42 ISLAM AT WAR
troops from the front, in the tradition of the Turkish warrior caste. He was
among the first Turkish rulers in Syria to attempt real government—his
predecessors had been mere warlords who treated their Syrian lands to
looting and rapine.
Zangi ruled in the midst of internecine Muslim warfare. His early years
saw a series of confusing and vicious struggles as he sought to consolidate
power in Syria. He dared not challenge the Christians at this time, but so
remarkable was his character, that in 1130, Alix, the daughter of Bohe-
mund II, king of Jerusalem, offered him an alliance against her own father!
This he declined, as it would have made an impossible alliance for him,
and he had too many concerns in his own lands.
During a Seljuq quarrel for the succession of the throne in 1133, Zangi
marched on Baghdad. Ambushed en route, he was assisted by an enemy—
a Kurdish officer named Ayyub. In years to come, Zangi would remember
this noble gesture and help Ayyub’s son to his first position of authority.
This man would become the scourge of the crusader kingdoms—Saladin.
In 1135, Zangi was nearly made ruler of Damascus, the principal city
of Syria, but intrigues continued to hold him back. In 1137, he marched
on Homs in central Syria, intending to take it as a steppingstone to Da-
mascus. Caliph Unar, who ruled the city, craftily called upon the Knights
Templar to aid him in his defense and then, as the Christian army ap-
proached, offered to assist Zangi in the destruction of the infidels. This
Zangi did. In June 1137, the Templar army was trapped in the fortress of
Barin by Zangi’s forces and forced to surrender. After the battle, however,
Unar renounced his allegiance and Zangi besieged Homs, which he could
not take because a combined crusader-Byzantine army was besieging his
city of Shayzar. Fearing the loss of this vital city, he withdrew his army
and broke the siege.
This Byzantine-crusader alliance could have been serious to the
Muslim-dominated Middle East. It was, in fact, the only time that the
crusaders acted as the pawns of the old empire, and had the Frankish
vitality been combined with the empire’s organization, the results for Syria
could have been fatal. Zangi responded with propaganda to tear the two
allies apart—warning the Byzantines of the huge army that he was gath-
ering and warning the Franks of Byzantine designs against their own
newly conquered lands. He swept the enemy away, more with guile than
arms, but this victory made him the preeminent man of Syria. In May
1138, he was offered a wedding alliance to princess Zumurrud of Da-
mascus and received Homs as her dowry. It was supposed that her son
Mahmud would then turn Damascus over to his new father-in-law. How-
ever, despite the agreement, Mahmud refused to turn the city over to