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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 settled 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

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’.