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When death with claw-like nails strikes at her prey, no amulet avails …
Ibn al-Qalanasi, The Chronicle of Damascus.
Baldwin III died in February 1162. Despite the difficult start to his reign and the increasingly frequent blows that Nur al-Din inflicted upon the king’s lands, Baldwin had achieved a good deal considering the poor hand he had been dealt by fate. Ascalon had finally fallen to the Crusaders. This frightened Damascus enough to maintain its non-aggression pact with the Franks, and gave the entire maritime trade of Syria over to Frankish control. The Arabic diwan tariffs, soon to be copied as the douane and dogana in France and Italy, and eventually to become what we understand today as customs dues, maintained the coffers of the kingdom and helped to pay local infantry, turcopoles and mercenaries. Ascalon was also a stepping stone on the road to Egypt, and Egypt would soon become the chief strategic focus for the Crusaders and Nur al-Din.
Nur al-Din had finally brought Damascus under his control, and the city’s wealth paid for his burgeoning army. It fell to him in a relatively straightforward way. His Aleppan forces had chased the Damascene askari back to the gate leading to the city’s Jewish quarter. Then an elderly Jewish lady lowered a rope to one of the foot soldiers below. Nur al-Din’s standard went up on the wall and a woodcutter followed the old lady’s example by smashing the lock of the East Gate and allowing the Aleppans easy entry. A united Syria was called into existence and its new sultan granted Jerusalem a one-year truce, in complete contradiction to his recent jihad propaganda. He needed to attend to the north of Syria where the Byzantines were again stirring up trouble, but all military activity from both sides was then cut short by a series of earthquakes in 1156.
Nur al-Din returned to the south to push the Franks from Banyas. He captured many knights and they were paraded through Damascus on camels, each with his banner attached so the crowds could recognise them, but this campaign was also cut short by continuing earth tremors. Then in 1157 Kilij Arslan II, the Sultan of Iconium, threatened Antioch. Nur al-Din immediately entered into a truce with Baldwin to allow Jerusalem to support Antioch. The jihad was put on hold as Nur al-Din considered Antioch as a soon to be acquired possession of the Zangid clan. In August, Nur al-Din set out with a large force that arrayed itself before Antioch and essentially created an exclusion zone around the city, through which neither the Franks nor the Turks of Anatolia could pass.
The sultan fell seriously ill in October 1157 but his lieutenants kept Syria under control. But he had to return to the field in 1158, despite ongoing poor health, as the Crusaders raided around Damascus. In 1159 the action moved again to the north as the Byzantines secured suzerainty over several Anatolian Turkish lords and these distractions meant stalemate in the south. Both the Crusaders and the Zangids looked to the ailing Fatimid state and its treasure to support their campaigns, the contest for Egypt would be between Nur al-Din and Amalric, who succeeded his childless brother in February 1162.