Najm ad-Din Ayyub

al-Malik al-Afdal Najm ad-Din Ayyub ibn Shadhi ibn Marwan (Arabic: الملك ألأفضل نجم الدين أيوب بن شاﺬي بن مروان) (died August 9, 1173) was a Kurdish soldier and politician from Dvin, and the father of Saladin. He is eponymous ancestor of the Ayyubid dynasty.

Ayyub was the son of Shadhi ibn Marwan and brother of Shirkuh. The family belonged to the tribe of Revend or Revendi, also Rawadiya, itself a branch of the Hadhabani tribe. The earliest form of the name is written "Rewend" in the Sharafnama. According to Vladimir Minorsky, this could have been a corruption of the Arabic name "Rawadiya". In contrast, the name of "Rewend" or in some cases "Revend" means "Nomad" in Kurdish and theis name was mostly applied to nomad Kurdish tribesin the region. Minorsky thus leaves space for a possible Arabic influence on the tribe, although they are generally considered to be Kurdish. Furthermore, Minorsky states that the rulers of the tribe could have given their name to it. In other words, it is possible that the Rewend/Rawadiya rulers were of Arab origin, and arrived in the Dvin region in 758 CE from the Arbela (modern Arbil) region. Further it should be considered that Vladimir Minorsky's research was based upon subjective writings of Kurdish medieval historian Ibn Athir.

The family were closely connected to the Shaddadid dynasty, and when the last Shaddadid was deposed in Dvin in 1130, Shadhi moved the family first to Baghdad and then to Tikrit, where he was appointed governor by the regional administrator Bihruz. Ayyub succeeded his father as governor of Tikrit when Shadhi died soon after.

In 1132 Ayyub was in the service of Imad ad-Din Zengi. He participated in a battle against the Seljuk Sultan near Tikrit and saved Zengi's life when he assisted his retreat across the Tigris. In 1136, Shirkuh killed a Christian with whom he was quarrelling in Tikrit, and the brothers were exiled (Ayyub's son Yusuf, later known as Saladin, was supposedly born the night they left). Zengi later appointed Ayyub governor of Baalbek, and when the town was besieged in 1146 by Mu'in ad-Din Unur, the atabeg of the Burid emir of Damascus, Ayyub surrendered it and retired to Damascus. Shirkuh, meanwhile, entered the service of Zengi's son Nur ad-Din Zengi, who had designs on Damascus; when the Second Crusade besieged the city in 1148, Nur ad-Din forced Mu'in ad-Din and the Burids into a reluctant alliance. Soon Nur ad-Din demanded the city be handed over to him, and Ayyub and Shirkuh negotiated its surrender in 1154. Ayyub remained governor of Damascus under Nur ad-Din's rule. He was held in such honour that he was the only one of Nur ad-Din's officials allowed to remain seated in his presence.

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