Nur ad-Din (February 1118-15 May 1174), also called Nur al-Din, Nur ed-Din, or Nureddin, was Sultan of the Zengids from 1146 to 1174, succeeding Zengi and preceding as-Salih ad-Din. He served emir of Aleppo after the death of his father Zengi, while his brother Saif ad-Din Ghazi I ruled the city of Mosul in northern Iraq; Nur ad-Din created a large empire with his 1154 conquest of Damascus, but his empire was conquered by the Ayyubids after his death in 1174.
Biography[]
Nur ad-Din in 1174
Nur ad-Din was the second son of Imad ad-Din Zengi, and when his father died in 1146, Nur ad-Din and his brother Saif ad-Din Ghazi I divided their father's lands between themselves. In his first years as a ruler, he conquered several castles in Syria from the Principality of Antioch and defeated Joscelin II of Edessa's attempt to recover the County of Edessa from the Zengids. In 1146 he conquered Edessa and massacred all of the Christians in the city, enslaving the women and children and defeating the crusaders in the 1149 Battle of Inab when they attempted to retake Edessa. In the summer of 1147 he won the battle of Bosra, where he captured several Jerusalemite nobles.
In 1148, the Second Crusade was declared against the Muslims in the Levant, and Nur ad-Din had several successes; the losses of the crusaders made the recovery of Edessa impossible. In addition, the crusaders besieged the city of Damascus instead of allying with its ruler against his enemy, Nur ad-Din, and the Emir of Damascus reluctantly accepted Nur ad-Din's assistance in pushing back the Christians. In 1149, Nur ad-Din reunited the Zengids when his brother Saif ad-Din died, and in 1154 Nur ad-Din conquered Damascus. However, his siege of Baniyas failed in 1157 when he fell ill, and in the 1160s he faced a new threat when the Ayyubid Caliphate conquered the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt. In 1174 he died of illness while he was preparing an invasion of Egypt.