Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, commonly known as Saladin, was the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. Hailing from a Kurdish family, he was the first sultan of both Egypt and Syria. An important figure of the Third Crusade, he spearheaded the Muslim military effort against the Crusader states in the Levant. At the height of his power, the Ayyubid realm spanned Egypt, Syria, Upper Mesopotamia, the Hejaz, Yemen, and Nubia.
The Second Crusade (1147–1150) was the second major crusade launched from Europe. The Second Crusade was started in response to the fall of the County of Edessa in 1144 to the forces of Zengi. The county had been founded during the First Crusade (1096–1099) by King Baldwin I of Jerusalem in 1098. While it was the first Crusader state to be founded, it was also the first to fall.
Baldwin III was King of Jerusalem from 1143 to 1163. He was the eldest son of Melisende and Fulk of Jerusalem. He became king while still a child, and was at first overshadowed by his mother Melisende, whom he eventually defeated in a civil war. During his reign Jerusalem became more closely allied with the Byzantine Empire, and the Second Crusade tried and failed to conquer Damascus. Baldwin captured the important Egyptian fortress of Ascalon, but also had to deal with the increasing power of Nur ad-Din in Syria. He died childless and was succeeded by his brother Amalric.
The Ayyubid dynasty, also known as the Ayyubid Sultanate, was the founding dynasty of the medieval Sultanate of Egypt established by Saladin in 1171, following his abolition of the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt. A Sunni Muslim of Kurdish origin, Saladin had originally served the Zengid ruler Nur ad-Din, leading Nur ad-Din's army in battle against the Crusaders in Fatimid Egypt, where he was made Vizier. Following Nur ad-Din's death, Saladin was proclaimed as the first Sultan of Egypt by the Abbasid Caliphate, and rapidly expanded the new sultanate beyond the frontiers of Egypt to encompass most of the Levant, in addition to Hijaz, Yemen, northern Nubia, Tarabulus, Cyrenaica, southern Anatolia, and northern Iraq, the homeland of his Kurdish family. By virtue of his sultanate including Hijaz, the location of the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina, he was the first ruler to be hailed as the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, a title that would be held by all subsequent sultans of Egypt until the Ottoman conquest of 1517. Saladin's military campaigns in the first decade of his rule, aimed at uniting the various Arab and Muslim states in the region against the Crusaders, set the general borders and sphere of influence of the sultanate of Egypt for the almost three and a half centuries of its existence. Most of the Crusader states, including the Kingdom of Jerusalem, fell to Saladin after his victory at the Battle of Hattin in 1187. However, the Crusaders reconquered the coast of Palestine in the 1190s.
The Zengid or Zangid dynasty, Atabegs of Mosul was an Atabegate of the Seljuk Empire created in 1127. It formed a Turkoman dynasty of Sunni Muslim faith, which ruled parts of the Levant and Upper Mesopotamia, and eventually seized control of Egypt in 1169. In 1174 the Zengid state extended from Tripoli to Hamadan and from Yemen to Sivas. Imad ad-Din Zengi was the first ruler of the dynasty.
Nūr al-Dīn Maḥmūd Zengī, commonly known as Nur ad-Din, was a Turkoman member of the Zengid dynasty, who ruled the Syrian province of the Seljuk Empire. He reigned from 1146 to 1174. He is regarded as an important figure of the Second Crusade.
Raymond III was count of Tripoli from 1152 to 1187. He was a minor when Nizari Assassins murdered his father, Raymond II of Tripoli. Baldwin III of Jerusalem, who was staying in Tripoli, made Raymond's mother, Hodierna of Jerusalem, regent. Raymond spent the following years at the royal court in Jerusalem. He reached the age of majority in 1155, after which he participated in a series of military campaigns against Nur ad-Din, the Zengid ruler of Damascus. In 1161 he hired pirates to pillage the Byzantine coastline and islands to take vengeance on Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos, who had refused to marry his sister Melisende. He was captured in the Battle of Harim by Nur ad-Din's troops on 10 August 1164, and imprisoned in Aleppo for almost ten years. During his captivity, Amalric I of Jerusalem administered the county of Tripoli on his behalf.
The Battle of Inab, also called Battle of Ard al-Hâtim or Fons Muratus, was fought on 29 June 1149, during the Second Crusade. The Zengid army of the atabeg Nur al-Din Zengi destroyed the combined army of Prince Raymond of Poitiers and the Assassins of Ali ibn-Wafa. The Principality of Antioch was subsequently pillaged and reduced in size as its eastern border was pushed west.
The siege of Damascus took place between 24 and 28 July 1148, during the Second Crusade. It ended in a crusader defeat and led to the disintegration of the crusade. The two main Christian forces that marched to the Holy Land in response to Pope Eugene III and Bernard of Clairvaux's call for the Second Crusade were led by Kings Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany. Both faced disastrous marches across Anatolia in the months that followed, with most of their armies being destroyed. The original focus of the crusade was Edessa (Urfa), but in Jerusalem, the preferred target of King Baldwin III and the Knights Templar was Damascus. At the Council of Acre, magnates from France, Germany, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem decided to divert the crusade to Damascus.
Mu'in ad-Din Unur was the ruler of Damascus from 1140 to 1149. He was a Turkoman slave of Burid emirs.
Shaizar or Shayzar is a town in northern Syria, administratively part of the Hama Governorate, located northwest of Hama. Nearby localities include, Mahardah, Tremseh, Kafr Hud, Khunayzir and Halfaya. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Shaizar had a population of 5,953 in the 2004 census.
The siege of Ascalon took place from 25 January to 22 August 1153, in the time period between the Second and Third Crusades, and resulted in the capture of the Fatimid Egyptian fortress by the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Ascalon was an important castle that was used by the Fatimids to launch raids into the Crusader kingdom's territory, and by 1153 it was the last coastal city in Palestine that was not controlled by the Crusaders.
The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Christian Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these military expeditions are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that had the objective of reconquering Jerusalem and its surrounding area from Muslim rule after the region had been conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate centuries earlier. Beginning with the First Crusade, which resulted in the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, dozens of military campaigns were organised, providing a focal point of European history for centuries. Crusading declined rapidly after the 15th century.
The Battle of Bosra was a lengthy and ultimately inconclusive battle fought in the spring of 1147 during the Second Crusade, between a Crusader force commanded by King Baldwin III of Jerusalem and Turkish forces from Damascus led by Mu'in ad-Din Unur, who was aided by Nur ad-Din's contingent from Mosul and Aleppo. Irritated by his Damascus overlord, the emir of Bosra and Salkhad invited the Crusaders to occupy the two places. Before the Latin army could take possession of Bosra, the emir's wife allowed a Damascene garrison into the city, and the thwarted Crusaders were forced to retreat via a grueling march through enemy territory. The Turks constantly harassed the retreating Latin column but were unable to inflict a defeat on their enemies.
The Battle of Belvoir Castle, also called the Battle of Le Forbelet, was a part of Saladin’s campaign in May — August 1182 against the Crusaders. Crusader forces led by King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem battled with Ayyubid forces from Egypt commanded by Saladin. Saladin took action in Damascus on June 11, 1182, together with his regent Farrukh Shah. Entering Palestine from the south of Tiberias, Saladin encountered the Crusader army coming from Transoxiana near Belvoir Castle. In the following battle, both sides attacked each other, and this fight, whose outcome was uncertain, ended in the evening.
The military history of the Crusader states begins with the formation of the County of Edessa in 1097 and ends with the loss of Ruad in 1302, the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land.
In the Battle of Lake Huleh in June 1157, a Crusader army led by King Baldwin III of Jerusalem was ambushed and badly defeated by Nur ad-Din Zangi, the emir of Aleppo and Damascus. While the king and some fighting men escaped to a nearby castle, a large number were killed or made prisoner. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem escaped worse damage when their adversary became ill and was unable to follow up his victory. The Hula Valley is located in the northeast part of modern-day Israel. At the time of the battle, the area belonged to the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
In the Battle of al-Buqaia in 1163, the Crusaders and their allies inflicted a rare defeat on Nur ad-Din Zangi, the Emir of Aleppo and Damascus. King Amalric I led the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, together with contingents from the northern Latin states, a substantial body of pilgrims who had just arrived from France, and a force brought by the Byzantine governor of Cilicia. For the Christian forces, this victory only gave a brief respite from the sustained Muslim offensive.
Gökböri, or Muzaffar ad-Din Gökböri, was a leading emir and general of Sultan Saladin, and ruler of Erbil. He served both the Zengid and Ayyubid rulers of Syria and Egypt. He played a pivotal role in Saladin's conquest of Northern Syria and the Jazira and later held major commands in a number of battles against the Crusader states and the forces of the Third Crusade. He was known as Manafaradin, a corruption of his principal praise name, to the Franks of the Crusader states.
The Banu Munqidh, also referred to as the Munqidhites, were an Arab family that ruled an emirate in the Orontes Valley in northern Syria from the mid-11th century until the family's demise in an earthquake in 1157. The emirate was initially based in Kafartab before the Banu Munqidh took over the fortress of Shayzar in 1081 and made it their headquarters for the remainder of their rule. The capture of Shayzar was the culmination of a long, drawn-out process beginning with the Banu Munqidh's nominal assignment to the land by the Mirdasid emir of Aleppo in 1025, and accelerating with the weakened grip of Byzantine rule in northern Syria in the 1070s.
Kingdom of Jerusalem 
Knights Hospitaller