A member of the Oghuz Turkish Zengid dynasty, Nur Al Dn Mamd Zeng ( ; February 1118–15 May 1174), also known as Nur ad-Din, governed the Syrian province of the Seljuk Empire (Shm). He ruled between 1146 and 1174. He is thought to have played a significant role in the Second Crusade.
Imad ad-Din Zengi, the Turkish atabeg of Aleppo and Mosul who was a committed hater of the crusader presence in Syria, had a second son named Zengi. Nur ad-Din and his older brother Saif ad-Din Ghazi I divided the kingdom between themselves after their father was killed in 1146, with Saif ad-Din taking up residence in Mosul and Nur ad-Din in charge of Aleppo. Al-Khabur River defined the boundary between the two new kingdoms.
Despite being "a tremendous persecutor of the Christian name and faith," Nur ad-Din was also "a just prince, valiant and clever, and according to the traditions of his race, a devout man," according to William of Tyre. After his illness and his travels, Nur ad-Din became especially devout. He saw the crusaders as strangers in Muslim territory who had come to Outremer to rob the country and desecrate its holy sites. Apart from the Armenians of Edessa, he tolerated the Christians who lived under his rule and held the Emperor Manuel in the highest regard. When Baldwin III passed away, Nur ad-Din reacted respectfully, but Amalric I promptly surrounded Banias and extracted a sizable sum of money from the emir's widow.
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