al-Mustanjid bi'llah Yusuf ibn al-Muqtafi
Abbasid caliph [555–566]; he lifted Iraq's tolls and was hard on mischief-makers — to the man offering ten thousand dinars for a prisoner he answered 'take them, and show me another like him to jail'. Ibn al-Najjar praises his piercing mind and his craft of astrolabes and spheres. In his first year al-Adid, last of the Ubaydids, rose in Egypt; he died 8 Rabi' II 566.
Reign · Abbasid Caliphate · no. 7 in the chain · 1160–1170 CE
Ruled the caliphate
Events of the reign
-
Nur al-Din's minbar made for al-Aqsa
Nur al-Din Mahmud ibn Zangi ordered a minbar made in 1169 for the Holy City he hoped to regain; it was a masterpiece of Syrian woodwork. Saladin brought it into the Aqsa when he reconsecrated the mosque in 1187, and it stood there until an arsonist destroyed it in 1969, before it could be fully studied.
-
Battle of al-Buqaia
Draft card for the Battle of al-Buqaia in 1163, the Crusader-Byzantine victory over Nur al-Din in the Beqaa; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
-
Battle of Marash
Draft card for Battle of Marash; its sources are not yet checked on the page.
-
Saladin's Conquest of Ayla
In the year 566 Saladin marched from Egypt into Frankish lands and raided the districts of Ascalon and Ramla, then attacked the suburb of Gaza and plundered it. The king of the Franks came against him with a small force; he fought and defeated them, and the king escaped after coming close to capture. Saladin returned to Egypt, had ships made in sections and carried the pieces on camels overland until he reached Ayla. There he assembled the pieces, launched them on the sea, and besieged Ayla by land and sea. He took it in the first ten days of Rabi' II and gave its people and all that was in it to plunder.
-
death of Quṭb al-Dīn Mawdūd — Sayf al-Dīn Ghāzī II succeeds in Mosul
Quṭb al-Dīn Mawdūd ibn Zangī, lord of Mosul, died and his son Sayf al-Dīn Ghāzī (II) succeeded him — the last Zangid to hold the city under Nūr al-Dīn's shadow.
-
The Great Earthquake in Syria, 565 AH
In Shawwal 565 the great earthquake struck Syria — most of Damascus and the Umayyad Mosque's porticoes fell, half Aleppo's citadel and its gate, eighty thousand of Hamah's people perished, and Hisn al-Akrad's castle collapsed leaving no trace of its wall.
-
Imad al-Din al-Isfahani sees the Tarikh Madinat Dimashq at seventy volumes, 562/1167
By 562/1167, when Imad al-Din came to Damascus, the Tarikh Madinat Dimashq ran to seventy books of ten parts each — up from fifty-seven in 549 — and in its final form it reached eighty volumes of eight hundred parts, as the author's son al-Qasim reports; the vast biographical dictionary is arranged alphabetically, opening with all who bore the name Ahmad.
-
Ibn al-Jawzi succeeds Abu Hakim al-Nahrawani in his two madrasas
Ibn al-Jawzi began teaching as assistant to his shaykh Abu Hakim al-Nahrawani in the latter's madrasa at Bab al-Azad and, in the year of the shaykh's death, in a madrasa built for him at the Ma'muniyya; on al-Nahrawani's death in 556/1161 Ibn al-Jawzi succeeded him as master of both colleges.
-
Nūr al-Dīn besieges al-Karak
Nūr al-Dīn laid siege to al-Karak, among the strongest Frankish strongholds in the land of Moab east of the Dead Sea — their great base of refuge.
-
Nur al-Din Takes the Fortress of Safita from the Franks in 561
In 561 Nur al-Din took the fortress of Safita (Castel Blanc) from the Franks.
-
Siege of Ayla
Draft card for the Siege of Ayla in 1170, Saladin's capture of the sea fortress from the Franks; its sources are not yet checked on the page.