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Nūr al-Dīn Maḥmūd Zengī (نور الدين محمود زنگي; February 1118 - 15 May 1174), commonly known as Nur ad-Din (lit. "Light of the Faith" in Arabic), was a member of the Oghuz Turkish Zengid dynasty, which ruled the Syrian province (Shām) of the Seljuk Empire. He reigned from 1146 to 1174. He is regarded as an important figure of the Second Crusade.
Nur ad-Din was the second son of Imad ad-Din Zengi, the Turkish atabeg of Aleppo and Mosul, who was a devoted enemy of the crusader presence in Syria. After the assassination of his father in 1146, Nur ad-Din and his older brother Saif ad-Din Ghazi I divided the kingdom between themselves, with Nur ad-Din governing Aleppo and Saif ad-Din Ghazi establishing himself in Mosul. The border between the two new kingdoms was formed by al-Khabur River. Almost as soon as he began his rule, Nur ad-Din attacked the Principality of Antioch, seizing several castles in the north of Syria, while at the same time he defeated an attempt by Joscelin II to recover the County of Edessa, which had been conquered by Zengi in 1144. In 1146, after the Frankish attempt to reoccupy Edessa, Nur ad-Din massacred the local Armenian Christian population of the city and destroyed its fortifications,[a][2] in punishment for assisting Joscelin in this attempt. According to Thomas Asbridge, the women and children of Edessa were enslaved.[3]
Nur ad-Din sought to make alliances with his Muslim neighbours in northern Iraq and Syria in order to strengthen the Muslim front against their Crusader enemies. In 1147, he signed a bilateral treaty with Mu'in ad-Din Unur, governor of Damascus. As part of this agreement, he also married Mu'in ad-Din's daughter Ismat ad-Din Khatun. Together Mu'in ad-Din and Nur ad-Din besieged the cities of Bosra and Salkhad, which had been captured by a rebellious vassal of Mu'in ad-Din named Altuntash, but Mu'in ad-Din was always suspicious of Nur ad-Din's intentions and did not want to offend his former crusader allies in Jerusalem, who had helped defend Damascus against Zengi. To reassure Mu'in ad-Din, Nur ad-Din curtailed his stay in Damascus and turned instead towards the Principality of Antioch, where he was able to seize Artah, Kafar Latha, Basarfut, and Bara.
In 1148, the Second Crusade arrived in Syria, led by Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany. Nur ad-Din's victories and the Crusader's losses in Asia Minor however had made the recovery of Edessa - their original goal - practically impossible. Given that Aleppo was too far off from Jerusalem for an attack and Damascus, recently allied with the Kingdom of Jerusalem against Zengi, had entered into an alliance with Nur ad-Din, the Crusaders decided to attack Damascus, the conquest of which would preclude a combination of Jerusalem's enemies. Mu'in ad-Din reluctantly called for help from Nur ad-Din, but the crusader siege collapsed after only four days.
Nur ad-Din took advantage of the failure of the Crusade to prepare another attack against Antioch. In 1149, he launched an offensive against the territories dominated by the castle of Harim, situated on the eastern bank of the Orontes, after which he besieged the castle of Inab. The Prince of Antioch, Raymond of Poitiers, quickly came to the aid of the besieged citadel. The Muslim army destroyed the Crusader army at the Battle of Inab, during which Raymond was killed, moreover, Raymond's head was sent to Nur ad-Din, who sent it along to the Caliph Al-Muqtafi in Baghdad.[4] Nur ad-Din marched all the way to the coast and expressed his dominance of Syria by symbolically bathing in the Mediterranean. He did not, however, attack Antioch itself; he was content with capturing all Antiochene territory east of the Orontes and leaving a rump state around the city, which in any case soon fell under the suzerainty of the Byzantine Empire.
During this time Nur ad-Din was busy in the north, fighting the Ortoqids, and in 1170 he had to settle a dispute between his nephews when his brother Qutb ad-Din died. After conquering Egypt, Nur ad-Din believed that he had accomplished his goal of uniting the Muslim states, he was seized by a fever due to complications from a peritonsillar abscess.[7] He died at the age of 56 on 15 May 1174 in the Citadel of Damascus. He was initially buried there, before being reburied in the Nur al-Din Madrasa.[8] His young son As-Salih Ismail al-Malik became his legitimate heir, and Saladin declared himself his vassal, Syria and Egypt under his own rule. defeated the other claimants to the throne and took power in Syria in 1185, finally realizing Nur ad-Din's dream.
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