Shajar al-Durr hid the death of Sultan al-Salih Ayyub in 1249, became sultan after his heir was killed, and was beaten to death in 1257

Sultan al-Salih Ayyub died at al-Mansura on 22 November 1249 while the crusader army of Louis IX of France was in the Nile Delta. His widow Shajar al-Durr, the emir Fakhr al-Din and the chief eunuch kept the death secret. They sent meals to his quarters and issued orders under his signature. His son and heir Turanshah was summoned from Hasankeyf and took power in February 1250. After the crusaders were defeated and Louis IX captured, Mamluk officers of his father killed Turanshah. On 2 May 1250 the Mamluks proclaimed Shajar al-Durr sultan. Her name was read in the Friday sermon and struck on gold dinars, which call her mother of al-Malik al-Mansur Khalil, her son by Ayyub who died as an infant. She ransomed Louis IX. The Abbasid caliph in Baghdad refused to recognise her and wrote that if Egypt had no men he would send one. After 80 days she handed the title to the emir Aybak and married him. In 1257 Aybak was murdered in his bath, and she was blamed. On 28 April 1257 servants of Aybak's first wife beat her to death with bath clogs, and her body was left outside the Citadel. She had built a domed tomb on al-Khalifa Street in Cairo. Its conservation, funded by the American Research Center in Egypt, began in November 2013. ARCE states it is unclear whether she is buried there.