ABSTRACT
The succession to Nur al-Din was a difficult issue. Nominally the choice was al-Salih, his eleven-year-old son, but there was no established dynastic structure to tide him over to his majority while other members of the Zengid family were eager to retain a loose family-based arrangement. This system would clearly be threatened if Damascus went to an outsider. The greatest and most purposeful force in the Islamic world at the time, however, was Saladin, son of Ayyub. Nur al-Din had suspected Saladin of entertaining separate designs in Egypt, as described earlier, and relations had deteriorated immediately before Nur al-Din’s death. Some Arab commentators anticipated that Saladin would prepare his forces to resist the arrival of Nur al-Din’s army seeking to claim its subsidy. Nur al-Din’s death cut short any such dire scenario though recent biographers have suggested that the tension of these exchanges and Nur al-Din’s possible preparations for the expedition were what induced the fatal health crisis on the Midan al-Akhdar, prompted by ‘an uncharacteristic fit of rage’.1 Saladin wrote from Egypt to pledge his loyalty to al-Salih but logically, now that the paramount Zengid was dead, Saladin’s power was greater than any potential rival. More immediately, Saladin faced the compelling fact that if he did not move, Damascus might fall prey to Jerusalem: the Holy War would effectively be lost.
