paid considerable attention to its military and political significance. However, one potential aspect of Ilkhanid-Mamluk relations has only been mentioned casually; examination of the role and image of the Kipchaks in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries may illustrate a much broader feature of the history of the Mongol Empire and its successor states.

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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 2000

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77 Ayalon, David, ‘The Wafidiya in the Mamluk Kingdom’, Islamic Culture (Hyderabad, 1951), 89104Google Scholar, rpt. Studies on the Mamluks of Egypt, Essay II (this article contains another running refutation of Poliak's theory that the Mamluks were vassals of the Golden Horde); Irwin, The Middle East, 108.

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