ABSTRACT
The situation of al-Nasir Muhammad on his second restoration in 709/1310 offered him particular opportunities which he was not slow to exploit. For the first time since the inception of the Mamluk sultanate sixty years before, there was no danger from an external enemy. The Frankish states had ceased to exist, and the unsuccessful Mongol invasion of Syria in the winter of 712/1312-13 demonstrated that the ilkhan, even in alliance with powerful Mamluk malcontents, was no more to be feared. The change in the preoccupations of the Mamluk sultan is shown by the fact that al-Nasir Muhammad, unlike his great predecessors al-Zahir Baybars and Kalavun, spent very little time in Syria. Instead of mounting a campaign there almost every year, al-Nasir Muhammad delegated the effective control of the region to Tengiz al-Husami. The last of the Ayyubid ruling princes had been al-Muzaffar Mahmud, the lord of Hamah, who died in 698/1299.
