Нұр әд-Дин Махмұд Зенги: Алеппо мен Дамаск әмірі

Emir of Aleppo (1146–1174) and Damascus (1154–1174)

Nūr al Dīn Maḥmūd Zengī (نور الدين محمود زنگي; February 1118 – 15 May 1174), commonly known as Nur ad Din (lit. 'Light of the Faith' in Arabic), was a member of the Zengid dynasty, who ruled the Syrian province (Shām) of the Seljuk Empire. He reigned from 1146 to 1174. He is regarded as an important figure of the Second Crusade.

Nur ad Din was the second son of Imad al Din Zengi, the Turkmen 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 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. In 1146, after the Frankish attempt to reoccupy Edessa, Nur ad Din massacred the local Armenian Christian population of the city and destroyed its fortifications, in punishment for assisting Joscelin in this attempt. The women and children of Edessa were enslaved. 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 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 Bara. 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 Crusader's 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 threatened to turn the city over to Nur ad Din if he was unable to defend it, but the crusader siege collapsed after only four days.]] 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 Abaq 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. Nur ad Din was generous in his victory, and allowed Abaq to flee with his property, later granting him fiefdoms in the vicinity of Homs.]] 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. Nur ad Din's 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 was given permission 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 and captured most of the Crusader armies' leadership, including Raymond III, Joscelin III and Bohemond III, leaving three major principalities of the Crusader states leaderless. However, he 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, Nur ad Din's Kurdish general 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 due to the unpopularity of the Egyptian alliance with the Crusaders, Shirkuh managed to take Alexandria without bloodshed. The Crusaders besieged Alexandria and famine set in quickly due to the city's limited stores of food. Shirkuh organized a sortie and broke through the enemy lines, leaving command of Alexandria to his nephew, Saladin. Ultimately, Amalric could not hold Egypt while Nur ad Din still held Syria, and he was forced to return to Jerusalem. The siege of Alexandria was lifted, and Shirkuh's forces withdrew from Egypt as well. His young son As Salih Ismail al Malik became his legitimate heir, and Saladin declared himself his vassal, maintaining the de jure unity of Syria and Egypt under As Salih's rule. When As Salih died suddenly at the age of eighteen, Saladin defeated the other claimants to the throne and took power in Syria in 1185, uniting Syria and Egypt not just in name, as they were during Nur ad Din's reign, but in fact.]] 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." His sense of justice was never denied to anyone, regardless of their creed or origins. As a result of his justice, a Christian foreigner was said to have settled into Damascus, which was under Nur ad Din's reign. 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 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. During Nur ad Din's reign, forty two madrasas were built in Syria, of which half he personally sponsored. Through the construction of these madrasas Nur ad Din was ensuring the creation of Sunni Islamic qadis and imams. Nur ad Din himself enjoyed having specialists read to him from the Hadith, and his professors even awarded him a diploma in Hadith narration. He had bimaristans (hospitals) constructed in his cities as well, one of them is Nur al Din Bimaristan and built caravanserais on the roads for travelers 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. Nur ad Din's Sunni orthodoxy can be seen in his public works. His repair of the Roman aqueduct in Aleppo insinuated an anti Shia polemic, and the conversion of two Shia mosques into madrasas, one Shafi'i another Hanafi, reinforce his insistence of promoting Sunni Islam. Consequently, in November 1148, he forbade the Shia call to prayer in Aleppo and any public displays of Shi'ism. 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 did not witness the later events of Nur ad Din's reign. The Islamist group Harakat Nour al Din al Zenki, active in the Syrian Civil War in Aleppo since 2011, is named after Nur ad Din.