Chapter 3
The world in which the young Saladin grew up was a place of cosmopolitan cities in which Armenians, Kurds and Turks, Syrians, Arabs and Greeks, Christians as well as Muslims competed in commerce and learning and the business of government. It was a world – and Saladin’s father and uncle proved the point – where a man of talent, whatever his nationality, could hope to rise in the service of the throne. But, like the Austro-Hungarian empire of the nineteenth century, it was also a world of master races. Islam had exploded from Arabia in the seventh century, but by the mid-twelfth century the Arab dynasties had been displaced by Turkish families, of which the greatest was that of Zengi, tutor or atabeg of Mosul, and his son Nur-ad-Din. Their partisans criticised Saladin as a usurper trying to supplant an historic dynasty. But there was a still deeper cause of resentment, because Saladin was a Kurd and the first man for over a century to challenge and then overtop the Turkish ruling classes.
Nevertheless, his career can only be sensibly interpreted in terms of the Turkish world he inherited. Its power struggles were determined by a quadrilateral of cities stretching across the Syrian desert and the head-waters of the Tigris and Euphrates. The terminal points of the base line of this quadrilateral are Damascus and Baghdad, separated by some 420 miles. North of Damascus 170 miles stands Aleppo, and from there, veering slightly northwards of due east and 280 miles distant, lies the city of Mosul on the river Tigris. Baghdad is 230 miles south-east of Mosul. And, in theory, it was Baghdad that was the capital of this quadrilateral of forces. It was one of the fabled cities of the medieval world and also the home of the Abbasid caliphs, the traditional captains of the orthodox throughout Islam and the implacable enemy of the usurping pretensions of the Fatimid self-styled caliphs of Cairo. Long before the birth of Saladin, the power of these caliphs of Baghdad had fallen into the hands of Turkish chief ministers or ‘sultans’, yet the thrust of their policy in Syria was determined by the Cairo-directed thinking of the traditional caliphate.
In the heady days of the eighth century, when the armies of Islam seemed to be sweeping all before them, even Constantinople had seemed within grasp; but the threat had been repulsed and in the intervening centuries Muslim and Christian had found a modus vivendi. Life and politics had settled down either side of the great religious divide and the overriding ideological commitment had become something of the past. Baghdad found Cairo a far more compelling problem than Constantinople, and the sultans followed the conventional wisdom. As might be guessed, they, like the caliphs before them, went through periods of weakness, but though European writers may be tempted to discount the influence of the Baghdad sultans in the western theatre it was in fact quite often significant.
All the Turkish dynasties of the area traced their ancestry from nomad Turkoman tribes converted to Sunnite Islam during the tenth century. The natural consequence of this was to focus the interest of these steppe peoples on the heartlands of their new religion. As the vigour of the Abbasids and the other Arab dynasties weakened, they called in Turkish mercenaries, or bought them in the slave markets to act as palace guards. The newcomers rapidly exploited their position to win increasing power, just as the barbarians called in by the later Roman emperors had gradually usurped control of that imperial machine.
The house of Selchük emerged as the leading dynasty and its head, invested with the grandiose title of ‘King of the East and West’, was given supreme authority over all the lands that admitted the caliph’s spiritual supremacy. The greatest of these early sultans, Alp Arslan, conquered Christian Armenia for the caliphate and then at Manzikert (western modern Turkey) in 1071 dealt the Byzantines a crushing defeat. The empire lay open but, true to the traditions of Baghdad, Alp Arslan had Cairo as his long-term objective and regarded these triumphs against the Christians merely as necessary preparatory moves to secure his position before the decisive campaign in Syria, Palestine and then finally Egypt. The time would no doubt come for a war against the infidel but the first priority was to unite the followers of the Prophet under the orthodox caliph.
The point is worth stressing. For the Christian historian, Manzikert is one of the decisive battles of the world. The emperor Romanus Diogenes had mobilised a great army with which he aimed to crush Turkish power and halt its encroachments into eastern Anatolia once and for all. These fertile uplands were traditionally the power house of the empire and seemed essential to its survival. The obliteration of the imperial army put an end to such hopes, and, although the day was far in the future, did foreshadow the birth of modern Turkey. But Alp Arslan had no thought of a drive on Constantinople. The victory was important because it left him free to plan a strategy against Egypt. This is the perspective in which we shall have to learn to view the career of Saladin. It started with a Turkish-inspired conquest of Egypt; only when that had been achieved did he turn his attention to Jerusalem.
Alp Arslan died in 1072, one year after his victory, and was succeeded by his son Malik-Shah. At the opening of his sultanate he found himself faced, ironically enough for one of his ancestry, with a nomad problem. New waves of Turkoman tribes were pushing against the northern frontiers and Malik-Shah decided to divert their raids into Anatolia, opened up ‘in a fit of absence of mind’ by the victory of his father. He commissioned his cousin Sulaiman to mobilise the tribesmen for a systematic conquest of the peninsula for Islam and Baghdad. Sulaiman duly carved out a territory for himself with its capital at the ancient Byzantine city of Nicaea. He continued to acknowledge the writ of Baghdad but was alone in the allegiance. The Turkomans had little interest in grandiose schemes of conquest on behalf of some distant sultan; they set about winning independent statelets for themselves while some even infiltrated the lordships of Syria.
There the authority of Baghdad was strong and rapidly extending. In 1085 treachery brought the great Christian city of Antioch into Turkish hands. Farther south, the forces of Fatimid Egypt, once supreme in Syria, were being pushed back to the Egyptian frontiers by Malik-Shah’s brother, Tutush. Pro-Fatimid factions remained in some of the coastal cities, while in exceptional cases Arab dynasties still held sway – but during the 1080s Syria came firmly under Selchük administration.
Under Malik-Shah that administration was tightly organised. Headed by the sultan at Baghdad it was divided into provinces, each headed by a member of the Selchük family bearing the title of king. If he was young or inexperienced the sultan appointed to his court an atabeg, responsible for his training in military affairs and administration – the title rapidly became synonymous with ‘governor’. Below the king and atabeg came district and city governors, responsible, among other things, for raising and maintaining the military forces in their regions. When Malik-Shah died in 1092 things fell apart as his sons struggled for the succession in Iraq and governors throughout the empire mobilised the forces under their command as private armies.
When Tutush died in 1095 the pattern of Iraq was repeated in Syria. His dominions in Syria fell apart during the succession contest between his sons Ridvan and Duqaq; Antioch, Muslim for barely a decade, threw off its allegiance to Aleppo and Jerusalem was retaken by Egyptian armies while an Arab dynasty managed to establish itself at Tripoli. Aleppo under Ridvan, and Damascus under Duqaq, reverted to the status of independent states. To the east Kerbogha, theatabeg of Mosul, continued to work for the conquest of Aleppo and now extended his ambition to the whole of Tutush’s divided territories; Baghdad was still being contested by the sons of Malik-Shah.
This was the position in the cities of the quadrilateral in 1097, when the crusaders began their trek from Constantinople across Anatolia to Palestine. But first they had to cross the lands of Kilij Arslan, son and heir of Sulaiman of Nicaea. He had usurped the title of sultan and renounced allegiance to Baghdad – he could expect no help from there. The crusaders reconquered Nicaea for the empire and then destroyed his array at the battle of Dorylaeum. The route to the Holy Land was open. Few of the Turkish rulers in Syria mourned the fall of Kilij Arslan and none saw the potential behind the new Christian threat. They had heard that the Franks were marching under the protection of the emperor and assumed that they were also marching, as mercenaries, under his orders.
Since Antioch had been lost by the empire only ten years before, and since the Franks were heading for it, it seemed reasonable to assume that their objective was the recapture of imperial territories recently lost. The Egyptian régime so far misunderstood the state of affairs as to offer the Franks a treaty whereby northern Palestine should return to Christian allegiance while Egypt moved back to its ancient centres in the south. This, of course, would have meant the crusaders agreeing to Egyptian control of Jerusalem. The proposal, which made sense in terms of the political map of Syria before the Turks came, must have struck the crusaders as utterly risible. Yet the Franks themselves reinforced the impression that their aims were limited in a letter to Duqaq of Damascus. Anxious to keep him out of the war they assured him that they were fighting to recover only the lands formerly belonging to the Greeks – all other territorial frontiers would be respected. No one could suspect that the ultimate objective of the mailed knights could be Jerusalem, for that had ceased to be in Greek hands 450 years ago.
Yet in that autumn of 1098, with the Frankish army advancing remorselessly upon the city, the governor of Antioch realised that whatever their ultimate objective might be here and now he desperately needed allies. The bulk of his city’s cosmopolitan population was made up of Christians, whether Syrian, Armenian or Greek, and many were summarily expelled. But in addition to potential fifth columnists inside the walls he had managed to antagonise his closest neighbour, Ridvan of Aleppo, by allying with Damascus against him the previous year. As a result he found himself forced to appeal for help to Kerbogha of Mosul. Anxious no doubt to prevent the Christians from recovering Antioch, Kerbogha also calculated that once inside the city as its saviour he could easily make himself its complete master and that then his territories would hold Aleppo like a nut in a nutcracker. He was not alone in seeing how the possession of Antioch would strengthen his power. Duqaq of Damascus and his atabeg Tughtigin mobilised an army of relief, though they were thrown back by the Franks. Then Ridvan, revising his shortsighted and vindictive policy, tried to force the Christians back from Antioch, but he too was defeated.
The survival of Antioch as a Muslim city now depended on Kerbogha. Early in the year he set out from Mosul with a large army including contingents from Persia and Iraq, but first laid siege to Edessa, strategically sited some miles north of the Mosul-Aleppo road and recently captured by a Christian force. After three weeks Kerbogha abandoned the attack, but the delay had already given Antioch, also, to the Christians. As it approached the city, the Mosul army was swelled still further by the contingents of Duqaq from Damascus and many others, though Ridvan held back. He feared the impact of a great victory by Kerbogha on his own position in Aleppo. Other allies who had joined the seemingly invincible Mosul army were equally apprehensive. When the decisive battle came they deserted, led by Duqaq. Andoch remained in Christian hands.
It was the first of many occasions when a promising Islamic counterattack foundered in the shifting sands of Syrian politics. As the crusaders marched south to Jerusalem, the coastal towns of Palestine bought their short-term immunity one by one. When the Holy City had fallen and it was obvious the Franks had come to stay, emirs and governors still attempted piecemeal independent resistance rather than unite against the common enemy. Inevitably they gradually fell to the Christians.
The future lay with the big four and particularly with Mosul, Aleppo and Damascus. But a united front would not be achieved until one had forced the submission of the other two. For most of the century they fought amongst themselves with only intermittent campaigns against the Franks. Ridvan of Aleppo, hemmed in by the Christians at Antioch and Edessa and always wary of the plans of Mosul, never took any consistent initiative against the Christians, content if he could remain master of his own city. He even showed willingness to cooperate with the Franks and so disgusted his subjects that they forced him to permit an appeal to the caliph in Baghdad to launch a war against the infidel. This army was led by Maudud, the new atabeg of Mosul. Again it seemed that fate was driving Aleppo into the arms of its traditional enemy. When Maudud brought his force up to the walls of Aleppo, hoping for provisions and accommodation, Ridvan not only closed his gates but even imprisoned leading citizens whom he suspected of pro-Mosul sympathies. He knew that once inside the city Maudud could overthrow him with popular support.
Two years later Maudud, supported by the army of Tughtigin of Damascus, defeated the forces of Baldwin of Jerusalem. Mosul was now the dominant city in the Muslim quadrilateral and Maudud the dominant figure, but in the September of 1113, the year of his victory, he was murdered by an Assassin as he and Tughtigin entered the great mosque of Damascus to celebrate their triumph. Immediately Tughtigin had the murderer executed, but rumour at once accused him. It was said that he too feared that Maudud had designs against his city. The theory was better than plausible. Maudud had come to power in Mosul only six years before under the patronage of the sultan of Baghdad. He found himself ruler of a city with a traditional policy in Syria and he acknowledged the authority of Baghdad where the powers of the sultan were growing again after the troubles that had followed the death of Malik-Shah. Damascus had long been one of the targets of Mosul policy and it was also a vital factor in the Baghdad strategists’ long-term designs on Cairo.
In the year that Maudud was assassinated Ridvan of Aleppo died. Five confused years followed there until a faction of citizens deposed Ridvan’s successor and called in Il-Ghazi, ruler of Mardin some 180 miles away to the north-east. Almost despite himself, he was to fulfil the dreams of the Aleppans for their city to take the lead in the war against the Franks. Il-Ghazi was delighted to add Aleppo to his already extensive dominions, but would have preferred a peaceful border with the Christians. He was forced to play champion of the Faith, however, by the successes of the army of Antioch. In June 1119, Christian and Muslim met on the plain of Sarmada – the battle that ensued was to be long remembered by the Franks as the Field of Blood. Apart from a troop of a hundred horse who broke through the encircling Muslims early in the battle, hardly a Christian survived. Those not killed on the field died in the aftermath, some being butchered as they tried to escape through the surrounding orchards, others being dragged in chains the fifteen miles to Aleppo to be tortured to death in its streets. Antioch was now defenceless, but II-Ghazi did not follow up his advantage and preferred to celebrate his victory rather than look for another. He was the hero of the hour, but he soon returned to his capital at Mardin, and died three years later without winning any other triumphs for the cause of Islam.
His brief period of operations from Aleppo nevertheless did pull that city round on to the course that military geography seemed to have set for it. With Mosul it formed the base of a Muslim triangle pushing northwards against the territory of Christian Edessa; it was also the first bastion against Antioch. For eighteen years Ridvan, perhaps naturally enough, had run the city’s affairs to ensure his own survival against both Muslim and Christian powers. But for the next half-century it was to be controlled by men whose capitals were elsewhere and whose ambitions lay beyond Aleppo. The trend began with Il-Ghazi and it was strengthened when al-Bursuki, atabeg of Mosul and loyal lieutenant of Baghdad, brought it, with the rest of northern Syria, into his dominions. His assassination in November 1126 shattered a threatening build-up of Selchük power and brought a sigh of relief from the Franks. But it was premature. Yet two years later Aleppo fell into the hands of another atabeg of Mosul who eventually did yoke the two cities to a single policy.
When, in 1128, Zengi Imad-ad-Din came in triumph to Aleppo, it is doubtful whether nostalgia figured prominently in his emotions. He was a hardened soldier, ostentatiously devoted to pietism when it suited him, as capable of double dealing as he was skilled in diplomacy, ruthless and mightily ambitious. Yet boyhood memories there could have been, since his father had been the governor of the city for the great Malik-Shah. He had died when his son was only ten years old, but his household had rallied round the boy and, more important, the young Zengi had found a powerful protector and patron in Kerbogha of Mosul, another veteran in the service of the sultan and a bosom friend of his father. Accordingly, in 1094, Zengi was called to the court at Mosul. He lived there, a favoured courtier under successive rulers, for thirty years. In their armies he won a reputation for bravery and resource which even the Christians honoured, and he came to the notice of Baghdad.
In 1122, when he was thirty-eight, Baghdad made him governor of Wasit and Basra, the chief Turkish garrison towns in lower Mesopotamia. The following year he played a major role in the defeat of an Arab putsch against the Caliph al-Mustarshid and his Turkish-controlled régime. Hardly had he won the caliph’s respect for defending him than Zengi found himself on the orders of the sultan, Mahmud, at war with the caliph’s forces. Al-Mustarshid, more vigorous than his predecessors, hoped to re-establish the old authority of his office. But his attempt to oust the sultan Mahmud was foiled by Zengi, whose loyalty to the sultan won him the post of atabeg of Mosul when al-Bursuki died in 1127.
Zengi was the first Muslim leader of any stature to present himself as fighting the Holy War on any long-term basis. He was more brutal, less sincere and more politically devious than his son Nur-ad-Din, but men looked back on his reign as the turning point of the tide against the Christians. He and his son brought the Turkish régimes in Syria to the pinnacle of their prestige, and their renown was to overshadow Saladin for years. From Mosul, in accordance with the city’s traditional policy, Zengi marched against Aleppo, to be welcomed by citizens eager for strong government and effective leadership against the Franks. From here he forced the submission of Muslim Syria as far south as Homs. Damascus still remained, but Zengi was needed back at Mosul to secure his power base.
In 1131 Sultan Mahmud died. The struggle between his brothers Mas‘ud and Tughrul for the succession was joined by the Caliph al-Mustarshid, who hoped to outmanoeuvre both. His army, operating for the time being on behalf of Tughrul, defeated Zengi, who had rallied to the side of Mas‘ud, forced him back to Mosul and besieged him there for a few months in 1133. Thus the complications of Iraqi politics had direct bearing on events in Syria if only because they distracted Zengi for a time from his objectives to securing his power base in Mosul. But, early in 1135, he received an appeal from a new régime in Damascus offering the homage of the city in return for his support. A ruler of Mosul who already controlled Aleppo could hardly refuse such an offer.
Although al-Mustarshid was still threateningly strong in Iraq, Zengi set out in haste on the 400-mile march to Damascus. Even as he was en route, a coup overthrew his would-be client. Zengi was as able to take advantage of his expedition to force the submission of the town of Hamah, but well-defended Damascus was clearly going to present a tougher problem. As preparations for the siege began Zengi was astonished to receive a notification from the caliph to leave the city in peace. Still more astonishingly, this most powerful Turkish prince obeyed the caliph’s request and felt he could do so without losing face. Clearly the Turkish establishment was now facing the possibility that the moribund caliphate, which they had so long controlled, might be on the verge of a genuine renaissance of power.
However Mas‘ud, who had been steadily advancing his power, defeated, captured and arranged the murder of the egregiously ambitious caliph. He had little difficulty in providing himself with a compliant puppet more in agreement with Selchük ideas of how a caliph should behave. The only remaining problem for Mas‘ud, now firmly established as sultan at Baghdad, was to buy Zengi’s support for the new arrangements there. At the end of four tense years, theatabeg found himself once more the most powerful lieutenant of the Selchük sultan in the west and free to pursue his ambitions there.
Within two years he had forced King Fulk of Jerusalem to surrender the fortress of Montferrand, which was ideally sited to overlook the doings of the lords of Damascus and the movements of the Franks up and down the valley of the Orontes river. For Zengi still aimed to conquer Damascus. He married the mother of the young ruler, he occupied neighbouring Homs in force and, no doubt hoping to terrify the Damascenes into submission, he slaughtered the garrison of Baalbek, after having promised them their safety on the most solemn oaths known to Islam. But the city refused to yield either to diplomacy or violent threats, instead it allied with Fulk of Jerusalem, who had as little interest as they in seeing Damascus fall to Mosul. The combined forces were enough to persuade Zengi to withdraw to Baalbek, and there was a new threat to him from Iraq.
Mas‘ud now felt sure enough of his position to discipline even the powerful atabeg. It is really rather remarkable that Zengi, now a man approaching sixty, lord of a large province, once the chief agent of Mas‘ud’s rise to power and regarded as the greatest potentate in Syria, found it expedient to make a show of submission. The tie with Iraq was still effective and inhibiting on his policies.
Two years after this improbable humiliation, Zengi had sailed clear of all censure, to become the most renowned figure in Islam. Because of the magic that surrounds the name of Jerusalem, it is easy to lose sight of the full extent of Frankish penetration in the Middle East. The first major achievement of the original crusaders had been the capture of the great town of Edessa. Under successive counts it constituted a vital buffer province on the Franks’ northern frontier and a constant source of harassment to Aleppo and Mosul. While it was held, the strategic balance favoured the Christians. But the city had emotional as well as military significance. It had been established as a Christian commonwealth even before Constantine the Great made Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. The Edessenes boasted themselves the oldest Christian polity anywhere in the world and, even though the place had been conquered for Islam in the seventh century, there was still a large, mainly Armenian, Christian community there at the time of the Crusade.
In the autumn of 1144, Zengi launched a feint attack on the city of Diyar-Bakr some eighty miles to the north-east of Edessa. Its ruler had recently formed an alliance with Joscelin of Edessa and, as Zengi calculated, the count left his capital in force to harass theatabeg’s lines of communication with Aleppo. Immediately the Mosul army turned back and by forced marches reached the city, now shorn of its best defending troops. Christians were to blame Joscelin bitterly for what happened next. Instead of marching at once to relieve his capital he retired to another city, confident that the massive fortifications of Edessa could hold out. The force he had led out made a powerful garrison behind the walls but was too small to defeat the massive army of Zengi. Now he had to wait for Christian reinforcements from Jerusalem, 300 miles distant.
Having outmanoeuvred the enemy, Zengi now prepared for the siege. He had a large siege train and an army at a pitch of religious fervour after months of jihad propaganda. The reduced garrison, led by the Catholic and Armenian bishops, held out doggedly for four weeks; but when the Muslim engineers breached a massive section of the walls the end was only hours away. The city was sacked with a ruthlessness that threatened to equal the Christian atrocities at Jerusalem. But when he made his formal entry Zengi was so impressed by the beauty and the riches of the place that he ordered an end to the destruction. Within years the whole county of Edessa, 10,000 square miles of vital strategic territory, was once more Muslim.
The fall of Edessa is one of the great events of twelfth-century history. If the Franks in Syria were numbed by the shock, the effect in Europe was little short of traumatic. For decades men had been warned that without continuing aid from Europe the Holy Land would be lost to Christendom, now the warnings struck home. St Bernard led the call for an expedition and his fervent preaching precipitated the Second Crusade.
In Islam the victory was greeted with jubilation from Baghdad to North Africa. The poet al-Qaysarani wrote: ‘Tell the rulers of the infidels to flee the territories they pretend to hold, for this land is the land of Zengi. Men said that the atabeg would be pardoned all his sins for this one deed and would be admitted at once to the joys of paradise. During his reign, fervour for the jihad had grown by the year, and the capture of Edessa was seen as its first great triumph and Zengi its greatest hero. He had knocked the coping-stone from the Christian edifice in Palestine – it seemed only a matter of moments before the whole building should crumble.
But two years later Zengi was dead, murdered by a servant he had insulted; it was a weighty blow to the hopes of the faithful. Yet he was to be followed by one more glorious, for his son Nur-ad-Din was to prove a still more noble warrior in the Holy War.
On Zengi’s death the ruler of Damascus reclaimed the city of Baalbek. But Aiyub retained his command. In addition, he was granted a mansion in Damascus and the taxation from ten villages as an iqta, the revenue base for an official income. Baalbek, some 4,800 feet above sea level, was dominated by the great Roman temples to Jupiter and Bacchus. Massive columns still survive – before the huge earthquake of 1170, the buildings were virtually intact and fortified with towers and ramparts. Below stretches the Beka’a valley, rich in cereal crops and orchards of fig, apricot and mulberry trees, even vineyards. (It was said that the teenage Saladin would indulge in wine.)
Aged eight Saladin moved to the family house in Damascus. No doubt the privileged youth and his friends would be seen of an evening riding and taking archery practice or playing polo, as would his own children. His father, Aiyub ibn-Shadi Naim ad-Din (i.e. ‘Star of the Faith’) enjoyed respect from Nur-ad-Din, but it was Saladin’s uncle, Shirkuh, who kept the family name prominent at the court in Aleppo.