An-Nasir Yusuf

Al-Malik an-Nasir Salah al-Din Yusuf, great-grandson of Saladin through the Aleppo line, was the last significant Ayyubid sovereign, and his fall to the Mongols in 1260 closed the dynasty's history as a major power. He inherited Aleppo in 1236 as a child of seven on the death of his father al-Aziz Muhammad, with his formidable grandmother Dayfa Khatun governing as regent until 1242. Reared in the most cultivated court of Ayyubid Syria, he grew into a ruler of refined tastes and, as events would show, irresolute judgment.

The Mamluk seizure of Egypt in 1250 made him the standard-bearer of Ayyubid legitimacy. Damascus opened its gates to him that summer, uniting Muslim Syria under his rule, and he took the field to recover Cairo from the usurpers. At the battle of al-Kura'a in February 1251 his initially successful attack collapsed when his own Bahri mamluk auxiliaries — exiles from Egypt whose loyalties ran both ways — turned the day, and he retreated to Damascus. A settlement brokered in the caliph's name in 1253 left Egypt to the Mamluks and Syria as far as the Jordan to an-Nasir, a partition both sides treated as provisional. The exiled Bahri commander Baybars later took refuge at his court, then broke with him, adding another unstable element to Syrian politics.

The Mongol storm found him without a strategy. Hulegu's destruction of Baghdad and the Abbasid caliphate in 1258 removed the symbolic order in which Ayyubid legitimacy was rooted, and an-Nasir oscillated between submission and defiance — sending his young son to Hulegu with tribute while soliciting, of all parties, Mamluk and even Frankish help. In January 1260 the Mongols took Aleppo by storm; Damascus surrendered without a fight in March as an-Nasir fled southward. Captured near the Jordan, he was sent to Hulegu, who treated him honorably for a time. After the Mamluk victory over the Mongols at Ayn Jalut in September 1260 — the battle that saved Egypt and avenged Syria — Hulegu had his royal prisoner executed, probably early in 1261. With him ended Ayyubid rule in Damascus and Aleppo, though a minor branch persisted at Hama for generations as clients of the Mamluk sultans.