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Arab-Byzantine
The Zangids (Atabegs) of Aleppo
Nur al din Mahmud ibn Zangi – 541-569 A.H. / 1146-1173 A.D.
Bronze Fals 22mm (3.09 grams)
Reference: Mitchiner (World of Islam), 1132
Two Byzantine figures standing; traces of Greek inscription between them; Arabic
around.
Jesus Christ standing facing; traces of Greek beside; Arabic around.
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Authenticity.
he Zengid or Zangid dynasty was a
Muslim
dynasty
of
Oghuz Turk
origin, which ruled parts of the
Levant
and
Upper Mesopotamia
on behalf of the
Seljuk Empire
.
History
The dynasty was founded by
Imad ad-Din Zengi
, who became the Seljuk
Atabeg
(governor) of
Mosul
in 1127. He quickly became the chief
Turkish potentate in Northern Syria and Iraq, taking
Aleppo
from the squabbling
Artuqids
in 1128 and
capturing the County of Edessa
from the
Crusaders in 1144. This latter feat made Zengi a hero in the Muslim world, but
he was assassinated by a slave two years later, in 1146.
On Zengi’s death, his territories were divided, with Mosul and his lands in
Iraq going to his eldest son
Saif ad-Din Ghazi I
, and Aleppo and Edessa
falling to his second son,
Nur ad-Din, atabeg of Aleppo
. Nur ad-Din proved
to be as competent as his father. In 1149 he defeated
Raymond of Poitiers
,
Prince of Antioch
, at the
battle of Inab
, and the next year conquered the
remnants of the
County of Edessa
west of the
Euphrates
. In 1154 he capped off these
successes by his capture of
Damascus
from the
Burid dynasty
that ruled it.
Now ruling from Damascus, Nur ad-Din’s success continued. Another Prince of
Antioch,
Raynald of Châtillon
was captured, and the
territories of the
Principality of Antioch
were greatly reduced.
In the 1160s, Nur ad-Din’s attention was mostly held by a competition with the
King of Jerusalem
,
Amalric of Jerusalem
, for control of the
Fatimid Caliphate
. Ultimately, Nur ed-Din’s
Kurdish
general
Shirkuh
was successful in conquering Fatimid
Egypt in 1169, but Shirkuh’s nephew and successor as Governor of Egypt,
Saladin
, eventually rejected Nur ad-Din’s
control.
Nur ad-Din was preparing to invade Egypt to bring Saladin under control when
he unexpectedly died in 1174. His son and successor
As-Salih Ismail al-Malik
was only a child, and
was forced to flee to Aleppo, which he ruled until 1181, when he was murdered
and replaced by his relation, the Atabeg of Mosul. Saladin conquered Aleppo two
years later, ending Zengid rule in Syria.
Zengid princes continued to rule in Northern Iraq well into the 13th century,
ruling Mosul until 1234; their rule did not come finally to an end until 1250.
Nūr ad-Dīn Abū al-Qāsim Maḥmūd ibn ʿImād ad-Dīn Zengī (February 1118 –
15 May 1174), often shortened to his
laqab
Nur ad-Din (Arabic:
نور الدين, “Light of the
Faith”), was a member of the
Turkish
Zengid dynasty
which ruled the
Syrian province
of the
Seljuk Empire
. He reigned from 1146 to 1174.
The war against
the Crusaders
Nur ad-Din was the second son of
Imad ad-Din Zengi
, the Turkic
atabeg
of
Aleppo
and
Mosul
, who was a devoted enemy of the
crusader
presence in Syria. After the
assassination of his father in 1146, Nur ad-Din and his older brother
Saif ad-Din Ghazi I
divided the kingdom between
themselves, with Nur ad-Din governing
Aleppo
and Saif ad-Din Ghazi establishing
himself in Mosul
. The border between the two new kingdoms
was formed by the
Nahr al-Khabur River
. Almost as soon as he
began his rule, Nur ad-Din attacked the
Principality of Antioch
, seizing several
castles in the north of Syria, while at the same time he defeated an attempt by
Joscelin II
to recover the
County of Edessa
, which had been conquered by
Zengi in 1144. (See
Siege of Edessa
.) In 1146, Nur ad-Din massacred
the entire Christian population of the city and destroyed its fortifications, in
punishment for assisting Joscelin in this attempt. Although according to
Thomas Asbridge
, the women and children of
Edessa were enslaved. He secured his hold on Antioch after crushing
Raymond of Poitiers
at the
Battle of Inab
in 1149, even presenting to the
caliph, Raymond’s severed head and arms.
Nur ad-Din sought to make alliances with his Muslim neighbours in northern
Iraq and Syria in order to strengthen the Muslim front against their
crusader enemies. In 1147 he signed a bilateral treaty with
Mu’in ad-Din Unur
, governor of
Damascus
; as part of this agreement, he also
married Mu’in ad-Din’s daughter
Ismat ad-Din Khatun
. Together Mu’in ad-Din and
Nur ad-Din besieged the cities of
Bosra
(see
Battle of Bosra
) and Salkhad, which had been
captured by a rebellious vassal of Mu’in ad-Din named Altuntash, but Mu’in
ad-Din was always suspicious of Nur ad-Din’s intentions and did not want to
offend his former crusader allies in
Jerusalem
, who had helped defend Damascus
against Zengi. To reassure Mu’in ad-Din, Nur ad-Din curtailed his stay in
Damascus and turned instead towards the Principality of Antioch, where he was
able to seize
Artah
,
Kafar Latha
, Basarfut, and Balat.
In 1148, the
Second Crusade
arrived in Syria, led by
Louis VII of France
and
Conrad III of Germany
. Nur ad-Din’s victories
and the crusaders’ losses in Asia Minor however had made the recovery of Edessa
– their original goal – practically impossible. Given that Aleppo was too far
off from Jerusalem for an attack and Damascus, recently allied with the
Kingdom of Jerusalem
against Zengi, had entered
into an alliance with Nur ad-Din, the crusaders decided to attack Damascus, the
conquest of which would preclude a combination of Jerusalem’s enemies. Mu’in
ad-Din reluctantly called for help from Nur ad-Din, but the
crusader siege
collapsed after only four days.
Nur ad-Din took advantage of the failure of the crusade to prepare another
attack against Antioch. In 1149, he launched an offensive against the
territories dominated by the castle of Harim, situated on the eastern bank of
the
Orontes
, after which he besieged the castle of
Inab. The Prince of Antioch,
Raymond of Poitiers
, quickly came to the aid of
the besieged citadel. The Muslim army destroyed the crusader army at the
Battle of Inab
, during which Raymond was
killed. Raymond’s head was sent to Nur ad-Din, who sent it along to the
caliph
in
Baghdad
. Nur ad-Din marched all the way to the
coast and expressed his dominance of Syria by symbolically bathing in the
Mediterranean. He did not, however, attack Antioch itself; he was content with
capturing all Antiochene territory east of the Orontes and leaving a rump state
around the city, which in any case soon fell under the suzerainty of the
Byzantine Empire
. In 1150, he defeated Joscelin
II for a final time, after allying with the Seljuk
Sultan of Rüm
,
Mas’ud
(whose daughter he also married).
Joscelin was blinded and died in his prison in Aleppo in 1159. In the
Battle of Aintab
, Nur ad-Din tried but failed
to prevent King
Baldwin III of Jerusalem
‘s evacuation of the
Latin Christian residents of
Turbessel
. In 1152 Nur ad-Din briefly captured
Tortosa
after the assassination of
Raymond II of Tripoli
.
Unification of
the Sultanate
It was Nur ad-Din’s dream to unite the various Muslim forces between the
Euphrates
and the
Nile to make a common front against the crusaders. In 1149 Saif
ad-Din Ghazi died, and a younger brother,
Qutb ad-Din Mawdud
, succeeded him. Qutb ad-Din
recognized Nur ad-Din as overlord of Mosul, so that the major cities of Mosul
and Aleppo were united under one man. Damascus was all that remained as an
obstacle to the unification of Syria.
After the failure of the Second Crusade, Mu’in ad-Din had renewed his treaty
with the crusaders, and after his death in 1149 his successor
Mujir ad-Din
followed the same policy. In 1150
and 1151 Nur ad-Din besieged the city, but retreated each time with no success,
aside from empty recognition of his suzerainty. When
Ascalon was captured
by the crusaders in 1153,
Mujir ad-Din forbade Nur ad-Din from travelling across his territory. Mujir
ad-Din, however, was a weaker ruler than his predecessor, and he also agreed to
pay an annual tribute to the crusaders in exchange for their protection. The
growing weakness of Damascus under Mujir ad-Din allowed Nur ad-Din to overthrow
him in 1154, with help from the population of the city. Damascus was annexed to
Zengid territory, and all of Syria was unified under the authority of Nur
ad-Din, from
Edessa
in the north to the
Hauran
in the south. He was cautious not to
attack Jerusalem right away, and even continued to send the yearly tribute
established by Mujir ad-Din; meanwhile he briefly became involved in affairs to
the north of Mosul, where a succession dispute in the Sultanate of Rum
threatened Edessa and other cities.
In 1157 Nur ad-Din besieged the
Knights Hospitaller
in the crusader fortress of
Banias
, routed a relief army from Jerusalem led
by King
Baldwin III
, and captured
Grand Master
Bertrand de Blanquefort
. However, he fell ill
that year and the crusaders were given a brief respite from his attacks. In 1159
the
Byzantine emperor
Manuel I Comnenus
arrived to assert his
authority in Antioch, and the crusaders hoped he would send an expedition
against Aleppo. However, Nur ad-Din sent ambassadors and negotiated an alliance
with the emperor against the Seljuks, much to the crusaders’ dismay. Nur ad-Din,
along with the
Danishmends
of eastern
Anatolia
, attacked the Seljuk sultan
Kilij Arslan II
from the east the next year,
while Manuel attacked from the west. Later in 1160, Nur ad-Din captured the
Prince of Antioch,
Raynald of Châtillon
after a raid in the
Anti-Taurus mountains; Raynald remained in captivity for the next sixteen years.
By 1162, with Antioch under nominal Byzantine control and the crusader states
further south powerless to make any further attacks on Syria, Nur ad-Din made a
pilgrimage to Mecca
. Soon after he returned, he learned of
the death of King
Baldwin III of Jerusalem
, and out of respect
for such a formidable opponent he refrained from attacking the crusader kingdom:
William of Tyre
reports that Nur ad-Din said
“We should sympathize with their grief and in pity spare them, because they have
lost a prince such as the rest of the world does not possess today.”
The problem of Egypt
Main article:
Crusader invasion of Egypt
As there was now nothing the crusaders could do in Syria, they were forced to
look to the south if they wanted to expand their territory. The capture of
Ascalon had already succeeded in cutting off Egypt from Syria, and Egypt had
been politically weakened by a series of very young
Fatimid
caliphs
. By 1163, the caliph was the young
al-Adid
, but the country was ruled by the
vizier Shawar
. That year, Shawar was overthrown by
Dirgham; soon afterwards, the
King of Jerusalem
,
Amalric I
, led an offensive against Egypt, on
the pretext that the Fatimids were not paying the tribute they had promised to
pay during the reign of Baldwin III. This campaign failed and he was forced to
return to Jerusalem
, but it provoked Nur ad-Din to lead a
campaign of his own against the crusaders in Syria in order to turn their
attention away from Egypt. His attack on Tripoli was unsuccessful, but he was
soon visited by the exiled Shawar, who begged him to send an army and restore
him to the vizierate. Nur ad-Din did not want to spare his own army for a
defense of Egypt, but his
Kurdish
general
Shirkuh
convinced him to invade in 1164. In
response, Dirgham allied with Amalric, but the king could not mobilize in time
to save him. Dirgham was killed during Shirkuh’s invasion and Shawar was
restored as vizier.
Shawar immediately expelled Shirkuh and allied with Amalric, who arrived to
besiege Shirkuh at
Bilbeis
. Shirkuh agreed to abandon Egypt when
Amalric was forced to return home, after Nur ad-Din attacked Antioch and
besieged the castle of Harenc
. There, Nur
ad-Din routed the combined armies of Antioch and Tripoli, but refused to attack
Antioch itself, fearing reprisals from the Byzantines. Instead he besieged and
captured Banias, and for the next two years continually raided the frontiers of
the crusader states. In 1166 Shirkuh was sent again to Egypt. Amalric followed
him at the beginning of 1167, and a formal treaty was established between
Amalric and Shawar, with the nominal support of the caliph. The crusaders
occupied Alexandria
and
Cairo
and made Egypt a tributary state, but
Amalric could not hold the country while Nur ad-Din still held Syria, and he was
forced to return to Jerusalem.
In 1168 Amalric sought an alliance with Emperor Manuel and invaded Egypt once
more. Shawar’s son Khalil had had enough, and with support from Caliph al-Adil
requested help from Nur ad-Din and Shirkuh. At the beginning of 1169 Shirkuh
arrived and the crusaders once more were forced to retreat. This time Nur ad-Din
gained full control of Egypt. Shawar was executed and Shirkuh was named vizier
of the newly conquered territory, later succeeded by his nephew
Saladin
. One last invasion of Egypt was
launched by Amalric and Manuel, but it was disorganized and came to nothing.
Domes of Nur al-Din Mahmud’s madrasa complex in Damascus (his burial
place)
Death and succession
During this time Nur ad-Din was busy in the north, fighting the
Ortoqids
, and in 1170 he had to settle a
dispute between his nephews when his brother Qutb ad-Din died. After conquering
Egypt, Nur ad-Din believed that he had accomplished his goal of uniting the
Muslim states, but
Saladin
did not wish to be subject to his
authority. He did not participate in the invasions led by Nur ad-Din against
Jerusalem in 1171 and 1173, hoping that the crusader kingdom would act as a
buffer state between Egypt and Syria. Nur ad-Din realized that he had created a
dangerous opponent in Saladin, and the two rulers assembled their armies for
what seemed to be the inevitable war.
However, when Nur ad-Din was on the verge of invading Egypt, he was seized by
a fever due to complications from a
peritonsillar abscess
. He died at the age of 59
on 15 May 1174 in the
Citadel of Damascus
. He was initially buried
there, before being reburied in the
Nur al-Din Madrasa
. His young son
As-Salih Ismail al-Malik
became his legitimate
heir, and Saladin declared himself his vassal, although he really planned to
unify Syria and Egypt under his own rule. He married Nur ad-Din’s widow,
defeated the other claimants to the throne and took power in Syria in 1185,
finally realizing Nur ad-Din’s dream.
Legacy
According to
William of Tyre
, although Nur ad-Din was “a
mighty persecutor of the Christian name and faith,” he was also “a just prince,
valiant and wise, and according to the traditions of his race, a religious man.”
Nur ad-Din was especially religious after his illness and his
pilgrimage. He considered the crusaders foreigners in Muslim
territory, who had come to
Outremer
to plunder the land and profane its
sacred places. Nevertheless, he tolerated the Christians who lived under his
authority, aside from the Armenians of Edessa and regarded the Emperor Manuel
with deep respect. In contrast to Nur ad-Din’s respectful reaction to the death
of Baldwin III, Amalric I immediately besieged Banias upon learning of the
emir’s death, and extorted a vast amount of money from his widow.
Nur ad-Din also constructed universities and mosques in all the cities he
controlled. These universities were principally concerned with teaching the
Qur’an
and
Hadith
. Nur ad-Din himself enjoyed to have
specialists read to him from the Hadith, and his professors even awarded him a
diploma in Hadith narration. He had free hospitals constructed in his cities as
well, and built
caravanserais
on the roads for travellers and
pilgrims. He held court several times a week so that people could seek justice
from him against his generals, governors, or other employees who had committed
some crime. In the Muslim world he remains a legendary figure of military
courage, piety, and modesty. Sir Steven Runciman said that he loved, above all
else, justice.
The Damascene chronicler
Ibn al-Qalanisi
generally speaks of Nur ad-Din
in majestic terms, although he himself died in 1160, and unfortunately did not
witness the later events of Nur ad-Din’s reign.
| Regnal titles |
Preceded by
Zengi
|
Emir of Aleppo
1146–1174 |
Succeeded by
As-Salih Ismail al-Malik
|
Preceded by
Mujir ad-Din
|
Emir of Damascus
1154–1174 |
Succeeded by
As-Salih Ismail al-Malik
|
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