Baibars and the End

CHAPTER 11 · 1244–1291 · The Crusades, 1095–1291

The instrument of the end is, once again, a slave-soldier state. At La Forbie near Gaza in 1244, an allied Frankish and Damascene army is destroyed by Egyptian forces and the Khwarezmians who had just sacked Jerusalem — the last time Outremer fields an army of any size. Then the Mongols come, sweeping away Baghdad and the Abbasid caliphate; and at Ain Jalut in 1260 the Mamluks of Egypt halt the seemingly invincible Mongols in Galilee. That victory saves the Islamic heartland — and forges a disciplined, self-renewing military state (the same slave-soldier system the Muslim world had used for ce

The turn: Ain Jalut, 3 September 1260.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.