by John Man
There was only one possible tactic. Shirkuh had to draw his enemy away from Cairo before it was too late. He led his army – all mounted – southwards on the west bank, in apparent flight. The Frankish–Egyptian cavalry duly followed, leaving the foot-soldiers behind. A week and 250 kilometres from Cairo, near al-Ashmunein, Shirkuh chose to make a stand at a spot where a gentle rise led between two hills, close to the valley holding the Bahr Yusuf canal, made around 2000 BC to channel water from the Nile to the Fayum depression to the north. This time – on 19 March – Saladin had his chance. Though sources are unclear about how the battle unfolded, a likely version is that Shirkuh gave Saladin command of the centre, ordering him to fall back when Amalric’s heavy horses charged. Saladin obeyed orders, retreating uphill, drawing the cumbersome Frankish cavalry onwards, until the two Syrian wings – Turkish archers on small nimble horses, Bedouin on camels – galloped in from behind the two hills. The result was a draw. But at least Saladin had shown his mettle as a commander, and Shirkuh had avoided defeat.
But avoiding defeat is not victory. He needed something more. While Shawar and Amalric trailed back to Cairo, Shirkuh led his horsemen across the desert, 130 kilometres north-west of Cairo, to Alexandria, the pre-Islamic capital named after its founder, Alexander the Great, 1,500 years before. In Saladin’s day it was still famous for its offshore lighthouse, built soon after the city’s foundation on the island of Pharos.17 Actually, it wasn’t quite an island: a viaduct led to it across the bay, creating a sheltered harbour. Its interlocking masonry, towering up to some 130 metres, made the lighthouse one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Ibn Jubayr, the traveller from Spain, took a guided tour and gasped at the baffling scale of its interior, ‘with stairways and entrances and numerous apartments so that he who penetrates and wanders through its passages may be lost’. In Saladin’s day it was not what it had been, because earthquakes had begun to shake its stones. It would last another 200 years before it was reduced to rubble, leaving solid foundations on which a fifteenth-century fortress now stands.
. . . which gave its name to the Greek (pharos) and French (phare) words for ‘lighthouse’.
Shirkuh made for Alexandria because he was sure of a good reception from a city incensed that their vizier had invited the Franks into Islam. He was right. Alexandria opened its gates.
But Alexandria relied mainly on the Nile for its supplies. So Amalric and Shawar set up blockades. Patrols barred the river and the approach roads. Eventually, the city would starve, long before which its citizens would turn on Shirkuh. His response was to split his forces. One half he led away from the city southwards, avoiding roads and rivers, seeking reinforcements. The other half he left in the city under Saladin. In this game of move and counter-move, Shawar’s plan was to start an all-out siege, cutting orchards for wood to build siege-towers and catapults that would soon reduce Alexandria’s walls to rubble.
Saladin was in trouble. His garrison was small, his communications cut, his supplies blocked. All he had going for him was the support of the townspeople, and that would not last long. For a while he kept them on side, spending his own money to do so, but after three months more and more Alexandrians were being driven away by hunger and drawn out by Shawar’s promises of tax relief. Saladin’s only hope was that Shirkuh would come to his rescue.
Shirkuh, though, was not in good shape. He had been 650 kilometres south, to the great bend of the Nile, where he acquired a few more Bedouin, some cash and some supplies, but nothing that would allow him to take Cairo or relieve Alexandria. Once more, the forces were evenly balanced.
Again, all outcomes looked bad, at least for the Muslims. For Shawar, defeating Saladin would be almost as bad as not defeating him, because it would leave the Franks in a dominant position, with Shirkuh roaming and ravaging at will, but with no chance of victory. Amalric had become anxious about leaving his homeland undefended. It was a deadlock, with peace as the least bad option for everyone. At Shirkuh’s suggestion, all agreed to stop fighting. The catapults were burned, prisoners were exchanged, the Syrians and the Franks left, and Shawar retook Alexandria. Nothing had been decided, no one defeated.
But Saladin had had a good little war, commanding with success in the field, directing the defences of a siege, which ended without bloodshed. As a reward, Nur al-Din granted him two villages near Aleppo. As the historian Imad al-Din said, ‘he thought he had everything for which he could wish.’
His uncle, on the other hand, had for the second time planned an invasion, avoided defeat only by improvisation, and then been forced out, leaving Egypt in the hands of the brutal, erratic Shawar, and the main enemy – the Franks – as strong as ever. Nur al-Din knew failure when he saw it. ‘You have exerted yourself twice,’ he supposedly told his general, ‘but have not achieved what you sought.’ While Shirkuh was given nothing more than the command of Homs, on the border with Abbasid lands, Saladin would have been the rising star, in line for high command when his master felt ready to make another attempt on Egypt. Would have been, but wasn’t quite yet. Nur al-Din was in no hurry, because the return of his troops allowed him to focus on his restive northern frontier (in fact on Qal’at Jabr, the fortress being besieged by Zangi when he was killed almost twenty years before); and Saladin’s time was happily taken up with his two little estates.
His next chance came a year later, in autumn 1168, thanks to the Byzantine emperor Manuel. He sent an embassy to Amalric in Jerusalem to say he was unhappy with Egypt’s ‘weakling’ rulers. It was ripe for a takeover. Nur al-Din would make a move sooner or later. Manuel suggested that he and Amalric forestall Nur al-Din by launching a joint attack. Amalric moved fast, without waiting for Manuel. In early November he was at Bilbeis, which was commanded by Shawar’s son, Tayy, who sent a contemptuous message to Amalric: ‘Do you think Bilbeis is a piece of cheese for the eating?’
To which Amalric replied, ‘Yes, it’s cheese, and Cairo is the butter,’ and, as if in pique, ordered a brutal assault, with totally unnecessary violence. He swallowed the city up in a day; captured Tayy (and ransomed him later); burned houses; and killed thousands. Nothing could have served Nur al-Din better than this brutal act, for nothing could have so starkly laid bare to Egyptians the uselessness of the luxury-loving, easy-going Fatimids, the brutality of the Crusaders and by contrast the strength and reliability of the Syrians, represented at that moment by Shirkuh, headed by his master, Nur al-Din, and in the not-too-distant future by his successor, Saladin.
Having unwittingly secured failure for himself, Amalric moved on to the main course, Cairo. At which point Shawar also ensured his own failure. To stop Amalric taking the unwalled suburb of Fustat (old Cairo), Shawar torched it – part of his own capital – creating fires that burned for almost two months, forcing residents to flee to the new part of Cairo previously reserved for the caliph and the army. He then offered Amalric cash to pay him off, but asked for time to raise it. Amalric pulled back northwards, 20 kilometres outside Cairo, to wait for it.
All this had spurred Nur al-Din to action. He summoned Shirkuh, handed over 200,000 dinars, promised more, and told him to raise an army. Shirkuh, of course, wanted Saladin as his aide. Saladin was not keen, having seen what war meant, especially the pain of others and his own personal loss (for the income from two villages did not support an officer for long):
I answered that I was not prepared to forget the suffering endured in Alexandria. My uncle then said to Nur al-Din: ‘It is absolutely necessary that Yussuf go with me.’ And Nur al-Din 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 piratical Shirkuh was eager for more action. Certainly he was serving Nur al-Din; but he was also keen to further his own interests. Here was another chance to eject first Amalric, then Shawar, and – assured of popular support by the disastrous actions of both men – to take over as Egyptian vizier, i
n effect making himself Egypt’s ruler. In the words of Lyons and Jackson, ‘when he left Syria, he and his force can better be seen as independent adventurers looking for fortune than as a detachment of the Syrian army on a foreign campaign.’18
Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, Chapter 1.
It all went his way. By mid-December news of his approach with at least 7,000 cavalry and tens of thousands of foot-soldiers drove Amalric first into Bilbeis and then, when he saw he had no hope of victory, into all-out retreat, taking 12,000 Muslim prisoners with him to guarantee his safety, plus an immense sum, perhaps as much as 2 million dinars, as well as 100,000 dinars as a ransom for Tayy. The road to Cairo was open. Its people greeted Shirkuh as a liberator. In early January, he had an audience with the now nineteen-year-old caliph al-Adid, who welcomed him as the saviour of Egypt, implying that Shawar’s days were numbered. Better stability under the Syrians than chaos under Shawar.
Except that Shawar was still at large, still vizier. Possibly, he would have made peace, and accepted a lesser role under Shirkuh in exchange for sanctuary, which was why – according to some sources – he rode into the Syrian camp one foggy day. In the absence of Shirkuh, Saladin and a fellow-officer arrested Shawar – the leader who was both former enemy and potential ally against the Franks. Or perhaps Saladin arrested him on the streets of Cairo. Either way, for a brief while Saladin was his warder as ‘one messenger after another came from the caliph’s palace to demand Shawar’s head.’ Wealth could not save him; nor would popular opinion, since his cruelty had set him beyond the pale; nor would the caliph, because he was a notorious turncoat and had failed militarily; nor would Shirkuh, for as Saladin said, ‘while Shawar holds power, we have no authority.’ As often with ex-leaders, the new ones saw him as the embodiment of evil. Execution was justified and necessary and, in the Egyptian tradition, his head was sent off to the caliph. Soon afterwards Shirkuh – dressed in a white turban stitched with gold and a scarlet-lined robe, bearing a sword encrusted with jewels – was made vizier by al-Adid, thus changing from army commander to the official ruler of Egypt, but also a servant of two masters, the caliph al-Adid next door and Nur al-Din in Baghdad – and in theory three masters, if you include Nur al-Din’s nominal boss, the other caliph, al-Mustadi in Baghdad. At his side, as his executive officer, was Saladin.
The changeover to a tubby, one-eyed foreigner was not popular, but Shirkuh knew how to manage that problem. Out in the streets of Cairo, he was surrounded by a surly mob, which might have turned nasty had not Shirkuh redirected their anger towards their former vizier, who had, after all, burned them out of house and home. ‘I now speak with the authority of your caliph,’ he said. ‘Go and ransack Shawar’s palace!’ With a programme of reconstruction, the refugees were persuaded to leave royal Cairo and return to their burned-out suburbs.
Back in Syria, Nur al-Din was not completely happy. Yes, the conquest of Egypt was good news, to be proclaimed and celebrated in public. It fulfilled a long-term ambition, and it kept the Franks out. In private, however, it was a different matter. Shirkuh was supposed to be Nur al-Din’s servant, but he had made himself Egypt’s vizier. They both owed nominal allegiance to a caliph, which made them of equal rank. But Shirkuh had switched caliphs, from Baghdad’s to Cairo’s, from Sunni to Shia. Was he perhaps more interested in serving his own interests than those of Nur al-Din? Would he turn on the caliph himself and make himself into an emperor, in control of church, state and army?
As things worked out, such worries were needless, because three months after taking office Shirkuh fell ill, several times, probably because of his penchant for rich foods and underlying ill-health. Short, red-faced, burly, he was probably heading for a heart attack or stroke. One night, after another heavy meal, he took a hot bath, suffered some sort of a seizure, and died.
After three days of official mourning, Egypt’s caliph and his aides decided they could not wait for a decision from Damascus and set about electing a successor. There were several possibilities, none of them perfect, none of them agreed by all. As army commander, the obvious compromise candidate was Shirkuh’s aide and nephew, Saladin. He had experience, and being of a Kurdish family he would be accepted by one of the largest military groups. Almost all Syrian officers supported him. But as an administrator? He was young, he had no local power-base, and his only experience was as executive for his uncle – all of which was to his advantage, because for the caliph, who would have to confirm Saladin’s appointment as vizier, inexperience, youth and weakness were excellent qualifications: he would surely be easy to control.
So at the end of March 1169, Egypt fell into Saladin’s lap. Was he hungry for it? Ambitious? Well, a display of ambition was not the fashion for a twelfth-century Muslim leader aspiring to greatness. Saladin had his father as a role model: the image of discretion and generosity. He had seen the opposite in his rough-cut uncle, a man of military ambition, but limited ability. There were standards to uphold. One accepted office with humility when it was thrust into one’s seemingly reluctant hands. One was wary of expressing anything as crude as ambition. But without ambition no one becomes a leader, at least not a great one. With Saladin, ambition was subject to his larger skills, as commander, diplomat, Muslim and now administrator.
Dressed as his uncle had been, in white turban, scarlet-lined robe and jewelled sword, he was confirmed as vizier by al-Adid. In flowery words composed by one of Saladin’s advisers, al-Adid spelled out his new vizier’s duty to wage holy war: ‘As for the jihad, thou art the nursling of its milk and the child of its bosom. Gird up therefore the shanks of spears to meet it and to plunge on its service into the sea of sword-points.’ A chestnut mare with a pearl-studded saddle carried Saladin back to his official residence. At the age of thirty-one, he had, more by luck than judgement, become the recipient of many titles: Very Illustrious Lord, Sultan of the Armies, Friend of the Community, Glory of the Dynasty and, most notably, for he would keep the title until his death, al-Malik al-Nasir, the Victorious King.
He was ready to start what he considered to be his life’s work: holy war against the Franks, fair governance, and submission to the caliph, all three goals to be pursued with honour.
4
Building a Power-base
HOLY WAR AND GOOD GOVERNANCE WERE ALL WELL AND good in theory, but in practice hard. Saladin was serving three masters and two versions of Islam – his Sunni boss Nur al-Din in Damascus and through him the Sunni caliph, al-Mustadi, in Baghdad, and Egypt’s Shia Fatimid caliph al-Adid. In Egypt, true, many of the people were Sunnis, and therefore happy to be free of an oppressive Shia vizier, but several sub-groups were unhappy – officials resentful of his takeover, Christian Armenians and, most significantly, a 50,000-strong army of blacks, Nubians in the far south, who were loyal to Cairo’s caliph but had no love for the new foreign ruler. These were notorious troublemakers, ‘insolent and violent’ as one source called them, something like the sectarian militiamen of Northern Ireland during the Troubles; ‘they thought all white men were pieces of fat and that all black men were coals’, ready to grill their opponents. Like most Islamic rulers, Saladin was at risk of rebellion and assassination. His strategy was to build a good, loyal army; acquire a devious and effective secret service; and proceed slowly, with great care.
In the palace, one of the controllers of the vizier’s secretariat was a eunuch named Mutamin al-Khalifa, who took against the way Syrians were being given land under the new regime. Around him clustered a group of Egyptian officials who felt the same way. To turn the clock back – to throw the Syrians out and restore local rule – they turned to the old standby, Amalric and his Franks in Jerusalem. A letter was dictated to a Jewish scribe, then sealed into the soles of a pair of shoes and handed to a courier, who disguised himself as a poor traveller and set off for Jerusalem. He had reached Bilbeis when one of Saladin’s informants happened to spot the suspicious figure who, although dressed in rags, was carrying a new pair of shoes. The man was arrested, his ni
ce new shoes sliced open, the letter discovered, and the Jewish scribe identified. With the right sort of persuasion, the Jew fingered the treacherous eunuch. In these circumstances, efficient secret agents do not pounce immediately. Arrests or murders within the palace might have had incendiary consequences. So they waited until Mutamin went out of town to visit his estates. There, where the crime could be put down as a robbery gone wrong, Mutamin met a nasty end.
This story, told by Imad al-Din, may or may not be true. But it points to a problem: opponents in Cairo would have looked to Jerusalem for help; and if the Christians had responded, Saladin would have had to march his army northwards to confront them; and that would have left Cairo open to an uprising. Best forestall any such danger by any means, fair or foul.
Another way Saladin secured his position was by surrounding himself with trusted aides, mainly family members – two nephews, an uncle and three of his brothers, the eldest of whom, Turanshah, was on hand when, immediately after Mutamin’s murder became known, the Nubian contingents in the army went on the rampage. There followed a number of street fights, which ended with Turanshah burning their houses and chasing them out of town, after which they never again challenged Saladin’s authority.
The next to confront him was the Byzantine emperor Manuel in alliance with Amalric, in a way that highlighted just how much the Egyptian navy had been weakened by the loss to the Crusaders of the Syrian ports – the outer belt of Egypt’s naval defences. For the last twenty years, Crusader, Norman and Byzantine ships had been raiding virtually at will. Now, at the end of October 1170, a fleet of some 150–200 galleys, sixty of them with doors in their sterns through which horses could be loaded, arrived at the port of Damietta, a few kilometres inland on one of the Nile’s branches. But before Amalric’s force could join them, Saladin ordered reinforcements to the city, where the Syrians blocked the river by slinging a chain across it. Nur al-Din sent more troops, the caliph in Baghdad sent cash. By the time the Franks arrived, the Byzantines were low on food, unable to supply themselves and furious with their allies for the delay. All they could do was batter the newly strengthened walls with catapults. Then the rains came, turning the Byzantine camp into a quagmire. After six weeks, the Byzantines sued for peace, which Saladin granted on the understanding that the Franks would burn their catapults. In mid-December the Byzantine fleet sailed away and the Franks left for home. Once again, Saladin and his Syrian invaders had saved Egypt from invasion by the Christians.