The Palace of Emir Baktamur

Stories of women are not easy to tease out of Mamluk histories. Women are mentioned mainly in their roles as wives, daughters or mothers or as enslaved concubines. Sometimes they are named, sometimes not.

The histories may not often address their lives head-on, but you find them. Wives and daughters were in charge of financial estates. Some became accomplished religious scholars, even teaching men. Wealthy women built mosques and give charity. Women in the middle and poorer classes were important in the market; in one instance, a moralizing official banned women from the souq, and commerce ground to a halt.

From time to time, you find glimpses into their internal lives. There’s no monument at this location, at the intersection of Kadri Basha and al-Houd al-Marsoud Streets. But here we can uncover a story from the lives of two enslaved women.

One was the concubine of a sultan who became the wife of the most prominent emir of his time. Her name is never given. She’s only ever identified as Umm Ahmed, the mother of Ahmed.

The other is an oud player. Her name was Khoubi, or “Goodness.”

Khoubi we know was enslaved from Anatolia, a fair-skinned Turk, as she’s described. Of Umm Ahmed we don’t know even that much.

They lived here. Currently at this site is the Cultural Park for Children, an ambitious project for community renewal from the 1990s that, after winning international awards, was mismanaged into decrepitude. Six centuries ago, here (or near here) stood one of the grandest palaces ever built around Birket el-Fil Lake: the Palace of Emir Baktamur al-Saqi.

The maps below show the evolution of this site. The first map is from the 1809 Description de l’Egypte, the second is the 1874 map of Pierre Grand Bey commissioned by Khedive Ismail, the third is Google satellite map of today. The Khalig al-Masri Canal/ Port Said Street is in blue, el-Habbaniya St in purple, Saliba St. in green, the Grand Avenue in red. The children’s cultural park, where Baktamur’s palace was likely located, is marked in each.

The placement of Baktamur's palace at this site is based on Nadia Fouad Younes' 2010 thesis, "The Evolution of Birket al-Fil," which is a wonderful study of this entire district and worth reading for multiple reasons. It can be found here.

Emir Baktamur was the closest companion of Sultan al-Nasir Mohammed, one of the greatest and longest ruling Mamluk sultans.

Baktamur “was the most handsome and joyous of men. Just looking at him lifted your cares and woes,” one historian wrote. “He had a massive body, was always smiling, blonde with dark eyes and dark, gentle eyelashes. His dimpled cheeks were so rosy it was if pomegranates and carnelians had melted in them."

Al-Nasir Mohammed sought his advice on affairs of state and was constantly by his side. Baktamur became a wealthy man, whether from the sultan’s gifts, from his own lands or from the gifts of those who came seeking his help in the halls of power. To show his favor, al-Nasir Mohammed gave Baktamur one of his own concubines, the future Umm Ahmed, in marriage. Together, the couple had their son Ahmed and at least two daughters.

The sultan also built this palace for Baktamur, for the staggering cost of 1 million silver dirhams. “No eye ever beheld a palace like it,” the historian al-Maqrizi writes. On the shore of Birket el-Fil lake’s southern tip, it would have had lofty, ornate reception rooms, windcatchers on the roof to draw the cool breezes into the house, and loggias on the upper floors where you could relax and look out over the waters of the lake.

It was here that Khoubi played. She was a singer and a player of the oud, or Arabic lute. Her touch on the oud strings, it was said, "stirred the depths of people's hearts. Sweetness flowed like water from her fingertips through the oud. When she sang, the birds were reduced to irrelevance."

After Baktamur bought Khoubi, his wife heard of this new concubine and wanted to investigate. She notified Baktamur that she was coming to the palace to admire the view over the lake. The emir knew what she was up to and, wary of his wife’s jealousy, told Khoubi to make sure to play the oud for her.

When Umm Ahmed arrived, she relaxed a while in the loggia, gazing out over the lake. Then she inspected the slave girls. She picked out Khoubi and asked her who she was. Khoubi sat at her feet and struck up her oud. Umm Ahmed was mesmerized. She informed her husband that she was taking Khoubi into her own retinue, where she lavished her with rich clothes and jewelry.

View over Birket el-Fil, engraving from Description de l’Egypte

Meanwhile, Sultan al-Nasir Mohammed often spent his evenings at their palace, passing the time with his friend Baktamur and enjoying Umm Ahmed’s cooking. He adored their son, Ahmed, and doted on him, letting him sleep in his lap. The sultan had his own eldest son, Anouk, marry one of Baktamur and Umm Ahmed’s daughters, throwing them one of the most lavish weddings ever seen. 

As Baktamur’s son Ahmed became a young man, the sultan also arranged a prestigious marriage for him _ with Qutlumalak, the daughter of Emir Tankiz, the sultan’s governor in Damascus.

This is where things get creepy.

When Qutlumalak arrived from Damascus for the wedding, the sultan got his first sight of her. She was tall and dark, with dark eyes, and he was immediately enraptured, writes a historian of the time, Mussa al-Yusufi. After the marriage, the sultan would visit Baktamur’s palace and have the new bride stand before him so he could stare at her. Sometimes, he’d lay down with his head in Umm Ahmed’s lap and just watch Qutlumalak.

“If I’d known Tankiz’s daughter had this shape, this neck, these dark eyes,” he told Umm Ahmed, “I never would have married her to anyone but myself.”

As you can imagine, Umm Ahmed was freaked out by all of this. Alarm bells ringing like mad, she warned her husband of the danger: The sultan clearly wanted their son’s wife.

“This girl is going to wreck my home,” she said, in the time honored tradition of blaming the victim.

Baktamur told her it was nothing. “He’s probably just saying all this as a compliment to her father, Tankiz.”

Which was so lame even Baktamur didn’t believe it. He knew the sultan usually took what he wanted. Further worrying him, he saw that the sultan’s favor was turning to others among his top emirs. 

Al-Nasir Mohammed, it was said, grew so close to his favorites it was like he could never be apart from them. But when he went cold, it was like they’d been wiped from existence. Al-Nasir Mohammed also had a thing for handsome mamluks, and he was growing enamored of a certain Emir Bashtak. The two often went riding together and spent evenings in conversation. And Bashtak used this time together to tell the sultan all about a passionate love of his own: For Baktamur’s wife Umm Ahmed. Bashtak went on and on about her overwhelming beauty, moaning that his desire for her was too much to bear.

Be patient, the sultan told him: “Soon she and all that Baktamur has will be yours.”

It all came to a climax when the sultan went on the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in 1333.

Just to set the scene: The annual hajj caravan from Cairo was always an elaborate affair requiring extensive preparations. The round trip took three or four months, crossing the Sinai, through Aqaba and down the eastern coast of the Red Sea to Mecca, stopping at a series of stations with water sources along the route. 

It was dangerous. If the hajj caravan got off track or found water supplies low at one of the way stations, pilgrims could be left staggering thirsty through the desert. Diseases were common. Bedouin often attacked, massacring pilgrims and looting their goods. Each year, an emir was appointed to organize and protect the caravan with his troops. Even so, after departing Cairo with great pomp and ceremony, some caravans limped home months later, the pilgrims emaciated, ailing, bloodied and mourning their dead.

When a sultan went on pilgrimage, everything was far, far grander. Al-Nasir Mohamed was accompanied not only by his family and soldiers; much of the court went with him. More than 60 emirs came along, most with their own households and soldiers, including Baktamur, his wife and their son Ahmed. Some carried their treasuries with them so they could pass out gold in Mecca as charity. All of them had their personal staffs, retinues and supplies. So you have hundreds of nobles, servants, soldiers, men and women trekking through the desert, strung out in a long train of horses, camels and litters, striking their tents at rest stops and packing them back up when they set out on the road again. On top of all that, this was at the height of summer.

Map of the historic way stations on the hajj route from Egypt to Mecca. Found on the web at https://www.lovely0smile.com/Msg-10947.html

Al-Nasir Mohammed’s pilgrimage turned into a nightmarish psychodrama.

As they reached Aqaba, the sultan heard rumors that Baktamur was plotting to kill him. The sultan said nothing and instead drew Baktamur closer to lull him into complacency and keep him from meeting with any co-conspirators.

He kept Baktamur constantly by his side. When the caravan was moving, he had him ride next to him. When the caravan paused, he had him sit with him. When they stopped for the night, he called Baktamur to his tent to sit up with him for hours and sleep beside him. For Baktamur — who it seems wasn’t actually plotting anything — his suddenly ultra-clingy sultan was exhausting. He couldn’t step away for a second. The one time he managed to pop over to his tent to see his wife, a series of messengers from the sultan immediately showed up, pestering him to come back.

“Just let me die so I get a break from this,” Baktamur groaned to a friend.

Strange incidents hiked the tension. The sultan’s son Anouk fell ill and had to be sent home with his mother. A group of 30 mamluk soldiers just disappeared, running off one morning down the road toward Iraq, raising the sultan’s suspicions that it was also somehow part of Baktamur’s supposed plot.

Still, the caravan reached Mecca. They performed the hajj, everyone was happy, and they headed toward Medina.

That night a tremendous sandstorm ripped through the camp. In the darkness, the winds tore tents up from their stakes and sent them flying. Soldiers scurried around madly. The sultan panicked, believing he was under attack. At the same time amid the confusion, a group of soldiers charged into the tent of Baktamur’s son Ahmed, seemingly intent on killing him in his sleep. But they found him awake and sitting with his soldiers, so they made up a story that they were chasing a thief. 

By daybreak, the camp was a wreck, as were everyone’s nerves.

“There’s nothing good in any of this,” Baktamur was heard brooding.

The next day, al-Nasir Mohammed and Baktamur rode together. The sultan declared he was thirsty and asked for water. The waterboy handed the sultan a jug — and gave him a conspicuous nod. “On the other hand,” the sultan told Baktamur, “cold water upsets my stomach. Better that Ahmed has it.” So Baktamur’s son drank from the jug.

That night, Ahmed was wracked with pain. As the caravan moved on, Ahmed’s condition only worsened. The sultan took Baktamur to ride beside him at the head of the caravan, and they were together when word arrived that Ahmed had died. Overcome with grief, Baktamur fainted and fell off his horse. The sultan tried to keep the caravan going, but Baktamur’s wife refused to move.

“I’m not going anywhere until my son is brought to me and I see him,” she declared. When they told her Ahmed was dead, she and all her ladies in waiting screamed with grief.

Now Baktamur was ill and bedridden. Each day, the sultan came to his tent and sat by his bedside. “Will he survive?” he whispered to the doctor. At one point, he took a little flask from his belt, leaned over his old friend and said, “Here, drink some date juice.” Baktamur took a few gulps. Within hours, Emir Baktamur was dead.

When Baktamur’s wife heard the news, she emerged from her tent, screaming and slapping her cheeks with grief, her hair uncovered and disheveled. When she saw the sultan, she marched up to him and shouted in his face: “Tyrant! How will you escape God? My son? My husband? My husband was your Mamluk! And my son? What had he ever done to you?” She roared it over and over for everyone in the caravan to hear.

This is the biggest murder mystery of the Mamluk era: Did al-Nasir Mohammed kill his favorite emir and the young man he had doted on so much?

It’s interesting to see how Mamluk historians treat the episode. Some say simply that Baktamur and his son fell ill during hajj and died with no mention of the accusations. Others state it as outright fact that al-Nasir Mohammed poisoned them.

Clearly, many believed it. The killing of the most powerful man in the regime sent shockwaves through everyone. When he heard of Baktamur’s death, another of the sultan’s favorites Emir Qousoun, broke down sobbing. “Why are you weeping? Wasn’t Baktamur your rival?” someone asked him.

“We’re talking about Baktamur here,” Qousoun replied. “Are any of us Baktamur’s equal? If this could happen to him, who is next?”

Months later, when the governor of Damascus was summoned to Cairo by the sultan, he was terrified the whole journey that he was heading to same fate as Baktamur.

Our detective in this mystery is the historian al-Yusufi, who lived at the time of all these events and wrote a multivolume account of al-Nasir Mohammed’s era.

He tried to dig up the truth, interviewing witnesses and collecting clues. One source tells him that when Baktamur’s son died, the sultan “seemed happy and showed no sign of grief.” Others tell him that throughout the pilgrimage, the sultan was on edge, never sleeping well and surrounding himself with guards _ and it was only after Baktamur’s death that he relaxed. It is al-Yusufi who reports how the sultan had lusted after the wife of Baktamur’s son, how he had promised Baktamur’s wife to Bashtak, how he gave Baktamur that final dose of date juice.

But even al-Yusufi can’t reach a sure conclusion. He writes of how, years after the sultan’s death, he spoke to Salaheddin al-Maghrebi, the doctor who treated both Baktamur and Ahmed, and pleaded with him to tell the truth. The doctor insists both died of illness, but he also admits to a cryptic comment the sultan made to him: “You’ve heard what they’re saying, Salaheddin? Just remember, if it’s true, you were an accomplice.”

First page of manuscript of Moussa el-Yusufi’s “Nuzhat al-Nazir fi Sirat al-Malik al-Nasir.” (نزهة الناظر في سيرة الملك الناصر لموسى بن محمد بن يحيى اليوسفي) Reproduced in the 1982 edition of the text by Dr. Ahmed al-Hatit

Mystery aside — for me, the real tragic hero of the whole story is Baktamur’s wife.

In the Mamluk histories, we rarely find a woman’s speech quoted. But Baktamur’s wife, we hear her voice over and over, or at least the historians’ version of her voice. I can’t think of any woman quoted so much in all the annals. (All the quotes I’ve included here are translations of her direct quotes in the histories.)

What we hear is the voice of a woman trying to stand her ground in a system where she is a pawn of the powerful men around her. Keep in mind, even if she technically was freed when she married Baktamur and even if she was the lady of the grandest manor in Cairo, ultimately she was a slave, a sultan’s concubine. She had no family to give her status or support her. She had only herself.

Her voice reaches us, angry, grieving and resistant, whether she’s warning about the sultan’s leers, refusing to move in the caravan or calling the sultan a murderer to his face in front of everyone.

Al-Yusufi calls her one of the most intelligent people he knew, and he reports one last speech by her.

Back in Cairo from the pilgrimage, the sultan summoned Baktamur’s wife to the palace. At this point, she has no protection; a sultan can do pretty much whatever he wants with a dead emir’s property and family.

With a sneer of contempt, the sultan told her: “You remember what you screamed at me, that I killed your husband and son? What would I gain by killing them? God killed them and caused their fate. I heard so many suspicious things about your husband, but I didn’t believe them. If I had wanted to kill or arrest him, who would stand in my way?”

She replied: “May God preserve the sultan. As for what I said, the sorrow that overcame my heart was so great I lost all reason and don’t know if what I said was right or wrong. Your highness says he could have killed my husband and destroyed my home if he had wished. That’s true, the sultan rules over us all.”

“Your highness says he heard suspicious things about my husband,” she continued. “But remember, the other emirs were jealous of him, of his closeness to the sultan, his standing with you, the wealth he attained all from your generosity. If Baktamur had really wished ill against you, there was no one closer to you or more able to have acted against you. The sultan slept next to him, put his head on his lap — put his head on my lap. I am the sultan’s concubine, I have known no man but my lord the sultan and his mamluk.”

Her words are defiance cloaked in deference. She flatters him but, even if she qualifies it, she doesn’t drop her accusation against him. While she reminds of him of their intimacy and acknowledges she’s at his mercy, she never begs for it. Instead, she shames him for believing rumors against her husband.

Al-Nasir Mohammed’s reply is a cold one: “Baktamur is gone, and I have others for you better than him.” 

He told her to hand over the keys to all her husband’s storehouses so he could confiscate his possessions, adding, “I remember every single thing I ever gave him. Piece by piece.”

He gave it all to his new favorite, Emir Bashtak — and not just Baktamur’s wealth. Umm Ahmed, Baktamur’s widow, was forced to marry Bashtak. Meanwhile, the sultan took Qutlumalak, the widow of Baktamur’s son, as his wife.

The oud player Khoubi was also given to Bashtak. But she never played for her new master. The day she heard of Baktamur’s death, the grief-stricken Khoubi smashed her oud to pieces.

The story has an even sadder coda. Umm Ahmed and Baktamur’s daughter had a series of ill-fated marriages to a string of al-Nasir Mohammed’s sons. 

Her first husband, Anouk, never even consummated the marriage because he was obsessed with his lover, a singer who he would meet secretly in a Bab el-Louq love shack. Anouk died at age 18, while his father was still sultan. 

She was then married off to Anouk’s brother Abu Bakr, who briefly became sultan after his father’s death but was quickly deposed and killed. Another brother who ascended to the throne, Ismail, married her but he soon divorced her and then died.

In 1345, another son of al-Nasir Mohammed, Shaaban, took the throne and demanded to marry her. At this point, Umm Ahmed was reduced to pleading with the 20-year-old sultan to leave her daughter be.

“She is in a bad state,” she told him. “She’s been overcome by grief from having so many husbands in such a short time.”

Shaaban ignored her and married the daughter anyway. She gave birth to their son, but the baby died within a few months. Shaaban was not bothered: His favorite concubine bore a son around the same time, and he threw a seven-day banquet in celebration.