Mostansir was, as is said, a man of great strength and good courage, with a loftiness of bearing very different indeed from Mostassim, the last Kalif of the Kalifat, who was trampled to death under horsehoofs at Hulagu’s camp ground. But whatever his merits this adventure reached the acme of folly. It is difficult to explain how the Sultan of Egypt with all his shrewd management could have spent so much treasure on a journey foredoomed beyond doubt to disaster, unless he had a sinister motive in the enterprise, and wished it to end in the destruction of that Kalif whom he had perhaps inaugurated through diplomacy and for his own aggrandizement. One historian declares that Beibars was sending ten thousand warriors to set up the Kalif in Bagdad, and giving him as aids the Prince of Mosul and his brothers, when one of these warned the Sultan that the Kalif if settled in Bagdad might take Egypt from him. We may well suppose that Beibars wished simply to establish his own power with firmness, and give himself freedom in Islam, and that he wished to be rid of the new Kalif so as to put in his place a man who could not be strong, and who would be obedient. Hakim, who met the late Kalif at Anbar, claimed to be fourth in descent from Mostershed who was slain in 1135 by the Assassins. This Hakim now fled to Egypt, where Beibars received him with distinction and gave him a residence in the palace called Munasir al Kebesh. His duties were simply to legitimize with the holiness of Islam the Sultan of Egypt, and ward off all Fatimid pretensions. His power beyond that was as nothing. He was styled “Shadow of God upon Earth, Ruler by command of God.” He lived this life for forty years and was first in that line of Egyptian Kalifs who were puppets of the Mameluke sovereigns. An end was put to that line only when Egypt was conquered by Selim I. and the Turkish Sultans took to themselves the Kalifat, and became the successors of Mohammed. Salih, the eldest son of Bedr ud din of Mosul, met a worse fate by far than the Kalif. Soon after the accession of Beibars Salih’s brother Saïd, who had been driven from Aleppo by the Mamelukes, went to Egypt, whence he wrote to his brother advising a visit to Beibars, who when he had conquered the Mongols could make Salih ruler not of some petty place in the West but of great Eastern regions. This letter was kept very carefully by Salih, who took it to bed with him. Ibn Yunus, an official who had been a great personage in Bedr ud din’s day, stole it from under the coverlet while Salih was sleeping. He set out immediately for Baashika his birthplace in the province of Nineveh. On missing the letter Salih sent two slaves to Baashika. Ibn Yunus, fearing dire punishment if caught, turned toward Erbil and at Bakteli, on the way, he advised one Abad Ullah to flee with all his people without waiting, for Salih would destroy every Christian and escape straightway to Egypt. He fled then to Erbil.