Aziz--on a visit to the sultan, who wras then in Tur. The
sultan rode out to meet him as far as Beisan. Malik Mughith wished to
dismount when he perceived the sultan, but he would not permit this, and
rode beside Mughith till he reached his own tent. Here he was separated
from his followers, thrown into chains, and brought into the citadel
of Cairo (a.h. 660). In order to palliate this crime, the sultan made
public the correspondence of the Prince of Kerak with the Mongols, which
it was thought would stamp the former as a traitor to Islam. The judges
whom he brought with him, and amongst whom we find the celebrated
historian Ibn Khallikan, who was then chief judge of Damascus, declared
him guilty, but we only have historical proof of the sending of his son
into Hulagu's camp to beg that his province might be spared, at a time
when all the princes of Syria, seized with panic, threw themselves at
the feet of the Mongolian general. Be that as it may, he none the less
committed a piece of treachery, since he had sworn not to call him to
account for his former crimes. Beybars hoped, now that he had disposed
of Malik Mughith, that the fortress Kerak would immediately surrender to
his emissary, Emir Bedr ed-Din Beisari, but the governor of the fortress
feared to trust the promises of a perjurer and offered resistance.
Beybars therefore set out for Syria with all the necessary siege
apparatus, constructed by the best engineers of Egypt and Syria. The
garrison saw the impossibility of a long resistance and capitulated.

The son of Malik Mughith, El-Malik el-Aziz, a boy of twelve, was
honoured as prince and taken to Egypt, as also Mughith's family. His
emirs and officials were treated with consideration, but the prince was
later thrown into prison. Nothing certain is known with regard to the
death of Mughith. According to some reports, because he offended the
wife of Beybars, when as a wandering Mamluk he once was staying with
him, he was delivered over to the sultan's wives and was put to death by
them; another account says that he died of hunger in prison.

After the conquest of Shekif, the sultan made an attack on the province
of Tripoli because Prince Bok-mond, Governor of Antioch and Tripoli,
was his bitterest enemy and the truest ally of the Mongolians, and had,
moreover, at the time of Hulagu's attack on Syria, made himself master
of several places which till then had belonged to the Mussulmans. The
whole land was wasted,