Louis IX captured near Mansura, 648

The year 648 AH began with the Franks at Mansura while the Muslims stood against them with the advantage. Their supplies had been cut off and sickness had struck their horses. Their king Louis decided to march by night to Damietta, but the Muslims noticed ¹.

The Franks had built a bridge over the Nile but left out a section of it. People crossed over that gap and surrounded them. Five hundred of Louis's champion horsemen gathered and charged the Muslims in one attack. The Muslims opened a path for them, and when they were in the middle the Muslims closed around them, and none of them escaped ².

Louis captured the family of Sayf al-Din al-Qaymari, who had founded the hospital in the Salihiyya quarter of Damascus. Ibn Hamawiyya said the prisoners numbered more than twenty thousand, among them kings and senior men, the dead numbered seven thousand, and about two hundred Muslims were martyred ².

Al-Malik al-Muʿazzam Turanshah bestowed fifty robes of honour on the senior Franks. Louis refused to wear them and said that his kingdom was equal to the kingdom of the ruler of Egypt, so how could he wear his robe? He was held in Mansura on the first day of Muharram. Negotiations then began over the return of Damietta and a large sum of money ².