Zengid dynasty

The Zengid dynasty was a Turkoman Sunni Muslim dynasty of the Middle East, first an Atabegate of the Seljuk Empire created in 1127, ruling parts of the Levant and Upper Mesopotamia and briefly holding Fatimid Egypt. In that year, after the murder of the atabeg of Mosul, the Seljuks named Zengi, son of Aq Sunqur, atabeg of Mosul; Zengi, a proven general and governor of Iraq, quickly became the chief Turkic power of northern Syria and Iraq, taking Aleppo from the Artuqids in 1128 and, most famously, capturing the Crusader County of Edessa in 1144, which made him a hero of the Muslim world before a slave assassinated him in 1146. His lands were split between Mosul and Iraq for Saif ad-Din Ghazi and Aleppo with Edessa for Nur ad-Din. Nur ad-Din beat the Crusaders at Edessa again in 1146, killed Raymond of Poitiers at Inab in 1149 and took the Euphrates lands of Edessa in 1150, and in 1154 crowned his career by taking Damascus. After his death in 1174 Saladin took Damascus and then Aleppo from the Zengids, ending their Syrian rule, though Mosul stayed Zengid until Badr al-Din Lu'lu' ended the line in 1234, and the house lived on with the Seljuk successor-states to 1250.