Fachr ad-Din Turan Shah

Al-Mu'azzam Fachr ad-Din Turan Shah ( Arabic المعظم فخر الدين توران شاه, DMG al-Muʿaẓẓam Faḫr ad-Dīn Tūrān Šāh ; * around 1180; † 1260 ) was a prince of the Ayyubid dynasty and the last surviving son of the famous dynasty founder an-Nasir Salah ad-Din Yusuf (Saladin) .

Turan Shah led a warrior's life and did not emerge through special political ambitions. When the Ayyubids were overthrown by the Mamluks in Egypt in 1250 , he joined the entourage of his great-nephew an-Nasir Yusuf and supported them in taking possession of Damascus . He was then one of the generals in the battle of al-Kura (February 2, 1251), in which he was wounded and fell into captivity with the Mamluks with his brother Nusrat ad-Din. His son, Taj al-Muluk, was also badly wounded and died in Jerusalem .

After he was released from captivity under a peace treaty in 1254, Turan Shah rejoined his great-nephew. When the Mongols under Hülegü crossed the Euphrates into Syria in November or December 1259 , his nephew appointed him commander of Aleppo . Despite his senile age, he went with an Ayyubid army reinforced by local militias against the Mongols. In view of the numerical superiority of the Mongols, he withdrew to the fortified city of Aleppo by the beginning of January 1260. He turned down an invitation from Hülegü to submission, whereupon the Mongols began the siege of Aleppo on January 18, 1260. They were there by the Armenians under Hethum I and the Franks under Bohemond VI. supported by Antioch . The city was more than inevitably shot at with Mangonels . On January 24th, the Mongols stormed the city, Turan Shah managed to retreat to the citadel , where he holed up with a relatively large remaining force. The city was now thoroughly plundered, the population massacred and their houses destroyed, until after six days Hulegü ordered a halt. The great main mosque had been burned down on Hethum's orders. Only a few buildings and the people who had fled to them were spared from the riots, such as the Sufi monastery, the Jewish synagogue, the Jacobite church and the buildings of some nobles, whose masters had already defied the Mongols in the run-up to the siege had subjected. The defenders stayed in the citadel for another month, but had no prospect of relief , so that Turan Shah finally surrendered the citadel on February 25, 1260, in return for free withdrawal with his men. Through his engagement, he had delayed the advance of the Mongols into Damascus by at least five weeks. A few days after the fall of Aleppo, Turan Shah died of old age.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Abu'l-Fida, p. 131
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Abu'l-Fida, p. 140
3. ↑ Humphreys, p. 349

swell

• Abu'l-Fida : Mukhtassartaʾrikh al-Bashar. In: RHC, Historiens Orientaux , Volume 1 (1872), p. 131; 140-141.
• Ibn Wasil : Mufarriǧ al-kurūb fī aḫbār Banī Ayyūb. In: Mohamed Rahim: The Chronicle of Ibn Wāṣil. Harrassowitz, 2010, ISBN 3447061499 .

literature

• Richard Stephen Humphreys: From Saladin to the Mongols. The Ayyubids of Damascus, 1193-1260. SUNY Press, 1977, ISBN 0873952634 , pp. 348-349.
• Ross Burns: Aleppo. A history. Routledge, 2016, ISBN 1134844085 .