Chapter 11
The Greek envoys had warned Saladin that crusading propaganda in Europe seemed likely to produce a high response. In fact the pope had taken up the cause, and in the very month that Saladin heard the depressing news the kings of France and England were pledging themselves to the Cross. In March the Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa followed suit and sent letters to Kilij Arslan in Konya and to Saladin to warn them of his intentions. Although he was nearly seventy his tall figure was little bowed and his immense charisma and authority were undimmed; he demanded that Saladin return the whole of Palestine to the Christians and challenged him to combat in November 1189. Saladin set about preparing his northern frontiers against the coming invasion. The problem of Tyre took second place.
Because, when it finally came, the Third Crusade was largely a French and English affair, and because some of the contingents came by sea to Tyre, historians, forgetting the long shadow cast by the German threat, have censoriously blamed Saladin for failing to force the capture of the town as a matter of urgency. Yet until April 1189, when a Pisan fleet made landfall there, this important commercial port had no military record at all. In any case, Saladin had only the historical precedents to guide him and neither the First nor the Second Crusade had come by sea. Even in 1147, when the whole of the seaboard was in Christian hands, Louis of France had chosen the land route through the Balkans and Anatolia, just as Barbarossa was now proposing. Two contingents had come by sea to the Second Crusade but they naturally made for Acre. Saladin had made it his immediate business after Hattin to take that great military port. In fact no one but the historians seems to have rated Tyre very highly in military terms. Henry II of England planned to travel overland, and wrote to the emperor in Germany, to the king of Hungary and to the emperor in Constantinople asking for a safe passage. He also wrote to the archbishop of Antioch to assure him that he would be marching to the city. When the major forces did eventually arrive at the Crusade they ignored Tyre. Both Philip of France and Richard of England were to sail direct to their siege lines outside Acre. Saladin did well to leave the question of Tyre – the more so perhaps, we might think, because the army that did keep the Christian cause truly alight was not commanded by Conrad of Montferrat at all but by King Guy, to whom Conrad consistently refused access to Tyre or reinforcements from the troops with him there.
In the spring of 1188 all this was in the future. Saladin had to prepare against the long-term possibility of invasion from a German army that would be coming overland from the north through the territories around Antioch. In the summer of 1188 he backed up a vigorous military campaign both there and in the kingdom, while continuing negotiations with the Byzantine empire.
The fortifications of Acre needed repair, and while Saladin held his winter court there he called in the architect, the emir Karakush, who had designed the defensive works at Cairo during the 1170s. With the work well in hand Saladin left for Damascus in the spring, and then, in the early summer, he headed north. The march lay past Baalbek, up the wide valley between Mount Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon which led to the valley of al-Buqai‘ah, running down to the coast. The fortresses of ‘Akkar and al-Arqah, which dominated the valley, fell with little opposition. He may have hoped to conquer Tripoli, but the town received help from William II of Sicily and Conrad from Tyre, and Saladin’s chief objectives at this time were the fortresses inland and the north, which could be expected to give aid and succour to the Germans when they eventually arrived. The army, reinforced by contingents from al-Jazirah under the command of ‘Imad-ad-Din of Sinjar, soon had an impressive line of Christian capitulations to its credit.
The fortress of Krak des Chevaliers was by-passed, and at Tortosa, where the town was overrun, the Templar garrison managed to hold out in a strongly fortified tower; the great Hospitaller castle at al-Marqab was left in the rear with a masking force posted to contain the garrison, but the ports of Jabala and Latakia were quickly taken, and on 29 July the supposedly impregnable and truly intimidating castle of Sahyun fell. Pushing deeper into the territories of Antioch, Saladin took the important castles of Burzey, Sarminiqa and Bakas Shoqr. Ibn-al-Athir, who was with the army, was considerably impressed by the immense strength of the castles and by the sultan’s vigour and courage. At Burzey his personal guard led one of the assaults and ‘Saladin armed at all points went in amongst them to spur them on.’ At the end of August he continued northwards to secure the strategic points of Darbsaq and Baghras, which controlled the pass through the hills to the north of Antioch known as the Syrian Gates. In two months Bohemond of Antioch had been reduced to his capital and its port of St Symeon; he had made no attempt to relieve the outlying castles, despite their appeals, and even when Saladin attacked Baghras he stood idly by.
Yet a determined sortie could well have saved the place. Before the siege was laid, Saladin had conferred with his emirs, and a strong party was opposed to attacking the town, arguing that it was so close to Antioch that the army could easily come under attack from the city. But Saladin continued with his plans even though the army was ‘inspired by fear of the inhabitants of Antioch who they believed could easily overrun the army with the support of the neighbouring population’. As the siege dragged out the troops became convinced the place would hold out and so increase their danger from the city. Despite their earlier successes, Saladin’s troops were still frightened by the Franks. Saladin himself was prepared to attack Bohemond’s capital, but the troops from al-Jazirah were anxious to get back to their homes to rest and renew their equipment. When Bohemond offered an eight-month truce it was eagerly agreed to.
The whole army returned to Damascus with the sultan, but there he discharged the troops from Sinjar and Mosul and the other cities of the east. His advisers urged him to release his own troops for the winter, but he refused while Kaukab, Safad, al-Karak and other such fortresses were still in the hands of the Franks. ‘It is absolutely essential that we rid ourselves of these irritants in the midst of Muslim territory, for there can be no guarantee that their inhabitants will not attack us.’ This was no mere rhetoric, as the chronicler confirms that the inhabitants of the towns within striking distance of a castle like al-Karak were frightened of the Franks living there and dreaded the possibility of attack from them. Accordingly in mid-November, after barely a month’s rest in Damascus, Saladin led his own men to the siege of the Templar castle of Safad, a few miles to the north of Lake Tiberias. Despite driving rain which reduced the field of battle to a quagmire, he held his men to the siege for a month, and in early December the garrison surrendered. The foul weather continued, but Saladin had more work to do and pushed on to the greater and more inaccessible fortress of Kaukab. A month later this too had fallen, and these triumphs were soon followed by exciting news from the south. The army of al-Adil had received the surrender of al-Karak. The siege had lasted more than a year, and the defenders had sold their women to the Bedouin in exchange for supplies. Later the same year ash-Shaubak fell too.
But Saladin was listening for news from the north. Crusaders had traditionally depended on the goodwill of Constantinople, and Saladin hoped to persuade Isaac to deny a passage to Frederick Barbarossa. Early in 1188 a new embassy had been dispatched with more rich presents and, according to Latin chroniclers, large supplies of poisoned wine and grain to be used on the German troops. The evidence for this early episode in the history of chemical warfare is prejudiced – the Latins were understandably keen to blacken the reputation of Isaac, so shamelessly willing to deal with the Infidel. In exchange for the Orthodox control of the Church in Palestine, he had offered his protection to Islam in Constantinople. At his invitation Saladin sent a minbar (pulpit) for the Muslim community in Constantinople. But the ship carrying it was captured by a Genoese squadron and the pulpit taken back to Tyre. Conrad sent letters to Europe reporting the capture as proof positive of the double-dealing of the emperor.
At first Saladin hoped for great things from the alliance. It is clear from the Muslim historians that all Islam was terrified by the news of the German advance. Barbarossa had put in the field the best-trained and best-equipped army yet known to the Crusades. They set out from Ratisbon in May 1189 and crossed the Danube in June; Isaac was quite powerless to stop their progress through the Balkans. Yet at the same time he was entertaining an embassy from Saladin with every mark of distinction. When a German envoy, led by the bishop of Munster, reached the capital in July to announce the emperor’s intended time of arrival, Isaac had them thrown into prison and gave their insignia to Saladin’s ambassadors, no doubt as an earnest of his good faith. Soon after this they returned to Saladin, finding him in his camp in Marj Uyun at the siege of Shaqif Arnun (Beaufort). They were able to tell him of developments in the Balkans, and also brought an invitation from Isaac for Saladin to send a second minbar along with imams, and a muezzin to the imperial capital. Later that year there was an event to shock the imagination of the Western Christian world when the name of the caliph of Baghdad was invoked in a Sunni ceremony held in Constantinople in the presence of Muslim inhabitants and visiting merchants, with the connivance of the Emperor Isaac. It was an achievement of which Saladin could reasonably be proud, but he was beginning to realise he could hope for nothing more practical from Isaac.
In the March of 1190 his supposed ally provided the transport which carried Frederick’s army across the Dardanelles. The Greek alliance had provided little positive advantage. Even the once formidable sultan of Konya, who had troubled both Saladin and Isaac, was powerless against the Germans, and in May Frederick entered Kilij Arslan’s capital. Saladin, now involved with the Frankish forces outside Acre, sent a detachment of troops north to guard the passes through the hills north of Antioch. At the beginning of June Frederick came through the last range of the Taurus mountains and led his troops down into the Cilician plain with the sea glittering in the distance beyond the port of Seleucia (modern Silifke). The best approach to the town meant a river crossing, and it was here that the emperor met his death, ‘drowned at a place where the water was not even up to his waist’. Perhaps the tough old man took a chill, either after bathing or from the shock of cold water on sweltering armour.
Saladin and all Islam saw the hand of God in this miraculous deliverance. Such terror had been inspired by the approach of the Germans that in the district near Mosul administered by Ibn-al-Athir’ brother the price of corn was affected. One of Saladin’s emirs had a village in the district; the bailiff of the estate wrote at harvest time asking instructions for the sale of the crops. The emir, with the army in Syria, ordered his agents not to sell a single grain but only a few days later gave permission for the sale to go ahead. When he returned to Mosul he was asked to explain his change of mind to his friends. ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘when we got news of the German king’s advance, we were convinced that he would drive us out of Syria and so I took precautions to ensure a good reserve of provisions on my estates back here. But when God destroyed the Germans there was no need for food reserves.’
For the death of Frederick did effectively destroy his army. There were Germans too who saw the hand of God in the great emperor’s death, and some of the leaders turned back, though barely a hundred miles from the Christian states they had come to help. Others left the army to go by sea from Seleucia to Tyre, and Duke Frederick of Swabia, who took over after his father’s death, found himself with a weakened and demoralised force. Because he too was ill, the remnant of the Germans, whose numbers had in any case been reduced by guerrilla attacks in Turkey and by disease, pushed on without him and lost still more men in a running battle with Saladin’s men guarding the northern passes. When they reached Antioch in August the magnificent fighting machine which had set out from Ratisbon fifteen months before was now an irrelevant, indisciplined rump. In June, when the German emperor lay dying in Asia Minor, the kings of France and England had not even set out for the Holy Land, and they did not arrive there until some ten months later. In those months Saladin should have been able to demolish the beach-head positions round Tyre and Acre. We must now attempt to see why, even with the German threat lifted, he could not.
The story begins back in July 1188, when Saladin released King Guy and the knights with him after they had sworn to leave Palestine and never take arms against him again. Arriving at Tripoli, Guy of course found no difficulty in getting a prelate to release him from this oath – given, so it was claimed, under duress and to an infidel. In addition Saladin had allowed defeated garrisons safe conducts to Tyre and other places still in Christian hands; so that while the kingdom of Jerusalem had lost its lands, it had once more its leaders and a growing number of soldiers. In the eyes of Saladin’s Muslim critics such clemency was suicidal. But Saladin had not necessarily miscalculated. The political infighting around Guy’s kingship had only been thinly papered over for the Hattin campaign. With Guy back in the arena the controversy became still more acrid. In the autumn of 1188 he marched down to Tyre and demanded the place be handed over to him. But Conrad, from being a mere adventurer, was now regarded by many as the saviour of the kingdom; Guy, on the other hand, was remembered as the man who lost Hattin. Obviously playing for the highest stakes, Conrad refused to hand over Tyre, claiming to be acting as trustee for the European monarchs who would settle the dispute on their arrival.
Guy had to retire to Tripoli for the winter, but in April 1189 he was back, determined to force Conrad to surrender. It looked as though the Christians were settling down to a full-scale civil war. It is hardly surprising that Saladin was not much worried about Tyre, now being blockaded for him by the Christians themselves. In a letter to his brother in the Yemen he wrote: ‘Only Tyre remains to them; if it were not on the coast and so can be revictualled from the sea, it would have been taken long ago. But, thanks to the Grace of God, Tyre is no longer a fortress which protects its inhabitants but rather a prison that hems them in; they are prisoners enjoying provisional liberty, dead men whom life has not quite abandoned.’
But in April 1189 there was another development which should perhaps have worried the sultan. The Pisan fleet which arrived outside Tyre in that year to help Conrad fell out with him and went over to Guy. Sea power gave the king an important new advantage. But at this moment Saladin encamped with his army at Marj Uyun was engrossed with the attempt to take Beaufort, commanded by Raynald of Sidon. He was one of the few Christians with a genuine enthusiasm for Islamic culture, he was fluent in the language, and it was even rumoured had passages from the Koran read to him at meals. He now used all his guile to persuade Saladin that if encouraged he might actually become a Muslim. He also claimed to be fearful that if he handed over the castle too easily his wife and family, at Tyre with Conrad, might be in danger. He asked to be allowed until August to prepare the ground for the surrender. Fascinated with his enemy’s high culture and adroit intellectualism, the sultan spent long hours in debate with him while Raynald’s agents openly bought provisions in the markets set up for Saladin’s army. When August came and Raynald still failed to deliver the castle Saladin eventually lost patience and sent him to prison in Damascus. Beaufort was not taken until the following summer, but by that time events had swept on in a dramatic and unexpected way.
In August 1189 Guy, realising that Tyre was virtually impregnable, lifted the siege, and with the Pisans sailing down the coast in convoy marched down to Acre. It was a reckless gamble by a man desperately needing success to retain any political credibility. Saladin immediately saw the opportunity offered and marched out in pursuit, intending to destroy the small Christian army on the march. But the Christians were to be spared once again. ‘When Saladin consulted his emirs, about whether they should take the enemy by the heels and attack them on the march, or meet them face to face by taking a different route from theirs, the emirs said: “There is no need for us to follow them, for their road is difficult and narrow and we could not easily take them as we want. It is better to proceed by the broader road and attack them from the rear as they approach Acre, where we will disperse them.”’ Saladin was totally unconvinced. ‘If the Franks reach their destination and get a firm hold of the territory, it will not be easy for us to dislodge them.’ But, as on other occasions, his dependence on his allies, made it possible for them to override him. Nevertheless, he did order skirmishers to keep in touch with the Christian march and harass stragglers. Their success suggested to at least one dispassionate observer that had Saladin’s full strategy been adopted it would have been successful. As it was, Guy made good his rash expedition, and, on 27 August 1189, began to pitch his tents around the walls of Acre.
It must be said that the failure of the German campaign pleased others besides the Muslims. The Byzantine emperor, Isaac Angelus, was more than content to see the collapse of the Western initiative, even though it meant a reverse for Christian arms. Since Gregory VII before the First Crusade, popes had envisaged the union of Orthodox Constantinople with Rome by force of arms. The leaders of the Christian churches in Asia both feared and hated their Latin opposite numbers in the Crusader states. In a letter that reported the death of Barbarossa, the head (catholicos) of the Armenian Church dubbed himself Saladin’s mameluke and prayed that God would ‘bless our master’s who had reunited the Faithful (and here of course he was referring to the Muslim Faithful). This was surely beyond the requirements of diplomatic sycophancy. Incidentally, it is the catholicos who seems to suggest that the emperor took a chill after bathing; but a near contemporary illustration most graphically depicts a rider, without armour, thrown by a stumbling horse – the Latin reads ‘in flumine defunctus’s, i.e. ‘dead in the river’. An angel lifts the soul, innocent of sin as a babe, to the hand of God.
In the forthcoming struggle between Saladin and Richard of England the Christian East seems in general to have sided with its oriental masters against its Western co-religionists. After the fall of Jerusalem, Saladin had been urged by his more extreme advisers to demolish many of the Christian shrines, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as monuments to idolatry. While Muslims revere Jesus Christ (Isa) as a true prophet in the line leading up to Muhammad, they deny his crucifixion and divinity. Other advisers argued that the proposed destruction, while in conformity with Islam, would enrage the idolaters, i.e. the Christian population in Muslim territories. The shrines in question are, of course, as sacred to the Eastern churches as they are to Western Christendom. In fact, at the request of Emperor Isaac, guardianship of the Holy Places was assigned to the Orthodox authorities and the celebrations of the Latin rite in those places largely superseded.
If the rump kingdom of Jerusalem, with the help of its European crusader allies, could recover the city, this settlement would be overturned. Meanwhile, it lessened the danger that the governor of Jerusalem and other cities might face subversion from the indigenous Christian populations.