HISTORY NEVER REPEATS ITSELF precisely, but it often rhymes. Coalition forces killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a safe house just outside Baghdad. More than 800 years earlier, the life of Zarqawi's role model, Nur ad-Din Zanki (1118-1174), came to an end in Damascus, another power center of the ancient Islamic world. The long overlooked connection between the two men should provide a note of instruction for the future in dealing with the Iraq insurgency.

Most tyrants and terrorists are inspired by a charismatic figure who triumphed in a heroic past. Hitler looked back to Napoleon and Frederick the Great. Lenin measured his achievements against the record of the Paris Commune of 1870.

Zarqawi's role model was twelfth century Arab fighting king Nur ad-Din Zanki. Zanki had two missions in life: to drive the Crusaders from Arab lands and to crush Shiite rulers. Few understood the importance that Zarqawi placed on him. In interviews with Iraq and Zarqawi specialists at the State Department, Defense Department and West Point's Combating Terrorism Center, we found no one who understood the importance that Zarqawi placed on Zanki.

A survey of the available literature on Zarqawi in English shows virtually no reference to Zarqawi's relationship to Zanki. In the Arab world, though, there has been a fair amount of discussion about the two men.

We recently acquired a new, never-before-translated Arabic-language book on Zarqawi, Al Qaeda's Second Generation, by Jordanian journalist Fouad Hussein, who has been linked to Hezbollah's al-Manar television network. An independent translation that we commissioned reveals that

"One cannot understand Zarqawi and cannot attempt to predict the future of his organization and the next steps that it will take without being familiar with Nur ad-Din Zanki. Zarqawi was simply fascinated by Nur ad-Din," al-Adel told Hussein. "Regardless of where he was, Zarqawi would always look for books about Nur ad-Din. The best presents he ever got from his acquaintances were history books that would lengthily describe the jihad that Nur ad-Din Zanki waged against the crusaders and the triumphs that he led his followers to."

Hussein, who is well-acquainted with al Qaeda leaders, contends that Zarqawi made strategic decisions based on his devotion to Zanki: "This fact enables us to answer the proverbial question of why Zarqawi, of al Qaeda leaders, specifically chose to settle in Iraq after the American military occupied Afghanistan. Perhaps he wants to begin liberating Iraq from Mosul and to spread the tawheed [Islamic monotheism] in Syria, Northern Iraq and Egypt as a preliminary step before liberating Jerusalem. Perhaps it is possible for us to adopt the theory that says that those who closely study history sometimes take on their heroes' roles and follow their footsteps in order to reshape the course of history."

"By reading Nur ad-Din [Zanki]'s biography we can understand why Zarqawi chose to trust Syrians from Humaa, Allazeekia, Halab and the Jazeera area of northern Syria first. After reading Nur ad-Din's story we finally realize why he chose northern Iraq that lies on the banks of the Euphrates as a first stronghold from which to attack the American occupiers of Iraq," Hussein writes.