County of Edessa

They realize they've got to conquer the port cities, and the port cities are there-- well, raise the prospect that perhaps they can, by conquering these ports, open up supply lines back to Western Europe and bring in the merchants, the settlers, the mercenaries, the pilgrims, the Crusaders they need to survive.

Further north, you've got two big Crusader states called the Principality of Antioch and an, an inland one called the County of Edessa.

And Antioch also tries to conquer the coast, but it also tries to expand inland.

And a major town that both the County of Edessa and the Principality of Antioch are looking to conquer is called Harran.

And because the town's under threat, two local Turkish leaders begin to work together with the ambition of trying to defeat the Crusaders.

And the way they do it is quite interesting.

Zengi's ambitions continued to expand through the early 1140s, and his name grew increasingly feared not only among the fractious Muslim principalities of Syria and the Jazira, but among the Crusader states that had carved out their own footholds along the Levantine coast since the end of the previous century.

It was Zengi who, in 1144, achieved what no Muslim commander had yet managed against the Crusader presence in the region, the recapture of the County of Edessa, the northernmost and most exposed of the Crusader states, a victory that sent shockwaves through Christian Europe and would, within a few years, help provoke the launching of what history would remember as the Second Crusade.

To a boy of seven, growing up in a garrison household bound in service to the man who achieved this victory, the name Zengi would have carried an almost mythic weight.

The great lord in Mosul and Aleppo, whose triumphs rippled outward and touched even the quiet administrative life of Baalbek, whose fortunes, for better or worse, were now inseparably entangled with his own family's fortunes.

There is the beginnings of a coalition forming against him.

And that coalition brings together various leading Turkish dynasties that are opposed to Zangi and the county of Edessa.

And he attacks one of these Turkish dynasties to begin with.

And within that attack, he becomes very concerned about the danger posed by the county of Edessa, which is the only inland crusade estate.

And due to that, he stages a night march.

His army suddenly appears outside Edessa's walls and embarks on a major siege.

Do we know if this is him, you know, is this just him being obliged or is there some sort of full-throated religious conviction behind this? Do we know anything about what's going on in his mind at this point?

In and amongst all the wars of this era, there's fighting taking place all the time.