Battle of ʿAyn Jālūt

Two years after Baghdad, with Damascus and Aleppo fallen and Mongol envoys in Cairo demanding surrender, the Mamluk sultan Quṭuz executed the envoys and marched. At the spring of ʿAyn Jālūt in Galilee, on Friday 25 Ramaḍān 658, a feigned retreat drew Kitbuqa's army into the hills, where the Mamluk centre — Quṭuz crying "wā Islāmāh" — closed and destroyed it.

It was the first Mongol field defeat that stuck: the empire never took Syria, and the aura of inevitability died at the spring. Quṭuz did not outlive his victory by two months; Baybars, who had led the vanguard, took the sultanate and built the Mamluk order on the prestige of the day.

Friday 25 Ramaḍān is fixed across the Mamluk chroniclers.