Who achieved more in the battle against the Christians? Zengi or Nur ed-Din?
James Sandberg History – DRDC 01/05/2007
Who achieved more in the battle against the Christians? Zengi or Nur ed-Din?
To answer this question we must first understand what the question actually means. Does it mean who won the most land off the Christians? Or who was the psychological winner? Who was the won who made the Crusader states crumble? Who made it possible for Saladin to destroy the Crusaders?
I am going to assume that it is not who won the most Christian land, but who had the greatest impact upon the Franks.
Zengi, its true, did win the most land against the Franks, for was able to capture Edessa in Christmas Eve 1144, and Nur ed-Din did not actually capture anything that the Christians already owned. What Nur ed-Din did manage to achieve was that he got Damascus (a close ally of the Franks) and Egypt were the Franks were very prominent in.
In the battle against the Christians Zengi would be the most obvious answer to say that he was the one who achieved everything, for without Zengi Nur ed-Din would not have had a platform with which to attack Edessa, Damascus and Egypt. Zengi was the one who first preached Jihad; he was the one who first started to unite the Muslims against the Franks, and he was the one who gave Nur ed-Din the captured cities of Aleppo and Edessa. It was Zengi, and without Zengi who knows what Nur ed-Din would have achieved. He might have been a historical nobody, just like his elder brother, who got Mosel from Zengi. But Nur ed-Din was not like his brother and he did receive all that he did from Zengi, and he did add Damascus and Egypt to his kingdom. Nur ed-Din was very politically aware, far more so than his father. He mange to capture Damascus with no bloodshed, this was a huge achievement, for Damascus managed to repel the great warrior Zengi. In 1159 Antioch fell, not to the Muslims, but to another Christian, Manuel of the Byzantine Empire. This meant that the Crusaders were now one city-state less and this was at a point when they needed all the help that they could get.
