Chapter 6
The Kurdish commanders had extricated themselves from near disaster, but the expedition had not even approached its objectives, The 50,000 gold pieces said to have been paid to Shirkuh were offset by large Christian gains. They installed a resident prefect at Cairo and a garrison which controlled the city’s gates – they also forced the Egyptians to double their annual tribute to 100,000 dinars. On his return Saladin devoted himself to politics and the diversions of the court. Two expeditions to Egypt had brought his family little success, and he put the whole episode behind him.
But the situation in Egypt could not be so easily dismissed. Shavar, began to lose influence. The Frankish garrison in Cairo was a standing indictment of his policies and the heavy tribute still owing fed the growing opposition to him. To placate it he let the payments fall behind, but this merely infuriated his erstwhile allies and Amalric was soon under pressure to invade Egypt in earnest. The king opposed an immediate expedition. He had recently concluded an alliance with the Byzantines and wanted time to involve them. He also had more fundamental doubts. Egyptian tribute money, even if delayed, was a valuable addition to Jerusalem’s war chest against Syria. He warned the hawks in the council, ‘if we invade with the intention of taking possession, the sovereign, the army, the cities and the peasants will unite against us and will fly into the arms of Nur-ad-Din. If he should come to their aid it will be the worse for us.’
The fact that he listed the ‘sovereign’ as a power to be reckoned with shows that Amalric, who had refused to ratify his treaty with Shavar until it had been approved in direct negotiation with the caliph, accepted that the Egyptian court still influenced events. Perhaps Shavar’s position was weakening, but the air was thick with strange rumours – one remarkable story going the rounds claimed that Kamil, the son of Shavar, was trying to arrange the marriage of his daughter and Saladin. Whether true or not it implied a move towards rapprochement between Syria and Egypt which could harden into alliance if the Christians acted precipitately. Twice they had had to withdraw from Egypt because of Syrian threats to the kingdom. If they now broke faith with their party in Cairo they might force the union of Muslims which was the most serious long-term danger. Amalric conceded that something would have to be done, but he was overruled in the matter of timing. In October 1168 the Franks moved south, this time as the invaders, not the allies, of Egypt. They were met in the desert by an ambassador from Shavar and answered his tirade with the bland suggestion that another two million dinars might perhaps buy them off. Shavar ordered the garrison of Bilbais to resist.
It was under the command of his son Taiy, and the stubborn defence surprised the Christians, who generally despised Egyptian troops. It also infuriated the soldiery, which, once inside the city, ran amuck and slaughtered the population, the Coptic Christians along with the Muslims. This massacre united Egypt against the invader even more completely than Amalric had feared. Malcontent Muslims might have welcomed the fall of Shavar, the Copts would almost certainly have provided a Frankish fifth column. Bilbais crushed any such hopes. On 12 November Shavar ordered the destruction of Fustat old city where Amalric had encamped on his earlier expedition.
Amalric had marched on to surround Cairo and Shavar had settled down to the congenial manoeuvres of bribery; his son, taken prisoner at Bilbais, was ransomed for a sizeable figure and it seemed possible that even at this stage the Franks could be bought off without the need to call in the dangerous support of Syria. Frankish councils were as ever divided. The warmongers who had urged the invasion in the first place wanted first and foremost to get their hands on the plunder and tribute money which, during peace, went direct into the royal coffers. Now that the vizir seemed willing and able to disgorge vast sums to the army in the field, they urged withdrawal a few miles from Cairo so that negotiations could proceed without duress on Shavar. The fact that the Franks were only in Egypt to secure long-term advantages seems to have been forgotten. The arrangements suited Shavar well enough, but his son Kamil, who was in close touch with the court, agreed that the time had come to call in Nur-ad-Din to finish the Frankish menace once and for all, and forced his father to concur in the caliph’s initiative.
The palace enthusiastically made the proposal its own. During the first weeks of the Frankish campaign Shavar’s chancellery had been depicting him in the glowing imagery of the Holy War, as the champion of Islam. Now that he had been forced to turn once again to bribery the rhetoric died, yet even so he had supporters among the religious establishment and the administration where some realised that Syrian intervention would mean the end of the Fatimid régime. Others despised the Syrian forces for their motley ancestry as Turks, Kurds, Armenians and so forth and opined that ‘it would be better to pay tribute to the Franks than to let in the Ghuzz’. But popular feeling was running so strong after the massacre at Bilbais that negotiations with the Christians had become dangerous as well as humiliating.
The appeal to Nur-ad-Din was reinforced by a letter from the caliph himself. This was accompanied by a lock of his wife’s hair, to show that the Syrian king could hope to share the favours of his still more cherished bride – the realm of Egypt. A letter written in the caliph’s own hand was remarkable enough in itself – the eloquent token he sent with it and its potent symbolism emphasised the invitation in the strongest possible way.
Nur-ad-Din’s immediate response to the embassy was to send for Shirkuh. He mobilised a force of 8,000 men, comprising 2,000 troops from his personal bodyguard plus 6,000 Turkomans and Kurds, officered by Kurds and Turks. In addition to a war chest of 200,000 gold pieces he gave each man twenty pieces as a bonus. He also ordered Saladin to accompany his uncle. The reply was a surprising refusal: ‘By God! even were the sovereignty of Egypt offered me I would not go.’ Yet eventually the pleas of his uncle and the orders of his sovereign, who showered him with horses and arms, forced Saladin to reconsider. Later he claimed that he went to Egypt ‘like one driven to his death’.
This reluctance is one of the best attested episodes in Saladin’s career and it is a puzzle. The ’67 campaign had been less than triumphant and quite possibly he had no wish to be associated with another failure; there were also bad memories of the siege of Alexandria. Yet by now he was a veteran soldier and no speculation can fill out the skimpy contemporary accounts of the affair satisfactorily. The army set out on 17 December 1168 and as soon as he heard the news Shavar, hoping to solve his dilemma by having Frank and Syrian exhaust themselves far from his capital, warned Amalric of the advance. The king withdrew from Cairo in a half-hearted attempt to intercept the Syrian army at Suez, but the two forces did not meet and Amalric’s withdrawal became a retreat.
His aim had been to secure the Christians’ hold on Egypt. Before he invaded they had their prefect in Cairo and a garrison there, and good chances even though the times had been uncertain. Now things had hardened beyond recall in favour of Syria. The atrocity at Bilbais had much to answer for. In ’67, faced by a firm Franco-Egyptian front, Shirkuh had been forced to waste his powers in a hazardous holding fight at Alexandria and fruitless raiding. Now, the Syrians were no longer outsiders but the favoured guests of the caliph; now Amalric found himself allied to a weak vizir and robbed of any Egyptian friendship by the brutality of his own troops. He had to quit the field and for a time the palace held the initiative – -for Shavar the writing was on the wall.
On 9 January Shirkuh entered Cairo to a great welcome as Deliverer of the Muslims. He had audience with the caliph and received from him a robe of honour which he proudly showed to his troops. For the moment Shavar could do nothing but concur in the general enthusiasm and made daily visits to the camp of his unwanted ally with all the pomp and panoply he could muster. At the same time he tried to involve his son in a plot to assassinate Shirkuh at a banquet, pointing out quite rightly that if they did not dispose of the Syrian and his officers he would shortly put an end to them and to all the Fatimid leaders. According to Ibn-al-Athir, Kamil replied: ‘What you say may well be right. But in my view it is better to be killed leaving Egypt to the Muslims, than by the Franks who will certainly return and deal with us once Shirkuh is dead.’ In the event Shavar, the veteran plotter, was out-plotted. On 18 January, making a pilgrimage to a mosque on the outskirts of Cairo, he was arrested by a Syrian guard commanded by Saladin and beheaded on the orders of the caliph. The same day Shirkuh was installed as vizir. To pacify the mob and win their support, he permitted them to loot the palace of the deposed vizir, keeping none of the treasures for himself or his troops. But he permitted his emirs to seize the estates of Shavar’s officers. The palace sent a letter to Nur-ad-Din to inform him that henceforth the Egyptian military would be commanded by his lieutenant, Shirkuh. The reaction from Damascus was immediate and angry. The caliph was urged to order Shirkuh back to his master and when this failed Nur-ad-Din confiscated the commander’s holdings in Syria.
It is hardly surprising that Nur-ad-Din was suspicious. Only two years previously Shirkuh had argued him into a campaign blessed by Baghdad as a holy war to overthrow the Fatimids. But now that the Egyptians’ allies were driven from the field and he himself was in full control of the capital, Shirkuh not only did not depose the caliph but even recognised his authority by accepting the appointment as his chief minister. From Damascus it looked as though once free of his master a loyal servant had seized the moment to turn rebel. The analysis may very well have been right, but since two months after his appointment Shirkuh died of his excesses we can never know how he would have used his position. The situation in Cairo was not simple. The people hailed Shirkuh as liberator from the Christians, the palace still held the political initiative. The caliph and his advisers were delighted to have Shavar removed for them, but could be expected to oppose any attempt by Shurkuh to displace the Fatimid régime. Shirkuh was not strong enough to force the issue, and had little inducement. While he meticulously observed Egyptian independence and permitted the observance of Shi‘ite rites he had the real power of vizir and the cooperation of the establishment.
His death on 23 March 1169 meant the appointment of a new vizir, It also meant the election of a new commander of the Syrian army in Egypt; the two posts need not necessarily be held by the same man. One palace faction proposed that the Syrian troops be settled in Egypt as a powerful addition to the caliph’s forces but that the vizirate be given to an Egyptian army officer. The caliph and his advisers, however, recognised that although they held the balance of power the new vizir must be acceptable to the ‘army of liberation’.
Saladin had been designated by his uncle to succeed him as commander and he could count on the support of the Kurdish contingent, but he had strong rivals among a group of Turkish officers, aggressively loyal to Nur-ad-Din, who dubbed themselves Nuriyah. The pro-Saladin lobby was led by ‘Isa al-Hakkari, who had risen in the service of Nur-ad-Din. He had been named as the chief negotiator in the rumoured marriage between Saladin and Shavar’s daughter in 1168, which at least shows he was popularly considered a loyal friend to Saladin. Largely thanks to him Saladin won the army command. But the decision was not unanimous, and the leading Nuriyah returned with his troops to Damascus, where he accused Saladin of disloyalty and self-seeking. Meanwhile, Saladin was invited by the caliph to follow his uncle as vizir. The palace may have hoped to spark off further Syrian defections. Immediately the news reached Aleppo, Nur-ad-Din confirmed the confiscation of Saladin’s and Shirkuh’s estates and offices in Syria, including the town of Homs, and slightingly ignored the office of vizir and the titles granted by the Cairo régime, referring to Saladin simply as ‘commander-in-chief’.
By including Nur-ad-Din’s name among those mentioned in the official Friday prayers at Cairo and by other gestures of submission Saladin did his best to soften Aleppo’s attitude. At the same time, owing his appointment to the palace, he was a regular attendant at court and companion of the caliph in ceremonial duties. The two were seen heading the Ramadan processions and each Friday made joint pilgrimage to some mosque. The Kurdish vizir trod carefully between his Sunnite overlord and Shi‘ite master, gradually allaying the suspicions of the one and becoming strong enough to override the other. If the caliph had hoped for a pliant subordinate he soon found his mistake.
By the summer of 1169 Saladin had formed a personal bodyguard; in July of the same year his position was further strengthened by the arrival of his brother Turan Shah. Even before Shirkuh’s death his nephew had had to do a good deal of the administrative work since the vizir was generally drunk and incapable. When Saladin took the office he showed the powers it might have in efficient hands and reinforced by the arrival of his family he began to build a strong position. Worried, the court party decided to call in the Christians once more. But Saladin learnt of the plot before Amalric. An alert agent, intrigued by the unusual design of the sandals of a court messenger, had them unstitched and discovered the dispatch addressed to Amalric. A detachment of Saladin’s guards was ordered to the country villa of the chief plotter, the black eunuch, Moutamen, and killed him before he had a chance to rally his own troops.
Saladin now dismissed all the palace servants loyal to the caliph and also installed his own ministers. For a moment it looked as though he had overreached himself. The displaced ministers stirred up trouble among the Nubian palace guard who were already furious at the death of the great black minister; they attacked Saladin’s troops in the palace area and the caliph looked on at the seething struggle. The overwhelming numbers of the black guard found themselves congested in the streets and courtyards but even so things were looking dangerous for the Syrians. At this point Saladin callously ordered that the barracks housing the guards’ families and also a contingent of Armenians be set on fire. The mutinous troops streamed back to rescue their wives and children from the flames; many were cut down in cold blood on Saladin’s orders while most of the Armenians perished in the fire. Resistance continued for a further two days in some quarters and the rebel remnant was given a safe conduct out of Cairo, but this too was violated and in bloody and ruthless fashion Saladin had put an end to the threat of rebellion in Cairo. The caliph, we are informed, hastened to assure Saladin of his loyalty.
News of the Cairo crisis had by now reached the Christians. Embassies to Europe urging immediate reinforcements while the enemy was in disarray found no support, but Constantinople did agree to a joint expedition with Amalric. On 10 July a Byzantine fleet headed south. However, the kingdom had been unsettled by the ’68 campaign and Amalric was not ready to leave until the middle of October, crossing into Egypt on the 25th. Saladin had had ample warning of the invasion and had concentrated his army at Bilbais. Unexpectedly, the Christians laid siege to Damietta.
Perhaps a rapid assault would have won the place, but the Frankish command intimidated by the massive fortifications prepared for a methodical siege. Their caution was utterly mistaken. Saladin had been thrown temporarily off balance by the Christians’ choice of target so that they still had some slight advantage of surprise. The defenders had been able to block the entrance to the river with a heavy boom so that while Amalric was deprived of the support he expected from the fleet Saladin was able to pour reinforcements into the town down the open branch of the Nile. Day by day the Greek commander watched the enemy garrison growing stronger in men and provisions, while his own men who had set out in July with provisions for only a three-month campaign grew weaker and more mutinous. He urged Amalric to risk an all-out attack. But still Amalric held off, and it gradually became obvious that the expedition had failed. In mid-December, for the second time that year, the Christians withdrew with nothing achieved.
It was the end of an eventful year. During the nine months since he had taken office as vizir, Saladin had proved himself a master in politics and war. Despite the open antagonism of Nur-ad-Din his troops in Egypt had remained loyal to him; a dangerous plot had been foiled and a revival of palace influence nipped in the bud; a threatening mutiny had been crushed and an army of invaders comprehensively routed. Finally, and perhaps most interesting, Nur-ad-Din’s prompt reply to the appeals for reinforcements had shown that, however suspicious he might be, Nur-ad-Din dared not abandon Saladin to the risk of a Christian take-over.
The way Saladin weathered these early troubles revealed a powerful political talent. The vizirate of Egypt was probably the most insecure job in the contemporary Muslim world. In the years to come he was to show still more impressive administrative skills which were to bring the country its longest period of untroubled government for half a century. Just now, however, there was more stormy weather ahead.
Nur-ad-Din was increasing the pressure for the dissolution of the Fatimid caliphate. But before this could be done, and before the name of al-Mustadi of Baghdad could be substituted for that of al-Adid, there were powerful vested interests that had to be negotiated. Once it had been done, Saladin’s only title to legitimate authority in Egypt would be in question. He moved carefully to secure his position, and began to replace key figures in the military and administrative establishment with his own nominees. In the early summer of 1170 he won an important new ally when his father, having at last received Nur-ad-Din’s permission, came to join him at Cairo. The occasion revealed the measure of Saladin’s ascendancy. Conferring an honour which no previous caliph had bestowed on a subject, al-Adid rode out to greet Aiyub in person at the outskirts of the capital.
With a suitable gesture of filial obedience Saladin offered to resign the vizirate to his father. Even if the offer was genuine it was not practical politics. Refusing the proposal, Aiyub remarked that God would not have chosen his son for so great an office had he not been worthy of it and added that it was never wise to play with one’s luck. But he did accept the treasurership and Alexandria and Damietta as iqtas, while Saladin’s brother, Turan-Shah, was granted Upper Egypt, a section of Cairo and the district of Giza. With his brothers in vital commands and the family patriarch, veteran in politics and master of administration, in a key post, Saladin began to move with ever more assurance. In June his first son, Ali al-Afdal, was born to his wife, Umm al-Afdal.
In the last months of 1170 he took the offensive against the Christians. Merely carrying the war into the enemy territory would raise Egyptian morale considerably. Leaving Cairo on 26 November he marched for the Templar fortress of Darum on the southern frontier of the Christian kingdom. The attack was launched on 10 December, but the Templars were able to hold out while the main Christian army under King Amalric came up. The Egyptians slipped away under cover of darkness and marched on the city of Gaza, putting it to the sack. The fortress there was too strong for them, but the operation had served notice that Egypt was once again a force to be reckoned with. More important, it concentrated Christian attention on the Mediterranean frontiers of the kingdom while Saladin’s forces were mounting a surprise and elaborate operation further south.
A flotilla of prefabricated ships had been transported by camel from Cairo to the Gulf of Suez, where they were launched for the voyage round Sinai. By the end of December they were in position in the waters of the Gulf of al-Aqaba and on 31 December cooperated with the land forces from Saladin’s field headquarters for a successful combined land and sea attack on the port. The recovery of this rich trading port and key staging post in the pilgrimage route to Mecca was a major victory for Islam. It was also a brilliant triumph for an army which for years had been satisfied if it could defend its own frontiers – generally with the help of infidel allies. In rather less than two years, by efficient, well-planned military reform, Saladin had made the Egyptian army a fighting force.
He had also moved steadily to strengthen his position as vizir. In the summer of 1170 ‘Isa al-Hakkari was appointed chief judge in Cairo; in March 1171 the Kurdish qadi, al-Fadil, was made head of the country’s judiciary. A few months later more purges of the military seemed to give him unassailable control of the Egyptian establishment. The moves were watched with cold suspicion from Damascus and in August 1171 Nurad-Din sent a direct command that the Fatimid government and caliph were to be overturned forthwith, and threatened that if nothing was done he would come in person. Saladin ignored the caliph’s protests against the purge and soon after ordered more army units to the capital. At about this time al-Adid fell ill. On Friday, 10 September 1171, the first Friday of the year 567 A.H., the bidding prayer in the chief mosque of Fustat omitted the name of the Fatimid caliph for the first time in two centuries. A week later al-Mustadi was named in the prayers of the chief mosque of Cairo, and as the orthodox invocation was echoed throughout the capital the palace grounds were being methodically taken over by Saladin’s troops. The royal family and its retinue were rounded up and placed under house arrest.
The constitutional arrangements of two centuries had been overturned without a murmur of protest. There were to be repercussions later, but the only immediate result was an enquiry on behalf of the dead caliph’s ten-year-old son as to when he was to be installed as successor. Saladin calmly replied that the boy’s father had given him personally no authority in the matters of the succession and that was that. Barely a week after the caliph’s death in the night of 12 September and but a few days after the solemn, religious proclamation of the Abbasid house, Saladin marched out of Cairo to a new campaign.
The objective was the strategic Christian strongpoint of ash-Shaubak (Montreal). About twenty-five miles to the south of the Dead Sea, it overlooked the route from Syria to the Gulf of al-Aqaba, and the communications between Syria and Egypt. Amalric, caught off guard, could not come at once to the relief of the garrison and the commander begged a ten-day truce. Nur-ad-Din was marching south from Damascus with a large army, and the fall of ash-Shaubak seemed certain. But a few days before the truce was due to expire the defenders saw in astonishment that the Egyptian force was striking camp. They were not the only ones surprised by the withdrawal. Even in Saladin’s own entourage it was whispered that he was retiring to avoid a face-to-face encounter. If they did meet, the speculation ran, the vizir of Egypt would be forced to accept the post of second-in-command in the field army and might even be relieved of his offices in Cairo.
To Syrian noses the whole thing smelt rankly of treason, and there can be little doubt that political self-interest was an important factor in Saladin’s decision. The given reason was that news had just reached the camp of a rising in Upper Egypt which threatened the whole Syrian position in the country. But Saladin’s brother was handling the rebellion effectively and it is unlikely Saladin really believed his own presence was needed. However, he did have grounds to be angry and worried both with Nur-ad-Din’s attitude and about his own situation in Egypt. Acting on instructions from Damascus, he had deposed the heretical caliph – and incidentally seen Nur-ad-Din receive the first congratulations from Baghdad for the action – and, again ordered by Damascus, he had left his own capital within days of the coup, when unrest was most to be feared, to make an attack deep into enemy territory. His withdrawal from ash-Shaubak may have been calculating but there were reasons for a return to Cairo. News soon came that Nur-ad-Din was planning a punitive expedition.
Saladin called an urgent conference of his family and advisers. Reaction was mixed but generally defiant, summed up in passionate words by one of the younger cousins Taqi-ad-Din ‘Umar – ‘If the king of Syria comes, we will fight him and force him back.’ Saladin’s father, always the diplomat and now perturbed at the kind of effect such hotheaded talk would have in Damascus, brought the proceedings sternly to order. ‘Know that should Nur-ad-Din come nothing would stop me or your uncle here from dismounting and kissing the ground at his feet,’ he said to the young hot-head. Then turning to Saladin he went on, ‘Even if he ordered us to take your life we should do it. If we would act thus how do you think others would? For all the army and all your council here owe their homage to Nur-ad-Din should he come. This is his land and if it pleased him to depose you we would immediately obey him. We are all Nur-ad-Din’s mamluks and slaves and he may do with us as he chooses.’ Aiyub’s advice was to conciliate the king with an offer of total submission: ‘News has reached us that you intend to lead an expedition to Egypt; but what need is there? My Lord need but send a courtier on a camel to lead me back to Syria by a turban cloth about my neck – not one of my people would attempt to resist him.’
After the council had dispersed Aiyub warned Saladin against yielding to ambitious talk. There would always be an informer willing to report back to Nur-ad-Din, and provocation was pointless since time was on the side of the younger man. If Nur-ad-Din could be placated there need be little fear of any Syrian invasion, but if things should reach that point Aiyub swore he would fight to the death rather than the king should take even a single sugar cane of the rich crops of Egypt from his son. For the next three years Saladin followed his father’s advice. In April the following year a caravan left for Aleppo carrying much treasure from the Fatimid palace including a valuable antique ceremonial robe and turban belonging to one of the early caliphs and, more to Nur-ad-Din’s liking, 100,000 dinars. In 1173 this Egyptian tribute consisted of more rich treasure and a further 60,000 dinars. Nur-ad-Din’s name was added to the invocations in the mosques at Cairo, and in his dealings with his overlord Saladin maintained the most correct protocol. But nothing could dispel Nur-ad-Din’s suspicions or satisfy his expectations for cash return from the Egyptian venture.
Saladin was indeed determined not to lose Egypt. In the summer of 1173 he was ordered up to besiege Karak in Moab, a few miles south of the Dead Sea. He obeyed but, as in 1171, retired on news that Nur-ad-Din was coming to join him. This time he could show good reason however; his loved and respected father. The aged Aiyub had been thrown from his horse and in fact died before his son reached Cairo.
But while he complained bitterly against Saladin, Nur-ad-Din, who had the resources to take ash-Shaubak unaided, dissipated his strength with campaigns against the sultanate of the Selchük Turks of Konya. The real charge against Saladin was not so much that he was using Egypt in his own interests as that he was not prepared to subordinate the country to the interests of Syrian policy. Popular enthusiasm for his régime flowed from the fact that it was beginning to restore Egypt to great-power status. Nur-ad-Din had hoped that Egypt would provide a rich and docile province. But Saladin, who had secured his position at Cairo virtually unaided, saw no reason to comply.
The capture of al-Aqaba and the attack on ash-Shaubak, while they demonstrated the effectiveness of Egyptian arms, were operations of equal advantage to Syria. In 1173 Egyptian armies were driving westward along the North African coast into territories that had not known rule from Cairo for a century and a half. This revival of the glories of the Fatimid past brought new sources of revenue for the financing of the vizir’s new army and fleet and appealed still more powerfully to the Egyptian public. Commanded by Sharaf-ad-Din Karakush, a member of the staff of Saladin’s nephew Taqi-ad-Din, the array advanced through Tripolitania, took Tripoli itself, and even pushed into the territories of Tunis. An important part of the Mediterranean littoral was won back for Egypt.
The following year, 1174, saw Saladin presiding over the recovery of yet more territories of the former Fatimid empire. Early in February his brother Turan-Shah crossed the Red Sea to al-Hijaz. Then he marched south into the Yemen taking Aden and other major strongholds. These conquests remained with the Aiyubid house for fifty years. With the North African gains they brought Egypt to a position she had not known for generations and, added to her command of al-Aqaba, restored her to the prestigious position of protector of the pilgrim routes to Mecca. In the popular imagination Saladin the conqueror was now Saladin Protector of the Faith.
The people of Egypt had reason to approve the Kurdish vizir, who, in five years, had brought the country so far back on the road to glory. The comparison with the devious and cloistered intrigues of the Shavar régime was startling. Of course many ministers of the old régime were incensed by the revolution and plots were gathering force to a countercoup. Upper Egypt, traditionally the base for campaigns against a too-successful vizir, had been temporarily pacified by Turan-Shah before his Red Sea expedition. In 1172 he had repulsed an invasion from Nubia and compelled its ruler to sue for terms. The brunt of that invasion had fallen on Aswan, where the governor had fortunately held loyal to Cairo. But in 1174 he decided to join the members of the displaced judiciary, administration and military now plotting the overthrow of Saladin. They were led by the son and grandson of two former vizirs. Remarkably, they judged it safe to involve two men high in favour with the Aiyubid régime. These were Ibn-Massal, who held a senior post in the administration and Zain-ad-Din, a leading divine of the Sunnite establishment. It is difficult now to know why such men should have been thought open to subversion – in the light of what was to happen it seems at least possible that the whole plot was set up by Saladin’s secret service to smoke out opposition.
Following Egyptian tradition in these matters the conspirators contacted the Christians, and the Normans of Sicily agreed to launch an attack on Alexandria to coincide with a rising in Cairo; this was planned for harvest time, the most vulnerable period for any medieval military establishment, when commanders and troops alike tended to be away on the estates. Saladin’s situation was potentially very dangerous. Following the North African campaigns of the previous year a sizeable body of troops had been detached for garrison duties in the new provinces while the Yemeni expedition of February had drawn further forces off from the capital. Possibly this was no coincidence. The campaign into the Yemen had been planned and decided on largely thanks to the urgings of a Yemeni poet and historian, Umarah, a prominent figure of the earlier régime. It was he who had persuaded Saladin that the region was ripe for conquest and so had ensured that the vizir’s elder brother, one of his strongest lieutenants, would be out of Egypt when the rebellion broke. Umarah was also one of the chief plotters.
It was an elaborate plan, coordinating attacks on the northern coast and a rebellion in the far south at Aswan with a rising in the capital. But it was betrayed from the first. Zain-ad-Din, the Sunnite divine, either because he foresaw failure or, as been suggested above, because he was an agent provocateur, made contact with Saladin’s chief secretary al-Fadil and offered to betray his fellow conspirators in exchange for their confiscated estates. The fact that he was able to bargain with the administration is in itself suspicious – as a self-confessed traitor he should have been in no very strong position to negotiate. Whatever the secrets behind the comings and goings, Saladin moved with precision and speed. On 12 March the remaining royal family members were put under close house arrest, and early in April a wave of arrests brought in the conspirators. A special tribunal condemned them to death by crucifixion and, beginning on 6 April, they were publicly executed in Cairo.
The rising had aborted, and with it the most serious threat of subversion. But there were consequences still to follow. King Amalric, who had also agreed to lead an army against Saladin, died early in July shortly before the plot should have matured. But King William II of Sicily sent a fleet under his renowned admiral Margaritus. In late July it was seen standing in to Alexandria. The force consisted of 200 galleys carrying 30,000 men and 80 freighters loaded with horses, equipment and armaments. But the Christians had hopelessly miscalculated. Not only had the Egyptian uprising been quashed months before but the defences of Alexandria were in excellent repair and the harbour mouth blocked with sunken ships. Saladin was close at hand, with a large army. After three inglorious days during which the garrison had harried them with audacious sorties and night attacks the Normans took to their ships and fled, leaving 300 men stranded on the hostile shore. The Sicilians headed north.
Within days of the Christian rout messengers posting up from Aswan reported that the region was being terrorised by rebels led by the town’s governor. Saladin sent his young brother al-Adil to put down the rebellion, and early in September the trouble was over. The contemporary records do not specifically link the Aswan rising with the main plot but the timing could hardly have been coincidence. Had the Norman invasion not evaporated so quickly the régime would have been faced with simultaneous attacks north and south; a situation avoided by only a few days. But those few days were enough for Saladin to deal with the threats piecemeal. During the summer, news had reached Cairo of the death of Nur-ad-Din on 15 May; Syria was wide open with possibilities for Saladin, but it was not until October, with the last murmur of rebellion silenced, that he could set out for Damascus. Then, however, so complete had been the pacification of Egypt that he was able to leave his capital in the hands of his brother al-Adil and not return for seven more years.
Brutal when necessary, but always decisive and bold, Saladin had solved the Egyptian problem. For generations vizirs had come and gone in a turgid succession of faction fights. The pieces on the board were the vizir, the palace party, Syrian or Christian intruders fishing in the troubled waters and, as often as not, the governor of Upper Egypt. As each pawn successively ‘queened’ (it is thought the original of the modern chess ‘queen’ was the ‘vizir’) the pieces were set up and the game begun again. By outmanoeuvring his enemies and at need liquidating them Saladin had called a halt to the game for a generation. He had, moreover, brought better and more enlightened government to the country than it had known since the days of the great caliphs. The treachery and killings that kept him in power tell against him in a modern evaluation. But the death of courtiers was too commonplace to be of much concern to the citizenry of Egypt, while the ending of the seemingly endless feuds was accompanied by Egypt’s return to power, prosperity and influence in the world. Biographers of Saladin anxious to hurry on to the grand and chivalrous doings of the Holy War have traditionally glossed over the early years of his Egyptian rule. Yet the fact is that these were formative to his career and reveal qualities of decision and tenacity that were vital in the years ahead.
In Saladin in his Time (1983), P.H. Newby noted that at the height of his career Saladin (vizir, later called sultan, of Egypt) would be known to his contemporaries as al-Malik al-Nasir Salah al-Din Abu ’l-Muzaffer Yusuf ibn Aiyub ibn Shadi. The Arabic ‘al-Malik’ is usually translated as ‘king’; ‘al-Nasir’ as ‘defender of’ or ‘victorious in (the Faith)’. It has been claimed that the great man, son of Aiyub who was son of Shadi and generally called ‘the honour’ (Salah) ‘of religion’ (al-Din), never himself adopted the title of king. Maybe not, but his contemporaries had no hesitation in awarding it to him.
His fortifications at Cairo, his capital from 1169 to 1176, still testify to his stature as a potentate. The result of the works he ordered was to consolidate the city’s defences. First the existing walls were reinforced, but then a new circuit was constructed for the capital and old Fustat while the immense works were crowned with the majestic citadel on the rocky promontory of the Muqattam hills. The expenditure in materials and resources was of course huge, even if the use of slave labour in the form of Christian prisoners of war is taken into account.
The restoration of Sunni rule in the city of the heretical Fatimids meant the return of Egyptian patronage of the holiest sites in Islam. When Saladin abolished the toll charges levied on the pilgrims to Mecca and compensated the authorities there for their loss in revenues, he had restored something of the ancient prestige of Muslim Egypt. He would also ruffle feathers in Baghdad, where the caliph was jealous of a possible challenge to his standing in the community of Islam.