Turanshah (al-Muazzam Turanshah)

Al-Muazzam Turanshah, son of as-Salih Ayyub, reigned over Egypt for roughly seventy days, won the war he inherited, and was murdered by his father's soldiers — the event conventionally taken as the end of Ayyubid rule in Egypt. His early career was spent at arm's length from power: as-Salih, wary of every potential rival including his own son, had stationed him at Hisn Kayfa on the upper Tigris, far from Cairo and from any following among the Egyptian military elite. That isolation would prove fatal.

When as-Salih died in November 1249 with the crusade of Louis IX of France encamped in the Delta, Shajar al-Durr and the senior emirs concealed the sultan's death and summoned Turanshah from the Jazira. He reached the front at Mansura in late February 1250, in time for the campaign's decision. The crusader vanguard under Robert of Artois had been annihilated in the streets of Mansura earlier that month by the Bahri mamluks, with the young officer Baybars prominent in the fighting. Turanshah pressed the advantage, ordering ships carried overland to the Nile to cut the crusaders' supply line from Damietta. Starving and disease-ridden, the French retreated and were destroyed at Fariskur in April 1250; Louis IX himself was taken prisoner, the only reigning king of France ever captured on crusade, and held for a ransom fixed at 400,000 livres alongside the surrender of Damietta.

Victory exposed the new sultan's position. Turanshah began installing his own retainers from the Jazira in offices held by his father's men, demanded that Shajar al-Durr surrender the late sultan's treasure, and, by hostile accounts, threatened the Bahri commanders in his cups. The threatened parties moved first. On 2 May 1250, at a banquet at Fariskur, Bahri officers led by Baybars attacked him; wounded, he fled to a wooden tower by the Nile, which was set alight, and he was cut down at the river's edge.

The regiments then raised Shajar al-Durr to the sultanate. A child cousin, al-Ashraf Musa, was later kept as nominal co-sultan for a time, but effective Ayyubid sovereignty in Egypt died with Turanshah at Fariskur.