His was a tumultuous time: centuries of
Shia reign had not long ended in central Syria, rival warlords sought dominate the capital
Damascus, and Crusaders had conquered
Jerusalem. Seeking the unification of
Syria and
Egypt, and the revival of
Sunni Islam in both regions, Ibn ‘Asakir served successive Muslim rulers, including Nur al-Din and
Saladin, and produced propaganda against both the Christian invaders and the Shia's. This, together with his influential writings and his advocacy of major texts, helped to lay the foundations for the eventual
Sunni domination of the
Levant and Egypt, a domination which continues to this day. During Ibn Asakir's intense journeys for education to the east. It is said that he was the first scholar in
Damascus to bring many copies of books that have never reached Damascus before in history. Due to so much knowledge and information he gathered, he manage to share these new pieces of valuable information in
Umayyad Mosque and began teaching there. Due to this, Damascus would later grow into becoming the Islamic center and birth many great scholars. The city would eclipse both Islamic leading centers such as
Baghdad and
Nishapur after the Mongol invasion. Ibn Asakir's collection's would later spread all over the west impacting further Islamic knowledge. Al-Qasim the son of Ibn Asakir would narrate two unique reports that prophesize his legacy. : I (Al-Qasim) used to hear my father (Ibn 'Asakir) say that, while his mother was pregnant, his father had a vision in a dream informing him that he would beget a son whom God would use to revivify Sunnism. : When my mother became pregnant with me, she saw in her dream someone telling her: "You will beget a child who will become very important. When you deliver him, bring him on the fortieth day of his birth to the Grotto - meaning the Grotto of Blood in the Mount Qasyun - and give alms, for then God will bless him and bless the Muslims by him." The famous scholar
Ibn Kathir quoted these two reports in his biography of Ibn 'Asakir and commented on it by saying: : "I say that these visions are indeed true, and what proves it is that he brought to Syria the most famous books of Islam, such as the
Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal and the
Musnad Abu Yaʽla and other Hadith books, the massive ones and concise ones. " ==Reception==