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My uncle then said to Nur al-Din. ‘It is absolutely necessary that Yusuf go with me’. And Nur al-Din thus repeated his orders. I tried to explain the state of financial embarrassment in which I found myself. He ordered that money be given to me and I had to go, like a man being led off to his death.
The later sultan, Saladin, reflecting on the campaign in Egypt against Amalric in the 1160s.
Egypt had fallen very far from the glory days of the al-Azhar mosque’s construction in 970. As perhaps the first university in the world its raison d’être of propagating the Fatimid creed was pretty much at an end too by the 1160s, as the dynasty was now paying tribute to the Franks just in order to stave off invasion. It had run through fifteen different wazirs. Every one of them had been involved in deadly standoffs with the caliphs, and only one of them had survived his tenure. Cliques of officers that backed different candidates for the wazirate broke the state apart. It was unfortunate for Amalric that Shawar, one of the losers in the deadly competition for the office, fled not to him, but to Nur al-Din’s court to seek aid against his successor. Amalric invaded Egypt in September 1163 to pre-empt any move by the Muslims and got to Bilbays after defeating a force sent against him by the new wazir, Dirgham. His hopes were then, however, literally washed away when the Nile dykes were broken open by the Egyptians and his army’s camp was flooded. A hasty retreat from the mud of the delta back to Palestine soon followed.
In Damascus, Nur al-Din hurried to organise a response to Amalric’s grab for Egypt, and Shawar enthusiastically told the sultan that all expenses for the expedition could be met from the Egyptian treasury. Nur al-Din selected the trusty Shirkuh to lead the mission, which was certainly wise as an abundance of cunning and durability would be needed for the campaign. He then made a diversionary attack on northern Palestine in April 1164 to allow Shirkuh and his nephew Saladin, along with a small force, a window of opportunity in which to return Shawar to the wazir’s palace. They took a long route east of the Jordan to the Red Sea before riding across the Sinai to Bilbays, and were at the walls of Cairo by 1 May. Shirkuh’s sudden appearance seems to have paralysed Dirgham, and the city fell bloodlessly. Shawar was put back in office whilst the body of Dirgham was left to rot in the streets. Shawar then rapidly double-crossed Shirkuh, and in July 1164 Almaric marched on Egypt again, this time at the invitation of the wazir. Shirkuh abandoned his barracks at Cairo, and held the Crusaders in newly-prepared positions at Bilbays, but the situation looked hopeless unless something could be done to pull Amalric away from Egypt.
Nur al-Din struck at Harim, defeated a coalition of Crusader, Armenian and Byzantine forces and captured Bohemond III of Antioch. Amalric was forced to negotiate for a mutual withdrawal of forces, and both armies left Egypt in October 1164. Amalric went straight to Antioch to defend the city. He managed to secure the situation there, but then had to march south, as his own territory was now under attack by Nur al-Din. In fact, things were going so well for Nur al-Din in Syria that he did not hazard for Egypt again until he was provoked by Shawar.