1- The internal and foreign policy of Sultan Qalawun
First: Qalawun’s internal policy
Qalawun led his army in many battles and wars against the Mongols and the Crusaders. He faced revolutions and internal strife, so Shams al-Din Sunqur, the deputy of the Levant, rebelled against his rule, seeking the Sultanate. He called on the people of the Levant to revolt against Qalawun, and he called himself a sultan and was called the Perfect King. Qalawun took the initiative to send a large army from Cairo to defeat Sunqur. In the year 679 AH/1280 AD, as we mentioned previously, Sanqar fled to Karaj to the Mongols, trying to turn them against the Mamluks. Then some of the Zahiri princes declared disobedience against Qalawun’s rule and contacted the Crusaders. The Sultan’s followers and soldiers arrested them, imprisoned some of them, and executed others, which prompted him to buy a lot of young Mamluks to create a group from them. He created a new fighter and trained them in towers and castles to be his support and aid against his rivals, the Zahiri princes and their aides, and they were all from the Circassian element. He raised them in the towers of the citadel, and that is why they were known as the towering Mamluks. Some people tend not to use this name because the Mamluks were raised in the citadel and its towers. This group prefers to call them the Circassian Mamluks, and the Circassians belong to the country of Karaj (present-day Georgia), located between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, and they were numerous in the markets because of Their country was exposed to the invasions of the Mongols in the late seventh century AH / thirteenth century AD.
Second: Qalawun’s foreign policy
Qalawun set out to confront external challenges in the regions of the Levant, especially since Prince Sanqur allied with the Mongols and the Crusaders against Mamluk rule. This Mongolian leader encouraged Abghakhan in the year (679 AH/1280 AD) to send his army to occupy castles in the Levant, and entered Aleppo, where he burned it, killed its people, and plundered it. He withdrew back to Iraq after learning that Sultan Qalawun had marched to Gaza on his way to meet him and defeat him. The Crusaders took advantage of this Mongol attempt and tried to regain the Kurdish fortress in the year (679 AH/1280 AD), but they failed in the attempt, and Sultan Qalawun hastened to implement his plan by stirring up enmity and hatred among his opponents. And his enemies so that they would not challenge his soldiers, and to approach each of them separately, so he made peace with the Crusaders in the year 680 AH/1281 AD for a period of ten years on the borders of the Levant and devoted himself to the Mongols, where he pardoned Sinqur and appointed him as governor of Antioch, and presented him with money to earn it to his side so that he could devote himself to other powers. Thus, Qalawun sought to neutralize the Crusaders and even pushed them to stand with him against his opponents, the Zahiri princes in the Levant. Although he had made peace with them and only four years had passed, he attacked the Hospitallers in Fort Al-Marqab, which was one of the most dangerous Crusader fortresses in the Levant, and succeeded in seizing it. Which caused the Crusaders a huge loss, and at a time when the Mamluks were preparing to completely eliminate the Crusader entity in the Levant, the Crusaders did not pay attention to the reality of the danger threatening them, and they continued to be immersed in their internal disputes, which were the disputes that characterized the history of the Crusaders in the Levant in the last half of the thirteenth century AD. Sultan Qalawun took advantage of the Crusaders’ preoccupation with these disputes, and sent an expedition that captured Latakia in the year 686 AH, which was the last city remaining for the Crusaders from the Emirate of Antioch. The results of Al-Mansur Qalawun’s seizure of Fort Al-Marqab were to incite terror and dismay in the hearts of the owners of the fortresses and other Crusader cities in the Levant. Prince of Tripoli, Bohemand VII, made peace and concluded a truce with Al-Mansur Qalawun, and so did Margaret, Prince of Tyre. The King of Minor Armenia made peace with Sultan Al-Mansur in exchange for paying an annual tribute and releasing Muslim prisoners in his country. However, three years after concluding the truce with Bohemand VII, Emir of Tripoli, he vetoed it. The people of Tripoli broke this truce and attacked Muslim merchants and blocked the road to travelers, even though they had pledged in the previous truce agreement not to attack a merchant or block the road to a traveler. Qalawun rebuked this opportunity while another was preparing to march to Tripoli, especially since Bohemand had died without leaving an heir, so a dispute arose. Inside Tripoli about the rule, a group of disputing parties called for help from Sultan Qalawun. He seized the opportunity and went out at the head of a huge army estimated at forty thousand horsemen in the year 688 AH/1289 AD. When he reached Tripoli, he laid siege to it and the siege continued for 39 days, after which Tripoli fell to Qalawun after fierce fighting. It was unable to resist the siege imposed on it by the Sultan, and after the ancient city of Tripoli was destroyed, Qalawun ordered the construction of a new Tripoli away from the coast for fear of the threat of the Crusader fleets to this city. This resulted in the Muslims soon seizing the places that the Crusaders had vacated near Tripoli, such as Beirut and Jableh. Thus, nothing remained for the Crusaders of their extensive rule in the Levant except Akka, Sidon, Tyre, and Athalith. It is clear that Akka was the greatest and most formidable of these cities, in addition to being the new center of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem after Saladin’s seizure of Jerusalem. However, Al-Mansur Qalawun headed after His seizure of Tripoli to Damascus, where he agreed to renew the truce with the Crusaders for a period of ten years, and while they were in the Levant betrothed to Sultan Qalawun and hoping that the rest of their possessions in the Levant would be kept for them, some Crusader groups arrived from Italy in the year 689 AH to spoil the atmosphere between the Muslims and the Crusaders. This is because these new Crusaders arrived in Akka full of enthusiasm, and at the same time they lacked order, experience and self-control. Immediately after their arrival, they began to attack the Muslims outside the walls of Akka, which foreshadowed the renewal of the war between the Muslims and the Crusaders. It is also said that Qalawun became angry when he saw some of the clothes. The Muslim victims were covered in blood, and he swore to avenge them from the Crusaders. At a time when Qalawun was preparing in Egypt and the Levant to carry out a major military operation against the Crusaders in Akka, the Sultan suddenly died in the year 689 AH, and his death occurred in the Al-Taber Mosque outside Cairo near Al-Matariyya, and he came to him determined. Ali conquered Akka.
2- The death of Sultan Al-Mansur Qalawun
In the year of his death, Sultan Saif al-Din Qalawun decided to perform Hajj, but news reached him about attacks carried out by the Crusaders of Akka against Muslim merchants within the city’s walls, thus violating the truce between the two parties. It discouraged him from his resolve, so he decided to put the invasion before the Hajj. No sooner had Sultan Qalawun finished all his war preparations, in order to go out to conquer Acre, when death suddenly struck him while he was in his camp - and it was said in his vestibule - towards the Al-Taber Mosque outside Cairo, and that was on the 6th of Dhul-Qa’dah 689 AH/ 1290 AD, after Sultan Qalawun was prepared, washed, and shrouded in the citadel, and he was taken down from it in a coffin, and the princes and notable people walked in front of him until they reached his soil in Bain Al-Qasrain, where he was buried. Thus, Sultan Qalawun’s life ended, after he ruled for eleven years and a few months, during which he achieved a lot. Of internal reforms and external victories, his rule lasted 11 years and 3 months.