ibn Marwān ibn Yaʿqūb al-Duwaynī, the Kurd, and brother of Emir Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb (1).

His birthplace was Duwayn, a small settlement on the fringe of Azerbaijan adjoining the land of the Georgians—its first consonant is vocalised with ḍamma and the second with kasra (2)—and the nisba derived from it is Duwaynī, with a fatḥa on the second letter (3).

He and his brother were reared in Tikrīt, for their father Shādhī was the naqīb (commandant) of its citadel; Shādhī, in Arabic, means Farḥān (4). They belonged to the Kurdish Rawādiyya, a branch of the Hadhbāniyya tribe.

Some of his descendants deny being Kurds, asserting: “Rather, we are Arabs who settled among them and married into them.”

The two brothers later came to Syria and entered military service. Their circumstances evolved until Shirkūh became one of Nūr al-Dīn’s foremost emirs and the commander of his armies.

He was counted among the celebrated champions and noted men of valor; the Franks were terrified merely at the mention of his name. Nūr al-Dīn then equipped him with an army and dispatched him to Egypt, whose affairs were in disarray and which the Franks coveted. He marched there more than once, first taking the route of Wādī al-Ghuzlān and emerging near Iṭfīḥ (5), and he sent his nephew Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn ahead to Alexandria.