Najm ad-Din Ayyub

al-Malik al-Afdal Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb ibn Shādhi ibn Marwān ( Kurdish: Necmeddin Eyûbî; died August 9, 1173), or simply Najmadin, was a Kurdish soldier and politician from Dvin, and the father of Saladin. He is the eponymous ancestor of the Ayyubid dynasty. Life and career Ayyub was the son of Shadhi ibn Marwan and brother of Shirkuh. The family belonged to the tribe of Revend or Revendi, also Kurdish 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 this name was mostly applied to nomad Kurdish tribes in 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, whereas we know that many rulers claimed of Arabic origin despite not being Arab or historians claimed as such. The full name of Saladin is "Al-Malik al-Nasir Salah al-Din Abu'l Muzzafar Yusuf ibn Ayyub al-Tikriti al-Kurdi", which clearly shows that Najm al-Din Ayyub and Saladin were Kurdish, "al-Kurdi" refers to his Kurdish ethnic origin. Most of their loyal companians as well as jurists were from the Kurdish region of Hakkari also known as Colemerg or Julamerk in some western history books. Further it should be considered that Vladimir Minorsky's research was based upon subjective writings of 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.