Tankiz
Mameluk emir, governor of Syria
Sayf ad-Din Tankiz ibn Abdullah al-Husami an-Nasiri, better known simply as Tankiz (Arabic: تنكيز; died May 1340), was the Damascus-based Turkic na'ib al-saltana (viceroy) of Syria from 1312 to 1340 during the reign of the Bahri Mamluk sultan an-Nasir Muhammad.
Early life and career
According to a Mamluk-era biographer of Tankiz, Khalil ibn Aybak as-Safadi, Tankiz was brought to Cairo as a young child by a man named al-Khwajah Alaa al-Din al-Siwasi. The name tankiz was the Arabic version of the Turkic word teñiz, meaning "sea". Tankiz was raised in Cairo and was later bought by Sultan Husam al-Din al-Lajin in 1296, becoming a mamluk (slave soldier) in his service until January 1299, when Lajin was killed. Following Lajin's death, Tankiz became a bodyguard (khassakiya) of Sultan an-Nasir Muhammad in 1299. In December 1299, Tankiz participated in the Battle of Wadi al-Khazandar between the Mamluks and the Mongol Ilkhanate and the latter's allies. Sometime during an-Nasir Muhammad's second reign (January 1299–March 1309), Tankiz was made an amir ashara (emir of ten mamluks). During these years, Tankiz studied the hadiths of Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim and was tutored by several Mamluk ulama (Muslim scholars).
Because of his initial tenure with Lajin, Tankiz was a relative outsider when he became part of an-Nasir Muhammad's inner circle of mamluks. Nonetheless, Tankiz became one of the sultan's closest friends.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tankiz” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.