
Khayr Bey was one of the Mamluks of the Sultan Qansuh al-Ghawri, sultan of Egypt .
He held high-ranking positions in Egypt, the heart of the Mamluk Sultanate.

Due to the Sultan’s suspicion of him, Qansuh al-Ghawri appointed him to govern regions in the Levant, believing that this would distance him from the political scene in Egypt. What he did not realize was that he was placing him exactly where he wanted to be.

Khayr Bey became involved in secret correspondence with the Ottoman prince at the time, Selim Khan, the governor of Adana near the Mamluk–Ottoman border.
During this period, he informed Selim Khan of everything concerning the situation in Cairo, the state treasury, and the discontent among the Mamluks. He also encouraged Selim Khan, after he became Sultan, to invade Egypt.

Selim Khan had already decided to march on Egypt and began sending deceptive signals to al-Ghawri about the rising tensions.
At that time, Khayr Bey was sending false reports to al-Ghawri so that he would not come to Aleppo with the Mamluk army.

In Cairo, the situation was unstable. When al-Ghawri sensed that something was suspicious regarding Khayr Bey, he ordered a call for jihad in Cairo and mobilized the Mamluks to march toward Aleppo. The Sultan arrived in Aleppo accompanied by the Abbasid caliph and the senior commanders of the Mamluk army.

Then came the moment of confrontation.

At Marj Dabiq, the Mamluk and Ottoman armies stood facing one another at close range.
At the front of the Mamluk army stood the finest cavalry and warriors of Egypt, with the Sultan and the Abbasid caliph nearby. On the other side, the Janissaries dominated the scene with their firearms. Al-Ghawri had refused to adopt firearms, considering them dishonorable, believing that true manhood lay in sword-to-sword combat.

The expected result followed: the Janissaries annihilated most of the Mamluk vanguard in the blink of an eye before they could even reach them.

At that moment, Khayr Bey—who was the commander of the left wing of the army—and his partner in treason, Janbirdi al-Ghazali, the commander of the right wing, withdrew from the battlefield, leaving the Sultan and the caliph alone with only a small detachment determined to defend them.

The caliph fled, while the Sultan and his soldiers remained. The two armies clashed fiercely, and the fighting was brutal and intense, until al-Ghawri fell from his horse and was trampled under the hooves of the horses….


Do you know the traitor whose good deeds were never accepted by Allah? Pt.1