In 1186, when az-Zahir was 15 years of age, his father appointed him governor of Aleppo,
Mosul and supporting areas which had recently been taken from the
Zengids. At the same time his two older brothers were appointed, respectively, as governor of Syria (
al-Afdal) and Egypt (
al-Aziz). The lands that az-Zahir received had been under the control of his uncle, Saladin's brother
al-Adil, and al-Adil took an avuncular interest in az-Zahir. As the third son, when he inherited in 1193 he was to owe suzerainty to his eldest brother, al-Afdal, in Damascus. However, he conducted his affairs independently from his brothers, and thus stayed out of their quarrels with his uncle Al-Adil for a while. In 1193, faced with the ongoing revolt of Zengid
'Izz al-Din in
Mosul, he called upon his uncle, al-Adil, to provide the forces to suppress the revolt, which was quickly quelled. In 1194, az-Zahir received
Latakia and Jableh as part of a settlement in which he recognized al-Afdal's authority. However, by 1196 al-Afdal had proved himself incompetent as a ruler, and had lost the support of his uncle, al-Adil. Az-Zahir joined with his brother al-Aziz and uncle al-Adil in deposing and exiling al-Afdal. In October 1197, noting that
Amalric of Lusignan had retaken the port at
Beirut and that
Bohemond III of Antioch was threatening the ports of Latakia and
Jableh, az-Zahir destroyed the ports. Although Bohemond took the two locations, they were no longer advantageous, and he soon withdrew. At which point az-Zahir reoccupied them, and rebuilt the fortress at Latakia. 's book on dietetic medicine copied for al-Malik al-Ẓāhir in 1213 CE While ruler in Aleppo he kept many of his father's advisors. He appointed
Baha ad-Din as a
qadi ("judge") in Aleppo. He brought the unorthodox
as-Suhrawardi to Aleppo, but was forced to imprison him in 1191 due to the demands of the orthodox
ulama ("men of learning"). When al-Aziz died in Egypt in 1198 and was succeeded by his son
al-Mansur, a boy of nine, al-Aziz's ministers, worried about the ambitions of al-Adil, summoned al-Afdal from exile to act as Regent of Egypt in the name of his young nephew. Early in the next year, while al-Adil was in the north suppressing an
Artuqid rebellion, al-Afdal and az-Zahir came together in alliance and were joined by most of the other Ayyubid princes. Together they besieged
Damascus, but as it held out for several months az-Zahir, as did other Ayyubid princes, lost interest and withdrew his troops. Prior to his death in 1216, az-Zahir appointed his younger son
al-Aziz Muhammad (b. 1213) to succeed him. ==References==