52
Vidi quel Bruto che cacciò Tarquino,
Lucrezia, Iulia, Marzïa e Corniglia;
e solo, in parte, vidi ‘l Saladino.
I saw that Brutus who expelled Tarquin,
Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia,
and I saw Saladin, by himself, apart.
Dante, L’inferno, Canto IV, 127–129.
Shawar secured a treaty of mutual assistance with Amalric and Nur al-Din responded with another expedition led by Shirkuh and Saladin in early 1167. Shirkuh slipped past the Crusaders and got his men between Cairo and Amalric’s advancing troops, then as the Crusaders crossed the Nile he fled up the river valley. Amalric set off in pursuit with only his knights, as his infantry could not keep up with the pace of Shirkuh’s retreat. The Battle of al-Babayn was fought on the fringes of the desert where soft sand and the steep slopes of the dunes made the Crusader charge of limited value. Amalric made a charge at Shirkuh’s centre with a contingent of his knights, but the troops positioned there under the command of Saladin quickly retreated. Amalric then found himself under an archery assault from two charging wings and also cut off from the rest of his forces. He managed to cut his way out of the mass of injured and dying knights that his force had become, and returned to his main force. He rallied as many men as he could around his standard, formed them into a close-order column, cleared the field, and headed back to Cairo.
Shirkuh then raced to Alexandria, which was on the point of rebellion against Shawar, and Amalric responded by besieging the city with the support of a Pisan fleet. Within a month the city was starving. Shirkuh broke out under cover of night from the city, leaving Saladin in charge of the remaining men, and attempted to foment rebellion against Shawar in Upper Egypt. Nur al-Din brought war to Amalric’s lands again and the king was forced to negotiate. Saladin was held as a hostage during the talks, and he became friendly with the Crusader Humphrey of Toron. The Syrian army was allowed to leave Egypt unmolested and Amalric left soon after in August. He had secured an increased tribute to Jerusalem and the right to have troops and a military attaché garrisoned in Cairo.
Amalric’s demands on the Egyptians for tribute required huge tax increases. This, coupled with the presence of Franj troops in Cairo, ate away at Shawar’s support. A Crusader army led by Count William of Nevers also arrived in Palestine in the summer of 1168, and this seems to have set Amalric’s mind that Egypt should be reduced before it rebelled against his puppet.
Shawar opened protracted negotiations with the king, and sent to Nur al-Din once again for aid. Cairo’s defenders set fires in the old city that blazed for 50 days, in order to deny the Crusaders its markets and shelter. Shirkuh and Saladin returned once more, but this time with an army larger than Amalric’s. The Crusader siege was falling apart as ‘camp-sickness’ took hold and the king took his army out of Egypt on 2 January 1169.
Shirkuh took the position of wazir with the support of the Fatimid Caliph and executed Shawar. Shirkuh did not, however, enjoy the pleasures of the office too long, as he died in his bath in March 1169.
