Nūr ad-Dīn played a central role in the history of the medieval Muslim East and even in world history. This prince, of whom his contemporary William of Tire said he was " vir providus et discretus, dux timens Deum " - a wise and remarkable man, a leader fearing God - and whom Michelet considered in his Histoire des Croisades to be "one of the saints. of Islamism ”, Ernst Herzfeld defined it thus:“ Nūr ad-Dīn Maḥmūd b. Zengī b. Aq Sunqur, of Turkish origin, predecessor of Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf b. Ayyūb, the Ayyubid of Kurdish origin, is a less spectacular figure and also less known in the West, but he is a more remarkable personality and of greater historical importance even than Saladin ”.In order to best retrace the features of this illustrious man and the contours of the historical period during which he distinguished himself, Nikita Elisséeff chose to begin this monograph with a census and a classification of the sources that she used. . She then draws the historical topography of the Zenguid empire, that is to say of Djézire and the whole of Syria, after which she details the internal organization of the kingdom of Nūr ad-Dīn, and in particular its social and economic life. The administrative and fiscal system and the urban / rural life |