Death of Nur al-Din Mahmud

Nur al-Din Mahmud ibn Zangi died on Wednesday, the eleventh of Shawwal 569 AH, of quinsy, according to Ibn al-Athir. He was buried in the citadel of Damascus, and later moved to the school he had founded near the market of the jewellers. ¹

Ibn al-Athir relates from a doctor who served him that when the illness grew severe the physicians advised bloodletting. He said: "A man of sixty does not let blood," and refused, so the medicine did not work. ¹

Ibn al-Athir says that a few days before his death he began to prepare to enter Egypt to take it from Salah al-Din, because he had seen slackness from him in the war on the Franks. He sent to ask for armies from Mosul, the lands of al-Jazira and Diyar Bakr. ¹

Ibn al-Athir says that he had studied the conduct of the earlier kings and had seen after the rightly guided caliphs and Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz none better than his conduct, nor more careful in pursuing justice. He was born in 511 AH. ¹

The Gregorian date is derived from the Hijri date.