Zengi and Nur ad-Din (1127-1174)

Part oneZengi and the fall of Edessa

For a generation after 1099, the Franks mostly had the upper hand. Their armies took Acre in 1104, Tripoli in 1109, Sidon in 1110 and Tyre in 1124, so that nearly the whole Levantine coast belonged to them. Muslim rulers inland often made truces with the Franks, and sometimes alliances against other Muslims, because the men next door seemed a greater danger than the strangers on the coast.

Even Damascus, the great Muslim city of the south, made a treaty with the king of Jerusalem in 1140 against Zengi's growing power. Imad ad-Din Zengi set out to change all this. He was a Turkish commander who became ruler of Mosul in 1127 and took Aleppo in 1128. For years he worked to join northern Iraq and northern Syria into one strong state. Damascus stayed outside it. On Christmas Eve 1144 he took Edessa, the first of the four Frankish states, after a siege of about four weeks. Edessa lay far to the northeast and had shielded the other Frankish states from Mosul and Aleppo, so with it gone the rest were exposed. The news shook Western Europe and led to a Second Crusade. Zengi did not live to see it. In 1146 he was killed by one of his own servants.

His sons divided his lands. The second son, Nur ad-Din, took Aleppo and set about rebuilding what his father had begun.

Part twoNur ad-Din and a united Syria

Nur ad-Din was a devout man who collected hadith and paid scholars to preserve the chains of their transmission. The Second Crusade arrived in 1147 under the king of France and the German king. In 1148 they besieged Damascus, and the attack collapsed after only a few days. The crusade went home with nothing. Damascus had been ruled apart from Aleppo, and the Franks had been able to use that. The lesson was plain to Nur ad-Din: Syria had to stand together.

In 1154 Damascus came over to him. It was his general Shirkuh, whose name means lion of the faith, who brought it about, and Nur ad-Din was glad to take the city without a bloody assault. From Aleppo to Damascus, Syria now answered to one ruler. In 1149 his army had won a battle at Inab, where the prince of Antioch was killed, and in 1164 he defeated the Franks again at Harim. He became the leading Muslim figure in the fight against them.

Accounts of his life stress how simply he lived. He dressed plainly and spent little on himself. He built many madrasas, schools of Islamic law, in Aleppo, Damascus and other cities, and the number in his lands rose from about sixteen to about forty. Scholars of different schools of law were welcome in them, and colleges of one school were sometimes endowed for students of another. In Damascus he founded a great hospital in 1154. Nur ad-Din understood that armies alone would not bring Jerusalem back. He needed a Syria that was taught, cared for and united.

Egypt was the next question. The Fatimid caliphate there was weak, and its viziers fought each other for power. King Amalric of Jerusalem wanted Egypt for himself. If he took it, the Franks would have its wealth and a second front, and Syria would be caught between them. Nur ad-Din was reluctant to send an army across the desert, but he knew that if he did not go, the Franks would. In 1163 a deposed Egyptian vizier, Shawar, had asked Nur ad-Din for help. In 1164 he sent Shirkuh, and a young nephew named Yusuf went with him. In 1167 they went again. Shirkuh led the main army up the Nile, and he left Yusuf to hold Alexandria, which the Franks and the Egyptian vizier besieged until all sides agreed to withdraw. The vizier Shawar, who kept changing sides, burned the old city of Fustat in 1168 to keep it from the Franks, and Shirkuh came a third time. In 1169 Shirkuh entered Cairo, where people welcomed him, and he was made vizier, and he died within a few months. His nephew Yusuf took over the office. History would know him as Salahuddin.

In 1169 a great earthquake struck northern Syria, and Nur ad-Din spent much of that year rebuilding damaged cities such as Aleppo, Hama and Homs. He knew by then that Egypt would soon be in his hands or lost to the Franks. Nur ad-Din died in May 1174 (569 AH). Jerusalem was still in Frankish hands, but he had made his plans. He had ordered a carved minbar, a pulpit, for the al-Aqsa Mosque, to be set up on the day the city was freed. Syria was his and Egypt answered to his name, and the man who would finish the work was already in Cairo.

He had a pulpit made for al-Aqsa and kept it ready for the day Jerusalem was freed.

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The mapWhere it happened

• Mosul
• Aleppo
• Edessa
• Damascus
• Jerusalem
• Cairo

This map is a simple sketch to help you picture where events took place. Positions, distances and borders are approximate, so please use it for reference only, not as an accurate map.

SourcesSources for this chapter