The Field of Blood

by Nicholas Morton

  In his history of the Crusader States, the famous historian William of Tyre expressed himself with a red fury when he recalled what happened next. He railed that although the 1167 agreement had given the Kingdom of Jerusalem all it needed from Egypt—peace, revenue, and trade—the Franks’ greed had not been satisfied.31

  In late October 1168 Amalric gathered his forces for a fourth campaign into Egypt, seeking the complete overthrow of the Fatimid regime. This highly controversial endeavor would utterly destroy Amalric’s advantageous entente with Shawar, all in the hope of securing direct control over the entire region. The Templars initially refused to participate in the risky and disreputable scheme. The Hospitallers were more willing, and Amalric enthusiastically marked out the parts of Egypt they could claim for themselves after the Fatimids were overthrown. Admittedly, the king’s motives may not have been undiluted greed. There were rumors in the Kingdom of Jerusalem that Shawar was once again plotting with Nur al-Din. Moreover, the Byzantines were leaning on Amalric to complete his conquest, and several Egyptian nobles are said to have written to Amalric encouraging him to take charge.32

  Amalric’s true motives are unclear, but his campaign’s outcome is certain. He advanced into Egypt and conquered Bilbeis in early November, subjecting the town to a thorough sack. Then he moved on to Cairo, where he began to construct the siege weapons necessary to assault the walls. Shawar responded skillfully. He promised Amalric vast amounts of money in return for his withdrawal, and he managed to keep the negotiations going long enough for Shirkuh to arrive with reinforcements. When, in late December, Amalric learned that Shirkuh was approaching Egypt, he returned to Bilbeis, hoping to meet him in battle and prevent him from joining Shawar. Shirkuh simply evaded the Franks and reached Cairo. Finding themselves wrong-footed, the Franks had no choice but to withdraw.

  When Shirkuh reached Cairo, he assassinated Shawar and became vizier himself, taking possession of Egypt in Nur al-Din’s name. In 1169 the Franks invaded yet again, but achieved nothing. A third struggle for possession of a major center of power had again ended in ignominious defeat for the Franks. Nur al-Din now controlled Egypt.

  By 1171 Nur al-Din had Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo under his control, a major achievement. Over the preceding six decades, the Franks had contested control of each of these cities, but they had lost to the Turks on each occasion. Nur al-Din now had the upper hand, and he was ready to move in force against the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The war for the Near East entered its final phase, which would culminate with the overthrow of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

  In October 1171, Nur al-Din learned that his Egyptian forces had moved against the Frankish fortress of Montreal in Jordan. Founded in 1115, this important castle drew substantial revenue from the merchants traveling through the region to reach Egypt. Nur al-Din’s lieutenant in Egypt was now Saladin, Shirkuh’s nephew (Shirkuh had died in 1169).

  Nur al-Din responded to Saladin’s advance by moving south, seeking to combine their forces and strike a crushing blow against the Franks. The time was right for such a venture because Nur al-Din effectively had the Franks surrounded. Except in the extreme north, he controlled all their landward frontiers, and with the money and troops from his colossal landholdings, he could realistically contemplate a frontal assault on the kingdom.

  Despite its potential, the campaign was a nonevent. Soon after Nur al-Din departed from Damascus, Saladin withdrew, claiming that problems in Egypt required his attention. The excuse may have been the plain truth, but he may have feared, as was later claimed, that if he met Nur al-Din in person he would be replaced as ruler of Egypt. Either way, rumors started to circulate that tensions were developing between the two men. In the years that followed their relationship became even more strained. Despite Saladin’s gifts and protestations of loyalty, Nur al-Din came to fear that Saladin was turning renegade, seeking to break away and become an independent power. By 1174 it was becoming clear that only force would enable Nur al-Din to gain any meaningful control in Egypt.33

  Nur al-Din never got the chance to rein in his subaltern. He died of illness in 1174 before his army was ready to march against Saladin. Nur al-Din was the most persistent enemy the Franks had ever faced, but he had won their admiration too. Amalric also won the respect of his foes, and when he died, in the same year as Nur al-Din, Saladin wrote a letter of condolence to the new Frankish king, Baldwin IV.34

  Saladin was born to a family of Kurdish ethnicity in 1138 in the town of Tikrit (in northern Iraq), which was then governed by his father Ayyub in the name of the Seljuk sultan. That year, his family entered Zangi’s service, and his father was given control of the castle of Baalbek in the Biqa Valley. Ayyub and his brother Shirkuh later served with Nur al-Din. During this time, Saladin grew steadily in authority, and his uncle Shirkuh learned to rely upon him during the 1167 Egyptian campaign. Saladin replaced his uncle as vizier of Egypt on March 26, 1169.

  Initially he ruled Egypt in the name of the Fatimid caliph, but in 1171 he abolished the Fatimid caliphate (Shia) and proclaimed instead the Abbasid caliphate (Sunni) in the khutbah. Saladin swiftly built up his authority across Egypt, using his family members to impose control across the land, winning favor with the populace, gathering money, and ruthlessly crushing both political and military opposition.35

  By late 1174, his position was sufficiently secure in Egypt to enable him to lead a small force of horsemen through Frankish territory and into Syria. He wanted to intervene in the chaos following Nur al-Din’s death, and his target was Damascus. This was a risky and gutsy move. The city’s new ruler was Nur al-Din’s son and heir al-Salih, but the boy was only eleven years old and was currently in Aleppo. Saladin had a chance to take control, but it would require delicate diplomacy. He could not appear to be usurping the place of his master’s heir, so he presented himself instead as a pious protector of Nur al-Din’s family and interests, wishing to take charge only to save the city and maintain the jihad against the Franks. The gamble worked. His demand was met with uncertainty and dissension among the Damascene elites, but many in the army sided with Saladin, allowing him to take possession. He entrenched himself as its ruler by showering gold on the populace.

  Directly after taking Damascus, Saladin set out for the north to try to take control of Nur al-Din’s remaining lands. Within a few months he had captured Homs (although not, initially, its citadel) and Hama, but Aleppo evaded his grasp. Al-Salih himself tearfully begged the Aleppan populace to defend his birthright against Saladin, and they responded to his call. Saladin then took Baalbek, driving back the Franks who were rumored to have been called on to assist the beleaguered Aleppans. Saladin furiously denounced his enemies for making treaties with the Franks—but he did the same thing himself shortly afterward.

  While Saladin was strengthening his position around Hama and Homs, the various branches of Zangi’s family (the Zangid dynasty), who ruled Syria and the Jazira, were converging to swat away this new threat. Their combined army was formidable, and they were keen to put a stop to Saladin’s ambitions. Nevertheless, when this allied force met Saladin on April 13, 1175, they were soundly defeated and were forced to yield their rights to the lands Saladin had already taken. The following year, in April 1176, there was a second big battle between Saladin and the Zangids, and this too was a clear defeat for Nur al-Din’s heirs. Saladin then attempted to negotiate his way through Aleppo’s gates, but he encountered only defiance from al-Salih. Consequently, following in the footsteps of the Franks during the 1110s and 1120s, he set about conquering the surrounding towns, applying more and more pressure on the city to strengthen his position.

  Overall, Saladin’s actions in the years following Nur al-Din’s death focused squarely on the overthrow of his former master’s heirs; he waged campaign after campaign against their remaining regional strongholds. He made little effort to fight the Franks in these early years and generally sought to hold them off with diplomacy. However, 1177 was an exception to this pattern: that year, Sal
adin tackled Jerusalem directly, invading out of Egypt and across the kingdom’s southern border while the Franks’ main army was waging war in the north. Saladin’s army reached Ascalon on November 23, 1177, and encountered little resistance during his initial advance. The remaining Frankish forces were too few to bar his path, and they took shelter inside the walls of Ascalon and Gaza. Emboldened by this lack of resistance, Saladin became overconfident and made a critical error: he allowed his troops to fan out and to start despoiling the coastal plain. Baldwin IV’s few remaining forces launched a sudden cavalry charge that swept through the Turks’ scattered companies and routed Saladin’s army. This encounter, known as the Battle of Montgisard, was not merely a military setback; it was a disaster. There was no friendly stronghold to which Saladin could retreat, and his surviving troops had to cross out of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and all the way across the Sinai Desert to reach safety. Moreover, his fleeing troops were harassed as they fled homeward, first by the victorious Christian knights and then by the Bedouin, who preyed upon them as they crossed the desert.

  In following years Saladin enjoyed more success in his wars against the Franks, but, as Nur al-Din had found in the 1150s, his forces tended to batter the frontier rather than landing a blow that would truly weaken his foe. He also energetically pursued his wars against al-Salih and against the Zangid dynasty, launching expeditions against them and their allies both in the Jazira and in northern Syria. But again, although he tended to win in these encounters, he had yet to secure either of the two big bastions of power in these regions: Aleppo and Mosul.

  His opportunity to claim the former finally came in November 1181 when al-Salih fell ill and died. Saladin moved swiftly to take control. Although he was not immediately successful—there was infighting among Aleppo’s elites—Saladin continued to work for the city’s overthrow. In 1182 his army traversed the Jazira, strengthening his position and weakening the Zangids wherever possible. He blockaded Mosul but did not press his attack home in earnest. In 1183 Saladin’s persistent campaign of attrition against the Zangids’ position was finally rewarded. In May of that year, following ongoing skirmishing with the populace, the Zangids finally conceded Aleppo to Saladin. On June 12 Saladin’s standard was hoisted above the city’s citadel; the “eye of Syria” was now in his hands.36 More than that, all the main centers of power surrounding the Crusader States—Egypt, Damascus, and Aleppo—were now under Saladin’s control. Three years later he gained authority over Mosul as well. The end was approaching.

  Contemplating these years of war and intrigue, historians have gone back and forth trying to understand Saladin’s character and behavior. His determination and boldness are beyond dispute. He was a politician of the highest caliber, and his ability to mix diplomatic pressure with military force was both effective and impressive. He was, however, as several historians have pointed out, perhaps only a competent soldier, not a brilliant one, and he tended to suffer badly when confronted by a commander of real tactical ability.37

  An ongoing question is whether Saladin truly believed his own rhetoric. Was he a genuine heartfelt advocate of the jihad? Or was his pious commitment to holy war merely a polished facade covering his own selfish ambitions? Certainly there were many occasions when his actions seemed to contradict his professed devotion to holy war.38 It is quite possible, however, that Saladin had so convinced himself that it was his right, and his alone, to rule the Near East and to lead the faithful in a jihad against the Franks that his conspicuous personal ambition and professed piety had merged into a single entity. Perhaps in his eyes, he was the jihad, and his personal motives and the interests of the Muslim world were therefore one and the same. This was not hypocrisy; it was a belief that he alone had been marked out for a special destiny. According to this script, his coreligionists had a duty to give way to his authority, and those who barred his path automatically made themselves viable targets. Likewise, when he himself deviated from the ideals he espoused—such as condemning fellow Muslims for making treaties with the Franks but then doing so himself, or claiming to fight jihad but concentrating his efforts on fighting fellow Muslims, or presenting himself as al-Salih’s defender but then attacking his interests both in word and in deed, or claiming a right to cities or territories with the thinnest of excuses—he could justify such acts by captioning them as the necessary means of achieving his end goal. Such beliefs made Saladin a very dangerous man.

  By 1186, no single ruler had amassed so much power in the Near East for almost a century. Moreover, with Muslim Syria and the Jazira firmly under his control, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was now in his sights. Saladin had spent years fighting to build up his territories, devoting the majority of his energies to fighting fellow Muslims. Now he needed to prove that there was some real substance to his endless assurances that he would destroy the Franks and retake Jerusalem. The political house of cards he had created was founded squarely on propaganda promising a glorious jihad, promises that were still unfulfilled. He had to act.

  It cannot have been a happy gathering when the nobility of the Kingdom of Jerusalem assembled in council on the evening of July 2, 1187. The kingdom had mustered its army in full strength at the small castle of Safforie to fend off yet another assault by Saladin. The sultan’s huge army lay to the east. He had crossed the River Jordan the previous day and laid siege to the town of Tiberias. The issue under discussion was whether the army should march out to confront him or remain in its current position. The general consensus was that they should stay exactly where they were. The most strident voice advocating this course of action was Count Raymond of Tripoli. Raymond urged the assembled nobles to wait until reinforcements could arrive to bolster their ranks. In the meantime, he suggested that they should hold Saladin off by blocking his line of advance and entrenching their own position so that he would be discouraged from staging an attack on their lines.

  It was good advice. It would keep Saladin’s superior force at arm’s length without risking the uncertainties of a major encounter. It would also build political pressure—already considerable—on Saladin himself, who had tried repeatedly to invade the Kingdom of Jerusalem but had achieved very little. Being stalled yet again far outside Jerusalem’s core territories would not look good for him, damaging his credentials as the leader of the jihad.

  Raymond’s strategic assessment was undoubtedly impartial because it ran contrary to his personal interests. Tiberias was his town, and the garrison was commanded by his wife Eschiva. His children were also within its walls, so his advice placed them all in harm’s way (although he was holding on to the thin hope that his family could take boats onto Lake Tiberias and hold out until reinforcements could arrive).39

  This may have been good military counsel, but the new king of Jerusalem, Guy of Lusignan (Baldwin IV died in 1185, and his heir, Baldwin V, died soon afterward, in 1186), was not in a position to make military decisions based solely on tactical concerns. He had only recently become king, and his ascension to power had been deeply controversial. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was riven by noble squabbles, and Guy had only been able to take the throne through a political sleight of hand. His support base was limited, and the nobles gathered at Safforie included both allies and enemies. Guy had to weigh the count of Tripoli’s military good sense against the fact that when he had been the kingdom’s regent in 1183, he had been disgraced for pursuing a similar course of action. On that occasion, he had allowed his army simply to block a major advance by Saladin without giving battle; the decision had cost him his regency.40

  It did not look good to refuse battle. This was a world where knights were born and raised on tales of daring, risk, and adventure. They also believed that God would grant them victory in battle, especially against non-Christian enemies. Guy would have known that while his nobles were debating policy, the army’s knights were celebrating the thought of saving the ladies of Tiberias. What would they think of him as their king if he sat in Safforie with one of the largest armies the kingdom
had ever mustered and simply watched the town burn? Of equal importance was the fact that two of his closest allies, the Templar master and the lord of Kerak, were pushing for him to march on Tiberias. They argued vigorously for this aggressive strategy in open debate, heckling the count of Tripoli, for whom the Templar master had a strong personal dislike.

  Finally, the king made his decision and ended the debate: they would not risk marching on Tiberias. A few hours later, however, after Guy had retired to his tent for the night, the Templar master came to him in private and persuaded him to change his mind. The army would march on Tiberias in the morning after all.

  On July 3, 1187, the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem began its advance. The armies were unbalanced in numbers. The Franks deployed twelve hundred heavy cavalry and about fifteen thousand light cavalry and infantry. Saladin possessed about thirty thousand troops.41 Still, the commanders on both sides would have been aware that the Christian heavy cavalry could overrun much larger forces if they were used effectively. The battle began when the Christian army moved forward in close formation toward Tiberias. The Turkish forces did not initially try to block its advance; rather, they sought to slow it down. These were desolate lands, with few springs, and in the July heat the Turks wanted to keep the Franks away from water. King Guy did not reach Tiberias the first day, so he was forced to make camp for the night. The following day the Franks woke to find themselves surrounded, and they tried unsuccessfully to break through to Tiberias. Saladin maintained a steady pressure on the Christian army, and exhaustion, dehydration, and superior numbers slowly began to have their effect. The army crumpled and the survivors made their stand in an old Iron Age fort known as the Horns of Hattin.42