After their castles in Rudbar and Kuhistan had been razed to the ground, and numbers of them massacred and scattered, they still maintained their stand, for fourteen years, in the mountains of Syria, against the armies of the Mongols, the Franks, and the Egyptian sultan, Bibars, one of the greatest princes of the Circassian Mamelukes of Egypt. This prince, who zealously sought for supreme power, was not inclined to share it any longer with the remains of the Assassin order, which had been chased from the mountains of Persia. During his reign, Frank and Arab vessels put into the Egyptian ports,[277] with embassies; which the Christian and Arabic princes, such as the German emperor, Alphonso of Arragon, the commander of Yemen, and others, sent with rich presents to the Syrian Ismailites. Bibars, in order to show that he was far above all fear of the order, levied on all these presents the usual customs; and sent to the superior in Syria, a letter, full of threats and reproaches. Terrified and humbled by their misfortunes in Persia, they answered submissively, and with the request that the sultan would not forget them in his peace with the Franks, but include them in his treaty, in token of his protection of them as his slaves; and, in fact, Bibars, who, in this year, concluded a peace with the knights-hospitallers, made the abolition of the tribute paid by the Ismailites, one of the conditions of the treaty. The following year, he received an embassy of the Ismailites, who sent him a sum of money, with the words: “That the money which they had hitherto paid to the Franks, should, in future, flow into the treasury of the sultan; and serve for the pay of the defenders of the true faith”.[278]