Imad ad-Din Zengi (Arabic: عماد الدین زنكي; Modern Turkish:
İmadeddin Zengi; c. 1085 – 14 September 1146), also romanized as Zangi, Zengui,
Zenki, and Zanki, was a Turkish atabeg who ruled Mosul, Aleppo, Hama, and Edessa.
He was the namesake of the Zengid dynasty.
Zengi's father, Aq Sunqur al-Hajib, governor of Aleppo under Malik
Shah I, was beheaded for treason in 1094, and Zengi was brought up by Kerbogha,
the governor of Mosul.
Zengi against Damascus
Following the death in 1128 of Toghtekin, atabeg of Damascus,
a power vacuum threatened to open Syria to renewed Crusader aggression. Zengi
became atabeg of Mosul in 1127 and of Aleppo in 1128, uniting the two cities
under his personal rule, and was formally invested as their ruler by the Sultan
Mahmud II of Great Seljuk. Zengi had supported the young sultan against his
rival, the caliph Al-Mustarshid. In 1130 Zengi allied with Taj al-Mulk Buri of Damascus
against the crusaders, but this was only a ruse to extend his power; he had
Buri's son taken prisoner and seized Hama from him. Zengi also besieged Homs,
the governor of which was accompanying him at the time, but could not capture
it, so he returned to Mosul, where Buri's son and the other prisoners from
Damascus were ransomed for 50,000 dinars. In 1131 Zengi agreed to return the
50,000 dinars if Buri would deliver to him Dubays ibn Sadaqa, emir of al-Hilla
in Iraq, who had fled to Damascus to escape al-Mustarshid.
In 1134 Zengi became involved in Artuqid affairs, allying
with the emir Timurtash (son of Ilghazi) against Timurtash's cousin Da'ud.
Zengi's real desires, however, lay to the south, in Damascus. In 1135 Zengi
received an appeal for help from Ismail, who had succeeded his father Buri as
emir of Damascus, and who was in fear for his life from his own citizenry, who
considered him a cruel tyrant. Ismail was willing to surrender the city to
Zengi in order to restore peace. None of Ismail's family or advisors wanted
this, however, and Ismail was murdered by his own mother, Zumurrud, to prevent
him from turning over the city to Zengi's control. Ismail was succeeded by his
brother Shihab ad-Din Mahmud. Zengi was not discouraged by this turn of events
and arrived at Damascus anyway, still intending to seize it. The siege lasted
for some time with no success on Zengi's part, so a truce was made and Shahib
ad-Din's brother Bahram-Shah was given as a hostage. At the same time, news of
the siege had reached the caliph and Baghdad, and a messenger was sent with
orders for Zengi to leave Damascus and take control of the governance of Iraq.
The messenger was ignored, but Zengi gave up the siege, as per the terms of the
truce with Shahib ad-Din. On the way back to Aleppo, Zengi besieged Homs, whose
governor had angered him, and Shahib ad-Din responded to the city's call for
help by sending Mu'in ad-Din Unur to govern it. In 1139, Zengi attacked
Damascus's fortress at Baalbek, obtaining its surrender in response to a
promise of safe passage; he did not honor it. He granted the territory to his
lieutenant Ayyub, father of Saladin.
Conflict with the Crusaders and Byzantines
In 1137 Zengi besieged Homs again, but Mu'in ad-Din
successfully defended it; in response, Damascus allied with the Crusader Kingdom
of Jerusalem against him. Zengi laid siege to the Crusader fortress of Baarin
and quickly crushed the army of Jerusalem. King Fulk of Jerusalem agreed to surrender
and was allowed to flee with his surviving troops. Zengi, realizing that this
new expedition against Damascus was bound to fail, made peace with Shahib
ad-Din, just in time to be confronted at Aleppo by an army sent by the Byzantine
Emperor John II Comnenus. The Emperor had recently brought the Crusader Principality
of Antioch under Byzantine control, and had allied himself with Joscelin II of
Edessa and Raymond of Antioch. Facing a combined Byzantine/crusader threat,
Zengi mobilized his forces and recruited assistance from other Muslim leaders.
In April 1138 the armies of the Byzantine emperor and the crusader princes laid
siege to Shaizar, but they were turned back by Zengi's forces a month later.
In May 1138 Zengi came to an agreement with Damascus. He
married Zumurrud, the same woman who had murdered her son Ismail, and received
Homs as her dowry. In July 1139 Zumurrud's surviving son, Shihab ad-Din, was
assassinated, and Zengi marched on Damascus to take possession of the city. The
Damascenes, united under Mu'in ad-Din Unur, acting as regent for Shihab
ad-Din's successor Jamal ad-Din, once again allied with Jerusalem to repel
Zengi. Zengi also besieged Jamal ad-Din's former possession of Baalbek, and
Mu'in ad-Din was in charge of its defenses as well. After Zengi abandoned his
siege of Damascus, Jamal ad-Din died of a disease and was succeeded by his son
Mujir ad-Din, with Mu'in ad-Din remaining as regent.
Mu'in ad-Din signed a new peace treaty with Jerusalem for
their mutual protection against Zengi. While Mu'in ad-Din and the crusaders
joined together to besiege Banias, Zengi once more laid siege to Damascus, but
quickly abandoned it again. There were no major engagements between the
crusaders, Damascus, and Zengi for the next few years, but Zengi in the
meantime campaigned in the north and captured Ashib and the Armenian fortress
of Hizan.
In 1144 Zengi besieged the crusader County of Edessa, the
weakest and least Latinized crusader state, and captured it on December 24,
1144, after a siege of four months. This event led to the Second Crusade, and
later Muslim chroniclers noted it as the start of the jihad against the
Crusader states.
Death and legacy
Zengi continued his attempts to take Damascus in 1145, but he
was assassinated by a Frankish slave named Yarankash in 1146. Zengi was the
founder of the eponymous Zengid dynasty. In Mosul he was succeeded by his
eldest son Saif ad-Din Ghazi I, and in Aleppo he was succeeded by his second
son Nur ad-Din.
According to Crusader legend, Zengi's mother was Ida of
Austria (mother of Leopold III of Austria), who had supposedly been captured
during the Crusade of 1101 and placed in a harem. She was 46 in 1101, Zengi was
born in 1085, and his father died in 1094 so this is not feasible.
Zengi was courageous, strong in leadership and a very skilled
warrior according to all of the Muslim chroniclers of his day.
Unlike Saladin at Jerusalem in 1187, Zengi did not keep his
word to protect his captives at Baalbek in 1139. According to Ibn al-‘Adim,
Zengi "had sworn to the people of the citadel with strong oaths and on the
Qur’an and divorcing (his wives). When they came down from the citadel he
betrayed them, flayed its governor and hanged the rest.”
According to Ibn 'al-Adim:
The atebeg was violent, powerful, awe-inspiring and liable to
attack suddenly… When he rode, the troops use to walk behind him as if they
were between two threads, out of fear they would trample over crops, and nobody
out of fear dared to trample on a single stem (of them) nor march his horse on
them… If anyone transgressed, he was crucified. He (Zengi) used to say:
"It does not happen that there is more than one tyrant (meaning himself)
at one time."
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