Nur al-Din emerged as the Near East’s foremost Muslim leader in the aftermath of the Second Crusade. Over the course of his career, Nur al-Din would unite Syria, extend Zangid power into Egypt and score a series of victories against the Christian Franks. He became one of the greatest luminaries of medieval Islam, celebrated as a stalwart of Sunni orthodoxy and a champion of jihad against Latin Outremer. Indeed, the appellation by which he is known to history, ‘Nur al-Din’, literally means ‘the Light of Faith’.
Muslim chroniclers of the age generally presented Nur al-Din as the very archetype of a perfect Islamic ruler–deeply pious, clement and just; humble and austere, yet cultured; valiant and skilful in battle, and committed to the war for the Holy Land. This view was most powerfully expressed by the great Iraqi historian Ibn al-Athir (d. 1233), writing in Mosul in the early thirteenth century, when that city was still governed by members of Nur al-Din’s Zangid dynasty. Among his many works, Ibn al-Athir composed a voluminous account of human history, starting with the Creation, and even in this chronicle Nur al-Din was presented as the principal protagonist. ‘The fame of his good rule and justice’ was said to have ‘encompassed the world’, and ‘his good qualities were numerous and his virtues abundant, more than this book can contain’.10
Modern historians have sought, with varying degrees of success, to reach beyond this panegyric to reconstruct an authentic vision of Nur al-Din, producing wildly divergent images. A central feature of this process has been the attempt to pinpoint a moment of transformation or spiritual epiphany in the emir’s life, after which he assumed the mantle of the mujahid.11 In the context of the crusades, two interlocking issues are imperative. Nur al-Din spent a fair portion of his life fighting against fellow Muslims–but was he acting for the greater good, unifying Islam in preparation for jihad, or was holy war simply a convenient veil behind which to construct a Zangid empire? And did Nur al-Din start out as an ambitious, self-serving Turkish warlord, only (at some point) to experience a deepening of his religious conviction and a quickening of his desire to prosecute the holy war? In part, these questions can be resolved by tracing the path of Nur al-Din’s career–examining when and why he fought against the Latins; and assessing his dealings with the Sunni Muslims of Syria, the Shi‘ite Fatimids of Egypt and the Greeks of Byzantium.
THE BATTLE OF INAB
In the summer of 1149 Nur al-Din launched an offensive against the Christian principality of Antioch, seeking to consolidate his burgeoning authority over northern Syria. Since late 1148 his troops had clashed with Antiochene forces in a number of small-scale encounters, but the results had been inconclusive. In June 1149, Nur al-Din capitalised upon the recent rapprochement with Unur of Damascus by calling for reinforcements, assembling a formidable invasion army, spearheaded by 6,000 mounted warriors. Historians have made little effort to understand the Aleppan ruler’s motivations, assuming that he was simply seeking a confrontation with Prince Raymond of Antioch. But just like his predecessor Il-ghazi in 1119, Nur al-Din’s actions probably had a more defined strategic purpose.
In 1149, Nur al-Din set out to conquer two Latin outposts–Harim and Apamea. The fortress town of Harim stood on the western fringe of the Belus Hills, in a commanding position overlooking the Antiochene plains. Just twelve miles from Antioch itself, Harim had been in Latin hands since the time of the First Crusade. The Belus range had long played a role in the struggle between Aleppo and the principality. Earlier in the twelfth century, when Antioch was in the ascendant, the Franks had occupied territory to the east of these craggy hills, offering a direct threat to Aleppan security. First Il-ghazi, and then Zangi, pushed them back, re-establishing a border that followed the natural barrier of the Belus. But Nur al-Din was not content with this state of equilibrium. He sought to capture Harim and gain a foothold beyond the barrier of the Belus range, thereby undermining the defensive integrity of Antioch’s eastern frontier.
Nur al-Din also targeted Apamea, on the southern edge of the Summaq plateau. In the past, Antiochene dominion over the Summaq threatened the main routes of communication between Aleppo and Damascus, but Zangi had recaptured much of this area in the late 1130s. By 1149 the Franks retained only a meagre corridor of territory, hugging the Orontes valley south to the increasingly lonely outpost at Apamea. Nur al-Din’s primary objective in 1149 seems have been the conquest of this fortified settlement, eradicating the lingering Latin presence in the Summaq region. Recent attempts to directly overrun Apamea, perched upon a lofty ancient earthen tell, had failed. Switching tack, Nur al-Din now sought to isolate the town–severing its main line of communication with Antioch by taking control of the ash-Shogur Bridge across the Orontes.
In June he advanced into this vicinity and began operations by laying siege to the small fort of Inab. When this news reached Antioch, Prince Raymond reacted swiftly, perhaps even impetuously. Later Latin tradition held that he set off immediately to relieve Inab, ‘without waiting for the escort of his cavalry, [hurrying] rashly to that place’, but this may have been something of an exaggeration because a Muslim contemporary based in Damascus reckoned that the Franks arrived with 4,000 knights and 1,000 infantry. Raymond’s force also included a contingent of Assassins, led by his Kurdish Muslim ally, ‘Ali ibn Wafa. Nur al-Din responded to the Antiochenes’ approach on 28 June with caution, retreating from Inab to assess his enemy’s strength, but his eyes were open for any chance to launch a counter-attack, and just such an opportunity soon presented itself.
Arriving in the environs of Inab, Raymond rather optimistically assumed that he had frightened off Nur al-Din’s forces and successfully secured the region. He elected to camp that night on the open plain rather than withdraw to a place of safety–a fatal error. Having actually moved off only a short distance, Nur al-Din gathered intelligence of the Frankish numbers and their exposed position and immediately retraced his steps under the cover of night. As dawn broke on 29 June 1149 the Latins awoke to find themselves surrounded. Sensing that a famous victory was now within his grasp, the lord of Aleppo wasted no time in pressing the advantage, ‘storm[ing] the camp as if he were besieging a city’ in the words of one Christian. According to the Damascus Chronicle, Prince Raymond vainly sought to rally his men and mount a defence, ‘but the Muslims split up into detachments which attacked them from various directions and swarmed over them’. Vicious hand-to-hand fighting ensued and, as the winds picked up, dust clouded the air, adding to the confusion. Outnumbered and encircled, the Franks soon buckled, but even as swathes of his troops fled the field, Raymond held his ground, fighting on to the end. One contemporary Arabic text described how ‘the swords of Islam had the final word [and] when the haze dispersed [the Christians] lay upon the ground prostrate and dirt-befouled’.
The Muslims had prevailed and the full extent of their triumph became clear when Nur al-Din’s men began combing the battlefield. There the Antiochene ruler Raymond ‘was found stretched out amongst his guard and his knights; he was recognised and his head cut off and carried to Nur al-Din, who rewarded the bearer of it with a handsome gift’. It was rumoured that the prince had been cut down by a sword blow from the Kurdish warlord Shirkuh. Nur al-Din apparently had the Frank’s head sealed within a silver trophy case and dispatched to Baghdad to celebrate the defeat of an enemy who, according to the Muslims, had ‘acquired special repute by the dread which he inspired, his great severity and excessive ferocity’. Latin sources confirm that Raymond’s corpse was decapitated, adding the grisly but practical observation that, when the Antiochenes finally returned to recover his mutilated body, it could only be identified by ‘certain marks and scars’.12
The significance of the Battle of Inab in 1149 paralleled that of the Field of Blood thirty years earlier. The Frankish principality was again deprived of a potent ruler and, with no obvious adult male heir apparent, left leaderless and vulnerable. Nur al-Din was now in a dominant position, but his actions after Inab are revealing. Crucially, he made no determined attempt to subjugate Antioch itself, but instead sent a large portion of his army south to Apamea. Nur al-Din led the remainder of his troops on the principality’s capital, but after a brief siege agreed to leave the city inviolate in return for a sizeable tribute payment of gold and treasure. Travelling to the coast, he took the symbolic step of bathing in the Mediterranean–a gesture affirming that Islamic power now stretched west to the sea.
The real work of conquest began around mid-July, with an assault on Harim. With its Latin garrison weakened after Inab, the town fell swiftly and steps immediately were taken to bolster its defences. Towards the end of that same month, Nur al-Din marched south to Apamea. Cut off from Antioch, with no hope of rescue, the Franks stationed there surrendered in return for a promise that their lives would be spared.
Like Il-ghazi in 1119, Nur al-Din had capitalised upon his defeat of the Antiochenes to achieve focused strategic goals–in this case, the neutralisation of Antioch and the assertion of Aleppan dominion over the lands east of the Orontes. He also forsook a potential opportunity to capture Antioch, perhaps in part because he lacked the manpower and material resources to overwhelm that city’s immense fortifications and knew that Frankish reinforcements would arrive soon from Palestine. Certainly in 1119 and again in 1149 Antioch’s conquest was not prioritised as an objective.
In spite of these evident similarities, the Battle of Inab was not a simple rerun of the Field of Blood. In 1119 King Baldwin II of Jerusalem had rushed to the principality’s aid and, over the following years, recouped its territorial losses. His grandson, King Baldwin III, likewise travelled north to Syria in summer 1149, but proved unable to fully revive Antioch’s fortunes. Apamea was never recovered and a brief attempt to retake Harim failed. With Nur al-Din’s soldiers ensconced within striking distance of its capital, the principality’s ability to threaten Aleppo was severely curtailed. Later that summer the Latins were pressed into a humiliating treaty with Nur al-Din that, by confirming Aleppan rights over the Summaq plateau and the territory east of the Belus Hills, tacitly acknowledged Antioch’s emasculation.
Nur al-Din’s underlying motivations and intentions in 1149 also differed fundamentally from those of Il-ghazi and this, in itself, exposes a deeper truth about the shifting balance of power in Syria. The Field of Blood had been an expression of Antiochene and Aleppan rivalry, a last-ditch attempt to stem the sweeping tide of Frankish territorial expansion eastwards. In stark contrast, and despite initial appearances, the campaign that culminated in the Battle of Inab was actually driven by inter-Muslim enmity. Nur al-Din set out to occupy Apamea not to stave off Frankish aggression, but rather to open a clear and unchallenged route south from Aleppo to his real target, the Burid-held city of Damascus. Driven back beyond the Orontes, the Antiochenes would be in no position to interfere in this greater game.
Generations of modern historians have misconstrued the causes and significance of Inab, some even maintaining that this victory marked the vital moment of transformation for Nur al-Din into a dedicated jihadi warrior. To be sure, the lord of Aleppo celebrated his success against the Christians. One Muslim chronicler observed that ‘the poets made much praise of Nur al-Din in congratulation for this victory, as the killing of [Prince Raymond] had a great effect on both sides’, and went on to quote this verse by Ibn al-Qaysarani:
Your swords have produced in the Franks a shaking
Which makes the hearts of Rome beat fast.
You have struck their chief a crushing blow with them
Which has destroyed his backbone and brought the crosses low.
You have cleansed the enemy’s land of their blood
In a cleansing that has made every sword polluted.
But to accept this propaganda at face value is to ignore the reality of Nur al-Din’s strategic focus in 1149: Damascus. Future events would demonstrate that he was wholly content to leave Antioch in the faltering grip of the Franks because, neutralised as a threat in the theatre of Levantine conflict, the Latin principality served as a useful buffer state between Aleppo and Greek Byzantium. In fact, in these early years of his rule, Nur al-Din’s overriding concern was the conquest of Damascus.
Events in August 1149 initially seemed to offer Nur al-Din the perfect opportunity to increase his influence within Muslim Syria. After dining on a particularly hearty meal, his sometime ally and rival Unur of Damascus was ‘seized by a loosening of the bowels’ which developed into a debilitating bout of dysentery. By the end of the month Unur was dead and Damascus plunged into a chaotic power struggle. But any hopes of capitalising upon this misfortune evaporated when news arrived of a second death, this time of Nur al-Din’s elder brother, Saif al-Din, on 6 September. Rushing to Iraq, Nur al-Din briefly sought to stake a claim to Mosul, but was eventually begrudgingly reconciled with his younger sibling, the heir designate Qutb al-Din Maudud. For now a chance to take control of Damascus had been missed. Faltering Burid rule endured in the city, but it would not be long before Nur al-Din’s gaze once again turned south of Aleppo.13
THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS
In 1150 Latin Outremer was beset by adversity. Arguably there had never been a more propitious moment for the lords of Near Eastern Islam–and for Nur al-Din in particular–to strike at the heart of the crusader states, sweeping the Franks into the Mediterranean. The Christians had suffered, in swift succession, the Second Crusade’s failure, defeat at Inab and the county of Edessa’s dissolution. After 1149 their difficulties only deepened. Panicked calls to western Europe for a new crusade were made, but with recent humiliation fresh in the memory, they went unanswered. In Antioch, Prince Raymond’s sudden death prompted yet another succession crisis because his son and heir, Bohemond III, was only five years old, and his widow Constance forcefully rejected her cousin King Baldwin III of Jerusalem’s plans to marry her off to a suitor of his choosing. Like her mother Alice before her, Constance sought to control her own fate, but this left the principality without an incumbent male military commander for four years and saddled Baldwin III with oversight of Antioch. The young king’s responsibilities were multiplied even further in 1152 by the murder of Raymond II of Tripoli by a band of Assassins. As the count’s son and namesake, Raymond III, was just twelve years old, Baldwin was again forced to assume the mantle of guardian.
Still only in his early twenties, Baldwin III of Jerusalem was now charged with the rule of all three of the surviving crusader states. To make matters worse his relationship with his mother Melisende was crumbling. Together they had exercised joint rule of Jerusalem since 1145 (when the boy king reached his majority at the age of fifteen), and in the beginning the queen’s wisdom and experience had been a welcome source of security and continuity. But as Baldwin grew into adulthood, his mother’s presence at his side began to feel more stifling than reassuring. Melisende, for her part, had no intention of relinquishing power and still enjoyed widespread support within the realm. From 1149 onwards, relations between the two co-rulers soured, and by 1152 Latin Palestine was almost torn asunder by civil war. Ultimately, Baldwin was forced to drive Melisende from her lands in Nablus and then to actually besiege the queen in the Holy City itself to force her abdication and assert his own right to independent rule.
In spite of the endemic weakness of his supposed enemy, Nur al-Din did little to pursue directly the interests of the jihad against the Christians. Instead, he continued to direct the bulk of his energy and resources towards the seizure of Damascus. Those seeking to promote Nur al-Din as a hero of Islamic holy war–from medieval Muslim chroniclers to modern historians–have argued that this dogged focus upon the subjection of Syria was but a means to an end; that only by preventing Damascus from falling into Christian hands and uniting Islam could the lord of Aleppo eventually hope to achieve victory in the greater struggle against the Franks.14 Zangi had long eyed the prize of Damascus, but was often drawn away by the affairs of Mesopotamia. For the next five years, Nur al-Din pursued this quarry with greater determination, bringing a nuanced array of tactics to bear. His father’s primary weapons had always been intimidation and fear. He had butchered the populace of Baalbek after promising to spare their lives if they surrendered, in the vain hope of terrifying Damascus into submission. Nur al-Din had perhaps learned the lesson of this failure. He adopted a new approach, concerning himself with the battle for hearts and minds, as well as the force of arms.
Power in Damascus now lay in the hands of another member of the faltering Burid dynasty, Abaq, and his inner circle of advisers, but their grip over the city was far from secure. In April 1150 Nur al-Din responded to news of Latin incursions into the Hauran, the frontier zone between Jerusalem and Damascus, by calling upon Abaq to join him in repelling the Franks. Nur al-Din then marched his own army into southern Syria, advancing beyond Baalbek. Just as he had expected, Abaq prevaricated with ‘specious arguments and dissimulation’, while simultaneously dispatching envoys to forge a new pact with King Baldwin III.
Now camped north of Damascus, Nur al-Din took great care to ensure the continued discipline of his troops, preventing them ‘from plundering and doing injury in the villages’, even as he ratcheted up the diplomatic pressure on Abaq. Messages arrived in Damascus chiding the Burid ruler for turning to the Franks and for paying them tribute monies stolen from ‘the poor and weak among [the Damascenes]’. Nur al-Din assured Abaq that he had no intention of attacking the city, but rather that he had been endowed by Allah with power and resources ‘in order to bring help to the Muslims and to engage in the holy war against the polytheists’–to which Abaq replied bluntly that ‘there is nothing between us except the sword’. Nur al-Din’s firm but restrained approach seems, nonetheless, to have borne fruit, as public opinion inside Damascus began to turn in his favour. One Muslim resident even noted that ‘prayers were continually being offered up for him by the people of Damascus’.
Nur al-Din backed away from this initial exchange, having made only relatively meagre gains. For all his brave posturing, Abaq eventually agreed to a renewed truce with Aleppo, officially acknowledging Nur al-Din as suzerain and ordering his name to be recited from the pulpit during Friday prayer and placed on Damascene coins. Symbolic as these gestures may have been, the piecemeal work of subduing Damascus with a minimum of bloodshed had begun. Over the next few years Nur al-Din maintained diplomatic and military pressure on the Burids while still seeking to avoid a direct assault on their city. His ‘scrupulous aversion to the slaying of Muslims’ continued to be noted by those living in Damascus, and by 1151 many were rejecting Abaq’s calls to muster against the Aleppans.
Around this time, Shirkuh ibn Shadi’s brother, Ayyub, began to act as Nur al-Din’s agent within the city. Ayyub had transferred allegiance to the Burid dynasty in 1146, but he now decided, with familiar political flexibility, to return to the Zangid fold, becoming a valuable voice of support within the Damascene court, while also winning over the local militias. By slow steps, Nur al-Din was transforming Damascus into a client-state. In October 1151 Abaq actually travelled north to Aleppo to declare his loyalty, tacitly acknowledging subjection in the hope of staving off full conquest. Nur al-Din merely used this as an excuse to employ even more devious and divisive propaganda–repeatedly writing, in the guise of a concerned overlord, to warn Abaq that various members of his own Damascene court were contacting Aleppo to plot Damascus’ surrender.
In winter 1153–4, Nur al-Din finally intensified his campaign, moving to cut off northern grain shipments to Damascus. Food shortages soon took hold. In the spring, with internal discontent swelling, he sent an advance force south under Shirkuh and then in late April 1154 closed on the city in person. In the end, no real attack was necessary. A Jewish woman reportedly lowered a rope over the walls, allowing some Aleppan troops to mount the eastern battlements and to raise Nur al-Din’s standard. As Abaq fled in horror to the citadel, the people of Damascus threw open the city’s gates, offering their unconditional surrender.
Patience and restraint had brought Nur al-Din control of the historic seat of Muslim power–he now took care to maintain those principles. Abaq, in spite of fears, was treated with equanimity and rewarded with the fiefdom of Homs in return for relinquishing control of Damascus; he later moved to Iraq. An abundance of food started flowing into the city and Nur al-Din’s generosity was affirmed by the ‘abolition of duties on the melon market and the vegetable market’.
Nur al-Din’s conquest of Damascus in 1154 was a striking achievement. With this act, he emerged from his father’s shadow, succeeding where Zangi had repeatedly failed. Nur al-Din could now claim dominion over almost all Muslim Syria; for the first time since the crusades began, Aleppo and Damascus were united. And all this had been achieved without the gratuitous shedding of Muslim blood.
Damascus’ subjugation has often been depicted as one of the crowning glories of Nur al-Din’s career. Conscious himself of its significance, he began to make extensive use of the title al-Malik al ‘Adil (The Just King). The notion also gained currency that his overthrow of another Islamic polity was a necessary precursor to the waging of holy war against the Franks. One Aleppan chronicler later wrote that ‘from this point forward, Nur al-Din dedicated himself to jihad’.
This view of events does not bear close scrutiny. Nur al-Din probably did have a real aversion to killing fellow Muslims, but he also seems to have been keenly aware of his clemency’s value in practical and propaganda terms. More importantly, despite having drawn upon anti-Latin sentiment to legitimise and empower his campaign against Burid Damascus, Nur al-Din launched no new jihadi offensive after 1154. The rhetoric had suggested that, with the kingdom of Jerusalem before him, the emir would unleash a wave of scalding aggression against the Franks. In fact, contemporary Arabic testimony reveals that Nur al-Din actually followed up his occupation of Damascus by agreeing new peace treaties with Latin Palestine. On 28 May 1155, ‘terms of truce were agreed’ with Jerusalem for one year. In November 1156 the pact was renewed for another year, this time with the stipulation ‘that the tribute paid to [the Franks] from Damascus should be 8,000 dinars of Tyre’. Far from being focused upon holy war after 1154, Nur al-Din actually spent most of his time acquiring more Muslim-held territory–subjugating Baalbek and capitalising upon the death of Ma‘sud, the Seljuq sultan of Anatolia, to absorb lands in the north. The treaties and tribute payments to the Christians, so disparaged in years gone by, now served to secure Nur al-Din’s Damascene lands.15
Damascus–‘Paradise of the Orient’
Nur al-Din’s seizure of Damascus may not have heralded an immediate jihadi revival, but it did mark a watershed in Zangid history. The dynasty now ruled Syria’s greatest city–what one twelfth-century Muslim pilgrim described as the ‘Paradise of the Orient…the seal of the lands of Islam’. Damascus is one of the oldest permanently inhabited settlements on Earth, with a history stretching back to c. 9000 BCE.
At Damascus’ heart stood the Grand Umayyad Mosque–perhaps the most awe-inspiring Muslim structure of the age. Built on the site of a Roman Christian church dedicated to John the Baptist (which itself had replaced a massive Temple of Jupiter), the Grand Mosque was constructed on the orders of Caliph al-Walid in the early eighth century, at the extraordinary cost of full seven years’ income from the Damascene treasury. Located within a huge rectangular walled compound–measuring some 525 feet by 320 feet–the lavishly decorated prayer hall was reached via an expansive courtyard whose walls displayed mosaic tableaux of unparalleled scale and magnificence: forty tonnes of glass were used in their creation. Although somewhat altered by centuries of damage and rebuilding (particularly after suffering significant fire damage in 1893), the Grand Mosque still can be visited today. The twelfth-century Iberian Muslim pilgrim Ibn Jubayr wrote lyrically, and at great length, about its ‘perfection of construction, marvellous and sumptuous embellishment and decoration’, describing its mihrab (prayer niche) as ‘the most wonderful in Islam for its beauty and rare art’.
As the home of this wondrous mosque, Damascus was revered as a site of particular devotional significance within Islam. The city’s sanctity was further enhanced by the presence nearby of a number of cave shrines–including one that was supposedly the birthplace of Abraham and another said to have been visited by Moses, Jesus, Lot and Job (all recognised as prophets in Islam). Members of Muhammad’s family and inner circle had also been buried at Damascus, and, in addition, some believed that the Messiah himself would descend to Earth on the Day of Judgement by the city’s ‘white minaret’, upon the East Gate.
Imbued as it was with historic and spiritual significance, the Damascus conquered by Nur al-Din in 1154 needed rejuvenation. The emir set to work, fortifying the Seljuq citadel, west of the Grand Mosque (originally dating from the late eleventh century), and repaired and bolstered the city walls. With the advent of stable Zangid rule, the Damascene populace, which had declined in number to around 40,000, soon began to increase. Commerce was also stimulated and the Arab visitor al-Idrisi now remarked that:
Damascus contains all manner of good things, and streets of various craftsmen, with [merchants selling] all sorts of silk and brocades of exquisite rarity and wonderful workmanship…That which they make here is carried into all cities and borne in ships to all quarters, and all the capitals both far and near…The city itself is the most lovely in all Syria and the most perfect for beauty.16
It is little wonder that, over time, Nur al-Din gradually shifted his seat of power from Aleppo to Damascus. Thus, while Shirkuh was appointed initially as the city’s governor, after 1157 Damascus was confirmed as the new capital of Nur al-Din’s expanding realm, and promoted as a focal point of Abbasid Sunni orthodoxy.
CHALLENGES
The 1150s saw little material advance for Islam in the jihad against the Franks. Even as Nur al-Din sought to subjugate Damascus, the Latins were enjoying their own renewal of fortune. Now confirmed as sole ruler, King Baldwin III swiftly scored a deeply significant victory for Jerusalem. For the last half-century the port of Ascalon had remained in Fatimid hands, offering the Muslim rulers of Egypt a strategic and economic foothold in southern Palestine. In 1150 Baldwin had overseen the construction of a fortress to the south of Ascalon, atop the ruins of the ancient settlement of Gaza, thus severing the Muslim port’s landward communications with Cairo. In January 1153 the young king mustered the full force of his armies to descend on Ascalon itself, finally securing its surrender after a hard-fought, eight-month siege. What once had been the Fatimid gateway to the Holy Land now became a vital stepping stone for the further expansion of Latin ambitions southwards, towards Egypt itself. The consequences of this victory would be felt keenly in the years to come.
The principality of Antioch was also rejuvenated. After four years of sole rule, the young Princess Constance of Antioch at last settled upon a husband, although her chosen spouse brought neither wealth nor power to the match. In spring 1153 she wed Reynald of Châtillon, a handsome young French knight and crusader of aristocratic birth but limited material means. Having fought alongside Baldwin III in the early stages of Ascalon’s siege, he gained the king’s permission, as his overlord and Constance’s guardian, for the union. Antioch’s new prince soon revealed his mercurial nature. Having first furthered Byzantine interests by moving against the rising power of the Armenian Roupenid warlord Thoros (Leon I’s son) in Cilicia, Reynald promptly allied with Thoros to lead a vicious raid on the Greek-held island of Cyprus. Often criticised by contemporaries and modern historians alike for his reckless ambition, lack of diplomacy and tempestuous brutality, Reynald nonetheless proved to be a formidable warrior who, in time, would offer staunch opposition to Islam.
The revitalisation of Jerusalem and Antioch meant that Nur al-Din faced pressure in two key frontier zones. In the north, events centred on Harim. Nur al-Din’s control of this outpost–just a day’s march from Antioch itself–since 1149 had all but neutralised the Frankish principality as a threat to Aleppo. In 1156 the Latins began conducting raids into its suburbs, but for now these were driven back successfully. Nur al-Din even had the grim pleasure of triumphantly parading the heads of Christians taken in these encounters through the streets of Damascus. Meanwhile, to the south, Baldwin III broke his truce with Nur al-Din in 1157, hoping to extend Jerusalemite authority over the Terre de Sueth. A series of largely inconclusive skirmishes followed, particularly in the region of Frankish-held Banyas, although the Latin king narrowly avoided capture in June 1157 when caught in an ambush.
Around this time, however, events conspired to curtail Nur al-Din’s capabilities. Syria had always been prone to earthquakes and now, in the late 1150s, the region was subjected to a succession of severe tremors, gravely damaging many Muslim-held settlements in the area between Aleppo and Homs. A contemporary chronicler in Damascus described how ‘continuous earthquakes and shocks…wrought destruction amongst the [Muslims’] castles, fortresses and dwellings in their districts and marches’. Throughout this dreadful period, Nur al-Din was forced to commit the bulk of his resources to rebuilding work, much of which was frustratingly undone by renewed seismic activity.
Then, in October 1157, Nur al-Din was struck down by a critical illness while lodging in the Summaq. The exact nature of this malady is unknown, but it was so extreme that the great emir soon began to fear for his life. Carried by litter to Aleppo, he quickly made arrangements for his will, designating one of his brothers, Nusrat al-Din, as heir and lord of Aleppo, while Shirkuh was to hold Damascus as his subject. Despite these provisions, civil unrest soon racked Muslim Syria, and Nur al-Din’s condition deteriorated throughout the autumn. Although he survived this first onslaught, his health seems to have remained fragile and, in late 1158, he was again laid low for months by acute sickness, this time in Damascus. Unfortunately, we lack the close eyewitness testimony to gauge accurately the impact of these brushes with death upon Nur al-Din’s state of mind. He is said to have experienced a spiritual awakening in these years, hereafter embracing a more ascetic lifestyle and adopting simpler garb. It is certainly true that, in spite of ongoing Levantine tensions, he took the time to perform the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, in late 1161.17
External threats
Spies soon brought the enemy word of Nur al-Din’s debility–it was even rumoured that he was perhaps already dead–and the Franks quickly sought to exploit the confusion gripping the emir’s lands. Their strength was reinforced by the presence of Count Thierry of Flanders, a powerful western noble and veteran of the Second Crusade, who once again had taken the cross and come east. In the autumn of 1157 his troops joined an amalgamated Christian army–with elements from Antioch, Tripoli and Jerusalem and an Armenian force under Thoros–in marching on Shaizar. After a short siege the lower town fell, and the allies appeared to be on the brink of overrunning the citadel when a bitter argument erupted. Hoping to harness Thierry’s wealth and resources for Outremer’s defence, Baldwin III had promised the count hereditary lordship of Shaizar, but Reynald of Châtillon disputed the legality of this plan, claiming that the town belonged to Antioch. With neither side willing to back down, the Christian offensive ground to a halt and, amid mutual recriminations, the allies abandoned the siege, forsaking a rare opportunity to reassert Frankish authority over the southern Orontes. Despite this reversal, the Latins managed to regroup in early 1158. Gathering at Antioch they targeted Harim and, after an energetic siege, forced the surrender of its citadel. On this occasion there was no argument over rights and the town was returned to the principality, thereby restoring a measure of security to its eastern borders.
Byzantium also re-emerged as a force in the Near East in the period. Greek influence in the region had been in abeyance since the death of Emperor John Comnenus in 1143. Power had passed to his son, Manuel, who, after the debacle of the Second Crusade, had been preoccupied with affairs in Italy and the Balkans. In the late 1150s Manuel sought to restore relations with the Franks after the ill will and suspicion engendered in 1147–8–reaffirming imperial authority in Antioch and Cilicia, and establishing closer ties with Frankish Palestine. Marriage alliances were the foundation of this process. In September 1158, King Baldwin III wed a highly placed member of the Comneni dynasty, Manuel’s niece Theodora. She brought with her a lavish dowry in gold. The emperor then took the further step of marrying Bohemond III’s sister, Maria of Antioch, in December 1161.
For Nur al-Din the implication of these unions was at once obvious and disquieting: the ancient eastern Christian opponent of Islam, Byzantium, would again be directing its legendary might towards the Levant. And, while the Latins stood as both a threat and annoyance to his ambitions, the lord of Aleppo and Damascus appears to have seen in the Greeks a more enduring and intractable menace. Awe, apprehension and resolution thus fused to condition Nur al-Din’s response when Manuel Comnenus led a huge army into northern Syria in October 1158.
That autumn the emperor received Reynald of Châtillon’s submission, accepting his penance for the recent assault on Cyprus, and brought the increasingly independent Roupenid Armenians to heel. In April 1159, with his recalcitrant subjects cowed, Manuel rode, in full majesty, through the gates of Antioch, surrounded by his resplendent Varangian Guard, attended by his servant, Prince Reynald. Even King Baldwin showed his humility by following some distance behind, mounted, but unadorned by any symbols of office. The message was obvious: as ruler of the eastern Mediterranean’s Christian superpower, Manuel’s eminence was unparalleled. Should he wish, he might carve a swathe through Syria.
Nur al-Din, only now in spring 1159 recovering from his second bout of infirmity, took this threat to heart, summoning troops from as far afield as Mosul to fight under the banner of jihad and strengthening Aleppo’s fortifications. Even so, when the Christian armies assembled at Antioch in May under Manuel’s leadership, readying themselves for a direct assault on Aleppo itself, the Muslims must have been significantly outnumbered. On the brink of such a dreadful confrontation a more bluntly bellicose Seljuq lord, of Zangi’s ilk, might simply have embraced the coming struggle with proud defiance, and likely suffered decimation. In his dealings with Damascus, however, Nur al-Din had shown a gift for the subtleties of diplomacy. Now he set out to test Manuel’s commitment to the prosecution of a costly campaign on Byzantium’s far-eastern frontier. Dispatching envoys, Nur al-Din proposed a truce, offering to free some 6,000 Latin prisoners captured during the Second Crusade and to support the Greek Empire against the Seljuqs of Anatolia. To the dismay of his Frankish allies, the emperor quickly agreed these terms, ordering the immediate cessation of his campaign.
This startling turn of events is profoundly instructive. Manuel’s behaviour could perhaps have been predicted–once again the interests of Byzantium had been prioritised above those of Outremer. But Nur al-Din’s conduct revealed that he was no intransigentjihadi ideologue, bent upon conflict with Christendom. Instead, he had employed pragmatism to defuse a confrontation with one of Islam’s true global rivals. Amid the dealings between Nur al-Din and Manuel, the crusader states almost seemed like an insignificant sideshow.
Throughout these years Nur al-Din’s actions suggest that, in spite of his apparent spiritual awakening and emergent patronage of jihad propaganda, he continued to view Latin Outremer as simply one opponent among many within the complex and entangled matrix of Near and Middle Eastern power politics. At the start of the 1160s, he made no concerted attempt to exert direct military or diplomatic pressure on the Franks–indeed, the emir allowed two opportunities for action to pass by. In 1160 Reynald of Châtillon was captured by one of Nur al-Din’s lieutenants and imprisoned in Aleppo (where he would remain for the next fifteen years), but rather than exploit a period of Antiochene weakness as the young Bohemond III came to power, Nur al-Din elected to agree a new two-year truce with Jerusalem. Then, in early 1163, when King Baldwin III died of illness aged just thirty-three, Nur al-Din again failed to react. One Latin chronicler put this down to the emir’s innate sense of honour, writing that:
When it was suggested to [him] that while we were occupied with the funeral ceremonies he might invade and lay waste the land of his enemies, he is said to have responded, ‘We should sympathise with their grief and in pity spare them, because they have lost a prince such as the rest of the world does not possess today.’
This quote from William of Tyre reflects the archbishop’s deep-seated admiration for Baldwin III, but Arabic sources give no indication that Nur al-Din’s decision making was influenced by compassion at this point. In part, his inaction can be explained by the fact that he had begun, as we shall see, to direct his attention south, towards Egypt. But it was also a function of his continuing preoccupations in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, and of his failure to prioritise the jihad against the Franks.18
TRIAL AND TRIUMPH
From the spring of 1163 onwards, however, Nur al-Din’s perception of his own role within the war for the Holy Land seems to have altered, prompting a deepening of his commitment to the cause. In May the emir led a raiding party into the county of Tripoli’s northern reaches, making camp in the Bouqia valley–the broad plain between the Ansariyah Mountains to the north and Mount Lebanon to the south. News of his whereabouts spread, and the Franks of Antioch, recently reinforced by a group of pilgrims from Aquitaine and by Greek soldiers, decided to launch an attack under the command of the Templar Gilbert of Lacy.
Oblivious to this threat, an advance party of Zangid troops were shocked to see a large Christian army marching out of the foothills of the Ansariyah range. After a brief skirmish they were put to flight and raced back towards Nur al-Din’s main encampment, hotly pursued by the enemy. A Muslim chronicler later described how the two forces ‘arrived together’, so that, overcome by surprise, ‘the Muslims were unable to mount their horses and take up their weapons before the Franks were amongst them, killing and capturing many’. A Latin contemporary recorded that ‘[Nur al-Din’s] army was almost annihilated [while] the prince himself, in despair of his very life, fled in utter confusion. All the baggage and even his sword were abandoned. Barefooted and mounted on a beast of burden, he barely escaped capture.’ Muslim sources confirm the scale of this defeat and the ignominy of Nur al-Din’s retreat, adding that, in his desperation, he mounted a steed whose legs were still hobbled and was saved only by the bravery of one of his Kurds, who rushed in to sever the tether at the cost of his own life.
Stunned and humiliated, Nur al-Din scuttled back to Homs with a handful of survivors. The horror of this unheralded disaster seems to have left a scar on his psyche and the nature of his reaction over the coming months is revealing. Filled with rage and impassioned determination, he is said to have vowed: ‘By God, I shall not shelter under any roof until I avenge myself and Islam.’ We might suspect this to be pure invective, but it was followed by practical action. At significant cost, Nur al-Din paid for the replacement of all weapons, equipment and horses out of his own purse–a responsibility not usually shouldered by Muslim warlords–so that ‘the army was restored as if it had not suffered any defeat’. He also ordered that the lands of any slain soldiers be passed on to their families, rather than reverting to his control. Most strikingly, when the Franks sought, later that year, to agree a truce, the emir flatly refused.19
Nur al-Din now sought to build a coalition with the Muslims of Iraq and the Jazira, gathering a mighty army to prosecute a retaliatory attack on the Latins. Stories of his devout dedication to ‘fasting and praying’ spread through the Near East, and he also began actively recruiting the support of ascetics and holy men throughout Syria and Mesopotamia, urging them to publicise the Latins’ manifold crimes against Islam. The impetus of jihad was gathering pace.
By the following summer, Nur al-Din was ready to strike, and his strategic objectives were audacious. Numerical estimates of his forces have not survived, but we know that he was followed by troops from his own Syrian territories as well as those from the eastern cities of Mosul, Diyar Bakr, Hisn Kifr and Mardin. He must have been confident about the strength of his army, because he set out both to make territorial conquests and to lure the Christians into a decisive battle. Nur al-Din advanced on Harim, which had remained in Antiochene hands since 1158, laying siege to its citadel and initiating a bombardment campaign with siege engines. As he must have expected, the Franks soon sought to make a counter-attack. In early August 1164 an army probably in excess of 10,000 men, including some 600 knights, marched from Antioch under the command of Prince Bohemond III, Count Raymond III of Tripoli and Joscelin III of Courtenay, alongside Thoros of Armenia and the Greek governor of Cilicia.
At news of their approach, Nur al-Din marched his army to the nearby Latin-held settlement of Artah, on the Antiochene plain, hoping to draw his enemy further away from the security of Antioch. Then, on 11 August, when the Christian allies made a nervous feint towards Harim, he closed to engage their forces on open ground. As the battle began, Nur al-Din’s right flank made a feigned retreat, tempting the Latin knights into a hasty charge. Left isolated and vulnerable, the Christian infantry faced a ruinous assault and were swiftly overrun. With the tide of the battle moving in the Muslims’ favour, the mounted Frankish elite reversed their headlong advance, only to find themselves enveloped as Nur al-Din’s right wing halted its supposed flight to ‘[come] back on their heels’, and his centre turned to engage them at close quarters. An Arabic chronicle described how ‘[the Christians’] spirits sank and they saw that they were lost, left in the middle, surrounded on all sides by the Muslims’. Aghast, a Latin contemporary conceded that: ‘Overwhelmed and shattered by the swords of the enemy, [the Franks] were shamefully slain like victims before the altar…Regardless of honour all threw down their arms precipitately and ignominiously begged for life.’ Thoros fled the field, but ‘to save their lives even at the cost of shame and reproach’, Bohemond, Raymond and Joscelin all surrendered; ‘chained liked the lowest slaves, they were led ignominiously to Aleppo, where they were cast into prison and became the sport of the infidels’.
Nur al-Din’s victory was absolute, the revenge for Bouqia sweet. He had thrashed the Syrian Franks, reaping an unprecedented harvest of high-level captives. Within days he returned to Harim which, now cut off from all hope of reinforcement, promptly surrendered. From this time onwards the town would remain in Muslim hands, leaving the principality of Antioch cowering behind an eastern frontier that had been definitively driven back to the River Orontes. Just as in 1149, after his triumph at Inab, Nur al-Din chose not to target the city of Antioch itself. The chronicler Ibn al-Athir later explained that the emir was deterred by the strength of its citadel and, more revealingly, by his reluctance to provoke a counter-attack from Antioch’s overlord, Emperor Manuel, quoting Nur al-Din as saying, ‘To have Bohemond as a neighbour I find preferable to being a neighbour of the ruler of Constantinople.’ With this in mind, he soon agreed to release the young Antiochene prince in return for a hefty ransom; he refused, however, to give Raymond of Tripoli, Joscelin of Courtenay or his other princely prisoner, Reynald of Châtillon, their freedom.20
In October 1164 Nur al-Din turned his attention to the southern frontier with Jerusalem. There the pivotal town of Banyas was vulnerable, because its lord, the Constable Humphrey of Toron, was in Egypt with the king of Jerusalem. The emir moved in with heavy siege weaponry and began an investment, deploying a combination of incessant bombardment and sapping to weaken the fortress and break the will of its small garrison. Bribes may also have been used to buy off Banyas’ commander. Within a few days, surrender on terms of safe conduct was secured and Nur al-Din installed his own well-supplied troops. Just as at Harim, the conquest of Banyas proved to be a permanent gain for Islam. The significance of this turning point in the regional balance of power was reflected in the punitive terms Nur al-Din now imposed on the Franks of Galilee–a share of the revenues of Tiberias and an annual tribute payment. Three years later, the emir followed up this success by destroying the Latin fortress at Chastel Neuf. This opened up a new corridor into Frankish Palestine, through the area of rolling hills known as Marj Ayun, between the Litani valley and the Upper Jordan. There could now be no question that Nur al-Din posed a real threat to Outremer.
THE DREAM OF JERUSALEM
Nur al-Din’s actions in the 1160s suggest that he had adopted a more determined and aggressive stance in his dealings with the Franks, embracing and promoting an active jihad against them. Ever since his occupation of Damascus in 1154, Nur al-Din had sponsored a monumental building programme within the city, rejuvenating and reaffirming its status as one of the Near East’s great centres of power and civilisation. This began almost immediately, with the construction of a new hospital, the Bimaristan–soon to become one of the world’s leading centres of medical science and treatment–and a luxurious bathhouse, the Hammam Nur al-Din, which remains largely unaltered and can be visited to this day.
From the late 1150s onwards, however, these public works seem to have been increasingly imbued with a devotional dimension; one inspired by and/or designed to aver Nur al-Din’s deepening sense of personal piety and his preoccupation with Sunni orthodoxy. In 1163 he financed the building of a new House of Justice, where he later sat for two days each week to hear the grievances of his subjects. This was followed by the construction of the Dar al-hadith al-Nuriyya–a new centre dedicated to the study of the life and traditions associated with Muhammad–headed by Nur al-Din’s close friend, the renowned scholar Ibn ‘Asakir, which the emir attended in person.
To promote Damascus as a hub of Sunni Islam, Nur al-Din built a new suburb, to the west of the city, to house pilgrims en route to Mecca, and in 1159 he founded the town of al-Salihiyya, just over one mile to the north, to shelter refugees from Palestine. Nur al-Din’s Damascene court soon drew in experts in the fields of governance, law and warfare from across the Muslim world. Among them was the Persian intellectual Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, who would later write some of the most illuminating and lyrical Arabic histories of this era. Educated in Baghdad, he joined the emir as a katib (secretary/scholar) in 1167, later describing his new patron as ‘the most chaste, pious, sagacious, pure and virtuous of kings’.
Throughout this period, Nur al-Din projected an image of himself as a devoted Muslim, the reviver of Sunni law and orthodoxy. Revealingly, the most potent and portable propaganda tool available to Nur al-Din–the coins he issued–bore the inscription ‘The Just King’. From the early 1160s, however, he appears to have placed greater emphasis upon the role of jihad in his rule, proclaiming his virtues as a heroic mujahid in inscriptions adorning public monuments. The pre-eminent position of Jerusalem within the framework of jihad ideology also began to crystallise in this period. The emir’s colleague Ibn ‘Asakir helped to revitalise the tradition of writing texts extolling the Holy City’s virtues and took to reciting these works to large public gatherings in Damascus. Poets in Nur al-Din’s court composed widely disseminated works stressing the need not only to attack the Latins but also to reconquer Islam’s third city. One wrote encouraging his patron to wage war on the Franks ‘until you see Jesus fleeing from Jerusalem’. Ibn al-Qaysarani, who had also served Zangi, announced his wish that ‘the city of Jerusalem be purified by the shedding of blood’, proclaiming that ‘Nur al-Din is as strong as ever and the iron of his lance is directed at the Aqsa.’ The emir himself wrote to the caliph in Baghdad of his desire ‘to banish the worshippers of the Cross from the Aqsa mosque’.
One further piece of evidence attests to Jerusalem’s increasingly central role, both within the ideology propagated by Nur al-Din and, perhaps, within his own heartfelt ambitions. In 1168–9, he commissioned the master carpenter al-Akharini to carve a fabulously ornate minbar (wooden pulpit) that the emir hoped to place in the Aqsa mosque once the Holy City was retaken. Some years later, the Iberian Muslim traveller Ibn Jubayr remarked on the pulpit’s extraordinary beauty when he passed through the Levant, asserting that its grandeur was unrivalled in the medieval world. This minbar was undoubtedly intended as a potent and public declaration of intent, emblazoned as it was with the description of the emir as ‘the fighter of jihad in His path, the one who defends [the frontiers] against the enemies of His religion, the just king, Nur al-Din, the pillar of Islam and the Muslims, the dispenser of justice’. Yet, in some respects, it must in addition be viewed as an intensely personal, almost humble, offering to God, for it was also inscribed with the simple, emotive appeal: ‘May He grant conquest to [Nur al-Din] and at his own hands.’ Upon its completion, the emir installed the pulpit in Aleppo’s Great Mosque, where, according to Imad al-Din, it lay ‘sheathed like a sword in the scabbard’, awaiting the day of victory, when Nur al-Din might achieve the dream of Jerusalem’s recovery.21
How then should Nur al-Din be regarded? Do his attacks on the Franks after the humiliation at Bouqia and his dissemination of jihad ideology prove that he was possessed by an unequivocal commitment to holy war? Can the emir’s own words, recorded in the Damascus Chronicle, be taken at face value? He was said to have declared:
I seek nothing but the good of the Muslims and to make war against the Franks…[If] we aid one another in waging the holy war, and matters are arranged harmoniously and with a single eye to the good, my desire and purpose will be fully achieved.22
There was a marked difference between Nur al-Din’s approach and focus in the 1140s and his activities in the 1160s. Comparison with the methods and achievements of his father Zangi is striking. But question marks and caveats remain. Given the context, and the complexities of human nature, any expectation of a singular solution–in which Nur al-Din was either wholly dedicated to jihad or purely self-serving–is surely flawed. Just as the Christian First Crusaders appear to have been moved by a mixture of piety and greed, Nur al-Din may well have recognised the political and military value of championing a religious cause, while still being impelled by authentic devotion. As upstart Turkish warlords in a Near and Middle Eastern world still underpinned by Arab and Persian elites, the Zangids’ need for social, religious and political legitimation must have been pressing.
In the course of the twelfth century the notion of a rebirth of Islamic jihad took hold in the Levant, and this process accelerated almost exponentially during Nur al-Din’s career. In 1105, when the Damascene preacher al-Sulami extolled the virtues of holy war, few responded. By the late 1160s the atmosphere in Damascus and Aleppo was transformed–Nur al-Din may well have cultivated and inspired this fervour; at the very least, he understood that a message emphasising the spiritual dimension of the struggles against Sunni Islam’s enemies now would find a receptive audience.