Abu Sa'id Qansuh, also Qansuh Al-Ashrafi, Qansuh I or Al-Zahir Qansuh, was the twenty third

Mamluk Mamluk or Mamaluk (; (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural); translated as "one who is owned", meaning "slave") were non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-so ...

Sultan of

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

from the

Burji dynasty The Burji Mamluks () or Circassian Mamluks (), sometimes referred to as the Burji dynasty, were the rulers of the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt from 1382 until 1517. As with the preceding Bahri Mamluks, the members of the Burji Mamluk ruling class we ...

. He ruled the Mamluk Sultanate between 1498–1500.

Biography

Abu Sa'id Qansuh was originally a young Circassian victim of the

Black Sea slave trade The Black Sea slave trade trafficked people across the Black Sea from Eastern Europe and the Caucasus to slavery in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. The Black Sea slave trade was a center of the slave trade between Europe and the rest of t ...

purchased by Sultan Qaytbay. When Sultan Qaytbay discovered that he was the brother of his favorite slave concubine

Aṣalbāy {{Infobox royalty , consort = yes , name = Aṣalbāy , image = , caption = , succession = Mother of Mamluk Sultan , reign = 7 August 1496 – 31 October 1498 , predecessor = , successor = , succes ...

he was appointed

dawadar () or (), also and , was a senior court office in medieval Islamic states. Meaning 'the keeper of the inkpot', it was created during the Seljuk Empire. It denoted the head of the chancery, and derived its name from the royal inkpot, symbol of of ...

, the protector of the Sultan's heir and the future Sultan,

Muhammad Muhammad (8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious and political leader and the founder of Islam. Muhammad in Islam, According to Islam, he was a prophet who was divinely inspired to preach and confirm the tawhid, monotheistic teachings of A ...

. When Muhammad took over, the Mamluks grew discontent with the Sultan, rebelled, killed him, and elected Abu Sa'id Qansuh in his place. Facing another similar path as Sultan, the Mamluks became discontent with Qansuh. Qansuh tried to flee the palace disguised as a woman, but was caught and exiled to

Alexandria Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile ...

. Qansuh was supposedly strangled to death by the orders of the future Sultan Tuman bay I. However, he was overthrown and succeeded by Abu al-Nasir Janbalat. He married Miṣirbāy (d. 1522), the widow of his predecessor; she eventually married Khā’ir Bek, the first Ottoman Governor of Egypt.Albrecht Fuess, “How to marry right: Searching for a royal spouse at the Mamluk court of Cairo in the fifteenth century”, DYNTRAN Working Papers, n° 21, online edition, February 2017, available at: http://dyntran.hypotheses.org/1761

Sources

16th-century Mamluk sultans Burji sultans 1473 births {{Egypt-bio-stub