Schirkuh

Schirkuh (above) and the arrival of Amalrich (below)

Asad ad-Din Schirkuh bin Schadhi ( Arabic أسد الدين شيركوه بن شاذي, DMG Asad ad-Dīn Šīrkūh b. Šāḏī ; † March 23, 1169 in Cairo ) was an Islamic military commander from the Ayyubid dynasty . He came from a Kurdish town near Dvin in Armenia . Shirkuh is Kurdish and means mountain lion (Kurdish Şêrko ). In Christian sources he was called Siraconus .

His father was Schadhi , a Kurdish ruler, his brother Nadschmuddin Ayyub , the namesake of the dynasty; his nephew was Saladin .

When Ayyub lost Tikrit in 1138 , he and Shirkuh joined Zengi's army. Shirkuh served under Nur ad-Din , Zengi's successor in Mosul . Zengi later gave him the city of Homs as a vassal state of Mosul.

In 1163 he convinced Nur ad-Din to send him to Egypt to settle a dispute between Shawar and Dirgham over the Fatimid vizier . Shawar was reinstated and Dirgham was killed, but this did not end the dispute, but continued between Shawar and Shirkuh. Sharar allied himself with Amalrich I , king of Jerusalem , who invaded Egypt in 1164 and besieged Shirkuh in Bilbeis . In return, Nur ad-Din attacked the Crusader states and almost conquered the principality of Antioch .

Shirkuh was sent back to Egypt in 1167 when Shawar reunited with Amalrich. Amalrich besieged him in Alexandria until he agreed to a withdrawal. A Crusader garrison remained in Egypt, and Amalrich allied with the Byzantine Empire to conquer it entirely. Now Shawar sought help from Shirkuh, who avoided an open battle with the crusaders, who, however, did not have the means to subdue Egypt and finally had to withdraw.

In January 1169, Shirkuh went to Cairo and had Shawar executed. He set himself up as a vizier , but died two months later from the consequences of a too lavish meal. His nephew Saladin , who had accompanied him on his Egyptian campaigns, took his place. Shirkuh's body was first buried in Cairo, but was brought from Saladin to Medina in 1175 together with the body of his brother Nadschmuddin Ayyub and buried there.

The Archbishop of Tire and historian of Jerusalem William of Tire wrote of Shirkuh that he was small in stature, fat and corpulent, but full of lust for glory, enduring all efforts, including hunger and thirst, without further ado, very generous and loved by his troops, not only capable of weapons and war experience, but also educated and eloquent.

He left behind at least one son, Nasir ad-Din Mohammed († March 5, 1186), Emir of Homs from 1179/1180.

swell

• Bahāʾ al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād: The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin or Al-nawādir as-sulṭāniyya wa'l-maḥāsin al-Yūsufiyya . Translated by DS Richards. Ashgate, Aldershot et al. 2002, ISBN 0-7546-3381-0 ( Crusade Texts in Translation 7).
• Wilhelm von Tire : A History of Deeds done beyond the Sea . = Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum . Translated into English by Emily Atwater Babcock and August C. Krey. Columbia University Press, New York NY 1943 ( Records of Civilization, Sources and Studies 35, ISSN  0080-0287 ).

literature

• Steven Runciman : A History of the Crusades . Volume 2: The Kingdom of Jerusalem . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1952.
• Vladimir Minorsky : The Prehistory of Saladin . In: Studies in Caucasian History . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1957, pp. 124-132 ( online here ).
• Malcolm Cameron Lyons, DEP Jackson: Saladin. The Politics of the Holy War . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1982, ISBN 0-521-22358-X ( University of Cambridge Oriental publications 30).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hannes Möhring : Saladin. The Sultan and his time. 1138-1193 . CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-50886-3 , pp. 40-41.
2. ↑ Cf. Abu l-Fida : Recueil des historiens des croisades . (RHC) Historiens orientaux. Volume 1, Paris 1872, p. 47 and 54.