by John Man
The crisis came to a head four years later when Nur al-Din allowed Damascus’s ruler, Abaq, to know that plots were being hatched against him. This was a high-risk and cynical tactic, but it worked. Abaq panicked and executed some of the prime suspects – some of whom must surely have been groomed by Ayyub and Nur al-Din – thereby guaranteeing his own isolation. So when Nur al-Din tightened the screws and intercepted Damascus’s food supplies, threatening starvation, it was easy to spread rumours that the real culprits were Abaq and his Frankish friends.
When Nur al-Din’s army, still under the command of Ayyub’s brother Shirkuh, came to the walls of Damascus on 25 April 1154, someone threw down a rope. Within minutes, a few of Nur al-Din’s men were on the battlements shouting, ‘Ya Mansur!’ (‘Victorious One!’). A sapper ran unopposed to the east gate and broke the locks. The gate swung open and troops flooded in, bearing Nur al-Din, to the cheers of citizens grateful to be saved from famine and the Franks. He followed up with wagonloads of food and tax cuts. Generous in victory, Nur al-Din let Abaq and his family go, granting them fiefdoms in Homs.
The more thoughtful citizens would have been delighted that the two great cities of Syria, Aleppo and Damascus, were at last united under a ruler who was young (thirty-seven), magnanimous to his fellow-Muslims and determined to take on the Franks. None would have dreamed that he was the one who would open the way to even wider unity and even greater victory under an even greater commander, who was at the time a sixteen-year-old awaiting his chance to shine.
3
Into Egypt
SALADIN WOULD HAVE HAD A CHANCE SOMETIME OR OTHER. He was, after all, one remove from the leadership – twice over, in fact, since his father, the discreet politician Ayyub, was Nur al-Din’s top aide and his uncle Shirkuh was the emir’s temperamental but highly effective army commander. Very little is known about Saladin’s early years. Since his biographers were Muslim, they record only a few snippets about his religious education, which suggest a tight-knit, loving family. ‘Brought up in his father’s bosom,’ wrote Baha al-Din in his biography of Saladin, ‘and nourished on the lofty principles which his father set before him, he soon showed signs of the good fortune that was always to accompany him.’ Everything pointed to a career in Syria, the focus of two Crusades, many battles and much inter-group rivalry over the previous half-century. In fact, by the mid-twelfth century the region had settled. Nur al-Din’s kingdom, the Seljuk Turks, the Byzantines in Constantinople, the Crusader states – all were like wary predators, eyeing each other, but none seeing an opening.
While waiting for Saladin to emerge from the shadows, let us recall how close all the antagonists and protagonists in his story were, and how much they knew about each other. Turks, Arabs and Europeans were enemies and rivals, but also allies, trading partners and friends, often all these things in quick succession.
Information flew between them, literally, because all major cities were linked by pigeon-post. This gets only passing mention in Arab sources, possibly because it was so routine as to be unworthy of comment. It would have started a long, unrecorded time – perhaps centuries – before, with pigeons being kept for food, as we keep chickens. Over the years, people noticed that they were able to find their way home from very far away (modern fanciers race their pigeons for up to 1,600 kilometres). Pigeons can fly for up to twelve hours at 100 kilometres per hour, for three days, resting at night. All leaders, civilian and military, would have kept pigeons ready to send to distant cities or take into battle.
The historian al-Maqrizi recorded one very non-routine use of homing pigeons. In the late tenth century, the fifth Fatimid caliph al-Aziz loved the cherries of Baalbek. As a treat, his vizier – in effect, prime minister – arranged for 600 homing pigeons to be sent off from Baalbek to Cairo, each carrying a silk bag attached to either leg, with a single cherry inside each bag. The pigeons had 600 kilometres to fly. If they left in the morning, al-Aziz could have had fresh cherries for dessert that evening, with enough left over for his many guests.
Others took note, and were impressed. Sir John Mandeville mentions pigeons in his fourteenth-century book of Travels. This was a compendium of travellers’ tales, with a heavy emphasis on tales. ‘Sir John’ never existed; he was (probably, possibly) a Flemish physician, perhaps a traveller himself, but also a fantasist and shameless plagiarist. He wrote in French, but many much-corrupted translations of the lost original gave the work international popularity. From somewhere – perhaps during his own travels in the Holy Land – ‘Sir John’ heard about the pigeon-post. As an early and rather cumbersome translation puts it:
In that country and other countries beyond they have a custom, when they shall use war, and when men hold siege about city or castle, and they within dare not send out messengers with letter from lord to lord for to ask succour, they make their letters and bind them to the neck of a culver [an obsolete word for a pigeon, perhaps from the Latin columba], and let the culver flee. And the culvers be so taught, that they flee with those letters to the very place that men would send them to. For the culvers be nourished in those places where they be sent to.
Consider: for this system to work at all, every major town must have trained its teams of pigeons, which would have been divided among every other major town. How many towns the size of Baalbek or larger would have been part of the pigeon-postal system? Shall we say twenty? The 600 cherry-carriers were raised and trained in Cairo, their home base, then transferred by horse or camel to Baalbek, along with (say) a few dozen more which would have been kept for official business. But Baalbek would have had pigeons delivered from all the other nineteen cities as well, and constantly redelivered after each mission. And as breeders know today, you need redundancy.14 Not all pigeons are equally talented: the good ones lead the bad. Nor is there a guarantee that any one pigeon will survive severe weather or predators. Over 160 kilometres, 95 per cent survive; but over several hundred kilometres you expect to lose about 50–80 per cent of them. Of al-Aziz’s 600 cherry-carriers, perhaps only 300 made it. To be sure of a message getting through long distance, you had to copy the same message three or more times and attach it to that many different birds. There must have been a whole specialist industry of dovecote builders, breeders, trainers, transporters and supervisors – hundreds of people to look after tens of thousands of pigeons.
Many thanks to Jim Savage for his guidance on the subject of today’s homing pigeons. See his website www.homingpigeon.co.uk.
But pigeons were not the only links. Officials acted as ambassadors, rulers linked families by marrying off their sons and daughters, pilgrims went from mosque to mosque, slaves were bought and sold, prisoners were taken, and ransomed, and exchanged. Here, for instance, is the Samuel Pepys of his time, the Syrian Usamah ibn Munqidh, recording how he freed some captives, or rather paid to turn them from prisoners into slaves. This was in 1139–40, during one of several visits he made to Acre during a truce between the Christians in Jerusalem and the Muslims in Damascus (this is from Philip Hitti’s translation, which I have modernized):
During these visits, the Franks used to bring before me their captives so that I might buy them off . . . Once a devil of a Frank named William Jiba set out in his vessel for a piratical raid, and captured a vessel in which were north African pilgrims numbering about 400 souls, men and women. Now some of these north Africans would be brought to me by their [new] owners, and I would buy from among them those whom I could buy. One of the captives was a young man who would salute and sit without uttering a word. I inquired about him and was told that he was an ascetic owned by a tanner.
So I said to the tanner, ‘How much will you sell this one for?’
The tanner replied, ‘By the truth of my religion, I will only sell him together with this old man, and will do so for the same price I paid for them, namely 43 dinars.’ I bought them both, and a few others for my own use. I also bought for the Emir Mu’in al-Din [his patron in Damascus] a few others costing 120 dinars. I paid the
money I had with me, and offered a bond for the balance.
Note the routine nature of the exchange, the ease of operating in a Christian base, the low-level philanthropy – the captives were going from bondage to servitude – and the fact that Usamah could, in effect, write a cheque. Despite the regular violence, the economy was stable. In another later visit to Jerusalem, he tries to negotiate the purchase of thirty-eight remaining captives:
I rode to Jiba’s home (may Allah’s curse be upon him!) and said, ‘Will you sell me ten of the captives?’
‘By my religion,’ he replied, ‘I’ll only sell them all together.’
‘I haven’t got the price of them all on me,’ I replied. ‘I could buy some now, and buy the rest another time.’
‘I will only sell them all together,’ he repeated.
So I left. But Allah decreed and they fled away that very night, all of them. The inhabitants of the villages of Acre being all Muslims, whenever a captive came to them they would hide him and see that he got into Muslim territory. That accursed one sought his runaways, but succeeded in capturing none.
For Saladin, opportunity came from a new and unexpected quarter – from the south, from Egypt.
For two centuries, Egypt had gone its own way, having followed Islam’s other sectarian channel, the Shi’ite branch. Since they claimed to be descendants of the Prophet’s daughter Fatima, they were known by their dynastic name as Fatimids. From the Fatimids sprang the Ismailis, followers of their eighth-century figurehead, Ismail. They predicted the return of Ismail’s son Muhammad as their messiah, the Mahdi. And, as we have seen, from the Ismailis sprang their most extreme manifestation, the Assassins. Whatever the names, all were Shi’ites, all opposed, often violently, to the Sunni Abbasids, based in Baghdad, and their Turkish conquerors and their breakaways, like Zangi and now Nur al-Din.
From their accession in 973, the Fatimids thrived for some two centuries. Cairo became a centre of art, architecture and scholarship. The first Fatimid caliph of the new Cairo, Jawhar al-Siqilli (the Sicilian), founded al-Azhar (‘The Bright’, one of Fatima’s titles), destined to become the world’s most important Islamic university. By Saladin’s day, however, the Fatimids were in decline. They had just lost their last eastern outpost, Ascalon (Ashkelon today, on the coast, 60 kilometres from Jerusalem) to the Franks. Of fifteen Fatimid viziers, fourteen had died violently: hanged, beheaded, stabbed, crucified, poisoned and lynched. In fact, it was accepted that the only way to become vizier was to murder one’s predecessor.
So it was, of course, yet more seizures of power that had started the most recent trouble. The man responsible was an Egyptian vizier named Shawar. Having murdered his way to office, he almost became a victim himself. His army commander, Dirgham, threw a banquet for seventy senior officers, among them Shawar, then set his own private guard loose and killed the lot, except for Shawar, who somehow escaped and, in early 1163, appeared at Nur al-Din’s court in Damascus asking for help. The emir hesitated. Sending an army to Egypt would mean crossing Frankish territory and stepping into the murky and dangerous waters of Fatimid politics.
But there was another factor to reckon with: the Franks, in the form of Amalric, the new king of Jerusalem, who would emerge as one of the three dominant personalities of the decade, besides Shawar himself and his commander, Shirkuh. The three powers – Franks, Egyptians and Syrians – would be circling and scrapping for the next four years, trying to secure the prize, Egypt.
Amalric – Amaury to the French, Morri to the Arabs – had inherited Ascalon, part of Jerusalem since 1153, and also the well-established ambition of Jerusalem’s rulers to take over Egypt, which would provide an almost unlimited flow of wealth and secure the Holy Land for Christianity until the Day of Judgement. For Amalric, a gangling figure with a nervous stutter, which he tended to cover with loud and lengthy fits of laughter, the conquest of Egypt had become an obsession. He could possibly make it a reality, given that Egypt was in chaos and that he commanded the key border town of Ascalon. He had already tried it once, in the autumn of 1162, but his troops had been stopped by floods at Bilbeis, a port on a branch of the Nile 50 kilometres north-east of Cairo. Clearly, he would soon try again. Nur al-Din could not allow the Franks such an extension to their kingdom. He had to get there first and seize control. So, yes, he would help Shawar back into power – in exchange for one-third of his grain revenues. In brief, Shawar was expected to become a puppet, and to pay for the privilege. Shawar wanted to lead. Nur al-Din, of course, would not hear of it, so on 15 April 1164 the two set out as joint leaders of 10,000 cavalry.
This was the first big campaign in which Saladin participated, and the first time he steps on to the world stage. He was well connected, destined for high office, but that’s about all we can say about him, for as the modern historians Malcolm Lyons and D. E. P. Jackson remark, ‘for the first 26 years of his life we have no picture of him at all.’15 Sources disagree on the nature of his involvement in the campaign. Some say he was part of it, some not. He himself never claimed to be present. But it seems he was, firstly because some sources mention him at crucial phases of the campaign and secondly because he would soon be given command, which suggests that he had acquired experience somehow. It’s likely that he was his uncle’s aide-de-camp. Perhaps he later suppressed this information, because it was not the most successful of episodes to begin his rise to power.
Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, p. 9.
They faced a long, hard journey from Damascus, as much of it at the gallop as possible to evade Frank attacks: down the Jordan for 220 kilometres – that was the easy bit – then on for another 250 kilometres past the Dead Sea and southwards, to avoid crossing Crusader territory on the coast. Covering almost 100 kilometres a day, they followed the present-day border between Israel and Jordan through dunes, salt-pans, gravel plains and jagged, eroded hills – grim country, but a good time to cross it. Oases and springtime streams kept the horses well watered and the goatskin water-bags full. They were needed, for from Aqaba westwards ranged the wastes of Sinai for another 250 kilometres, until at last, after the final 110 kilometres, they reached their first target, Bilbeis.
This was an extraordinary achievement. Sources say that they left on 15 April and arrived outside Bilbeis on 24 April. That’s 830 kilometres in nine days. Is this possible? Endurance competitions today race individual horses over 160 kilometres in a day, for which the current record is just under six hours at a speed of 25 kph. Horses have been raced over 300 miles (480 kilometres) in five days. In the Mongol Derby, perhaps the world’s toughest horserace, the winner covers 1,000 kilometres in eight days – but needs a change of mount every 40 kilometres, twenty-five in all. Shirkuh’s expeditionary force supposedly covered 100 kilometres a day at, say, 10 kph for close to ten hours per day for nine days – which is inconceivable without way-stations and fresh horses. Did they take spare horses along with them? And there’s not much pasture south of the Dead Sea, and none at all in Sinai. Did they bring fodder? We have no idea, because the sources do not say.
Having somehow completed the epic gallop, Nur al-Din’s army seized Bilbeis, advanced to Cairo and four days later took the city, killing Shawar’s rival and replacing him in his old position as vizier. The Shia caliph, al-Adid, a boy of thirteen, was helpless. At this point, Shawar turned from Nur al-Din’s puppet into puppet-master, with all Egypt as his stage. He wanted Shirkuh and his army out. To accomplish this, he sent for help from, of all people, Amalric, king of Jerusalem, Nur al-Din’s old enemy. Shawar promised cash. Amalric, happy to have a second chance at gaining a foothold in Egypt, started at once from Ascalon on the 300-kilometre, month-long march, setting off a series of moves and counter-moves as all three parties jockeyed for advantage. Shirkuh pulled out of Cairo, back to Bilbeis, where (according to one source, the historian ibn Abi Tayy16) Saladin was put in charge of organizing stores. There followed a three-month siege by the Frankish–Fatimid allies. In response, back in Syria, Nur al-Din seized a Fr
ankish fortress near Antioch and captured Antioch’s ruler. In case the news did not make the point strongly enough, he sent a sack full of Frankish heads to Shirkuh with instructions to display them on the ramparts of Bilbeis to ‘strike fear into the infidels’. That was enough for the two outsiders. Both the Frankish and Turkish armies declared a truce and agreed to withdraw simultaneously.
A Shi’ite from Aleppo, he favoured Saladin, perhaps because Saladin treated Aleppine Shi’ites well. His work is lost, but quoted by Abu Shama.
But this was not peace. Nur al-Din would never forgive Shawar’s duplicity and would continue eyeing Egypt, and Shawar knew it. So it was no surprise that Shawar again sought an alliance with Amalric, nor that Nur al-Din again planned a pre-emptive strike to take Egypt. Nur al-Din’s move came in January 1167. Seldom does history repeat itself so exactly: the same alliance, the same armies, the same routes.
Though this time Shirkuh sprang a surprise. The Franks and Egyptians commanded Cairo so, rather than challenge them directly, Shirkuh circled south of the city, then west, crossing the Nile in small boats. In the city, Amalric, knowing how unreliable Shawar was, cemented the shaky alliance by insisting on meeting the aloof sultan himself, now sixteen, who, in an immensely impressive ceremony conducted in the opulent heart of his palace – armed guards, marble columns, pools, tame gazelles, mazes of corridors, bejewelled curtains – promised his support ‘in good faith and without fraud’, all sealed with an ungloved handshake, a precedent utterly shocking to courtiers used to their ruler’s untouchability. Who could doubt the strength of such a bond?
But the two armies – Shirkuh’s and Amalric’s Frankish– Egyptian alliance – were divided by the Nile. Time passed. Amalric started to build a pontoon bridge across the river. More Crusaders arrived to join him. No reinforcements came to help Shirkuh. If this went on for another day, Shirkuh would face overwhelming odds and inevitable defeat.