Nur al-Din came to power aged around twenty-eight. He was said to have been ‘a tall, swarthy man with a beard but no moustache, a fine forehead and a pleasant appearance enhanced by beautiful, melting eyes’. In time he would attain power to eclipse even that held by his father, emerging as Latin Christendom’s most feared and respected Muslim adversary in the Near East–a ruler who nurtured and re-energised the cause of Islamic holy war. Even William of Tyre was later moved to describe him as ‘a wise and prudent man and, according to the superstitious traditions of his people, one who feared God’. But in 1146, the emir’s position was precarious and the task set before him all but insurmountable.3
In the wake of Zangi’s assassination, Syria was thrown into disarray. The brutal effectiveness of the atabeg’s despotism now became apparent as lawlessness broke out across large swathes of the Muslim Levant. Even a Damascene contemporary acknowledged that ‘all the towns were in confusion, the roads became unsafe, after enjoying a grateful period of security’. With Nur al-Din’s right and ability to rule as yet unproven, a number of Zangi’s loyal lieutenants realigned their interests. Under pressure from Unur, the de facto ruler of Damascus, the Kurdish warlord Ayyub ibn Shadi surrendered Baalbek and moved to the southern Syrian capital. Nur al-Din retained the support of Aleppo’s Zangid governor, Sawar, and the backing of Ayyub’s brother, Shirkuh, but on balance the young emir’s prospects for success, or even survival, were slim.
As emir of Aleppo, Nur al-Din found himself in control of one of the great cities of the Near East. Already in the twelfth century Aleppo had an almost unimaginably ancient history–the site of human settlement for at least seven thousand years. In physical terms, the metropolis governed by Nur al-Din from 1146 was dominated by an impressive walled citadel, rising out of the heart of the city, atop a steep-sided, 200-foot-high natural hill. One near-contemporary visitor noted that this ‘fortress is renowned for its impregnability and, from far distance seen for its great height, is without like or match among castles’–even today it dominates the modern city. Aleppo’s Great Mosque, a short distance to the west, was founded around 715 under the Umayyads, to which the Seljuqs had added a striking square minaret in the late eleventh century. The city was also a renowned commercial hub, home to a network of covered souqs (markets). Aleppo may not have been Syria’s first city in the twelfth century, but it was a centre of political, military and economic power–as such it offered Nur al-Din a vital platform upon which to build his career.4
In 1146, amidst the chaotic vacuum of power that followed Zangi’s murder, Nur al-Din needed to assert his authority. An opportunity to do just this soon presented itself, as urgent news of a sudden crisis arrived. The Frankish count of Edessa, Joscelin II, was making a desperate attempt to recover his capital. Leading a rapidly assembled force, he had marched on the city in October 1146 and, with the collusion of its native Christian population, breached Edessa’s outer defences by night. The Muslim garrison fled to the heavily fortified citadel and were now closely besieged.
Nur al-Din reacted with urgent resolution, determined to prevent Edessa’s loss to the Franks and to forestall any possibility of westward expansion by his brother Saif al-Din. Mustering thousands of Aleppan troops and Turcoman warriors, the emir prosecuted a lightning forced march through day and night, travelling at such an intense pace ‘that [the Muslims’] horses dropped by the roadsides from fatigue’. This speed paid off. Lacking the manpower and siege engines to overcome the citadel, Joscelin’s troops were still ranged within the lower city when Nur al-Din arrived. Trapped between two forces, the count immediately abandoned the city, escaping at the cost of heavy Latin losses. With Edessa back in his possession, the emir chose to make a blunt demonstration of his ruthless will. Two years earlier, Zangi had spared the city’s eastern Christians; now, as punishment for their ‘connivance’ with the Franks, his son and heir scourged Edessa of their presence. All males were killed, women and children enslaved. One Muslim chronicler remarked that ‘the sword blotted out the existence of all the Christians’, while a shocked Syrian Christian described how, in the aftermath of this massacre, the city ‘was deserted of life: an appalling vision, enveloped in a black cloud, drunk with blood, infected by the cadavers of its sons and daughters’. The once vibrant metropolis remained a desolate backwater for centuries to come.5
Grim as its impact was in Edessa, Nur al-Din’s show of strength helped to cement his rule over Aleppo. On this occasion, the emir had followed his father’s lead in relying upon brute force and fear to impose his authority. Over time, however, Nur al-Din proved capable of employing more subtle modes of governance–from consensual politics to the shaping of public opinion–alongside steely resolve. Like Zangi, he aspired to unite Aleppo and Damascus, but to begin with, at least, the emir cultivated an atmosphere of renewed cooperation with his southern Syrian neighbour. A marriage alliance was arranged between Nur al-Din and Unur of Damascus’ daughter, Ismat. The Aleppan emir also made the magnanimous gesture of releasing a slave girl captured by Zangi at Baalbek in 1138, who had once been Unur’s lover. In the opinion of one Muslim chronicler, ‘this was the most important reason for the friendship between [Nur al-Din and the Damascene]’.
With the rebalancing of power that followed Zangi’s death, Aleppo and Damascus were feeling their way towards a new relationship. No longer fearful of imminent Zangid invasion, Unur’s authority was rejuvenated, and he began to sever his ties as a client ruler of the Franks. When one of his dependants, Altuntash of Bosra, sought to form a breakaway alliance with the kingdom of Jerusalem in spring 1147, Unur moved to intervene. Nur al-Din came south to lend support and together the two beat back a Latin attempt to occupy Bosra. This notable success earned Unur recognition from the rival caliphs of Baghdad and Cairo, with both sending robes of honour and diplomas of investiture. Against this backdrop, Damascus, rather than Aleppo, appeared in 1147 to be the dominant Syrian Muslim polity.
Nur al-Din spent that summer consolidating his position in the north and campaigning on the western border zone with Antioch. Chilling news then put the emir on the defensive. An ‘innumerable’ Latin army was reportedly ‘making for the land of Islam’ it was said that so many Christians had joined the huge force that the West had been left empty and undefended. Alarmed by these tidings, Aleppo, and all its Muslim neighbours, sought to prepare for the Second Crusade, and the coming of a new war.6
COUNTERING THE CRUSADE
Over the next six months, reports of the German and French crusaders’ experiences gradually filtered back to the Near East. One Damascene heard that ‘a vast number of them perished’ in Asia Minor, through ‘killing, disease and hunger’, and by early 1148 it was apparent that Ma‘sud, the Seljuq sultan of Anatolia, had inflicted crippling losses upon the Franks. For Nur al-Din and Unur, anxiously waiting in Aleppo and Damascus, these tidings must have been a welcome, but surprising, relief. Their Turkish neighbours to the north-west–more often rivals than allies over recent decades–had blunted the Christian crusade even before it reached the Levant.
Even so, the danger was not past. That spring, Latin survivors (still numbering in their thousands) began to arrive in the ports of Syria and Palestine. The question now was, where would they strike? Nur al-Din readied Aleppo for an attack and his brother, Saif al-Din, brought reinforcements from Mosul later that summer. Yet against expectations the Frankish offensive, when it finally came in July 1148, was launched to the south against Damascus.
Reaching Antioch that March, King Louis VII of France had quarrelled with Raymond of Antioch. Edessa’s recent devastation scuppered any lingering plans to attempt its immediate reconquest; instead Raymond advocated a campaign targeting Aleppo and Shaizar. The plan had considerable merit, offering an opportunity to strike against Zangid power while Nur al-Din was still consolidating his hold over northern Syria, but the French king rejected the scheme and promptly marched south to Palestine. The causes of Louis’ decision have long been debated. He may have
been short of funds, concerned about King Conrad of Germany’s activities in the Latin kingdom, and keen to fulfil his own pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The heart of the matter, though, was probably a torrid scandal. Upon arriving in Antioch, Louis’ young charismatic wife Eleanor of Aquitaine had spent a great deal of time in the company of her uncle, Prince Raymond. Rumour spread that they had begun a passionate, incestuous affair. Humiliated and appalled, the French monarch was forced to drag his wife out of the city against her will, an act that soured their relationship beyond repair and put an end to any hopes of cooperation between Antioch and the crusaders.
With Conrad having arrived in the Holy Land that April, the French and German contingents regrouped in northern Palestine in early summer. On 24 June a joint Latin council of the leading crusaders and Jerusalem’s High Court was held near Acre to debate a future course of action, and Damascus was chosen as the new target. This decision was once viewed by scholars as an act of near-lunacy, given the Muslim city’s recent alliance with Frankish Palestine and its resistance to Zangid ascendancy. But this view has been rightly challenged on the grounds that Zangi’s death in 1146 reshaped the balance of power in Muslim Syria. Once Jerusalem’s docile pawn against Aleppo, by 1148 Damascus had become a far more threatening and aggressive neighbour. As such, its neutralisation and conquest were a reasonable objective and the city’s seizure might transform Outremer’s prospects for long-term survival.7
In midsummer 1148, the Christian kings of Europe and Jerusalem advanced to Banyas and then marched on Damascus. Unur did his best to prepare the city, strengthening defences and organising troops and militia. Requests for aid were dispatched to his Muslim neighbours, including the Zangids. On 24 July the Franks approached through the dense, richly irrigated orchards south-west of Damascus. These tightly packed copses, enclosed by low mud walls, stretched some five miles from the city’s suburbs. Traversable only via narrow lanes, they had long served as a first natural line of defence. The Muslims did their best to halt the Latin advance, launching skirmishing attacks and incessant arrow volleys from watchtowers and concealed vantage points amidst the trees, but the enemy pressed on.
By day’s end the Franks had established a camp on the open ground in front of the city, from where they had access to the waters of the Barada River. In contrast to the likes of Antioch and Jerusalem, Damascus possessed no great encircling fortifications, but was protected at most by a low outer wall and the crowded jumble of its outlying suburbs. With the Christians now waiting on its very outskirts, the metropolis seemed horribly vulnerable. Unur ordered the streets to be barricaded with huge wooden beams and piles of rubble and, to raise morale, a mass gathering was held in the Grand Umayyad Mosque. One of Damascus’ most sacred treasures, a revered copy of the Koran, once owned by the Caliph ‘Uthman (an early successor to Muhammad), was displayed to the throng ‘and the people sprinkled their heads with ashes and wept tears of supplication’.
For the next three days a desperate struggle was played out, as the Muslims battled to hold back the Franks, and both sides suffered heavy casualties in close, hard-fought combat. Reinforcements from the Biqa valley boosted Muslim resistance and, with the arrival of Nur al-Din and Saif al-Din anticipated, Unur played for time. He appears to have promised to renew tribute payments in return for an end to hostilities. Aware of the rivalries coursing beneath the surface of the Christian coalition, Unur also sought, rather deviously, to sow seeds of doubt and distrust. A message was apparently sent to the crusader kings warning of the Zangids’ approach, while a separate envoy contacted the Levantine Franks, pointing out that their alliance with the westerners would only culminate in the creation of a new adversary in the East, for ‘you know that, if they take Damascus, they will seize the coastal lands that you have in your hands’. The Christian ranks certainly seem to have been plagued by internal tensions, as Latin sources confirm that the Franks began arguing over who should have rights to the city if it fell.
Having made little progress and with doubts surfacing, the Franks held a council of war on the evening of 27 July. A somewhat panicked decision was made to move to the east of the city from where, it was believed, a direct attack might be more easily launched. In fact, this area of Damascus proved to be just as strongly defended, and the Christians now found themselves camped in an exposed, waterless position. Beneath the searing summer sun, their nerve broke. According to one Muslim eyewitness, ‘reports reached the Franks from several quarters of the rapid advance of the Islamic armies to engage in the holy war against them, and they became convinced of their own destruction and the imminence of disaster’. Latin sources murmur of treachery within the army, of pay-offs by Unur and heated recriminations on all sides. On 28 July, the coalition of crusaders and Levantine Franks began an appallingly humiliating retreat, harried by Damascene skirmishers as they fled. King Conrad later wrote that the Christians had ‘retreated in grief with the siege a failure’, while William of Tyre described the crusaders as being ‘covered with confusion and fear’. The French and German kings spoke of plans to launch a second, better-equipped assault against Damascus, or of a possible campaign against Fatimid Ascalon, but no action was taken on either count. Conrad set sail for Europe in September and, after visiting the holy sites, Louis followed his lead in spring 1149. With relief, one Muslim chronicler declared that ‘God saved the believers [in Damascus] from their evil.’8
As far as the Franks were concerned, the main Levantine thrust of the Second Crusade had ended in miserable defeat. After such grand, regal preparations, the Christians’ plans had come to naught and the very concept of Latin holy war was now brought into question. The consequences of this grave setback for the popularity and practice of crusading would be felt long into the future. Despite the protracted debate over the wisdom of the Franks’ decision to besiege Damascus, historians have tended to underplay the crusade’s impact upon Near Eastern Islam. On the surface, the balance of power appeared unchanged–Unur remained in control of Damascus; the Christians had been repelled. But at the critical moment of danger, the Damascenes had been forced to appeal to Aleppo and Mosul. For a brief moment in the mid-1140s, Unur had seemed capable of checking Zangid ascendancy; now, in the aftermath of the Second Crusade, he had to accept an increasingly subservient relationship with Nur al-Din.
The Latin attack on Damascus in 1148 also contributed to a hardening of anti-Frankish sentiment among the wider Damascene populace. Before long, Unur and the Burid ruling elite reopened diplomatic channels with the kingdom of Jerusalem, but local support for the policy of alliance with Palestine was now in terminal decline.
The county of Edessa dismembered
Aleppo had escaped the Second Crusade unscathed and, if anything, the Latin expedition had bolstered Nur al-Din’s position in northern Syria. Certainly the crusade had done nothing to reverse the Zangid gains achieved in the county of Edessa. In the years that followed, the scattered remnants of what had been the first crusader state were gradually picked over by Islam. Facing pressure from three fronts–as Nur al-Din, Ma‘sud of Konya and the Artuqids of Diyar Bakr all vied to seize Edessene territory–Count Joscelin II tried to buy a measure of security by agreeing a submissive truce with Aleppo. But when the count was captured in 1150, Nur al-Din paid scant notice of Joscelin’s supposed status as a client-ally; the Frank was thrown into prison (and possibly blinded) and remained in confinement until his death nine years later.
Zangid supporters made the most of Joscelin’s fall from power. Describing him as ‘an intransigent devil, fierce against the Muslims and cruel’, one Muslim chronicler noted that ‘[the count’s] capture was a blow to all Christendom’. Expanding on this theme, the poet Ibn al-Qaysarani (now a member of Nur al-Din’s court) affirmed that Jerusalem itself would soon be ‘purified’.9
With Joscelin captive, his wife Beatrice sold off the remainder of the Latin county to the Byzantines, prompting a stream of Frankish and eastern Christian refugees to flee to Antioch. The countess sett
led in Palestine, where her children–Joscelin III and Agnes–later became prominent political figures. Even the Greeks proved unable to defend these isolated outposts and, with the fall of Tell Bashir to Nur al-Din’s forces in 1151, the county of Edessa came to a final, irredeemable end. The Zangids had eradicated one of the four crusader states.
8
THE LIGHT OF FAITH
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
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