Jakmak’s relations with the foreign chiefs were most friendly.  He constantly exchanged letters and gifts with both Sultan Murad and Shah Roch.  The sons of Kara Yelek and the princes of the houses of Ramadhan and Dudgadir submitted to him; also Jihangir, Kara Yelek’s grandson and Governor of Amid, tried to secure his friendship, as did the latter’s deadly enemy, Jihan Shah, the son of Kara Yusuf.

[Illustration:  073.jpg mosque of Kait bey, Cairo]

Jakmak’s rule was mild compared with that of Bursbai, and we hear less of extraordinary taxes, extortions, executions, and violence of the Mamluks.  Although he was beloved by the people and priests on account of his piety, he could not secure the succession of his son Osman, in favour of whom he abdicated fourteen days before his death (February, 1453).  Osman remained only a month and a half on the throne; he made himself odious to the emirs who did not belong to his Mamluks.  The Mamluks of his predecessors conspired against him, and at their head stood his own Atabeg, the Emir Inal, a former Mamluk of Berkuk.  Osman was warned, but he only mocked those who recommended him to watchfulness, since he believed his position to be unassailable.  He had forgotten that his father was a usurper, who, although himself a perjurer, hoped to bind others by means of oaths.  His eyes were not opened until he had lost all means of defence.  He managed to hold out for seven days, after which the citadel was captured by the rebels, and he was forced to abdicate on the 19th of March.  Inal became, even more than his predecessors had been, a slave to those Mamluks to whom he owed his kingdom.  They committed the greatest atrocities and threatened the sultan himself when he tried to hold them in check.  They plundered corpses on their way to the grave, and attacked the mosques during the hours of service in order to rob the pilgrims.

They were so hated and feared that, when many of them were carried off by the plague, their deaths were recorded by a contemporary historian as a benefit to all classes of society.

In the hour of his death (26th February, 1461), Inal appointed his son Ahmed as his successor, but the latter was no more able to maintain himself on the throne than his predecessors had been, in spite of his numerous good qualities.  He was forced to submit in the strife with his emirs, and on the 28th of June, 1461, after a reign of four months and three days, he was dethroned, and the Emir Khosh Kadem, a former slave of the Sultan Sheikh, of Greek descent, was proclaimed in his stead.  Khosh Kadem reigned for seven years with equity and benignity, and under one of his immediate successors, El-Ashraf Kait Bey, a struggle was begun with the Ottoman Turks.  On the death of Muhammed II., dissensions had arisen between Bayazid II. and Jem.  Jem, being defeated by Bayazid, retired to Egypt, which led to the invasion and conquest of Syria, hitherto held by the Sultan