The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land

by Thomas Asbridge

  Facing mortality

  It was at this point, on 3 December 1185, that the sultan fell ill with a fever and retired to Harran. As the weeks turned into months, his strength waned and the concerns of those around him deepened. Throughout this period, Imad al-Din, who had travelled east with Saladin, exchanged a stream of anxious letters with al-Fadil back in Damascus. Their words lay bare the deepening concern, fear and confusion that now gripped the Ayyubid world. Twice it seemed that the sultan’s health was returning, and that the danger was past–at one point al-Fadil even happily reported that he had received a note written in Saladin’s own hand–yet on both occasions the sultan relapsed. His court physicians, who had now arrived from Syria, were left to argue about possible treatments, even as Saladin’s mind drifted in and out of lucidity and his body became emaciated. By his side throughout, Imad al-Din wrote that ‘as [the sultan’s] pain increased, so too did his hope in God’s grace’, and grimly observed that ‘the spread of bad news…could not be concealed, especially when the doctors [came] out and said that there was no hope…then you could see people sending off their treasures’. In early 1186, al-Fadil wrote that in Damascus ‘hearts [are] palpitating and tongues [are] full of rumours’, begging that the sultan be brought back from the frontiers of his lands to the security of Syria.

  In January, Saladin dictated his will and, by mid-February, al-Adil had arrived from Aleppo to lend his support, but also to be on hand to take up the reins of power should that prove necessary. Meanwhile, another Ayyubid slipped away from Harran to foment rebellion. Nasir al-Din, Shirkuh’s son, seems to have harboured a cancerous jealousy of his cousin Saladin’s rise to power in Egypt, a region which he himself might have claimed as Shirkuh’s heir back in 1169. The gift of Homs had bought grudging loyalty in the 1170s, but with the sultan’s demise seemingly imminent, Nasir al-Din now saw a chance for his own advancement. Quietly amassing troops in Syria, he laid furtive plans for the seizure of Damascus. His timing proved disastrous. In the final days of February, the sultan’s condition turned a corner and he began to make a slow but lasting recovery. By 3 March Nasir al-Din was dead. Officially he had succumbed to a disease that worked ‘faster than the blink of an eye’, but rumour had it that he had been poisoned by one of Saladin’s Damascene agents.

  Saladin had been brought face to face with his own mortality in early 1186. It has often been suggested that he emerged a changed man, having paused to consider his life, his faith and his achievements in the many wars fought against the Franks and his fellow Muslims. Certainly some contemporaries represented this as a moment of profound transformation in the sultan’s career, after which he dedicated himself to the cause of jihad and the pursuit of Jerusalem’s recovery. At the height of his illness, he apparently vowed to commit all his energy to this end, regardless of the human and financial sacrifice exacted. Imad al-Din wrote that this affliction had been divinely appointed, ‘to wake [Saladin] from the sleep of forgetfulness’, and noted that the sultan subsequently consulted Islamic jurists and theologians about his spiritual obligations. Al-Fadil, who had lobbied against the Mosul campaign in the first place, now looked to convince Saladin to renounce aggression against Muslims. In practical terms, Saladin’s infirmity forced him to accept a compromise with Mosul in March 1186. The Zangid ruler Izz al-Din remained in power, but recognised the sultan as overlord, including his name in the Friday prayer and promising to contribute troops to the holy war.60

  Saladin’s career to 1186

  For modern scholars–most notably in the classic political biography of Saladin by Malcolm Lyons and David Jackson published in 1982–Saladin’s brush with death proved revelatory in another regard, for it raised the pointed question of how Saladin might be regarded by history had fate’s course transected a different path, bringing his life to an end at Harran in early 1186. Lyons’ and Jackson’s swingeing conclusion that Saladin would be remembered as ‘a moderately successful soldier [and] a dynast who used Islam for his own purposes’ is instructive, if somewhat blunt. Up to this point, the sultan had made only a limited contribution to the jihad, spending some thirty-three months fighting against Muslims since 1174 and only eleven combating the Franks. He was a usurper with an obvious appetite for power and a marked facility for its accumulation–an aggressive autocrat who repeatedly seized Muslim territory to which he had no rightful claim and made fulsome use of propaganda to justify his actions and blacken the names of his opponents. Of course, not all historians have accepted this view of Saladin. Some still persist in suggesting that he was obsessed with the holy war against the Franks throughout his career–always building towards a full-scale attack on the kingdom of Jerusalem and ever seeking to bring his Christian enemies to battle–but, on balance, the contemporary evidence suggests that they are wrong.61

  It is not surprising that Saladin’s aims up to 1186 continue to be debated, because even contemporaries disputed this issue. Some praised the sultan. Writing shortly before his death (probably in 1185), William of Tyre believed that the Ayyubid ruler posed a grave and immediate threat to the continued survival of Outremer, but nonetheless commended him as ‘a man wise in counsel, valiant in battle and generous beyond measure’.62 Nevertheless, other opponents and supporters–from the pro-Zangid Iraqi chronicler Ibn al-Athir to the sultan’s personal secretary al-Fadil–knew only too well that Saladin’s lack of wholehearted dedication to the jihad left him dangerously exposed to accusations of self-serving empire building. Had the sultan died in early 1186 the question of his intentions would have remained unanswered. As it was, he lived on, with the call to holy war harkening in his ears.

  12

  HOLY WARRIOR

  In the spring of 1186, with the worst of his illness behind him, Saladin–now some forty-eight years old–returned to Damascus. Much of the remainder of that year was given over to his protracted convalescence, and the calmer recreations of theological debate, hawking and hunting, as his physical vitality slowly rekindled. That summer, one marked distraction was provided by the prediction of an impending apocalypse. For decades, astrologers had foretold that, on 16 September 1186, a momentous planetary alignment would stir up a devastating wind storm, scouring the Earth of life. This bleak prophecy had circulated among Muslims and Christians alike, but the sultan nonetheless thought it ridiculous. He made a point of holding a candlelit, open-air party on the appointed night of disaster, even as ‘feeble-mind[ed]’ fools huddled in caves and underground shelters. Needless to say, the evening passed without event; indeed, one of his companions pointedly remarked that ‘we never saw a night as calm as that’.

  While his health gradually improved, Saladin looked to reorganise the balance and distribution of power within what could now be termed his Ayyubid Empire. One priority was the promotion of his eldest son al-Afdal as primary heir. The young princeling, now around sixteen, was brought north from Egypt to Syria. Entering Damascus to celebrations fit for a sultan, al-Afdal became nominal overlord of the city, although in the years to come Saladin often kept him by his side, tutoring him in the arts of leadership, politics and war. Two of Saladin’s younger sons were similarly rewarded. Uthman, aged fourteen, was appointed ruler of Egypt, and the sultan’s trusted brother al-Adil returned from Aleppo to the Nile region to act as the young boy’s guardian and governor. Aleppo itself passed to the thirteen-year-old al-Zahir. The only problem spawned by this extensive reshuffle was Saladin’s nephew Taqi al-Din. As governor of Egypt since 1183, he had shown worrying tendencies towards independent action. With the aid of Qaragush (whom Saladin had appointed to oversee the Cairene court in 1169), Taqi al-Din had laid plans for a campaign westwards along the North African coast that would have deprived the sultan of valuable troops. Rumours also abounded that, during the sultan’s illness, Taqi al-Din had been preparing to declare his autonomy. In autumn 1186, Isa, ever the consummate diplomat, was tasked with the delicate mission of persuading him to relinquish his hold on Egypt and return to Syria. Arriving unexpectedly at
Cairo, Isa was initially greeted with prevarication, but then apparently advised Taqi al-Din to ‘Go wherever you want.’ This seemingly neutral statement possessed an icily threatening undertone, and Saladin’s nephew soon left for Damascus, where he was welcomed back into the fold and rewarded with his former lordship at Hama and further lands in the newly subdued region of Diyar Bakr.63

  The question of Taqi al-Din’s continued subservience reflected a wider issue. To sustain his burgeoning empire, Saladin relied upon the support of his wider family, but the sultan was also determined to protect the interests of his sons, the direct perpetuators of the Ayyubid bloodline. Saladin had to achieve a delicate balance–he needed to harness the drive and ambition of kinsmen like Taqi al-Din, because their energy was vital to the continued preservation and expansion of the realm; but at the same time, their independence had to be curbed. In Taqi al-Din’s case, Saladin hoped to ensure loyalty by offering his nephew the prospect of continued advancement in Upper Mesopotamia.

  ISLAM UNITED?

  Saladin’s attempts to shape the dynastic fortunes of the Ayyubid Empire in 1186 were, to some extent, a direct function of the increased power and territory he had now accumulated. Since emerging as a political and military force in 1169, he had masterminded the subjugation of Near Eastern Islam, extending his authority over Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo and large stretches of Mesopotamia. The Fatimid caliphate’s abolition had brought the crippling division between Sunni Syria and Shi‘ite Egypt to an end, ushering in a new era of pan-Levantine Muslim accord. These achievements, unparalleled in recent history, surpassed even those of Nur al-Din. On the face of it, Saladin had united Islam from the Nile to the Euphrates; his coinage, circulating throughout his realm and far beyond, now bore the inscription ‘the sultan of Islam and the Muslims’, stark proclamation of his all-encompassing, almost hegemonic authority. This image has often been accepted by modern historians–an attitude typified by one scholar’s recent assertion that after 1183 ‘the rule of all Syria and Egypt was in [Saladin’s] hands’.64

  Yet the notion that Saladin now presided over a world of complete and enduring Muslim unity is profoundly misleading. His ‘empire’, constructed through a mixture of direct conquest and coercive diplomacy, was in truth merely a brittle amalgam of disparate and distant polities, many of which were administered by client-rulers whose allegiance might easily falter. Even in Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo–the linchpins of his realm–the sultan had to rely upon the continued fidelity and cooperation of his family, virtues that were never assured. Elsewhere, in the likes of Mosul, Asia Minor and the Jazira, Ayyubid supremacy was largely ephemeral, dependent upon loose alliances and tainted by barely submerged antipathy.

  In 1186 the spell held. But it did so only because Saladin had survived his illness and still possessed the wealth, might and influence to manifest his will. In the years that followed, the work of sustaining and governing such a geographically expansive and politically incongruent empire tested the sultan to breaking point. And the struggle to counteract the ingrained centrifugal forces that could so readily rip apart the Ayyubid Empire proved constant and consuming.

  Even after some seventeen years of unrelenting struggle, Saladin’s work was not done. Amidst the holy war to come, he could call upon a dedicated, loyalist core of battle-hardened troops, but for the most part the sultan stood at the head of a fragile, often restive, coalition, ever conscious that his realm might be disrupted by insurrection, rebellion or cessation. This fact was of paramount importance, for it shaped much of his thinking and strategy, often forcing him to follow the path of least resistance to seek swift, self-perpetuating victories. Contemporaries and modern historians alike have sometimes criticised Saladin’s qualities as a military commander in this later phase of his career, arguing that he lacked the backbone to prosecute costly and prolonged sieges. In fact, he depended upon speed of action and ongoing success to maintain momentum, clear in the knowledge that if the Muslim war machine ground to a halt, it might well collapse.

  At a fundamental level, Saladin’s empire had also been forged against the backdrop of jihad; at every step he justified the extension of Ayyubid authority as a means to an end. Unity beneath his banner may have been bought at a heavy price, but he argued that it was directed at one sole purpose: the jihad to drive the Franks from Palestine and liberate the Holy City. This ideological impulse had proved to be an enormously potent instrument, fuelling and legitimising the motor of expansion, but it came at a near-unavoidable cost. Unless Saladin wished to be revealed as a fraudulent despot, all his promises of unbending devotion to the cause must now be fulfilled and the long-awaited war waged. Certainly, in the aftermath of his illness, and what may have been a period of deepening spirituality, the sultan’s promulgation of the jihad became ever more active. Revered Islamic scholars like the brothers Ibn Qudama and Abd al-Ghani, both long-time proponents of Saladin’s cause, were among those who contributed to a quickening of religious fanaticism. In Damascus, and across the realm, religious tracts and poems on the faith, the obligation of jihad and the overriding devotional significance of Jerusalem all were recited at massed public gatherings with increasing regularity. By the end of 1186, it appears that the sultan had not only recognised the political necessity for an all-out assault on the Latins, but had also embraced the struggle ahead at a personal level. This is borne out by the testimony of one of Saladin’s few critics among contemporary Muslim commentators, the Mosuli historian Ibn al-Athir. Recording a war council from early 1187, the chronicler wrote:

  One of [Saladin’s] emirs said to him: ‘The best plan in my opinion is to invade their territory [and] if any Frankish force stands against us, we should meet it. People in the east curse us and say, “He has given up fighting the infidels and has turned his attention to fighting Muslims.” [We should] take a course of action that will vindicate us and stop people’s tongues.’

  Ibn al-Athir’s intention was to censure Ayyubid expansionism, while evoking the tide of public pressure and expectation now attendant on the sultan. But he went on to suggest that Saladin experienced a brief, but significant, moment of self-realisation at this meeting. According to Ibn al-Athir, the sultan declared his determination to go to war and then mournfully observed that ‘affairs do not proceed by man’s decision [and] we do not know how much remains of our lives’. Perhaps it was the sultan’s own sense of mortality that moved him to action; whatever the reason, a change does seem to have occurred. Real questions remain about the true extent of his determination to combat the Franks in the long years between 1169 and 1186, but regardless of what had gone before, in 1187 Saladin brought the full force of his empire to bear against the kingdom of Jerusalem. He was now doggedly resolved to bring the Christians to full and decisive battle.65

  A KINGDOM UNDONE

  This upsurge of Ayyubid aggression coincided with a deepening crisis in Latin Palestine. At some point between May and mid-September 1186 the young King Baldwin V of Jerusalem died, and a rancorous succession dispute erupted. Count Raymond of Tripoli, who had been acting as regent, schemed to seize the throne, but he was outmanoeuvred by Sibylla (Baldwin IV’s sister) and her husband, Guy of Lusignan. Having won the support of Patriarch Heraclius, a large proportion of the nobility and the Military Orders, Sibylla and Guy managed to have themselves crowned and anointed as queen and king. Raymond tried to engineer an outright civil war, proclaiming Humphrey of Toron and his wife Isabella as the rightful monarchs of Jerusalem. But, perhaps mindful of the terrible damage that might be wrought should this claim be pursued, Humphrey declined to step forward.

  As king, one of Guy’s first steps was to buy time to restore some sense of order to the realm by renewing the treaty with Saladin until April 1187 in return for some 60,000 gold bezants. Guy was a divisive figure–Baldwin of Ibelin was so disgusted by his elevation that he gave up his lordship and moved to Antioch–and, as king, Guy’s policy of putting family members from Poitou into positions of power caused further unea
se. To deal with his most powerful enemy, Raymond of Tripoli, Guy seems to have hatched a plan to seize the lordship of Galilee by force. But in response, Raymond took the quite drastic step of seeking protection from Saladin himself. Muslim sources indicate that many of the sultan’s advisers were suspicious of this approach, but that Saladin rightly judged it to be an honest offer of alliance, the product of the desperate division that now afflicted the Franks. To the evident horror of many of his Latin contemporaries, Raymond welcomed Muslim troops into Tiberias, to bolster the town’s garrison, and gave Ayyubid forces licence to travel unhindered through his Galilean lands. At this worst moment, the count perpetrated an act of treason, engendering even greater disunity among the Christians.

  Then, in the winter months of 1186 and 1187, Reynald of Châtillon, lord of Kerak, contravened the truce with the Ayyubids by attacking a Muslim caravan travelling through Transjordan on its way from Cairo to Damascus. His motives remain open to debate, but basic greed probably combined with a realisation that Saladin was building towards a major offensive to spur Reynald into action. Certainly in the weeks that followed he made no effort to repair relations, bluntly refusing the sultan’s demands for restitution of the stolen goods. Even without Reynald’s raid, Saladin would almost certainly have refused that spring to renew the truce with Frankish Palestine, so the once popular contention that the lord of Kerak effectively ignited the war to come should probably be discarded. Nonetheless, Reynald’s exploits did reinforce his status as the Muslim world’s abhorred enemy. They also provided Saladin with a clear cause for war further to inflame the heart of Islam.