Saladin

by A R Azzam

could secure a place at the assembly, while others would come on camels

  and mules and would remain seated on their animals, their necks craned to

  hear al-Jilani preach. His sermons were attended by viziers, the sultans and

  even the caliphs, and he was certainly outspoken. Above all al-Jilani believed

  that for his students and disciples knowledge in itself was not enough and

  that it was necessary to develop spiritually and to play a role in reviving the

  moral framework of the Muslim world. Rapidly his students spread across

  the Muslim world, carrying with them their al-Jilani's teachings. Many of

  these students in turn became Nur al-Din and Saladin's closest advisers and

  exerted considerable influence over them.^' It is therefore likely that the

  prayers which al-Nishapuri taught Saladin would have been very similar if

  not identical to the ones taught by al-Jilani.

  Perhaps it was al-Nishapuri who instilled a love for sufism in Saladin,

  since Ibn al-Athir notes Saladin's fondness for sufi gatherings. When the sufis

  stood up during their chanting and invocations, he stood up with them, and

  when they sat down he sat down. Ibn Shaddad wrote that over the years

  Saladin used to practise the daily devotions of the mystic and that it was also

  common for Saladin to hold an audience for the sufis on Thursday nights.

  Addas writes of the close collaboration between the the sufi circles, and the

  Ayyubid princes who formed a 'bond of brotherhood' during this period.

  One story relating to al-Adil, Saladin's brother, confirms just how strong

  this bond was and how those closest to Saladin were under the direct or

  • 48 •

  3: T H E Y O U N G SALADIN

  indirect influence of spiritual masters."*' Originally from Lorca in Andalusia,

  Atiq Ibn AJiad al-Lawraqi had travelled to Damascus, where he resided with

  the qadi of the city, Zaki al-Din. At that time Zaki al-I>in was in dispute

  with al-Adil over some possessions, and Zaki al-Din appealed to Atiq to

  intercede in the matter with al-Adil. 'I will certainly intercede on your behalf

  with God', he assured him. 'And would you be prepared to meet with

  al-Adil?' insisted Zaki al-Din. Atiq agreed to this, and went to meet al-Adil,

  who greeted him warmly 'because a bond of brotherhood had already been

  established between them'.''^ Al-Adil agreed to return the qadi's posses-

  sions, but the same night al-Adil saw himself in a dream surrounded by the

  keepers of hell, who warned him, 'Unless you keep away from the qadi we

  will see that you perish!' He woke up in shock and instructed that the qadi

  should never again be disturbed. When Zaki al-Din went to thank Atiq, the

  latter replied, 'Did I not tell you that it would have been quite enough for

  me to speak on your behalf to my sultan? You could have spared me the

  trouble of having to go and speak to yours!

  Like the majority of Muslim men of his age, Saladin performed the five

  daily prayers in public - that is to say in a congregation - and he once

  remarked that it had been years since he prayed on his own. Fasting did not

  suit his temperament and, in later years, illness forced him to miss days

  of fasting. He loved to have the Quran recited in his presence, and Ibn

  Shaddad noted that at night in his room he would ask anyone who was

  awake to recite two or three verses. He also wrote how he was quick to tears

  and was oft:en seen in public weeping when the Quran was being recited. If

  Quranic recitation was heard daily in Saladin's presence, then so were the

  hadith of the Prophet. As a young man Saladin attended the recitations

  of hadith made by Ibn Asakir in Damascus and whenever a hadith scholar

  visited him he summoned his children to listen, bidding them to sit down

  at the scholar's feet as a sign of respect. Even during batde, hadith would

  be read out: 'The reading was held while we were all in the saddle', wrote

  Ibn Shaddad, 'sometimes advancing and sometimes at halt between the

  ranks of the two armies'. The study and recitation of the hadith of the

  Prophet formed a core element in the education of Muslims. Not only did

  they constitute the most important basis of Islamic law, but their public

  recital on feast days during the months of Rajab, Shaban and Ramadan,

  and on other special occasions, was a central feature of popular religious

  celebration among Muslims, who drew no distinction between instruction

  • 49 •

  SALAD I N

  and devotion.^® Matters of jurisprudence may have been beyond the abili-

  ties of the militaiy, but the listening to hadith was an act of piety that was

  shared by all, for it was commonly acknowledged that their public recitation

  possessed extraordinary efficacy and power. So, for example, when a plague

  struck Cairo in 1388, the chief qadi of the city called together a group of

  men to al-Azhar to read the Sahih of al-Bukhari and pray for deliverance.

  Three days later the recitation was repeated, this time using children and

  orphans.^''

  As someone who was born to serve in the military, physical activities

  formed a crucial part in Saladin's upbringing. Ibn Jubayr noted how

  Saladin's sons rode out every evening to play polo and practise archery, and

  one assumes that Saladin followed a similar routine when younger. Certainly

  he would have been an excellent horseman and he himself commented that

  'When I am on my horse all pain ceases until I dismount'. Well-versed in

  the genealogy of Arab horses, he probably spent as much time on horseback

  as he did on his feet, and the skill of firing a bow while at full gallop was one

  that he must have often practised. One imagines Shirkuh watching carefully

  and admonishing him for not pulling the arrow all the way back to his chest.

  Constantly he would remind him that the arrow had to hit the mark

  whether he was advancing or retreating, and never forget to add that the

  most valuable wisdom taught in the military manuals was how to obtain vic-

  tory without engaging the enemy. This was an important lesson for Saladin

  and his brothers and one that they clearly adhered to; as al-Maqrizi writes

  in his obituary of al-Adil, Saladin's brother, he 'did not see it as wise to

  engage his enemy openly, preferring rather in his designs to use guile and

  deception'. Hunting was also a favourite pastime and Saladin enjoyed

  gazelle hunting in the plains outside Damascus.

  Saladin spent his time between Damascus, where his father and Nur al-

  Din resided, and Aleppo, where Shirkuh was deputy in Nur al-Din's absence,

  and it seems that Nur al-Din used Saladin to carry messages between him

  and Shirkuh.^^ For a while Saladin developed a closer relationship with his

  uncle than with his father. Perhaps his uncle's gruff manner and military

  exploits impressed him more than Ayyub's diplomatic nature, although as

  he grew older it would become increasingly clear that he was his father's

  son.

  • 50 •

  Chapter 4

  The Battle for Egypt

  Whomsoever has not seen Cniro will never ctppreciate the de^free and power

  of Islam.

  Ibn Khaldun, fourteenth-eentury historian

  With the fall of Damascus to Nur al-Din, the r
ole of Egypt suddenly

  assumed supreme importance, for it was not on the banks of the

  Jordan but of the Nile that Jerusalem would be won or lost. Although it has

  been argued that the fall of the Latin Kingdom was due to its failure to cap-

  ture Damascus or Aleppo, in reality it was its inability to negate the threat

  from Egypt that sealed its fate. For the Franks it was imperative that they

  not suffer a Muslim pincer movement launched from Egypt in the south and

  Iraq from the north; encircled they would then be ruthlessly pushed back

  towards the coast. And so, in order to safeguard their hold on Palestine and

  Syria, the Franks had to conquer Egypt or at the very least ensure that it did

  not fall to Nur al-Din. vUeppo and Damascus were now under his control,

  Edessa had been lost, AnUoch shorn of half its territory, the eastern marches

  of Tripoli had been overrun and the defences of the Kingdom of Jerusalem

  seriously weakened. Egypt could not be lost. On this premise was based the

  strategy of the Latin Kingdom now under the rule of a new king, Amalric.

  Tall and handsome with a thick blonde beard, his speech was afflicted by the

  occasional stammer^ but his vision was clear; he and his advisers did not

  consider that trying to live at peace with Nur al-Din was an option,^ and it

  • 51 •

  SALAD I N

  was imperative, no matter what, that Egypt did not fall to him. Before his

  accession, Amalric had been the count of Jaffa and Ascalon, and the key-

  stone of his policy rested on the control of Egypt. When Ascalon had fallen

  in 1153, so had Egypt's last bastion against a Prankish invasion of the coun-

  try. And indeed one year after the fall of Ascalon a Norman fleet sacked

  Tinnins, and the year following that, in 1155, Alexandria and Damietta

  were attacked by the Normans. Then in 1161 the crusaders once again

  entered Egyptian territory and had to be bought off by the enormous sum

  of an annual tribute of 160,000 dinars. Amalric's fear about the threat of

  Egypt was well founded, for it was an offensive from there that ultimately

  helped seal the kingdom's fate. The master of the Templars Bertrand of

  Blanquefort had once said that his greatest fear was that a single Muslim

  prince would 'reunite the two most powerful realms, Cairo and Damascus,

  and abolish the very name of Christian'. It was perhaps fortunate for

  Blanquefort that he died in 1169 and did not live long enough to see his

  worst fear realised.

  For Nur al-Din, Egypt was also important, and for reasons that were

  not simply strategic. Admittedly he understood that with its wealth and

  boundless resources he would be able to drive the Franks out of Syria

  and Palestine. For him the fall of Ascalon also had serious repercussions,

  for the city had acted as a sort of buffer state between Muslims and

  Christians and its capture by the Franks had endangered the commerce with

  • Egypt. Since the Latin control of the coastal cities meant that Muslim Syria

  was effectively cut off from the coast, Nur al-Din understood that if the

  Franks controlled Egypt then Muslim Syria would be ruined. According to

  Runciman, it was Shirkuh, more than any other Muslim, who fiilly under-

  stood that the conquest of Egypt was the necessary preliminary to the con-

  quest of Palestine, and it was Shirkuh's nephew who reaped the harvest of

  his persistence. Nur al-Din was equally aware of the importance of restoring

  Egypt to the Sunni fold; for renascent Sunnism, as we have seen, the great-

  est threat ideologically, if no longer politically, was that posed by the Ismaili

  Fatimid caliphate. Nur al-Din had carried with great gusto the Sunni mes-

  sage into Syria, but now the message had to be carried into the heart of

  Egypt. Ibn Hubayra, the vizier whom Nur al-Din admired, urged it and the

  Abbasid caliph demanded it. For Nur al-Din, however, there was an even

  greater concern, for he believed the loss of Egypt to the Franks would mean

  the end of Islam,^ and extreme as that statement may appear to be it was not

  • 52 •

  4; T H E BATTLE F O R EGYPT

  without foundation. The main reason for this was that the Hijaz depended

  almost totally on Egypt, and the occupation of Egypt to a non-Muslim

  power would mean the fall of the Ai'abian coastal region of the Red Sea and

  the ultimate loss of Mecca and Medina. Twice when the crusaders attacked

  Egypt in the first half of the thirteenth century panic seized the Egyptians,

  who were convinced that this was the end of their religion."' In addition, the

  loss of Egypt would mean that the Maghrib would be cut off from the eastern

  Muslim world and the Franks could make direct contact with the Christians

  of Nubia and Abyssinia. Egypt, in short, could not fall to the Franks.

  For both parties, enraptured by the staggering stories of Fatimid wealth,

  the economic benefits of capturing Egypt were enormous. Nasir-i Khusrau,

  who visited the land in 1047, wrote that all the 20,000 shops in Cairo paid

  a monthly rent of between two and ten dinars to the Fatimid caliph. The

  early Arab conquerors of the seventh century were amazed, and described

  Egypt as a 'storehouse of corn and riches and blessings of every kind'. With

  the spread of Islam and trade in Africa, regular supplies of gold from Senegal

  and Nubia began to reach Egypt, thus flirther adding to its wealth. Shirkuh

  described Egypt as the milk cow of their treasury, and as a military man he

  would have been impressed by the fact that its wealth meant that for every

  army raised by Damascus, Egypt was capable of raising three. 'Suffice to

  say that Syria, in spite of its importance, is only a rural sub-district when

  compared to Egypt', wrote al-Muqaddasi, the Jerusalem geographer at the

  end of the tenth century. If the ships arriving in Fustat had reached his

  birthplace Jerusalem, he noted, they could have removed in one voyage the

  whole of the town, with its population, trees and stones, to another place.

  And afterwards people would say, 'Once upon a time there was a town

  here'.® For their part the Franks were equally dazzled by the stories of the

  treasures that could be found, and they had assiduously compiled a list of

  Egyptian villages and the incomes derived from them. Runciman's descrip-

  tion of the visit of Hugh of Caesarea to meet the Fatimid caliph could well

  have been inspired from The Thouscmd and One Nights:

  They were led past colonnades and fountains and gardens where the court

  menageries and aviaries were kept, through hall after hall, heavy with

  han£in£is of silk and golden thread, studded with jewels, till at last a^folden

  curtain was raised, to show the boy-caliph seated veiled on his golden

  throned

  • 53 •

  SALAD I N

  The Fatimids: the sick man of the Nile

  There was a time when the Red Sea was a Fatimid lake, part of an empire

  which stretched across most of North Africa and which threatened to over-

  throw the Sunni Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad. But that time had passed;

  North Africa had broken away and so too had Sicily. As for the Red Sea,

  the only support came from distant Yemen. With the fall of Ascalon, the

  Fa
timids lost their last hold on Palestine and the caliph found himself the

  ruler of a dynasty which had, in the words of the contemporary satirist

  al-Wahrani, been reduced to the scheming o f ' o l d women'.^ Ismailism may

  have been the state religion of Egypt, but it was littie else. Lacking a power

  base, the Fatimids had dissolved in a sea of Sunnis. On the eve of Saladin's

  entry into Egypt, 85-90 per cent of tiie population was either Sunni

  Muslims or Christians, and it is even questionable if the Ismaili population,

  excluding the army, was larger than the Jewish one.^ Ismaili millennial

  expectations were weakened, in addition, by religious schisms. And these

  were exacerbated by the actions of some caliphs, which appalled and alien-

  ated their Sunni subjects while provoking internal dissension. On occasion

  their actions baffled the Egyptians and lent littie credence to their Islamic

  claims. One example was al-Aziz, who died in 996, choosing the sister of

  the patriarchs of Alexandria and Jerusalem to be his wife, or refusing to pun-

  ish a Muslim who had converted to Christianity. But these actions were to

  pall into insignificance compared to those of his son, al-Haldm, which, if

  nothing else, proves that every enduring dynasty will eventually produce a

  Caligula. Indifferent at best to their fate, few mourned the passing of the

  Fatimids - in Ibn al-Athir's mocking words 'there was not so much as the

  butting of two goats'.

  We have spoken above about the crusader thunderbolt that struck the

  Muslim world, but perhaps for some Muslims its arrival was not unexpected.

  Referring to the Fatimids, Hillenbrand, for one, is clear that 'one group of

  Muslims knew about the coming of the crusades in good time b u t . . . had

  their own reasons for not spreading the information and trying to defend

  Islamic territory more effectively'.' Clearly there was early contact, indeed

  collusion, between the crusaders and the Fatimids, and it seems the first

  contact was made as early as 1098 when the crusaders were besieging the

  city of Antioch. In the words of Ehrenkreutz:

  • 54 •

  4: T H E BATTLE F O R EGYPT

  After several months of painful sie^e operations at the impregnable fortress

  of Antioch, the forces of the Crusaders reached the brink of exhaustion. It