30

The Ayyūbids

564 to end of the ninth century/1169 to end of the fifteenth century

Egypt, Syria, Diyār Bakr, western Jazīra and Yemen

1. The line in Egypt

2. The line in Damascus

3. The line in Aleppo

4. The line in Ḥimṣ

5. The line in Ḥamāt

6. The line in Diyār Bakr (Mayyāfāriqīn and Jabal Sinjār)

7. The line in Diyar Bakr (Ḥisḥ Kayfa, Āmid and Akhlāṭ)

8. The line in Yemen

9. The minor branches of the family in Ba‘lbakk, Karak, Bāniyās and Subayba, and Busrā (for details, see Zambaur, 98–9)

Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb and Asad al-Dīn Shīrkūh b. Shādhī, the progenitors of the dynasty, were from the Hadhbānī tribe of Kurds, although the family seems to have become considerably Turkicised from their service at the side of Turkish soldiers. The Turkish commander of Mosul and Aleppo, Zangī b. Aq Sonqur (see below, no. 93, 1) recruited large numbers of bellicose Kurds into his following, including in 532/1138 Ayyūb, and soon afterwards his brother Shīrkūh entered the service of Zangi’s famous son Nūr al-Dīn. In 564/1169, Shīrkūh gained control of Egypt on the demise of the last Fāṭimid caliph al-‘Ādid (see above, no. 27) but died almost immediately, and his nephew Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn b. Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb (Saladin) was recognised by his troops as Shīrkūh’s successor.

The celebrated foe of the Frankish Crusaders, Saladin, was accordingly the real founder of the dynasty. He extinguished the last vestiges of Fāṭimid rule in Egypt and replaced the Ismā‘īlī Shī’ism which had prevailed there for two centuries by a strongly orthodox Sunnī religious and educational policy; the great wave of Ayyūbid mosque- and madrasa-building in Egypt and Syria was one aspect of this. The Ayyūbids were in this way continuing the policy of the Zangids in Syria and were acting in a parallel manner to the Great Saljuqs before them, who had inaugurated a Sunnī reaction in the Iraqi and Persian lands taken over from the Shī‘ī Būyids (see below, no. 75). Although the Ayyūbids were in fact less enthusiastic pursuers of jihād than the Zangids had been, Saladin is associated in Western scholarship with his successes in Palestine, for his enthusiasm enabled him to weld together armies of Kurds, Turks and Arabs in a common cause. With his victory at Ḥaṭṭīn in 583/1187, the holy city of Jerusalem again became Muslim after eighty years in Christian hands; the Franks were driven back essentially to the cities and fortresses of the Syro-Palestinian littoral, and, apart from their briefly restored rule in Jerusalem and the other lost districts, mentioned below, were unable to recover most of their losses.

Before his death in 589/1193, Saladin granted out various parts of the Ayyūbid empire, including the cities of Syria, Diyār Bakr, western Jazīra and Yemen, as appanages for various members of the family, the intention being that the supreme sultan should normally reside in Egypt. A reasonable sense of family solidarity was maintained under al-Malik al-‘Ādil Sayf al-Dīn Muḥammad or Aḥmad and his son al-Kāmil Nāṣir al-Dīn Muḥammad until the latter’s death in 635/1238. Under these two sultans, Saladin’s activist policies gave place to ones of detente and peaceful relations with the Franks, especially as the northern branches of the Ayyūbids in Diyār Bakr and Jazīra were now feeling pressure from the Rūm Seljuqs and the Khwārazm Shāhs (see below, nos 107, 89). The culmination of these new policies was al-KāmiPs offer of Jerusalem and the territories conquered by Saladin a generation before to the Emperor Frederick II (626/1229); in fact, the Crusaders recovered only the Holy City and one or two other towns, including Nazareth, and ten years later al-Nāṣir Dāwūd b. al-Mu‘aẓẓam ‘Isa of Damascus was to regain it. The period of peace did, however, bring economic benefits to Egypt and Syria, including a revival of trade with the Christian powers of the western Mediterranean.

After al-Kāmil, internal quarrels among the Ayyūbids intensified. The supreme sultan in Egypt had never been an autocrat, and the Ayyūbid empire was more a confederation of local principalities, those in Syria and Diyār Bakr often with unstable and shifting borders; these principalities resisted attempts by the supreme sultans to impose a more centralised authority. The Franks‘ Sixth Crusade was mastered and its leader, the French King St Louis (IX), captured, but soon after al-Ṣāliḥ Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb’s death the Turkish Bahrī slave troops seized power in Egypt, making their leader Aybak first Atabeg and then sultan in 648/1250. Al-‘Ādil I Sayf al-Dīn Muḥammad or Aḥmad had sent out his young grandson al-Mas‘ūd Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf with an Atabeg or tutor to continue Ayyūbid rule over Yemen, but the dynasty were unable to maintain themselves there and the region passed to their former servants, the Turkish Rasūlids (see below, no. 49).

The appearance of the Mongol armies of Hülegü (see below, no. 133) was disastrous for the northern petty lines of Ayyūbids, and the Il Khān personally killed the prince of Mayyāfāriqīn and his brother. In Syria, only the branch at Ḥamāt survived, because of its obscurity and docility, until the mid-fourteenth century, although it did produce, as its penultimate amir, the historian and geographer Abu ’l-Fidā‘. However, in Diyār Bakr a local Kurdicised Ayyūbid principality around Ḥiṣn Kayfā survived the Il Khānids and Tīmūrids, and these amīrs were only extinguished by the ‘White Sheep‘ Turkmens in the later fifteenth century.

A striking feature of Ayyūbid titulature was the rulers‘ adoption of titles comprising al-Malik ‘prince, ruler‘ plus a qualifying adjective expressing such qualities as power, honour, piety, justice, etc., hence al-Malik al-Mu‘aẓẓam, al-Malik al-Kāmil, etc. These usually appear on the coins minted by ruling princes, but the use of such titles extended to distinctly minor members of the Ayyūbid family also. This practice was inherited, together with much other Ayyūbid administrative and ceremonial practice, by their successors the Mamlūks (see below, no. 31).

Justi, 462–3; Lane-Poole, 74–9; Sachau, 19 nos 36–8 (branches in Ba’lbakk, Karak and Ḥiṣn Kayfā); Zambaur, 97–101 and Table H; Album, 22–3.

EI² Ayyūbids‘ (Cl. Cahen), ‘Hamāt‘ (D. Sourdel), ‘Ḥimṣ‘ (N. Elisséeff), ‘Mayyāfārikīn. 2‘ (Carole Hillenbrand).

H. A. R. Gibb, ‘The Aiyūbids‘, in K. M. Setton et al. (eds), A History of the Crusades. II. The Later Crusades 1189–1311, Philadelphia 1962, 693–714.

H. F. A. al-Hamdānī and Ḥ. S. M. al-Juhanī, al-Ṣulayhiyyūn wa ‘l-haraka al-Fātimiyya fi ‘l-Yaman, table of the Yemen Ayyūbids at p. 347.

G. R. Smith, The Ayyūbids and Early Rasūlids in the Yemen (567–694/1173–1295), 2 vols, London 1974–8, with a table of the Yemen Ayyūbids at II, 50.

R. S. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols. The Ayyubids of Damascus, 1193–1260, Albany 1977, with tables at 88–91.

P. Balog, The Coinage of the Ayyūbids, Royal Numismatic Society, Special Publication, no. 12, London 1980.

N. D. Nicol, ‘Paul Balog’s The coinage of the Ayyūbids: additions and corrections‘, NC, 9th series, vol. 146 (1986), 119–54.

H. Halm, ‘Die Ayyubiden‘, in Haarmann (ed.), Geschichte der arabischen Welt, 200–16.