ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the political history of the eastern Mediterranean lands has been their progressive unification and ultimate consolidation under the administration of a single Muslim government. The movement towards the political unification of this territory was powerfully stimulated by the plantation of the Christian Frankish states on its periphery: the call to the Holy War sanctified the policies of the Muslim rulers and was a rallying-cry to their subjects. The territorial and political unification of the Ayyubid inheritance was achieved by their Turkish soldiery, the Mamluks, who in the middle years of the seventh/thirteenth century became the rulers of the lands of their former masters. The Mongol invasions were repulsed, the remnants of the Frankish states conquered, and under 'the kings of the Turks' Egypt and Syria were united. Syria, detached from Egypt, was more or less effectively absorbed into the Ottoman administrative system.
