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A holy man saw the dead Zangi in a dream and asked him, ‘How has God treated you?’ And Zangi replied, ‘God has pardoned me because I conquered Edessa.’
Ibn al-Athir, The Perfect History.
Zangi travelled the length and breadth of Syria for 18 years on campaigns, and his charismatic leadership and personal bravery were the keys to keeping his army in the field. He was also a master of intrigue. His agents spread suspicion between the Byzantine-Crusader army’s leaders during its unhappy retreat from his lands, and Turcomen border raids erupted all over John’s lands.
Damascus was claimed by Zangi to be the key to defeating the Franks, and whilst this was certainly true, he was also as much interested in adding the riches of the city to his treasury as he was in the Holy War. He married the Prince of Damascus’s mother and took Baalbek, the fortress that shielded the city’s northern approaches. He secured the capitulation of troops holding out in the last tower with promises of safe passage. However, he quickly reneged on this pledge and had every man crucified.
Damascus resisted desperately with the city militia and a company of peasants taking the field against Zangi’s professional soldiers, with predictable results. By March 1140 Zangi’s troops were closing on the city. The emirs of the city responded by gifting him a propaganda victory by allying with King Fulk, who received both monies and hostages from the Damascenes. It was enough to create stalemate in the contest over Damascus.
Fulk died in late 1143 and Queen Melisende took on the regency of the child king, Baldwin III. It was doubly unfortunate that Joscelin II of Edessa and Raymond of Antioch were also at loggerheads. The ulama called warriors to the jihad and in November 1144, knowing that Joscelin II was absent from Edessa, Zangi attacked the city. So, it may be that the deed for which Zangi is chiefly remembered was entirely opportunistic.
A swarm of Turcomen surrounded the city, intercepting all supplies and reinforcements. It was said that even birds dared not fly near, so absolute was the desolation made by the besiegers’ weapons and so unblinking their vigilance. Counterweight trebuchets, a recent invention and a machine of enormous power capable of battering holes in even Edessa’s thick walls, shot ceaselessly night and day. Sappers from far away Khurasan mined under the towers of the city’s walls. Once the tunnels’ supports were fired the walls crumbled.
William of Tyre tells us that the city fell rapidly because the population was made up of ‘Chaldeans and Armenians, unwarlike men, scarcely familiar with the use of arms’, and Queen Melisende’s relief force never had a chance of reaching it in time.
Zangi moved rapidly to take Saruj, and Joscelin, who had fled to Turbessel, was fortunate that Zangi was briefly distracted once more by Damascene affairs. Then in early 1145 the Armenians of Edessa attempted to betray the city to Joscelin. Zangi marched north and rapidly crushed the conspiracy. The guilty parties were crucified and the shahid moved onto quell a revolt at the fortress of Jabar on the Euphrates. Zangi was three months into a siege of the castle when he was stabbed to death by a Christian slave, as he lay drunk in his tent.