Chapter 9
Muslims and Christians rated the submission of Aleppo very highly. Some fervent jihad enthusiasts might deplore this continuing war between the Muslims, but many more were jubilant that Islam was once again being united. Events had shown that the Zengid princes were too envious of the power of the Kurdish ‘usurper’ to help him against the Christians. And just as Nur-ad-Din from Aleppo had concentrated on winning Damascus and then Egypt before risking the final blow against the kingdom of Jerusalem, so Saladin had refused to commit himself against it with a hostile Aleppo on his frontier. Baha’-ad-Din tells us that Saladin looked on Aleppo as the basis and key to his power while from William of Tyre we learn that the news fell in the Christian camp like a bombshell. ‘It ran through the land of the Christians who were much afraid, for this was the thing they had been dreading. They well knew that if Saladin could conquer that city then their country could be swept and besieged in every part.’ Another Frank said quite simply that the Christians were now in a permanent state of siege.
Saladin was the greatest power in Islam; but his newly won empire brought with it deep political complexities. His own early career had shown how difficult it could be for the lord of Syria to maintain his grip on Egypt, even when it was held by a loyal lieutenant. Now Cairo dominated the North African coast as far west as Tripoli, thanks to raiding campaigns by the ambitious Sharaf ad-Din. He had set up this far-flung presence of Aiyubid power almost single-handed, and moreover, as a general in the forces of Saladin’s nephew Taqi-ad-Din, owed his first allegiance to a member of the family whose own ambitions made it necessary to watch his loyalty constantly. Taqi-ad-Din had been posted in Syria since 1175 (an inscription shows him as governor of the town of Hamah from 1179) and the government of Egypt had been entrusted to Saladin’s brilliant younger brother al-Adil. Another brother, Tughtigin, had been given the provinces of Arabia the year before the Aleppo campaign, and from the peace that reigned in that part of the empire we can assume that his loyalty was never in doubt. Turan-Shah, the dynamic and colourful conqueror of the Yemen, after a chequered political career including governorships of Damascus, Baalbek and finally Alexandria, had died in semi-disgrace, too addicted to his pleasures to be a useful member of the family team, in 1180. A far more serious loss was the death of Saladin’s nephew Farrukh-Shah, who had proved such a capable soldier and commander at Damascus, in September 1182. His cousin, Nasir-ad-Din, was governor of Homs. He also was the son of Shirkuh, the conqueror of Egypt, and his loyalty too could not be completely relied upon.
Saladin now ruled an empire that far exceeded the state of Nur-ad-Din. His colleagues in empire were a numerous family, some of whom, like Taqi-ad-Din and Turan-Shah, had shared in the founding of his greatness, and all of whom, given the separatist nature of twelfth-century Islamic politics, could be supposed to have their individual ambitions. Where Nur-ad-Din had been free of importunate relations and had been able to use subordinates like Aiyub and Shirkuh who depended on him for their advancement, Saladin needed all his considerable political intuition to harness the abilities of a competitive family, many older than he, and check their rivalry. The empire was to fall apart soon after his death, just as the domain of Nur-ad-Din had done. To maintain it in being during his life required force of character, constant attention and time-consuming work.
The first decision was the appointment of a new governor of Aleppo. For six weeks Saladin was busy reorganising the administration, and perhaps satisfying himself about the loyalty of the place. He had little to fear. Despite their fierce traditional loyalty to the Zengid house, the people of Aleppo had been shabbily treated. Only two years back, ‘Izzad-Din of Mosul had traded the proud former capital of Syria with his brother, and now that brother had shamefully betrayed it to the man whom the Aleppans had long regarded as the arch enemy of their city and their dynasty. Saladin’s clemency, following so fast on the mean, inglorious expedients of the Zengid princes, dissolved the threat of any immediate opposition. The long-term integration of the great city into the Aiyubid realm would need the guiding hand of a loyal and experienced man. The nearest of Saladin’s relations was Taqi-ad-Din at Hamah. His talents as a soldier were proven but his political abilities and loyalty in a sensitive post were not. Back in 1175 he had held the governorship of Damascus, but had had to be removed twelve months later. For the time being things in Aleppo were peaceful enough for Saladin to install as temporary governor his third son, the ten-year-old az-Zahir, with an experienced adviser. We are told that he was his father’s favourite son and, naturally enough, that he was virtuous and wise beyond his years. However, at the end of the year he was to find himself replaced by his renowned uncle al-Adil who for the past nine years had been directing the Egyptian administration with cool efficiency. Just when Saladin decided on the switch we do not know, but there is some reason to suppose that it was during the summer of 1183.
By 24 August he was back in Damascus. He had announced his intention of another campaign against the Franks in a well-publicised dispatch to the caliph. Having assembled a large army he left the city on 17 September and moved south in easy stages to reach the eastern bank of the Jordan, below the Lake of Tiberias, on the 28th. On the morning of the next day he crossed over into the kingdom. His leisurely march to the frontier ford, about fifty-five miles in eleven days, had given time for all the expected detachments to join the main army: it had also given the Christians ample time to muster. The regent, Guy of Lusignan, called all the forces of the kingdom to his standard at Saffuriyah in the hills about Galilee. Well placed for access to the port of Acre and the coastal plain, and with large and reliable supplies of water, the position also enabled the defending army to block equally rapidly an enemy advance from across the Jordan north or south of the lake.
The chief men of the kingdom were with the regent: among them the brothers Balian of Ibelin and Baldwin of Ramlah, Count Raymond of Tripoli, soon to contest the leadership of the kingdom with Guy, and Raynald. Hurrying up from the south were further reinforcements, drawn from the garrisons of Raynald’s castles, al-Karak and ash-Shaubak (Montreal), and led by his stepson, the young Humphrey IV of Toron. Despite its great size, the army’s function was purely defensive, to remain in the field in force so as to cramp any major manoeuvres by the enemy, not to seek out a decisive engagement.
On 29 September Saladin swept into the town of Baisan, which had been deserted by its population on the news of his coming. The soldiery was left free to pillage and burnt everything they could not carry off. It was an inspiriting start to what looked like being a profitable razzia. The next day the army pushed on south-west a few miles to the head of the valley of Jezreel which stretched inland from Haifa to modern Yizre’el. Saladin pitched camp overlooking ‘Ain Jalut, a pool known to the Christians as the Spring of Goliath. He had also sent on ahead a flying column led by ‘Izz-ad-Din Jurdik, formerly one of the most loyal of Nur-ad-Din’s mamluks. He successfully ambushed Humphrey of Toron’s forces on the slopes of Mount Gilboa barely twenty miles short of its destination, and destroyed it. The news reached the main army on 30 September and raised its pitch of euphoria a notch higher. In forty-eight hours they had sacked a Christian town and destroyed a significant enemy force.
But the Christians were now heading south to contest the vital watering place of ‘Ain Jalut with Saladin. ‘Because he meant to pit his forces against them in the field’, Saladin drew up his army in formal order of battle and sent a vanguard of 500 on to harass the enemy. In the words of his biographer these were soon ‘eyeball to eyeball’ with the Christian van, commanded by the regent’s brother, Amalric. There was a fierce clash, but the main Christian force soon came up and the Muslims had to draw off.
Now began one of those battles on the march which had been a characteristic of crusading warfare from the earliest years. ‘The Franks kept their ranks closed, their infantry protecting their knights, they neither charged nor stopped, but continued their march to the spring and there they dressed their tents.’ Saladin, using traditional Turkish tactics, sent his horse archers down on the compact column time and again in a vain endeavour to make it break ranks. But a Christian army which kept discipline and was not outrageously outnumbered was almost impregnable, even on the march. The superior physique of the Franks and their heavy armour gave them the advantage. It is largely for this reason that many of Saladin’s campaigns seem ineffectual – so much of the time was spent trying to lure the Franks to break their formation. On this occasion the armies confronted one another for five days. Then Saladin withdrew to Jabal Tabur (Mount Tabor) some ten miles away hoping to tempt the Christians from their position to attack him. In the meanwhile his marauders had sacked many villages round about the battle zone and had attacked a monastery on Jabul Tabur itself. Although hard pressed and for a time desperate for supplies, the Christians had held firm, and now, instead of pursuing Saladin to Jabal Tabur, they withdrew back towards their base at Saffuriyah. Saladin, his army bloated with plunder and flushed with triumph, broke off the action and was back in Damascus by 14 October.
If we are tempted to ask just what had been achieved and indeed what had been intended, few of his subjects had such doubts. In a dashing razzia their army had plundered at will, taken the fighting to the enemy, and forced on him the humiliating role of inaction while all around him his peasants and townships were pillaged. Saladin received a hero’s welcome on his return to Damascus. The Christian camp, by contrast, was bitterly divided. The common soldiery, plagued by the insolent arrows of the enemy, had wanted to fight – the view urged in the councils of the leadership by the fire-eating Raynald. The seemingly timid advice that the array must be maintained intact, which the regent had followed, had come from Raymond of Tripoli and the Ibelin brothers. Their enemies now charged that they had been motivated not by wise strategy but by an envious determination to deny Guy any chance of glory. The fact that the army was still in being and could stop any major invasion was not the kind of military achievement that the average man could understand or would be interested in. There must have been many Christians who cast envious eyes at the triumphs being celebrated in Damascus. Among his own people Saladin’s reputation, tarnished a little perhaps by his campaign against Aleppo, was once more bright.
A week later he was once more on the road south. This time the objective was al-Karak. Al-Adil had been summoned up from Egypt and Saladin was scheduled to rendezvous with him under its walls. Baha’-ad-Din tells us that while waiting for news of his brother’s progress Saladin ‘set out several times on the road for al-Karak’. This is just one of the pointers that leads to the suspicion that the famous siege of November 1183 was not the simple military operation it appears to have been.
The siege, which coincided with the marriage between the young Humphrey IV of Toron and Isabella of Jerusalem is a centrepiece for the chivalric tapestry later woven round the crusading wars. The marriage had been sponsored by King Baldwin in the faint hope that it would heal the rift between the house of Ibelin, Isabella’s step-parents, and the allies of Raynald, Humphrey’s stepfather. The politics of the kingdom had been fragmented into two fierce factions when, in 1180, Sibylla, the sister of the leprous King Baldwin, had married Guy de Lusignan, specially brought over from Europe for the purpose by his brother, Amalric, the constable of the kingdom. With the king a leper the succession was a vital question, and this marriage seemed to threaten the baronage with an untried, upstart young French nobleman as their future monarch. The Ibelins represented the baronial party, while Raynald, himself very aware of his European allegiances, was wholeheartedly behind de Lusignan. Baldwin, bravely trying to keep harmony between the strong men of a realm, which needed unity above all things, had arranged the betrothal of Humphrey and Isabella although the princess was at the time only eight. Now, three years later, it was thought possible to celebrate the marriage. Raynald was determined that, little as he welcomed the political implications supposed to lie behind the union, if it was to be celebrated at all it should be in his castle with all the pomp he could muster. As well as the wedding guests, entertainers and jugglers thronged to the castle from all parts of the Christian states, and by the middle of November the party was in full swing. Meanwhile, from the south, the forces of al-Adil were at last on the move from Egypt.
He joined Saladin and Taqi-ad-Din outside al-Karak on 20 November. Saladin was able to force an entrance into the town below the castle with a rushed assault but was beaten back at the entrance to the fortress. He now set up his siege engines and began a heavy and relentless bombardment. Taqi-ad-Din was with the Damascus army and took a hand in directing the operations. It looked like a major attempt to take a castle which had caused the Muslims so much trouble for so long. Within the walls the festivities defiantly went on. One contemporary account informs us that the bridegroom’s mother even prepared dishes from the wedding feast and had them sent out to the chivalrous Saladin. In return he courteously enquired where the young couple’s marriage chamber was and ordered his artillery men not to fire at that section of the wall. However, if he left the bride and groom some relative peace, Saladin continued the bombardment on the main circuit of the walls, which was as fierce as ever. In desperation the garrison got a message to Jerusalem and beacon fires soon brought the reply that reinforcements were on the march. It was enough to decide Saladin to withdraw. The Christian army pressed on and the king was carried in triumph into the castle. Saladin was back in Damascus on 11 December, and at first glance it would seem as though he had achieved little.
Most historians have regarded this expedition against al-Karak and the one that followed in 1184 as failed attempts to take the place by storm and have supposed that al-Adil came up from Egypt solely to bring reinforcements. A cynical modern biographer of Saladin, noting the speed with which he fell back on news of an approaching Christian relief force, suggests that the campaigns were mere charades designed to bolster Saladin’s reputation as an untiring warrior in the jihad. Both interpretations seem a little improbable. It may well be that Saladin did not plan for a protracted siege. Karak was one of the strongest of the many very formidable castles the Crusaders built; when it did fall in 1188 it was only after a stubborn year-long siege. Saladin was perfectly aware of the military problem posed by this strongpoint. Had its capture been the first objective in 1183 and ’84 he would have prepared his position against the inevitable attempt by the enemy to relieve the place. We deduce that the reduction of the fortress was not the point of his campaign. Equally, the object can hardly have been to win prestige – there is little of that to be had from failure. The clue to what lay behind Saladin’s planning is found implied in Baha’-ad-Din’s account of the 1183 campaign. Baha tells us that ‘a number of merchants and others travelled with al-Adil’, and ends with the observation that Karak ‘caused great damage to the Muslims for … it obliged the caravans to travel with an armed escort’. After the armies had made their junction at Karak they promptly separated again. Al-Adil marched on northwards, where he was to take up the post of governor in Aleppo, while Taqi-ad-Din, a better soldier, headed southwards to take over command in Egypt. According to Baha’-ad-Din Saladin had grown apprehensive of the Christians marching against that country. In the autumn of 1183 then Saladin’s concern was not with the capture of a great Christian fortress but to ensure the smooth transfer of commands in two of the most important provinces and to protect the passage of a rich convoy. Had al-Karak fallen he would no doubt have been as much astonished as delighted, for the campaign had been intended to draw the forces of the kingdom to a position where he could hold them, and he knew that a feint against Karak would be the surest way of doing this.
A similar pattern can be discerned behind the siege of Karak in August/September 1184. This time it was Taqi-ad-Din who brought up the army from Egypt and this time the precious goods under convoy were the household and treasures of al-Adil on their way to join him in Aleppo. The armies of Saladin and his nephew made their junction on 30 July, and a fortnight later a fierce bombardment of Karak began. A month after, they were back to a triumphant reception in Damascus. Saladin had an additional cause for self-congratulation, for this brief campaign was the first in which his army had included contingents from the sensitive areas to the north which he was contesting with Mosul.
Despite his disappointment there in the winter of 1182 Saladin was still determined to force his suzerainty on the city. In February 1184 a deputation reached Damascus looking for terms of compromise. It was headed by Baha’-ad-Din, at that time one of the senior advisers of Mosul, and with him was the prestigious Badr-ad-Din, who bore the honorific title of Shaikh of Shaikhs at the caliphal court. Saladin, with his characteristic respect for age and wisdom, visited the venerable ambassador from Baghdad almost daily, but he refused to back down from his claims on Mosul. As Baha’-ad-Din was later to learn, part of these discussions were concerned with him. Saladin, impressed with the leader of the Mosul deputation, persuaded the shaikh to offer Baha’-ad-Din a tempting opportunity to enter his service. But he was met with a refusal. The ambassador feared, reasonably enough, that, with the negotiations clearly heading for an impasse, to accept the job would provoke charges of double-dealing against him. Possibly, in fact, Saladin was hoping that he could undermine the authority and prestige of ‘Izz-ad-Din at Mosul if he could persuade one of his chief advisers to quit his service. But the fact that the offer was to be repeated and eventually accepted proves that such an ulterior motive was not his only one.
While Baha’-ad-Din was at Damascus the entourage of az-Zahir arrived from Aleppo. After six months in office the boy and his adviser had been displaced by al-Adil, who reached the city in the middle of December. Considering the boy’s age the replacement was hardly surprising, yet he seems to have resented it. Baha’-ad-Din, watching with the professional diplomat’s eye, reported back to Mosul that: ‘the boy submitted to his father in all things and concealed his discontent, but it did not escape the eye of Saladin.’ The next month al-Adil was at Damascus to celebrate the Feast of Sacrifice with his brother, and no doubt to report.
With the festival over, Saladin sent out messengers to recruit allies for a campaign planned for later that summer against the Christians. Among other things Saladin was anxious to demonstrate the reality of his influence in al-Jazirah. The first among the princes of the area to join the standard was Nur-ad-Din of Hisn Kaifa, who was received by al-Adil with high honour when he marched into Aleppo on the last day of May. A week later they went to Damascus together and Saladin, who had been ill, hastened out to meet them on the road as another gesture of honour to this very welcome ally. He had good reason to be pleased when his army was joined by detachments from Mardin and Sinjar. It was an impressive force that the Egyptians found awaiting them at the rendezvous outside al-Karak. An artillery train of fourteen mangonels put up a fierce bombardment – a contemporary letter, quoted by the historian Abu-Shamah, boasted that no defender dare show his head for fear of the Muslim archers. Saladin had men sapping the foot of the walls under the protection of covered approach ways. Abu-Shamah’s anonymous correspondent thought that victory was close, but news came that the Christian army was on the march. Saladin interrupted the siege and marched to intercept them, again apparently hoping to force a full engagement. But again it was denied him, and the Franks, maintaining their compact column on the march, forced their way through to relieve the beleaguered fortress. Denied the rather improbable bonus of a quick capitulation from al-Karak, Saladin took advantage of the fact that the Franks were once more concentrated at the castle and sent out raiding columns as the main army headed back for Damascus, to ravage from Nablus northwards into Galilee.
On 15 September Saladin returned in triumph to Damascus. Greeted by his own people as a hero, he was careful to honour the ruler of Hisn Kaifa publicly, even investing him with a robe of honour which the caliph had sent for the victorious Saladin himself. For the rest of the year Saladin was busy with the administration of his large empire, and it appears that he also had to pacify complaints from Cairo. With the bulk of the Egyptian army away in the north the country felt vulnerable to surprise Christian raids. These protests were to become more plaintive the following year when Saladin took the Egyptian forces with him still further from their home in a campaign against Mosul.
Though his admirers may have been unhappy at yet another conflict with a Muslim city, Saladin knew there was little to fear from the Christians. The tragic life of Baldwin IV was nearing its end and he had designated his eight-year-old nephew Baldwin as his successor. Thus at the very time Saladin, with Aleppo subdued and the lesser princes of al-Jazirah his willing allies, was welding Muslim Syria into the most convincing unity it had known since Nur-ad-Din’s death, the Franks were faced with a long regency. Better still, Guy of Lusignan had been explicitly excluded from the regency which had been given to his rival, Raymond of Tripoli, so that some bitter and damaging politics lay ahead for the kingdom. For the moment its most pressing problem was a threat of famine. The winter rains had failed and the peasantry seemed faced with starvation; the plundering expeditions by Saladin’s troops of the previous year had not helped matters, while the Christians were desperately short of men if the enemy should decide on a major invasion. Emissaries had been sent to Europe to beg reinforcements, but without success. When the new regent met his council to decide what was to be done they agreed, with little debate, to his proposal that a truce should be sought with Saladin.
Not only did Saladin readily grant the truce, willingly according to one Western source, he also ordered supplies into the disaster areas. In fact, according to the Frankish source known as Ernoul, ‘the Saracens brought in so much provender that the Christians had all they needed; had there been no truce they would have died of famine. For this the count of Tripoli was much blessed and honoured by the peasants, for the truce that he had made with the Saracens.’ For the French historian Grousset the factors in the situation proved that Saladin, ‘satisfied with the constitution of his Syrio-Egyptian empire, was prepared to tolerate the Frankish presence in coastal Palestine, despite his jihad protestations.’ It must be conceded that, strictly within the context of the Holy War, the situation in early 1185 was good for an attack on the Christians. But Saladin had commitments to his allies in the Islamic world and news was already coming in that ‘Izz-ad-Din at Mosul, with the help of the Persian Selchük, Pahlavan, was mounting an attack on his ally the lord of Irbil. Determined to settle the perennial disturbances that threatened on his northern frontiers, Saladin was delighted that his southern border was secured by the four-year truce the Franks had begged of him.
He crossed the Euphrates at al-Birah to be joined there by Gökböri, governor of Harran, and envoys from Irbil and other parts of al-Jazirah. Despite warnings from Konya he continued his march, judging rightly that the sultan would not send troops against him. He reached Harran in mid-May and there followed a brief episode which has remained a puzzle. Gökböri, who had long been one of the most ardent advocates of Saladin’s intervention in the area, was almost immediately arrested ‘for something he had done and for certain words attributed to him by his ambassador which angered Saladin, though certainly he had not thoroughly investigated the matter’. It seems that Gökböri had promised 50,000 dinars to the expedition which were not available when Saladin called on them; more seriously we get a hint that the governor of Harran had been accused of having dealings with Mosul itself. Perhaps these are the ‘words attributed to him’. The fact that Baha’-ad-Din, still in the service of Mosul at the time, comments that Saladin could not have investigated the matter properly suggests that he had inside information and knew that the governor had in fact made no approach to Mosul. It seems that Saladin soon discovered that the accusations were slanderous. Gökböri was stripped of all his titles, yet within a matter of days, he had been released and had given back the governorship of Harran with the assurance that Edessa too would be returned to him in due course. His complete restoration to favour was symbolised when Saladin magnanimously clad him with a robe of honour.
A month later the army was once again outside the walls of Mosul. And once again they promised to be more than a match for Saladin’s siege craft. More seriously, signs of sickness began to spread; yet while ‘Izz-ad-Din, whose allies were now too concerned with their own affairs to come to his aid, begged for a compromise, Saladin was adamant. It was believed that he was toying with plans to divert the course of the Tigris and so rob the city of its water supply. But developments to the north diverted him from a full blockade of Mosul, and a few weeks after setting the siege he led the bulk of his army out on the road to Akhlat on the coast of Lake Van. The Selchük prince of the place had died, and his successor, called Baktimore, learnt with dismay that Pahlavan, the lord of Azerbaijan, was planning to march against him. Baktimore sent a desperate plea for help to Saladin.
Saladin responded promptly, and on the march north he was accompanied by his cousin Nasir-ad-Din, lord of Homs, and ‘Isa-al-Hakkari, a senior member of the Egyptian administration on the campaign with Egypt’s army. Since Pahlavan alone of ‘Izz-ad-Din’s allies had actually sent troops to the aid of Mosul a point scored at his expense would emphasise the wide reach of Saladin’s influence. Perhaps, too, there was an element of nostalgia behind the decision. Akhlat lay on the edge of the Kurdish homelands from which Saladin’s family had come. Finally, there was trouble brewing up on this distant northern frontier which could, and in fact soon did, impinge on the security of northern Syria in general and Aleppo in particular. At about the time of Baktimore’s appeal, turbulent warfare had broken out between a new wave of Turkomans moving in from central Asia and the Kurdish population of the Upper Jazirah. The Turkomans won an outright victory and massacred their opponents. From that point on through to the winter of 1186 they ravaged the Christian and Muslim lands from Georgia to Cappadocia virtually unopposed: by 1187 they would be threatening even the northern frontiers of Antioch and Aleppo.
If he had won control of it, the fortress city of Akhlat would have provided a valuable outpost from which to keep a check on these threatening developments. A further factor must have reinforced Saladin’s decision to intervene and this was the somewhat surprising arrival of an embassy from Constantinople. The prospect of having an ally on the northern boundary of his inveterate and nagging enemy Kilij Arslan at Konya was worth an immediate gesture in response. The situation in Akhlat gave him a chance to show his capacity for operations remote from his own base in support of a prospective ally as well as offering immediate advantages.
The diplomatic minuet between Saladin and the Byzantines which was alternately to enrage and fascinate the Muslim and Christian Middle East for another five years revolved around certain common interests. The Emperor Andronicos knew the Muslim world at first hand. When as a young man he had been exiled from the Byzantine court, he had been befriended both by the caliph at Baghdad and by Nur-ad-Din at Damascus. Andronicos also badly needed allies. His accession was regarded by some as mere usurpation, others were infuriated by the cruelty of his régime: he had many enemies and some of the most influential were in exile. At the time of his approach to Saladin, King William II of Sicily was advancing into the Greek provinces on behalf of one of them. And there were two other more long-term threats. The sultanate of Konya, which had already overrun vast tracts of Byzantine territory, and the island of Cyprus, theoretically a Byzantine dependency, was in revolt and so possibly an ally of the Franks in Palestine. Both these states were also potential or actual enemies to Saladin.
An alliance between Saladin and the Byzantines made political sense, but it was obvious that Saladin, lord of Syria and Egypt, would expect to be the senior partner. Obvious, that is, to all but Andronicos, who could not break loose from the time-honoured conventions of Byzantine diplomacy, which had recognised no equal since defeating Zoroastrian Persia in 628. Saladin was asked to do homage to the emperor, and the division of any conquered territories was weighted in favour of Constantinople. Andronicos even supposed that he was strong enough to insist on the return of Jerusalem to the empire. But in fact he was not strong enough to retain his own throne. When Saladin’s ambassadors arrived at the capital with their reply to the proposed alliance, it was to find that the emperor had been deposed by mob action and replaced by a new emperor, Isaac II Angelus. The first movement of the minuet was over.
By this time, September 1185, Saladin had learnt that Akhlat had eluded him. Baktimore had been able to come to terms with Pahlavan and married one of his daughters. Saladin returned to Mosul. In November ‘Izz-ad-Din, hoping to appeal to his renowned chivalry, sent his wife and two princesses to intercede with him, but without success. The outlook for Mosul was not good. There was no hope of relief from the outside, and Saladin’s army seemed ready to press the siege throughout the winter months. But at this point Saladin’s fragile health broke down in the sultry humidity of the winter rainy season. With him in command the army would fight beyond the demands of convention, without him it would do nothing, and on 25 December Saladin fell back to Harran. Despite the critical nature of his condition he refused to ride in a litter and stayed in the saddle for all the army to see he was still in command.
During the next few weeks, his life in the balance, Saladin tried to ensure a peaceful succession by forcing his emirs to swear loyalty to his sons. But ambitious men were stirring. Nasir-ad-Din of Homs, who apparently felt that he had been promised the governorship of Mosul when it fell, obviously thought he had a strong claim, and secured promises of support from groups in Aleppo and in Damascus, being assured that the capital would be held for him if Saladin died. There was also trouble in Egypt where Taqi-ad-Din, proud of his military reputation, was beginning to chafe at his position as tutor and second string to Saladin’s eldest son, al-Afdal. During his illness Saladin had urgent discussions on the situation with al-Adil, who had hurried up from Aleppo with his own physician.
During January 1186 Saladin’s health began to mend, and in February he was able to receive another deputation from Mosul headed by Baha’ad-Din. He tells us that Mosul had seen Saladin’s illness ‘as an opportunity not to be missed for we knew how readily the prince lent his ear to an appeal and how tender-hearted he was’. But Saladin, disturbed by the unrest that was brewing in the empire, was as eager for a settlement as was ‘I-ad-Din, and on 3 March their ambassadors signed a treaty. ‘Izz-ad-Din remained lord of the city of Mosul, but the city finally acknowledged the overlordship of Damascus, and the lands across the Tigris to the south of Mosul were put in the charge of emirs appointed by Saladin.
Two days later news arrived in Harran that Nasir-ad-Din had died from an excess of wine. ‘Like father, like son’ would cover the facts, though some were later to suggest that Saladin himself had had a hand in the death. There is no evidence to support the rumour, nor is it probable. His cousin’s death would certainly have suited Saladin’s book a few weeks earlier. Assured of the security of his own provinces he could have driven a harder bargain with Mosul. As it was he hastened to confirm the twelve-year-old heir of Nasir-ad-Din, Shirkuh II, as ruler of Homs, and early in April was back at Damascus.
Saladin now had the goodwill of Baghdad, and the three other cities of the quadrilateral of power under his direct authority. The Franks were divided amongst themselves by bitter political wrangling and the truce with them had, in any case, three more years to run. The new Byzantine emperor, Isaac II Angelus, had been entertained once at Saladin’s court while an exile and now confirmed the ‘treaty arrangements that Saladin had proposed in response to the initiative of Andronicus. Saladin was free to put the finishing touches to the reorganisation of his empire.
The situation in Egypt was disturbing, and during June al-Adil came down from Aleppo for a number of conferences with his brother. Also at the capital were Saladin’s two young sons, the fourteen-year-old al-’Aziz and the thirteen-year-old az-Zahir, still languishing after his brief period of glory as nominal ruler of Aleppo three years before. The result was a general post which reveals a good deal about Saladin the dynast. His sons were approaching manhood. Nur-ad-Din’s son and heir had been only eighteen when he died, but even by that time he had wielded sufficient influence at Aleppo to sway the choice of his successor. Men expected the sons of princes to be ready for responsibility at an early age. Saladin was anxious to establish his sons firmly in the administration of the empire, to assure their loyalty and the continuance of his dynasty. But he also realised the strain that advancing them too fast would impose on the loyalty of his gifted and energetic brother al-Adil and the hotheaded but equally talented Taqi-ad-Din.
In the summer of 1186, Taqi-ad-Din seemed to be the most pressing problem. Saladin decided to recall him from Cairo and at the same time summoned his eldest son al-Afdal. He was now sixteen and had spent all his life in Egypt; he was well established and he was ambitious – when his father lay dying seven years later, he calmly took the seat of honour in the banqueting hall. Saladin, who had already detected signs of his son’s ambition, was clearly not willing to leave him at Cairo to preside over the change of administration that was to follow the recall of Taqiad-Din. Instead, the younger al-Aziz was sent to Cairo with al-Adil as his atabeg
There was mounting criticism in Cairo of Saladin’s policies and growing exasperation at the long-drawn-out struggle with Mosul. Even al-Fadil, for years Saladin’s most loyal minister in Cairo, bitterly complained that the wars against Mosul were draining the wealth of Egypt and taking thousands of her troops to remote theatres of war. Far from sympathising with his sovereign when he was convalescing from the near-fatal illness of early 1186, he had lectured him for backsliding from the cause of jihad ‘God has given you a warning. Take a vow that if you recover from this illness, you will never again fight against Muslims and that you will devote your energies to war on the enemies of Allah.’ One Arabic source seems to hint that even he had dabbled for a time in opposition politics; other critics of Saladin had been descanting pointedly on the evils of wars between Muslims for some time.
As a result of the discontent in the upper reaches of the administration the atmosphere at the court of Damascus was heavy with suspicion. The intrigues of Nasir-ad-Din had involved important figures both there and at Aleppo. When he accepted the post at Cairo, al-Adil, although Saladin’s brother and most respected adviser, took the remarkable step of clearing his position with the two young princes as a precaution, after a summer of rumour-mongering, against the whisperings of ambitious rivals. He found the boys sitting together and took the place between them. To al-‘Aziz he said: ‘Your father, my lord, has commanded me to enter your service and to go with you to Egypt. I know there are many wicked people and some of them will come to you and will abuse me and counsel you not to trust me. If you mean to listen to them tell me now so that I may not go with you.’ Despite the boy’s assurance al-Adil next turned to his brother. ‘I am quite well aware that your brother might listen to men who devise mischief and that, if he did, I could not rely on any but you.’ Az-Zahir’s answer was calm and reassuring, ‘Bless you! All will go well.’
In August az-Zahir was nominated the ruler of Aleppo by his father while his elder brother, al-Afdal, arrived at Damascus. Messengers were soon on their way to Egypt to demand the return also of Taqi-ad-Din. Years before, in the council which received the embassy commanding Saladin’s return to the capital of his suzerain Nur-ad-Din, he had been the one to urge that the family should defy their rightful lord and dare him to come and assert his claim. Now he was equally outraged when his own uncle commanded his return. He vowed that he would join his general Sharaf-ad-Din campaigning in the maghrib and raise rebellion. But he too was urged by his advisers not to defy the orders of Damascus, and in November there was a reconciliation between uncle and nephew. As a consolation Taqi-ad-Din received the appanage of Hamah, where he had already served as governor and where he could hope to find neither the resources nor the obscurity to raise further trouble. The year ended with two marriages designed to heal some of the ruptures among the ruling family. At Aleppo az-Zahir married a daughter of al-Adil to whom he had been betrothed for some time, while at Damascus the Aiyubid heir, al-Afdal, took a wife from among the daughters of the dead Nasir-ad-Din.
The rumblings of discontent beneath the surface of the great empire quietened. By contrast, Christian politics shattered in rivalry, intrigue and treason. In August the boy king Baldwin V died, attended by the regent Raymond of Tripoli and the seneschal Joscelin, who, at Raymond’s insistence, had held the custody of the king’s person. Raymond, while accepting the regency, had refused the guardianship of the weakly child for fear that he would be accused when the king died. The will of Baldwin IV had provided that in the event of the boy’s death Raymond should be regent until the emperor, the pope and the kings of England and France should decide between the claims of the two princesses of the royal house, Sibylla (wife to the unpopular Guy de Lusignan) and Isabella. But the partisans of Sibylla and Guy, among them the seneschal and Raynald, outmanoeuvred Raymond. They held Jerusalem and the royal regalia and forced through the coronation of Queen Sibylla and King Guy.
While most of his supporters accepted the coup, Raymond retired to Tiberias, demanding that Guy restore to him his city of Beirut. There he made a separate truce with Saladin to cover his own county and his wife’s principality of Galilee. A few months later he was reported to be negotiating for Muslim aid in a bid for the crown itself, and according to Muslim chroniclers he definitely received troops. Neither his enemies’ sharp practice nor the provocation he had received could justify such outright treason – Christian ranks were more bitterly divided than ever. It was as well for them that the truce with Saladin still had two years to run.
Then came stunning news from the south. Raynald had overrun yet another rich caravan, slaughtered the convoy and interned the merchants with their treasure at al-Karak. Saladin at once dispatched an envoy to demand the return of the hostages and restitution of the treasure. He poured reproaches on the truce-breaker and threatened him with fearsome vengeance, but Raynald, secure behind the walls of al-Karak, contemptuously refused an audience. The envoys went on to put their case to King Guy. Knowing full well what could now be in prospect for the kingdom, he was conciliatory and sent orders to Raynald to make reparation. But his messenger returned from al-Karak with nothing to report save a neatly apposite misquote from the jeering Jews who had surrounded Christ at the crucifixion. ‘They trusted in Muhammad that he should deliver them; let him deliver them!’
Western historians have, in general, cast Raynald of Chatillon as the evil genius who presided over, even guaranteed, the collapse of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Some have suggested that Saladin might have been content to contain the Christian threat; to renew the truce indefinitely; and to wait for European apathy and the dwindling resources and morale of the one-time Crusaders to submerge the infidel settlements in the overwhelming facts of Muslim population and culture. Yet it is doubtful whether, increasingly cornered by his own ostentatious jihad propaganda and no doubt driven on by his own genuine religious piety, Saladin could or would have left the Christians in peace much longer. As it was, Raynald made all such speculation irrelevant. Nor is it entirely clear that his view of things was mistaken. However keen the Franks of Outremer may have been to see themselves in the role of a European aristocracy merely set in a foreign landscape, they were still the warriors of religion. They faced an Islamic world up in arms against their intrusion and their raison d’être was not the administration of landed estates but the protection of the Holy City and the War against the Infidel. Perhaps diplomacy and appeasement would have saved them from sudden disaster, but it must, in the end, have meant the losing of their identity in the polyglot world of Middle Eastern politics and society. The flaring, blood-red militancy of Raynald suited better with the origins of the state and the nature of a European-derived martial class than pliant and subtle politicking.
And there was some military sense behind his handling of his command in Transjordan. Al-Karak and ash-Shaubak were a standing menace to the lines of communication between Syria and Egypt. No caravan could risk running the gauntlet without a really powerful convoying escort. In 1183 and 1184 Saladin had had to mount large diversionary attacks to secure a safe passage for merchants and courtiers. Bloody-minded though he may have been, Raynald occupied more of Saladin’s time and resources than any other single Christian prince. He could reasonably argue that if the Muslims could pillage Christian lands at will, and so weaken their war effort as well as reaping plunder and ransoms, there was little point in castles which commanded the richest trade routes in Syria and one of the great arteries of Muslim pilgrimage if they were not to be used. Up till that time even the worst provocation had not stirred Saladin to crushing retaliation.
But now his suzerainty over Mosul, confirmed by his name stamped on its coinage and invoked every Friday at the bidding prayer, gave him authority to command its fighting men to his banners. He was lord of all the territories once ruled by Nur-ad-Din and, in addition, under him the cause of Islam was now backed by the resources of Egypt. Perhaps because the knock-out blow had been so long in coming, the Franks may not have fully appreciated the fate that lay ahead for them.
Now, in the spring of 1187, the tocsin of jihad was reverberating from Cairo to Mosul. It was not just one more flurry of razzias that was in preparation but a determined attempt to win at last the Holy City of Islam. The vast forces assembled and the well-thought-out strategy with which they were deployed were going to probe the resources and military adaptability of the Christians to the full. And to his vow to recapture Jerusalem Saladin had now added an oath to finish once and for all the career of the infidel oath-breaker, Raynald.