Al-Mustansir

Who was Al-Mustansir?

Al-Mustansir was a member of the Abbasid house who, following the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, was installed as Caliph in Cairo, Egypt by the Mamluk Sultans in 1261. He was sent with an army east to recover Baghdad, but was killed in a Mongol ambush in 1262, and was succeeded by his kinsman Al-Hakim I. The line of Cairo caliphs he founded lasted until the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517, but they were little more than religious figureheads for the Mamluks.