The troubles began in the 1140s, when a Turkish soldier and career politician known as Imad al-Din Zengi attacked the city of Edessa—capital of the smallest and most vulnerable of the crusader states. Edessa was a long way from the coast, halfway between the Latin-held city of Antioch and Aleppo, where Zengi was governor, and that fact of geography alone made it vulnerable. Zengi had a reputation for drunkenness and extreme cruelty to his troops and enemies alike, but he was a brilliant strategist, with ambitions to unite as many Syrian cities as possible under his own leadership.
