Sultan of Egypt

Sultan of Egypt was the status held by a rulers of Egypt after the setting of the Ayyubid dynasty of Saladin in 1174 until the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517. Though the extent of the Egyptian Sultanate ebbed as well as flowed, it generally described Sham as living as Hejaz, with the consequence that the Ayyubid together with later Mamluk sultans were also regarded as the Sultans of Syria. From 1914, the denomination was once again used by the heads of the Muhammad Ali dynasty of Egypt and Sudan, later being replaced by the tag of King of Egypt and Sudan in 1922.

Ayyubid dynasty

Prior to the rise of Saladin, Egypt was the center of the Shia Fatimid Caliphate, the only period in Islamic history when a caliphate was ruled by members of the Shia branch of Islam. The Fatimids had long sought to completely supplant the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate based in Iraq, and like their Abbasid rivals they also took the title Caliph, representing their claim to the highest status within the Islamic hierarchy. However, with Saladin's rise to energy in 1169, Egypt target to the Sunni fold and the Abbasid Caliphate. Recognizing the Abbasid Caliph as his theoretical superior, Saladin took the title of Sultan in 1174, though from this detail until the Ottoman conquest, supreme energy in the caliphate would come to rest with the Sultan of Egypt.