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O Allah bestow your blessings on our Medina, and bestow your blessings on our Mecca, and bestow your blessings on our Sham, and bestow your blessings on our Yemen.
From the Hadith of Najd.
Saladin and Nur al-Din had attempted joint campaigns in 1171 and 1173, when Saladin attacked Karak and Shawbak, the two great Crusader fortresses in the Transjordan, but in both ventures the two armies failed to join up.
The Crusaders had suffered the same issue of co-ordination in their attempts to take Egypt from the sea with the assistance of Byzantium in 1169, though in truth much of this was related to avarice over the expected spoils of the venture. The emperor dispatched a fleet of 230 ships and Amalric was to march before the end of the campaign season, but fortunately for Saladin the allies wrangled over treasure and over tactics, as the Franks insisted on marching to the Nile Delta rather than being carried by Byzantine transports. This may have been wise, however, as when the Byzantine fleet arrived at the port of Damietta they found their way barred by a giant chain. A siege was begun at the end of October and there was still some hope of success, as the African troops were in full revolt, but Damietta resisted all assaults.
Then the weather turned and rains destroyed the Franks’ morale and the ensuing mud made movement almost impossible. They withdrew after 35 days and a severe storm destroyed half the Byzantine fleet during its return to Constantinople.
Saladin took the Crusader fortress-city of Ayla at the head of the Persian Gulf, near modern-day Aqaba, in 1170. The venture required the dismantling of ships and their transport across the Sinai to the Red Sea, where they joined the assault on the port. These raids may have been aimed at showing Saladin’s loyalty to Nur al-Din, as tensions were rising between the two men.
Throughout 1171 Nur al-Din pressured Saladin to finish the Fatimid line and impose Sunnism. Saladin’s more admiring biographers claim that he could not bring himself to kill the sickly young caliph, but his hand was forced by a citizen of Mosul who was visiting Cairo. This gentleman, who was apparently very wealthy, entered the Friday mosque, climbed the pulpit ahead of the regular Ismaili preacher, and said the khutba in the name of the Abbasid caliph. There was no protest from the congregation and absolute quietude on the streets. The gentleman’s largesse may have had something to do with the way that the Fatimid dynasty died so quietly, and almost without grieving on the part of its citizens. Its last caliph died, in his sleep, only a few days later and the women and men of the ruling house who survived him were separated so that the line, which claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad’s daughter, might die out naturally.
Egypt belonged once more to the Sunni world and a diploma of rule was sure to come to Nur al-Din sooner or later. As we have seen Saladin was hot and cold in his support of the sultan. In February 1174 he sent his brother to Yemen to clear it of Fatimid supporters and to secure it as a possible sanctuary for the Ayyubid family should he should fail in his dangerous balancing act.