Al-ʿAzīz ʿUthmān ibn al-ʿĀdil (died 20 June 1233) was the

Ayyubid The Ayyubid dynasty (), also known as the Ayyubid Sultanate, was the founding dynasty of the medieval Sultan of Egypt, Sultanate of Egypt established by Saladin in 1171, following his abolition of the Fatimid Caliphate, Fatimid Caliphate of Egyp ...

ruler of Banyas from 1218 until his death. Al-ʿAzīz ʿUthmān was a younger son of Sultan al-ʿĀdil I. He was granted Banyas as an ''

iqṭāʿ An iqta () and occasionally iqtaʿa () was an Islamic practice of Farm (revenue leasing), farming out tax revenues yielded by land granted temporarily to army officials in place of a regular wage; it became common in the Muslim empire of the Caliph ...

'' (fief) by his elder brother, al-Muʿaẓẓam, perhaps in 1218. In 1219, with ʿIzz al-Dīn Aybak, he was left in charge of al-Muʿaẓẓam's Syrian principality when the latter went to join the Sultan al-Kāmil in Egypt against the

Fifth Crusade The Fifth Crusade (September 1217 - August 29, 1221) was a campaign in a series of Crusades by Western Europeans to reacquire Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land by first conquering Egypt, ruled by the powerful Ayyubid sultanate, led by al- ...

. When al-Muʿaẓẓam decided to raze the

walls of Jerusalem The Walls of Jerusalem (, ) surround the Old City of Jerusalem (approx. 1 km2). In 1535, when Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman Empire, Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent ordered the ruined city walls to be rebuilt. T ...

, he protested unsuccessfully that he was able to defend the city. After al-Muʿaẓẓam dismantled all of his fortresses west of the

Jordan River The Jordan River or River Jordan (, ''Nahr al-ʾUrdunn''; , ''Nəhar hayYardēn''), also known as ''Nahr Al-Sharieat'' (), is a endorheic river in the Levant that flows roughly north to south through the Sea of Galilee and drains to the Dead ...

, he gave the territory to al-ʿAzīz ʿUthmān. This included the former crusader castles of Beaufort, Chastel Neuf and

Toron Toron, now Tibnin or Tebnine in southern Lebanon, was a major Crusader castle, built in the Lebanon mountains on the road from Tyre to Damascus. The castle was the centre of the Lordship of Toron, a seigneury within the Kingdom of Jerusa ...

. During the

Sixth Crusade The Sixth Crusade (1228–1229), also known as the Crusade of Frederick II, was a military expedition to recapture Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land. It began seven years after the failure of the Fifth Crusade and involved very little actua ...

, in February or March 1228, al-ʿAzīz ʿUthmān ambushed a group of crusaders near Tyre. He killed or captured some seventy horsemen in one of the few military actions of the crusade. Later that year, he entered a conspiracy to seize

Baalbek Baalbek (; ; ) is a city located east of the Litani River in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley, about northeast of Beirut. It is the capital of Baalbek-Hermel Governorate. In 1998, the city had a population of 82,608. Most of the population consists of S ...

from Bahrām Shāh. Failing that, he attempted to take the town by siege until ordered to desist by his nephew,

al-Nāṣir Dāʾūd An-Nasir Dawud (1206–1261) was a Kurds, Kurdish ruler, briefly (1227–1229) List of rulers of Damascus#Ayyubid emirs (some were also Sultans of Egypt), Ayyubid sultan of Damascus and later (1229–1248) Emir of Al-Karak. An-Nasir Dawud was the ...

. This caused a rift between the two and al-ʿAzīz joined al-Kāmil with the army of Banyas at

Nablus Nablus ( ; , ) is a State of Palestine, Palestinian city in the West Bank, located approximately north of Jerusalem, with a population of 156,906. Located between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a ...

in August 1228, when the sultan was preparing to dispossess al-Nāṣir. At this time, al-Kāmil may have recognized al-ʿAzīz as autonomous in Banyas. Thereafter, he would cease to owe his position to the ruler of Damascus. Already by 1226, al-ʿAzīz had begun to call himself '' al-sultan'' in his inscriptions. In the negotiations that followed, al-ʿAzīz ʿUthmān acquired Baalbek. Following the siege of Damascus in June 1229, however, his brother al-Ashraf refused to hand it over. This betrayal did not cause a permanent rift. In 1230, al-ʿAzīz joined al-Ashraf's army that defeated the ''

Khwarazmshah Khwarazmshah was an ancient title used regularly by the rulers of the Central Asian region of Khwarazm starting from the Late Antiquity until the advent of the Mongols in the early 13th-century, after which it was used infrequently. There were a to ...

'' Jalāl al-Dīn at the battle of Yasi-chimen on 9 August. He was also present at the brief siege of Amida in 1232. Al-ʿAzīz ʿUthmān died not long after this last campaign, on 10 '' Ramaḍān'' 630 AH (20 June 1233). He was succeeded in Banyas by his eldest son, al-Ẓāhir Ghāzī, who soon died and was succeeded by a younger son, al-Ṣaʿīd Ḥasan.

Notes

Bibliography

*{{cite book , title=From Saladin to the Mongols: The Ayyubids of Damascus, 1193–1260 , first=R. Stephen , last=Humphreys , publisher=State University of New York Press , year=1977 1233 deaths 13th-century Ayyubid rulers Year of birth unknown Banias