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Religion is in darkness because of the absence of his light
The age is in grief because of the loss of its commander.
Let Islam mourn the defender of its people
And Syria mourn the protector of its kingdom and its borders
Abu Shama, a contemporary poet, mourning Nur al-Din.
Nur al-Din died on 15 May 1174 following a heart attack brought on by a polo match. He had always been a gifted and aggressive player of the game, much as he had been a gifted politician and an aggressive military leader. Indeed the two almost went hand-in-hand in the Turkish world as polo had come with them from Central Asia during the great migrations, and, like the great hunts, it was a ‘bloodless drill’ that taught many of the skills required on the battlefield.
He was about 60 when he died and he was rightly remembered by the populace of Muslim Syria as the man who had taken away the very real fear that the Franj would conquer Aleppo and Damascus. The last years of his reign were a success but were marred by constant and mutual suspicion between him and his lieutenant in Egypt, Saladin. Nur al-Din made constant demands on the Egyptian treasury and Egyptian army that Saladin would not, or could not, comply with. Indeed it might even be suggested that Saladin viewed the Crusader state as a shield protecting his new acquisition from the sultan, and also recognised what a dangerous game he was playing.
In fairness to Saladin he was wazir to a Shiite-Ismaili caliph and had only a small body of Syrian troopers to counter the still large, if virtually unmanageable, forces of the Fatimid army. He quickly seized lands and properties from senior Fatimid emirs, and used the funds and property he garnered from this to buy the services and loyalties of the Turkish Mamluks of the Fatimid army. By these actions he tied Syrian and Egyptian troops to his personal fortunes. He pushed the black troops of the Fatimid army, some 30,000 men, into a revolt because of his, possibly intentional, indifference to their welfare during the summer of 1169, but their leader’s attempts to bring Amalric to their aid failed, as his messenger, dressed in peasant rags, failed to slip by Saladin’s Turkish guards who noticed his fancy palace slippers.
Saladin had gambled but he knew that he had bought enough loyalty among the Turkish cavalry to crush the Sudanese troops. The Africans attempted a coup, but Saladin’s troops burnt their lodgings to the ground and slaughtered their families. Those that survived fled to Gaza but Turanshah, Saladin’s oldest brother, decimated them.
By 1174 Nur al-Din was becoming convinced that his lieutenant was becoming too strong and that Egypt’s tax revenues, needed for the Syrian jihad, were being salted away by Saladin. Nur al-Din sent an inspector to Egypt to check the tax remittances and the inspector duly submitted a fairly damning report to the sultan. Mosul and Aleppo were immediately abuzz with rumours that Nur al-Din was mustering his forces for an attack on Egypt. It was said later that ‘Fortune Made a King’ when Saladin became Sultan of both Syria and Egypt. He was perhaps fortunate indeed that Nur al-Din died before the attack could be made.
