144 DESTINY DISRUPTED
was the Turkish general Zangi, who governed Mosul, then took Aleppo,
and then absorbed many other cities into his domains until he could rea-
sonably call himself the king of a united Syria. This was the first time in
fifty years that a Muslim country larger than a single city and its environs
had existed in the Levant {the region between Mesopotamia and Egypt).
Zangi's troops revered him because he was the archetypal soldier's sol-
dier. He lived as ruggedly as his men, ate what they ate, and put on no airs.
He soon decided that Muslims had a single common enemy and began to
organize a unified campaign against this enemy. First, he squeezed the
weakness out of his machine: he eliminated flatterers from his court and
courtesans from his armies. More important, he built a network of inform-
ers and propagandists throughout Syria that kept his governors in line.
In 1144, Zangi conquered Edessa, which made him a hero to the Mus-
lim world. Edessa wasn't the biggest city in the east, but it was the first siz-
able city the Muslims had taken back from the Franj, and with recapture
ofEdessa, one of the four "Crusader Kingdoms" ceased to exist. A wave of
hope ran through the Levant. A wave of dismay and war fever swept west-
ern Europe, inspiring a group of monarchs to organize what turned out to
be a dismally ineffectual Second Crusade.
Zangi supported preachers who promoted jihad because he saw jihad as
an instrument for unifying the Muslims. Unfortunately Zangi could not
very well put himself at the head of a new jihad because he was a hard-
drinking, foulmouthed brawler; the very qualities that endeared him to his
men offended many of the ulama. He did, however, create an anti-Franj
movement that another more pious ruler could build into a real jihad.
His son and successor, Nuruddin, possessed the qualities his father had
lacked. Though he shared his father's martial energy, Nuruddin was pol-
ished, diplomatic, and devout. He called on Muslims to unite around one
set of religious beliefs {Sunni Islam) and make jihad their central objective
in life. He revived the image of the just and pious man who fought not for
ego, not for wealth, nor for power, but for the community. In restoring to
Muslims this sense of themselves as a single Umma, he gave them back
their sense of destiny, nurturing a fervor for jihad that another, greater
ruler could use to craft a real political victory.
This greater ruler turned out to be Salah al-Oin Yusuf ibn Ayub, com-
monly known as Saladin, the nephew of one of Nuruddin's top generals.