The people of Damascus lost hope, while the ruler of Mosul had already reached Ḥimṣ. Muʿīn al-Dīn Anur therefore wrote to the coastal Frankish princes, saying, “What sense is there in assisting the Germans against us? If they prevail, they will snatch the coast from you; and if I am forced to yield, I shall hand Damascus over to Ibn Zengī, and you will not be able to withstand him.”

The Franks wavered, and he ceded Banīyās to them. They then alarmed the German king with talk of the armies coming from the East, so he retreated to his own lands, which lie beyond Constantinople.

In the same year the Ghurid state arose. Sūrī ibn Ḥusayn marched on Ghazna and seized it; a battle followed between him and Bahrām Shāh in which Sūrī was killed. The Ghurids were incensed at his death and gathered their forces; their uprising occurred in 547 AH, and their rule—what remains of it—endures to this day. They also conquered the province of India (1).

Famine grew severe in Ifrīqiyyah—indeed, it became universal. Al-Muʾayyad ʿImād al-Dīn said: “That year the general scarcity extended from Khurāsān to Iraq, to Syria, and to the lands of the Maghrib.” (2)

In 544 AH Nūr al-Dīn Maḥmūd, lord of Aleppo, routed the Franks, killed the lord of Antioch together with 1,500 of them, captured the same number, and then took from them the fortress of Fāmiyah.

Joscelin, the tyrant of Tell Bashir (3), had harried the Muslims with continual raids and had occupied Ilbīra, Bahasnā (4), Marʿash, Rawandān, ʿAyntāb, and ʿAzāz. Nūr al-Dīn’s silāḥdār (armour-bearer) (5) fought him, but Joscelin captured the man; so Nūr al-Dīn secretly