Mamlûk sultan of Egypt (1279-1290), and founder of a dynasty that lasted for 100 years. Qalâwûn’s reign saw the Mamlûk victory in the Second Battle of Homs (1282), which ended the immediate Mongol threat to the eastern Mediterranean region and enabled the Mamlûks to concentrate their military efforts on the final destruction of the Frankish states of Outremer. He died while mounting an expedition against Acre (mod. ‘Akko, Israel), which under his son and successor Khalil ended the Frankish occupation of the Near East.
Qalâwûn was a Kipchak Turk by origin. In his twenties, he was purchased by a member of the household of al- Kâmil, Ayyûbid sultan of Egypt, for the price of 1,000 dinars, and hence came to be called al-Alfi, after the Arabic word for thousand. Later he served al-Salih Ayyûb as one of the Bahriyya corps of soldiers, and became an emir under Sultan Baybars I. After Baybars’s death,Qalâwûn succeeded to the throne following a brief power struggle, and set about consolidating his position. This consolidation involved setting aside the mamluks (slave soldiers) of Baybars in favor of his own, as well as some of the Salihis who had not previously held important positions. He also successfully confronted a revolt in Syria by Sunqur al-Ashqar with the support of the Bedouin leader ‘Îsâ ibn Muhannâ.
In 1281, Qalâwûn faced a long-expected invasion of Syria by the Ilkhan Abaqa, who had sought to break Mamlûk power in the region. Qalâwûn’s victory in the Second Battle of Homs (1282), followed by Abaqa’s death shortly thereafter, left him free to continue the Mamlûk military campaign against Outremer, which was politically weak and divided. The sultanate had concluded a number of truces with individual Frankish powers; now, Qalâwûn simply found pretexts for declaring them void and eliminating his enemies one at a time.
In 1285, the sultan accused the Hospitallers of Margat of attacking Muslims, and after a brief campaign he took the stronghold in late May. He then moved against the castle of Maraclea, which Prince Bohemund VII of Tripoli ordered to be surrendered so as to preserve his own truce with the Mamlûks. In 1287, after an earthquake destroyed some of the fortifications at Laodikeia in Syria,Qalâwûn took the city, claiming that it was not covered by his truce with Bohemund, as the city lay outside the boundaries of the county of Tripoli. In 1289 Qalâwûn attacked Tripoli (mod.Trâblous, Lebanon), eventually storming the town and massacring much of the population. He then razed the city and ordered it rebuilt on a new site. In an attempt to save Acre, the last Christian possession in the area, Pope Nicholas IV called a crusade in February 1290, though many Western monarchs simply used the crisis to strengthen their economic interests in Egypt. During the preparations for his campaign against Acre, however, Qalâwûn died. The city’s capture was left to his son Khalīl, whom he had successfully installed as heir.