Battle of Ain Jalut

3 September 1260, northern Palestine

The Egyptian Mamluk army led by Sultan Qutuz met Kitbuqa's Mongol-led force at ʿAyn Jālūt on 3 September 1260. Sources variously equate the day with 25 or 26 Ramadan 658 AH.

The fighting initially went badly for part of the Mamluk army. Qutuz personally rallied the shaken troops, and the Mamluks ultimately broke the opposing force.

Kitbuqa's end, told two ways

Kitbuqa was killed or captured and then executed — the sources differ over the precise sequence — and his army was decisively defeated.

Hülegü was not on the field. He had withdrawn the main army from Syria and left Kitbuqa a command originally assigned as one tümen, nominally about 10,000 troops, which is not a secure count of the men actually present.

Syria empties out

Surviving Mongol troops and officials withdrew from Syria after the defeat. Damascus's population expelled the Mongol garrison, and Mamluk forces rapidly occupied territory extending to the Euphrates.

The medieval sources do not permit reliable casualty totals or a secure strength for either army, and scholars stress that Kitbuqa commanded a reduced force rather than an enormous host.

This was not the Mongols' first battlefield defeat — Jalal al-Din had inflicted a serious one at Parwan in 1221 — and it did not end Mongol activity in Syria, where Ilkhanid invasions and frontier warfare continued for decades.