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Again and again we were on the verge of destruction, nor would God have delivered us if it were not for some future duty.
The Sultan Saladin looking back on the dangers of the 1170s.
Saladin has been well served by his contemporary Arabic biographers, and by Western troubadours, poets and historians. Stories about the great sultan who retook Jerusalem from the Franj, and who died with only one gold and forty-seven silver coins as his personal fortune, were still being told by hakawati in the twenty-first century in teahouses and coffee shops across Syria. It is easy to understand why. Whilst Saladin was decidedly a man of war, and was intolerant of religious unorthodoxy to the extent of crucifying unbelievers, freethinkers and heretics, he is also the one individual of the Crusades period who clearly shows a nature inclined towards clemency, concern for the population and chivalry, and his occasional lapses into brutality might be excused by the need to survive and prosper in the cutthroat world of twelfth-century Syrian politics, and by the fanatical nature of his Christian adversaries.
The sultan was a formidable enemy once roused and on 13 April 1175, he crushed the combined forces of Mosul and Aleppo at the Battle of the Horns of Hama, near the River Orontes. One cavalry charge was enough to clear the field of the Aleppan askari, and the baggage train and the infantry were both abandoned to their fate. The Mosul contingent was particularly badly, but courageously, led. Saladin said of its leader, Izz al-Din, that he was, ‘either the bravest man present on the field that day or a complete fool’.
Saladin was now in undisputed possession of Damascus and a large part of northern Syria, with virtual suzerainty over Aleppo. However, he failed to achieve full caliphal recognition of his rights in northern Syria, despite sending envoys to Baghdad in the summer of 1175 and such a recognition was vital for him to be able to claim unchallenged leadership in the Holy War. The rise of Saladin the Kurd, in a theatre dominated by Turks for over a hundred years, may have played badly in Saljuq Baghdad, but then enemies were also to be found closer to home too. In May 1176, as Saladin was resting alone in the tent of one of his emirs, an Ismaili Assassin rushed in and struck at him with a dagger. He was only saved by the close-fitting mail coif that covered his head and neck. The Assassin then slashed at his throat, but Saladin, who was a small but extremely powerful man, struck at his attacker’s arm and slapped the blow away. One of Saladin’s emirs heard the commotion and rushed into the tent and the Assassin was overpowered and killed. Then another Ismaili burst into the tent and attacked the sultan. Fortunately, the guard had now arrived and the Assassin was hacked to pieces. When the Assassins’ bodies were examined it was found that they were both members of Saladin’s close personal bodyguard.