As if to confirm the fears of the Occidentals, Zangī returned to Syria after his victory, giving rise to rumours that he was preparing a broad offensive against the major cities held by the Franj. At first, these projects were greeted with enthusiasm in the cities of Syria. But gradually the Damascenes began to wonder about the atabeg’s real intentions, for he had settled in Baalbek, just as he had done in 1139, and was busy building siege machinery. Was it not perhaps Damascus itself that he intended to attack, using the jihād as a pretext?
We will never know, for in January 1146, just as his preparations for a spring offensive seemed complete, Zangī found himself compelled to turn north again. His spies had informed him that a plot to massacre the Turkish garrison had been hatched by Joscelin of Edessa and some of his Armenian friends who had remained in the city. The atabeg took the situation in hand immediately upon his return to the conquered city, executing the supporters of the former count. Then, in an effort to strengthen the anti-Franj party within the population, he moved in three hundred Jewish families of whose indefectible support he was certain.
This alert, however, convinced Zangī that it would be better to renounce any attempt to extend his domain, temporarily at least, and to concentrate on consolidating it instead. In particular, an Arab emir who controlled the powerful fortress of Jābar, situated on the Euphrates along the main route from Aleppo to Mosul, had refused to recognize the atabeg’s authority. Since this insubordination could easily threaten communications between Zangī’s two capitals, he laid siege to Jābar in June 1146. He hoped to take it in a few days, but the enterprise proved more difficult than expected. Three long months passed, and the resistance of the besieged forces failed to weaken.
One night in September the atabeg fell asleep after imbibing a great quantity of alcohol. Suddenly he was awakened by a noise in his tent. When he opened his eyes, he saw one of his eunuchs, a man of Frankish origin named Yarankash, drinking wine from his own goblet. This infuriated the atabeg, who swore he would punish the eunuch severely the following day. Fearing the wrath of his master, Yarankash waited for him to fall asleep again, and then riddled his body with dagger-strokes and fled to Jābar, where gifts were lavished upon him.
Zangī did not die immediately. As he lay half-conscious, one of his close aides entered his tent. Ibn al-Athīr reports his testimony:
When he saw me, the atabeg thought that I had come to finish him off, and with a gesture of his finger, he asked for the coup de grâce. Choked with emotion, I fell to my knees and said to him, ‘Master, who did this to you?’ But he was unable to answer, and gave up his soul, may God have mercy on him!
Zangī’s tragic death, coming so soon after his triumph, made a deep impression on his contemporaries. Ibn al-Qalānisi commented on the event in verse:
The morning found him sprawled upon his bed, lying where his eunuch had slaughtered him,
And yet he slumbered amidst a proud army, ringed by his braves with their swords.
He perished, neither riches nor power of use to him,
His treasures now the prey of others, by his sons and adversaries dismembered.
At his death did his enemies ride forth, grasping the swords they dared not brandish while he lived.
Indeed, when Zangī died there was a mad dash for the spoils. His soldiers, so well-disciplined only a short time ago, now became a horde of uncontrollable plunderers. His treasury, his arsenal, even his personal effects, disappeared in the twinkling of an eye. Then his army began to break up. One after another, the emirs assembled their men and hurried off to occupy some fortress, or to await the sequel of events from some more secure position.
When Mu‘īn al-Dīn ‘Unar learned of the death of his adversary, he immediately led his troops out of Damascus and seized Baalbek, reestablishing his suzerainty over all of central Syria in a few weeks. Raymond of Antioch, reviving what seemed a forgotten tradition, launched a raid under the very walls of Aleppo. Joscelin was plotting to retake Edessa.
The saga of the powerful state founded by Zangī seemed over. In reality, it had only just begun.
Part Four
Victory
(1146 — 1187)
May God grant victory to Islam and not to Maḥmūd. Who is this dog Maḥmūd to merit victory?
NŪR AL-DĪN MAHMŪD
Unifier of the Arab East
(1117–1174)
8
Nūr al-Dīn, the Saint-King
Only one man remained unruffled amidst the confusion that reigned in Zangī’s camp. He was twenty-nine years old, a tall man with dark skin, clean-shaven but for a goatee, his forehead broad, his expression gentle and serene. He approached the still-warm body of the atabeg and, trembling, took his hand and removed his signet ring, symbol of power, slipping it onto his own finger. His name was Nūr al-Dīn, Zangī’s second son.
I have read the biographies of the sovereigns of old, and other than among the first caliphs I have found no man as virtuous and just as Nūr al-Dīn. Ibn al-Athīr virtually worshipped this prince, and with good reason. For although Zangī’s son had inherited his father’s qualities of austerity, courage, and statesmanship, he had none of the defects that made the atabeg so odious to some of his contemporaries. Where Zangī struck fright with his truculence and complete lack of scruples, Nūr al-Dīn, from his very first appearance on the scene, managed to cultivate the image of a pious, reserved, and just man, one who kept his word and was thoroughly devoted to the jihād against the enemies of Islam.
Even more important—and herein lay his genius—he was able to weld these virtues into a formidable political weapon. As far back as the middle of the twelfth century, he understood the invaluable role of psychological mobilization, and he therefore built a genuine propaganda apparatus. Several hundred men of letters, religious figures for the most part, were entrusted with the mission of winning the active sympathy of the people and of thereby forcing the leaders of the Arab world to flock to his banner. Ibn al-Athīr reports the complaint of an emir of Jazīra who was ‘invited’ by the son of Zangī to participate in a campaign against the Franj.
If I do not rush to Nūr al-Dīn’s aid, the emir said, he will strip me of my domain, for he has already written to the devotees and ascetics to request the aid of their prayers and to encourage them to incite the Muslims to jihād. At this very moment, each of these men sits with his disciples and companions reading Nūr al-Dīn’s letters, weeping and cursing me. If I am to avoid anathema, I must accede to his request.
Nūr al-Dīn supervised his corps of propagandists personally. He would commission poems, letters, and books, and always took care that they were released at the time when they would produce the desired effect. The principles he preached were simple: a single religion, Sunni Islam, which meant a determined struggle against all the various ‘heresies’; a single state that would encircle the Franj on all fronts; a single objective, jihād, to reconquer the occupied territories and above all to liberate Jerusalem. During his 28-year reign, Nūr al-Dīn would call upon various ‘ulamā’ to write treatises hailing the merits of al-Quds, the holy city, and public readings were organized in the mosques and schools.
On these occasions, no one ever omitted to eulogize the supreme mujāhid, the irreproachable Muslim Nūr al-Dīn. But this cult of the personality was unusually effective and clever in that it was based, paradoxically, on the humility and austerity of the son of Zangī.
According to Ibn al-Athīr:
Nūr al-Dīn’s wife once complained that she did not have enough money to provide adequately for his needs. He had assigned her three shops which he owned in Homs; these generated about twenty dinars a year. When she found that this was not enough, he retorted: ‘I have nothing else. With all the money I command, I am but the treasurer of the Muslims, and I have no intention of betraying them, nor of casting myself into the fires of hell on your account.’
Such words, very widely broadcast, proved especially embarrassing to the princes of the region, who
lived in luxury and squeezed their subjects to wring every last pittance out of them. In fact, Nūr al-Dīn’s propaganda laid heavy emphasis on the taxes he abolished in the lands subject to his authority.
If he embarrassed his adversaries, the son of Zangī was often no less exacting with his own emirs. As time went on, he became increasingly strict about religious precepts. Not content with forswearing alcohol himself, he forbade his army to partake in it, or to have any truck with ‘the tambourine, the flute, and other objects displeasing to God’, as Kamāl al-Dīn, the chronicler of Aleppo, explains, adding: Nūr al-Dīn abandoned luxurious garments and instead covered himself with rough cloth. The Turkish officers, who were accustomed to heavy drinking and sumptuous adornments, were not always comfortable with this master who smiled so rarely and whose favourite company seemed to be turbaned ‘ulamā'.
Even less reassuring to the emirs was the son of Zangī’s tendency to dispense with his title, Nūr al-Dīn (‘light of religion’), in favour of his first name, Maḥmūd. ‘O God’, he would pray before battle, ‘grant victory to Islam and not to Maḥmūd. Who is this dog Maḥmūd to merit victory?’ Such manifestations of humility won him the sympathy of the weak and pious, but the powerful considered them simply hypocritical. It appears, however, that he was sincere in his convictions, although his public image was undoubtedly confected in part. In any event, he obtained results: it was Nūr al-Dīn who turned the Arab world into a force capable of crushing the Franj, and it was his lieutenant Saladin who reaped the fruits of victory.
Upon the death of his father, Nūr al-Dīn succeeded in assuming control of Aleppo—not much compared to the enormous domain conquered by the atabeg, but the very modesty of his initial realm itself assured the glory of his reign. Zangī had spent most of his life fighting against the caliphs, sultans, and various emirates of Iraq and Jazīra. His son would be unencumbered by this exhausting and ungrateful task. Leaving Mosul and its adjoining region to his older brother Sayf al-Dīn, with whom he maintained cordial relations, thereby ensuring that he could count on a powerful friend on his eastern border, Nūr al-Dīn devoted himself to Syrian affairs.
Nevertheless; his position was far from comfortable when he arrived in Aleppo in September 1146, accompanied by his close confidant the Kurdish emir Shīrkūh, uncle of Saladin. Once again the city lived in fear of the knights of Antioch, and at the end of October, even before Nūr al-Dīn had had time to establish his authority beyond the city walls, he was told that Joscelin had succeeded in retaking Edessa, with the aid of part of the Armenian population. Edessa was not just one more city like those that had been lost since the death of Zangī: it was the very symbol of the atabeg’s glory, and its fall imperilled the whole future of the dynasty. Nūr al-Dīn reacted swiftly. Riding day and night, abandoning exhausted mounts along the way, he arrived at Edessa before Joscelin had had time to organize a defence. The count, whose courage had not been bolstered by his past ordeals, decided to flee at nightfall. His supporters, who tried to follow him, were caught and massacred by the Aleppan cavalry.
The rapidity with which the insurrection had been crushed brought the son of Zangī fresh prestige of which his nascent regime had great need. Drawing the lesson, Raymond of Antioch became less enterprising. As for ‘Unar, he quickly offered the ruler of Aleppo the hand of his daughter in marriage.
The marriage contract was drafted in Damascus, Ibn al-Qalānisi explains, in the presence of Nūr al-Dīn’s envoys. Work on the trousseau began immediately, and as soon as it was ready, the envoys left to return to Aleppo.
Nūr al-Dīn’s position in Syria was apparently secure. But Joscelin’s plots, Raymond’s raids, and the intrigues of the old fox in Damascus would soon seem derisory compared to the fresh danger now looming.
Reports kept coming in—from Constantinople, from the territory of the Franj, and from neighbouring lands too—that the kings of the Franj were on their way from their countries to attack the land of Islam. They had emptied their own provinces, leaving them devoid of defenders, and had brought with them riches, treasures, and immeasurable matériel. They numbered, it was said, as many as a million foot-soldiers and cavalry, perhaps even more.
Ibn al-Qalānisi was seventy-five when he wrote those lines, and he undoubtedly remembered that he had had to report a similar event, in scarcely different terms, half a century before.
Indeed, from the outset the second Frankish invasion, provoked by the fall of Edessa, seemed a repetition of the first. Countless fighters were unleashed against Asia Minor in the autumn of 1147, and once again they bore on their backs the two strips of cloth sewn into the form of a cross. As they passed Dorylaeum, where the historic defeat of Kilij Arslan had occurred, the latter’s son Mas‘ūd was waiting for them, seeking revenge fifty years on. He laid a series of ambushes and dealt them some particularly deadly blows. It was constantly said that their forces were being pared down, so that people began to breathe easier. But Ibn al-Qalānisi adds that after all the losses they suffered, the Franj were still said to number about a hundred thousand. Here as elsewhere, the figures should not be taken too literally. Like all his contemporaries, the chronicler of Damascus was no slave to precision, and it would have been impossible for him to verify these estimates in any event. Nevertheless, one should pay tribute in passing to Ibn al-Qalānisi’s scruples, for he adds an ‘it is said’ whenever a figure seems suspect to him. Ibn al-Athīr had no such scruples, but he did take care, when presenting his personal interpretation of some event, to conclude with the words Allāhu ‘aalim, or ‘God alone knows’.
Whatever the exact numerical strength of the new Frankish invaders, there is no doubt that their forces, added to those of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Tripoli, were quite adequate to upset the Arab world, which observed their movements with growing dread. One question arose unflaggingly: which city would they attack first? Logically, they should begin with Edessa. Was it not to avenge its fall that they had come? But they could as well assault Aleppo, striking at the head of the rising power of Nūr al-Dīn. In that event, Edessa would fall almost automatically, In fact, neither was the target. After lengthy disputes among their kings, says Ibn al-Qalānisi, they finally agreed among themselves to attack Damascus, and they were so sure of taking it that they made agreements in advance about how the dependencies would be divided up.
Attack Damascus? The city of Mu‘īn al-Dīn ‘Unar, the only Muslim leader to have signed a treaty of alliance with Jerusalem? The Franj could have done the Arab resistance no greater service. With hindsight, however, it appears that the powerful kings commanding these armies of Franj believed that only the conquest of a prestigious city like Damascus would justify their long journey to the East. The Arab chroniclers speak mainly of Conrad, king of the Germans, never making the slightest mention of the presence of Louis VII, king of France, a personality, it is true, of no great distinction.
As soon as he was informed of the designs of the Franj, Ibn al-Qalānisi reports, the emir Mu‘īn al-Dīn began preparations to defeat their maleficence. He fortified all the points at which an attack might be feared, deployed soldiers along the routes, replenished the wells, and destroyed the water sources in the environs of the city.
On 24 July 1148 the Frankish troops arrived before Damascus, followed by long columns of camels laden with their baggage. The Damascenes poured from their city in their hundreds to confront the invaders. Among them was an aged theologian of Moroccan origin, al-Findalawi.
Upon seeing him walking ahead, Mu‘īn al-Dīn approached him, Ibn al-Athīr reports, greeted him, and said, ‘Venerable old man, your advanced age exempts you from fighting. It is we who will defend the Muslims.’ He asked him to turn back, but al-Findalawi refused, saying: ‘I have sold myself and God has bought me.’ Thus did he refer to the words of the Almighty: ‘God has bought the persons and property of the faithful, and will grant them paradise in return.’ Al-Findalawi marched forward and fought the Franj until he fell under their blows.
Al
-Findalawi’s martyrdom was soon followed by that of another ascetic, a Palestinian refugee named al-Halhuli. But despite these acts of heroism, the advance of the Franj could not be checked. They spread across the plain of Ghūṭa and pitched their tents, coming close to the city walls at several points. On the night of that very first day of battle the Damascenes, fearing the worst, began erecting barricades in the streets.
The next day, 25 July, was a Sunday, Ibn al-Qalānisi reports, and the inhabitants began making sorties at dawn. The battle ceased only at nightfall, by which time everyone was exhausted. Each side then returned to its own positions. The army of Damascus spent the night opposite the Franj, and the citizens stayed posted on the walls watching, for they could see the enemy close by.
On Monday morning the Damascenes took heart, for they saw waves of Turkish, Kurdish, and Arab cavalry arriving from the north. ‘Unar had written to all the princes of the region appealing for reinforcements, and they were now beginning to reach the besieged city. It was reported that Nūr al-Dīn would arrive the following day, at the head of the army of Aleppo, and so would his brother Sayf al-Dīn, with that of Mosul. According to Ibn al-Athīr, at their approach Mu‘īn al-Dīn sent one message to the foreign Franj and another to the Franj of Syria. He addressed the former in the simplest possible terms: The king of the Orient is on his way; if you do not depart, I will hand the city over to him, and you will regret it. For the others, the ‘colons’, he used a different language: Are you now fool enough to aid these people against us? Have you failed to understand that if they take Damascus, they will seek to deprive you of your own cities? As for me, if I am unable to defend the city, I will deliver it to Sayf al-Dīn, and you know very well that if he takes Damascus, you will no longer be able to hold your positions in Syria.