Ibn Khan (original) (raw)

Hārūn ibn Malik al-Turk, better known as Ibn Khān (died 1070), was the leader of the first recorded group of free Turkmen troops to enter Syria. Previous groups of Turks that had been present in Syria were slave soldiers and pages and their descendants. Ibn Khan had been invited to Syria to bolster the Mirdasid emir of Aleppo, Atiyya ibn Salih, against his nephew and rival claimant to the emirate, Mahmud ibn Nasr, in 1064.