Name: How a concubine became the ruler of Egypt - Abdallah Ewis
Uploaded: 2021-09-29T07:45:55.000Z
Duration: 4 min 32 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

The French King Louis IX  is sailing the Nile,

threatening to overthrow the Egyptian sultan and capture Egypt.

Egypt's army commanders ask the sultan's wife, Shajar Al-Durr,

to report this news to the sultan, who has been injured in battle.

and Shajar Al-Durr is secretly ruling in his stead.

Born around 1220 CE, Shajar Al-Durr, whose name means “tree of pearls,”

This was a common fate for Christian children from Turkic countries like her.

Enslaved boys, or mamaleek, were trained to be elite military personnel

while enslaved girls were forced  to become concubines.

As a teenager, Shajar Al-Durr  became a concubine

to the son of the Egyptian sultan,  As-Salih Ayyub.

They had a son named Khalil  who died in infancy,

and As-Salih freed her  so he could court her formally.

As-Salih became sultan,  and he and Shajar Al-Durr married.

When As-Salih died in the middle of the conflict with the crusaders,

Shajar Al-Durr knew King Louis IX had already succeeded

in conquering important  Egyptian port cities.

Fearing that her husband's death would threaten the army's morale,

To conceal his death,  she had food brought to his tent,

and forged his signature on decrees to govern the sultanate

When the crusaders attacked  the Egyptian city of Al-Mansurah,

Egyptian soldiers ambushed the crusaders and took the French king hostage.

Meanwhile, the truth about  the sultan's death began to leak.

Shajar Al-Durr invited her late husband's  son with another woman

At first, both she and her mamaleek advisers supported

But then he began threatening to exile her and kill the mamaleek,

The mamaleek had served Shajar Al-Durr's husband before her,

They thought she would make a better ruler than the unpredictable prince,

and conspired with her to assassinate him.

In May of 1250, with the support of the mamaleek military,

Shajar Al-Durr was inaugurated as Sultana of Egypt.

Days later, she negotiated the ransom  of the French king and his army

and the surrender  of the occupied port city.

In spite of her success leading Egypt through this military crisis,

she had to work to cement her credibility in the eyes of the public.

her rise to power wasn't linked to royal ancestry,

while as a woman,  societal restrictions  prevented her

from participating in many of the events  a sultan would typically attend.

To increase her visibility and solidify  her claim to the throne,

she constructed a public mausoleum for her husband,

issued the currency under her name,  and signed decrees as Walidat Khalil,

Unfortunately, the sultanate's  premier religious authority,

the caliph of Baghdad, still objected to having a woman rule.

that her new husband must divorce his first wife.

Shajar Al-Durr intended to maintain  her status as supreme ruler.

Her new husband threatened to undermine her rule

by arranging a political marriage between  himself and a princess from Mosul.

So Shajar Al-Durr ordered  his assassination.

who successfully plotted  to murder the Sultana.

Shajar Al-Durr's killers threw her body  from the Cairo citadel.

Shajar Al-Durr left no personal writings, but her legacy was lasting.

Before her death, she built her own mausoleum

with a madrasa, garden,  public shower, and palace,

decorated with her signature  tree of pearls