The sultan had his viceroy of Syria arrested, killed and stripped of his fortune; three years later the viceroy's grandson was sultan and his body came home to Damascus

Tankiz was a mamluk, a slave soldier, who served Sultan an-Nasir Muhammad from 1299. In 1312 the sultan made him viceroy of Syria, based in Damascus. He held the post for 28 years, rebuilt the city's water canals and widened its roads. The two families intermarried: Tankiz's daughter Qutlughmalik married the sultan and in 1338 bore him a son, as-Salih Salih^†. In 1339 the men quarrelled over a tax Tankiz had levied on the Christians of Damascus, which he refused to send to Cairo, and over a hunting trip the sultan forbade^†. In 1340 an-Nasir Muhammad sent Emir Bashtak with 350 mamluks to arrest him^†. Tankiz was sent to prison in Alexandria, where he was executed. The confiscated estate listed 36,000 gold dinars, 1.5 million silver dirhams, clothing valued at 640,000 dinars, palaces, inns, baths and markets in Damascus valued at 2.6 million dirhams, property in Homs and Beirut, and 4,200 animals^†. It was shared among the senior emirs^†. An-Nasir Muhammad died in 1341. In 1342 Tankiz's grandson as-Salih Salih became sultan^†. In 1343 Tankiz's body was moved from Alexandria to the tomb chamber he had built in Damascus. His madrasa in Jerusalem, completed in 1328-29, was a law court into the 1960s and has been used by Israeli troops since 1967.