Heard on Dan Carlin's Hardcore history that the Middle Eastern empires sent ambassadors to Europe asking for help amid the Crusades.

The answer is somewhere between "not really" and "that's not how I would put it."

Over the 12th and 13th centuries, Muslim armies ate away at the territorial gains of the early crusaders. The last major holdout was the kingdom then centered around Acre (formerly centered on Jerusalem, but, well). Acre ultimately fell in 1291, with only a few remaining cities for Muslim armies to sweep up in the aftermath. Important for our purposes here, however, is that 1291 is well into the era of the Mongol threat to the "west."

The Mongol capture of Damascus shocked and horrified the Muslim governors in the Middle East, not least of all the Mamluks in Egypt. The sultan of Egypt reached out--not to Christian Europe, but to the local Christians, in Acre.

There was ample precedent for such a move. In both the Near East and in Iberia, individual Christian and Muslim rulers made and broke alliances, jockeying for gain at the expense of their co-religionists as well as their religious opponents.

In this case, however, the sultan got only half of what he sought. The Mamluk forces gained permission to march through Acre's territory on the way to confront the advancing Mongol army, and apparently some of the army leaders were even housed as honored guests in the city of Acre itself during the army's encampment nearby. But Acre refused to extend formal military aid.

The Battle of 'Ain Jalut was an unqualified victory for the Mamluk army against the Mongols--resulting in the Muslim reclamation of the Near East and the further isolation of Acre.