The treaties of the early Mamluk sultans with the Frankish states

Abstract

Arabic sources have preserved the texts of seven treaties concluded in the second half of the seventh/thirteenth century between the Mamluk sultans al-Ẓāhir Baybars and al-Manṣūr Qalāwūn on the one hand, and various authorities in the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem and in Antioch-Tripoli on the other. Four are given by the Egyptian chancery clerk al-Qalqashandī in his encyclopaedic compilation, Ṣubḥ al-a'shā. This was completed in 814/1412, over 120 years after the extinction of the Frankish states, but the treaties were transcribed (as al-Qalqashandī tells us) from an earlier work by a clerk in Qalāwūn's chancery, Muḥammad b. al-Mukarram. Two of Qalāwūn's other treaties are found in his biography, written by the contemporary chancery clerk, Muḥyi al-Dīn ibn 'Abd al-Ẓāhir (d. 692/1292). Yet another of Qalāwūn's treaties was preserved by the contemporary chronicler, Baybars al-Manṣurī (d. 725/1325).