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Historical person

Al-Ashraf Khalil

c. 1262–1293

Al-Ashraf Khalil was the Bahri Mamluk sultan of Egypt and Syria from 1290 to 1293 and the son of Sultan Qalawun. He inherited a state already committed to eliminating the remaining Crusader footholds on the Levantine coast. In 1291 he led the great Mamluk assault on Acre, the principal surviving centre of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and its capture effectively ended large-scale Latin territorial rule in mainland Palestine.

After Acre, Khalil’s forces took or compelled the abandonment of Tyre, Sidon, Beirut and other coastal positions, consolidating Mamluk dominance in the region. His reign was nevertheless marked by tension with senior emirs, whose support was essential to Mamluk politics. In December 1293 Khalil was assassinated during a hunting expedition after conflict with members of the military elite. His younger brother al-Nasir Muhammad eventually emerged as the dynasty’s most enduring ruler.

In Roger Crowley’s The Accursed Tower, in 1291 Acre was the principal remaining stronghold of the Crusader states on the mainland of the Holy Land. Mamluk sultan al-Ashraf Khalil assembled a major army to finish the conquest begun by his predecessors, while the city’s defenders included the military orders, Italian merchant communities and the forces of the crusader nobility. In Michael Jecks’ Templar's Acre, the crusader port is the last major mainland stronghold of the Latin East, crowded with soldiers, merchants and refugees as al-Ashraf Khalil’s Mamluk army prepares its assault.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Al-Ashraf Khalil (1 series)

Last Templar Mysteries in Order

by Michael Jecks 32 books 4.2(20,880)

The Last Templar Mysteries follow Sir Baldwin de Furnshill, a survivor of the suppression of the Knights Templar, and his friend Simon Puttock, a Devon bailiff. Most of the sequence is set between 1316 and 1327, when the two men investigate deaths in villages, monasteries, ports and cathedral…

All books in this series

Non Fiction

Non Fiction featuring Al-Ashraf Khalil (1 book)

Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.