al-Ashraf Musa (Syria)

al-Malik al-Ashraf Musa Abu 'l-Fath Muzaffar ad-Din ( Arabic الملك الأشرف أبو الفتح مظفر الدين, DMG al-Malik al-Asraf Abū l-Fatḥ Muẓaffar ad-Dīn ; often Ashraf ; † August 27, 1237 ) was a Sultan of Syria from the Ayyubid dynasty . He was one of the sons of Sultan al-Adil I. Abu Bakr (Saphadin) and thus a nephew of the famous Saladin .

He is not to be confused with al-Ashraf Musa (1250–1254), the last Ayyubid sultan of Egypt.

biography

When his father died in 1218, al-Aschraf was the younger son of the first to rule over the Upper Mesopotamian area (Jazira) with the capital Harran and should be subordinate to his eldest brother, Sultan al-Kamil . But al-Ashraf and his third ruling brother in Syria, al-Mu'azzam , did not want to accept this. Before it came to the fratricidal struggle, however, the Ayyubids had to fend off the Fifth Crusade , which was just beginning , which was directed against Egypt and thus threatened the most important center of rule of the Ayyubids. It was up to al-Ashraf to fend off the Rum Seljuks , allied with the Christians , which he actually repulsed at Samosata . When the crusaders left Damiette for Cairo in the late summer of 1221 , he and al-Mu'azzam also went to Egypt with their armies to support their brother. Together they managed to lead the crusaders into a trap near al-Mansura and thus to seal their defeat. In September 1221 the crusaders had to leave Egypt defeated.

After this threat was averted, the Ayyubid brothers began their power struggles among themselves, al-Ashraf and al-Mu'azzam now ruled in their areas virtually independently of al-Kamil. During this conflict, the Roman-German Emperor Frederick II, banned by the Pope, prepared in Italy for a new crusade to recapture Jerusalem , which made him an important factor in the conflict among the Ayyubids. Al-Kamil was the first to successfully establish contact with the emperor and promised him Jerusalem for an alliance against al-Mu'azzam and al-Ashraf. The situation changed in November 1227 when al-Muazzam died and his young son an-Nasir Dawud succeeded him in Damascus . In the hope of being able to benefit from this, al-Kamil and al-Ashraf allied themselves against their nephew and agreed on a reorganization of the Ayyubid empire by al-Ashraf to preserve Syria and al-Kamil Palestine with Jerusalem. From September 1228 they gradually conquered their nephew's fortresses. Around the same time, Emperor Friedrich II reached the Holy Land with his crusade and entered into changeable negotiations with al-Kamil. Both finally came to an agreement in February 1229 on the future order of the Orient, by returning some important cities such as Jerusalem to the Christians. Al-Ashraf also recognized this treaty sealed in Jaffa , while an-Nasir Dawud was completely ignored in it. In March 1229, al-Ashraf and al-Kamil began the siege of Damascus, which was finally brought to an end with the surrender of the city in June. The city fell to al-Ashraf, who made it the capital of his own Syrian sultanate .

During these events, al-Ashraf's rule in its extreme east was threatened by the Khorezm Shah Jalal ad-Din , who had conquered the border fortress of Ahlat in 1230 . Al-Aschraf quickly allied himself with the Rum Seljuks Kai Kobad I and together with him they won the Battle of Yassı Çemen on August 10, 1230 over the Choresmians, who then had to withdraw again. After the death of his cousin and brother-in-law al-Aziz in 1236, al-Aschraf intended to conquer the emirate of Aleppo , but died in August 1237. His younger brother al-Salih Ismail inherited him, but he was inherited from al-Kamil after only one year was eliminated, so that the Syrian rulership was reunited with the Egyptian Ayyubid Empire.

Similar to his brother al-Kamil, al-Aschraf also maintained a friendly relationship with Emperor Friedrich II. In May 1232, for example, he sent a large embassy to the court in Sicily, among other things with a preciously made planetarium as a gift, which Friedrich later said of supposed to have, after his son Konrad , it was the most precious thing he owned.

literature

• Wolfgang Stürner : Friedrich II. 1194-1250 . 3. Edition in one volume, fully bibliographically updated and expanded to include a foreword and documentation with additional information. Primusverlag, Darmstadt 2009, ISBN 978-3-89678-664-7 .
• Hans Ludwig Gottschalk : Al-Malik al-Kāmil of Egypt and his time. A study of the history of the Middle East and Egypt in the first half of the 7th / 13th centuries. Century. Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1958.

predecessor	Office	successor
al-Adil I.	Emir of Harran (Jazira) 1218–1229	as-Salih
an-Nasir Dawud	Sultan of Damascus (Syria) 1229–1237	as-Salih Ismail