1169: Shawar, Saladin forerunner
Add comment January 18th, 2019 Headsman
On this date in 1169, the vizier of Egypt, name of Shawar, was put to summary death as war collapsed the Fatimid Caliphate … a death required to prepare the way for a much more august successor.
A Shia dynasty that had once stretched across North Africa and the Levant, the Fatimids by the 1160s controlled only Egypt but they did not control it decisively, as neighboring powers could readily discern.
Shawar, vizier since 1162, was the effective ruler of the empire but he’d been chased to exile in Damascus by an internal rival. Nothing daunted, Shawar successfully appealed to the Turkish governor of that city, Nur al-Din, to restore him.
A Kurdish general named Shirkuh led this successful intervention, which is notable as the entry onto history’s battlefields of Shirkuh’s nephew — the mighty Saladin.
While Shawar profited from Shirkuh and Saladin’s intervention, he had no desire for them to stay — while of course staying was the whole reason that Nur al-Din had sent them to intervene. Egypt slid into a three-way war when the Frankish Crusader King Amalric of Jerusalem invaded to check the influence of Shawar’s overstaying benefactors. Miraculously, Shawar came out of this unscathed when the rival powers fought to a stalemate and departed Egypt under truce.
Alliances shift like the sands hereabouts; by 1168 it was the Franks attacking, and overwhelming, the Egyptians, forcing a desperate Shawar to torch his own capital, Fustat. Replaying the same script from 1163 with the roles reversed, Shirkuh and Saladin were soon sent to counter the Crusaders, which their very presence accomplished: Amalric withdrew as soon as they arrived.
And this, at last, left Egypt in Shirkuh’s hands and the nimble Shawar exposed to his fate. The Fatimid caliph was induced on January 18 to consent to Shawar’s immediate execution.
Shawar’s passion also signaled the imminent death of the Fatimid Caliphate. The vizier’s post was filled subsequently by Shirkuh himself … and when Shirkuh died two months later, by Saladin.
Egypt thereafter would prove the launching-point for a scintillating career: Saladin reorganized the unstable polity and by 1171 disbanded the Fatimid state, founding in its place the Ayyubid Dynasty.* From this base of power, Saladin took over Syria when his former patron (by then rival) Nur al-Din passed away in 1174, and proceeded thence to become the preeminent conqueror of his day.
* Named for Saladin’s father.
On this day..
- 2016: Daniel Shaver, police impunity victim - 2020
- 1884: Maggie and Michael Cuddigan lynched in Ouray - 2018
- 1573: Gilles Garnier, loup-garou - 2017
- 1678: James Mitchell, Covenanter assassin - 2016
- 2013: Two from cranes in Pakdasht - 2015
- 2000: Spencer Corey Goodman - 2014
- 1863: Mangas Coloradas, Apache leader - 2013
- 1902: Gideon Scheepers, Boer guerrilla - 2012
- 1256: Marie of Brabant, on suspicion of infidelity - 2011
- 1676: Joshua Tefft, drawn and quartered in Rhode Island - 2010
- Themed Set: Resistance and Rebellion in the Restoration - 2010
- 1803: George Foster, and thence to the reanimator - 2009
- 1985: Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, progressive Islamic theologian - 2008
Entry Filed under: 12th Century,Borderline "Executions",Caliphate,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Egypt,Execution,Heads of State,History,No Formal Charge,Occupation and Colonialism,Politicians,Power,Summary Executions,Syria,Wartime Executions
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