The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land (31 page)

Nur al-Din’s victory was absolute, the revenge for Bouqia sweet. He had thrashed the Syrian Franks, reaping an unprecedented harvest of high-level captives. Within days he returned to Harim which, now cut off from all hope of reinforcement, promptly surrendered. From this time onwards the town would remain in Muslim hands, leaving the principality of Antioch cowering behind an eastern frontier that had been definitively driven back to the River Orontes. Just as in 1149, after his triumph at Inab, Nur al-Din chose not to target the city of Antioch itself. The chronicler Ibn al-Athir later explained that the emir was deterred by the strength of its citadel and, more revealingly, by his reluctance to provoke a counter-attack from Antioch’s overlord, Emperor Manuel, quoting Nur al-Din as saying, ‘To have Bohemond as a neighbour I find preferable to being a neighbour of the ruler of Constantinople.’ With this in mind, he soon agreed to release the young Antiochene prince in return for a hefty ransom; he refused, however, to give Raymond of Tripoli, Joscelin of Courtenay or his other princely prisoner, Reynald of Châtillon, their freedom.
²⁰

In October 1164 Nur al-Din turned his attention to the southern frontier with Jerusalem. There the pivotal town of Banyas was vulnerable, because its lord, the Constable Humphrey of Toron, was in Egypt with the king of Jerusalem. The emir moved in with heavy siege weaponry and began an investment, deploying a combination of incessant bombardment and sapping to weaken the fortress and break the will of its small garrison. Bribes may also have been used to buy off Banyas’ commander. Within a few days, surrender on terms of safe conduct was secured and Nur al-Din installed his own well-supplied troops. Just as at Harim, the conquest of Banyas proved to be a permanent gain for Islam. The significance of this turning point in the regional balance of power was reflected in the punitive terms Nur al-Din now imposed on the Franks of Galilee–a share of the revenues of Tiberias and an annual tribute payment. Three years later, the emir followed up this success by destroying the Latin fortress at Chastel Neuf. This opened up a new corridor into Frankish Palestine, through the area of rolling hills known as Marj Ayun, between the Litani valley and the Upper Jordan. There could now be no question that Nur al-Din posed a real threat to Outremer.

THE DREAM OF JERUSALEM

Nur al-Din’s actions in the 1160s suggest that he had adopted a more determined and aggressive stance in his dealings with the Franks, embracing and promoting an active
jihad
against them. Ever since his occupation of Damascus in 1154, Nur al-Din had sponsored a monumental building programme within the city, rejuvenating and reaffirming its status as one of the Near East’s great centres of power and civilisation. This began almost immediately, with the construction of a new hospital, the
Bimaristan
–soon to become one of the world’s leading centres of medical science and treatment–and a luxurious bathhouse, the
Hammam Nur al-Din
, which remains largely unaltered and can be visited to this day.

From the late 1150s onwards, however, these public works seem to have been increasingly imbued with a devotional dimension; one inspired by and/or designed to aver Nur al-Din’s deepening sense of personal piety and his preoccupation with Sunni orthodoxy. In 1163 he financed the building of a new House of Justice, where he later sat for two days each week to hear the grievances of his subjects. This was followed by the construction of the
Dar al-hadith al-Nuriyya
–a new centre dedicated to the study of the life and traditions associated with Muhammad–headed by Nur al-Din’s close friend, the renowned scholar Ibn ‘Asakir, which the emir attended in person.

To promote Damascus as a hub of Sunni Islam, Nur al-Din built a new suburb, to the west of the city, to house pilgrims en route to Mecca, and in 1159 he founded the town of al-Salihiyya, just over one mile to the north, to shelter refugees from Palestine. Nur al-Din’s Damascene court soon drew in experts in the fields of governance, law and warfare from across the Muslim world. Among them was the Persian intellectual Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, who would later write some of the most illuminating and lyrical Arabic histories of this era. Educated in Baghdad, he joined the emir as a
katib
(secretary/scholar) in 1167, later describing his new patron as ‘the most chaste, pious, sagacious, pure and virtuous of kings’.

Throughout this period, Nur al-Din projected an image of himself as a devoted Muslim, the reviver of Sunni law and orthodoxy. Revealingly, the most potent and portable propaganda tool available to Nur al-Din–the coins he issued–bore the inscription ‘The Just King’. From the early 1160s, however, he appears to have placed greater emphasis upon the role of
jihad
in his rule, proclaiming his virtues as a heroic
mujahid
in inscriptions adorning public monuments. The pre-eminent position of Jerusalem within the framework of
jihad
ideology also began to crystallise in this period. The emir’s colleague Ibn ‘Asakir helped to revitalise the tradition of writing texts extolling the Holy City’s virtues and took to reciting these works to large public gatherings in Damascus. Poets in Nur al-Din’s court composed widely disseminated works stressing the need not only to attack the Latins but also to reconquer Islam’s third city. One wrote encouraging his patron to wage war on the Franks ‘until you see Jesus fleeing from Jerusalem’. Ibn al-Qaysarani, who had also served Zangi, announced his wish that ‘the city of Jerusalem be purified by the shedding of blood’, proclaiming that ‘Nur al-Din is as strong as ever and the iron of his lance is directed at the Aqsa.’ The emir himself wrote to the caliph in Baghdad of his desire ‘to banish the worshippers of the Cross from the Aqsa mosque’.

One further piece of evidence attests to Jerusalem’s increasingly central role, both within the ideology propagated by Nur al-Din and, perhaps, within his own heartfelt ambitions. In 1168–9, he commissioned the master carpenter al-Akharini to carve a fabulously ornate
minbar
(wooden pulpit) that the emir hoped to place in the Aqsa mosque once the Holy City was retaken. Some years later, the Iberian Muslim traveller Ibn Jubayr remarked on the pulpit’s extraordinary beauty when he passed through the Levant, asserting that its grandeur was unrivalled in the medieval world. This
minbar
was undoubtedly intended as a potent and public declaration of intent, emblazoned as it was with the description of the emir as ‘the fighter of
jihad
in His path, the one who defends [the frontiers] against the enemies of His religion, the just king, Nur al-Din, the pillar of Islam and the Muslims, the dispenser of justice’. Yet, in some respects, it must in addition be viewed as an intensely personal, almost humble, offering to God, for it was also inscribed with the simple, emotive appeal: ‘May He grant conquest to [Nur al-Din] and at his own hands.’ Upon its completion, the emir installed the pulpit in Aleppo’s Great Mosque, where, according to Imad al-Din, it lay ‘sheathed like a sword in the scabbard’, awaiting the day of victory, when Nur al-Din might achieve the dream of Jerusalem’s recovery.
²¹

How then should Nur al-Din be regarded? Do his attacks on the Franks after the humiliation at Bouqia and his dissemination of
jihad
ideology prove that he was possessed by an unequivocal commitment to holy war? Can the emir’s own words, recorded in the Damascus Chronicle, be taken at face value? He was said to have declared:

There was a marked difference between Nur al-Din’s approach and focus in the 1140s and his activities in the 1160s. Comparison with the methods and achievements of his father Zangi is striking. But question marks and caveats remain. Given the context, and the complexities of human nature, any expectation of a singular solution–in which Nur al-Din was either wholly dedicated to
jihad
or purely self-serving–is surely flawed. Just as the Christian First Crusaders appear to have been moved by a mixture of piety and greed, Nur al-Din may well have recognised the political and military value of championing a religious cause, while still being impelled by authentic devotion. As upstart Turkish warlords in a Near and Middle Eastern world still underpinned by Arab and Persian elites, the Zangids’ need for social, religious and political legitimation must have been pressing.

In the course of the twelfth century the notion of a rebirth of Islamic
jihad
took hold in the Levant, and this process accelerated almost exponentially during Nur al-Din’s career. In 1105, when the Damascene preacher al-Sulami extolled the virtues of holy war, few responded. By the late 1160s the atmosphere in Damascus and Aleppo was transformed–Nur al-Din may well have cultivated and inspired this fervour; at the very least, he understood that a message emphasising the spiritual dimension of the struggles against Sunni Islam’s enemies now would find a receptive audience.

For much of the 1160s the conflict between Zangid Islam and the Levantine Franks centred on Egypt, as both powers tried to assert control over the Nile region. In strategic terms, dominion of Egypt might allow Nur al-Din effectively to encircle Outremer–with control of Aleppo and Damascus secured, the addition of Cairo could shift the balance of power in the Near East irrevocably in his favour. The division between Sunni Syria and Shi‘ite Egypt had long undermined any hope of a concerted drive to defeat the Latins. If that rift was somehow overcome, Islam would stand united for the first time since the coming of the crusades.

The Nile’s fabulous wealth was also alluring. The great river’s annual August flood bestowed enormous fertility upon the arable land along its banks throughout the Nile Delta. In a good year, Egypt enjoyed an abundant agricultural surplus and, by association, bounteous tax revenues. The region likewise benefited from burgeoning trade between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, because the critical land route linking the two crossed Egypt. Popular with Italian and Byzantine merchants, the Nile region became one of the world’s leading commercial hubs.

MEDIEVAL EGYPT

Egypt often is characterised as having been a Muslim territory in the age of the crusades, but this is a misleading simplification. The region was conquered in 641
CE
during the first wave of Arab Islamic expansion, but the Arab ruling elite was largely concentrated in two centres: the port city of Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great some 1,500 years earlier; and the new settlement of Fustat, established by the Arabs at the head of the Nile Delta. Elsewhere, Egypt’s indigenous Coptic Christian population predominated. Over the centuries the Copts were Arabised in a cultural sense, for example taking on the Arabic language, but their adoption of the Islamic faith was far more gradual. Even in the twelfth century this Coptic Christian rural underclass remained.

From 969 Egypt was ruled by the Shi‘ite Fatimid dynasty, who broke free from the Sunni Abbasid rulers of Baghdad. The Fatimids built a formidable navy, with which they came to dominate Mediterranean shipping. They also constructed a new capital city north of Fustat, which they named Cairo (meaning ‘the Conqueror’), and established a rival Shi‘ite caliph (‘successor’ to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad), challenging the universal authority of the Sunni caliph in Baghdad. By the twelfth century the walled city of Cairo was the political heart of Egypt. Here, two fabulously opulent, labyrinthine caliphal palaces stood as testament to the limitless wealth of the Fatimids–housing exotic menageries and hordes of court eunuchs. The city was also home to the tenth-century al-Azhar mosque, renowned as a centre of Islamic scholasticism and theological study, while at the end of a canal running to the Nile, on the small island of Roda, was the Nilometer, a carefully calibrated structure that allowed the great river’s flood to be measured precisely and, therefore, the harvest predicted.

Cairo became the seat of Fatimid power, but ancient Alexandria retained its status as the focal point of Egypt’s economy into the crusading era. Located on the Mediterranean coast to the west of the Nile Delta, possessed of the great wonder that was Pharos’ Lighthouse, this port was perfectly positioned to exploit the trade in luxury goods such as spices and silks flowing from Asia, through the Red Sea and on to Europe. One Latin then living in Palestine observed that ‘people from the East and the West flock to Alexandria, and it is a public market for both worlds’.

By the time of the crusades the ability of Fatimid caliphs to exercise real power over the Nile region had dwindled and, for the most part, Egypt was governed by the caliph’s chief administrator, his vizier. After the death of the Vizier al-Afdal in 1121, however, this political system faltered and Cairo was soon gripped by intrigue. A noxious cycle of dissolute conspiracy, unbridled brutality and murder brought Fatimid Egypt to its knees. As one Muslim chronicler observed, ‘in Egypt the vizierate was the prize of whoever was the strongest. The caliphs were kept behind the veil and viziers were the de facto rulers…It was rare for anyone to come to office except by fighting and killing and similar means.’ Beset by political instability, the Nile region fell into decline, and the once great Fatimid fleet was left to decay. Against this backdrop of endemic weakness it was no wonder that the ruling powers of Syria and Palestine began to regard Egypt as a prime target.
²³

THE NEW BATTLEGROUND

In the early 1160s, Egypt was spiralling ever deeper into chaos. By 1163 nominal power lay in the hands of the eleven-year-old boy Caliph al-Adid (1160–71), while the vizierate was held by the former governor of Upper Egypt, Shawar. He came to power in early 1163, but within eight months had been overthrown by his Arab chamberlain, Dirgham. Shawar escaped with his life to Syria and, like so many of the usurpers before him, Dirgham ‘put to death many of the Egyptian emirs to clear the lands of rivals’. After decades of infighting the country had now been all but stripped of its ruling elite. In this weakened state, Egypt was desperately vulnerable to the predations of its Christian and Muslim neighbours.

The kingdom of Jerusalem had for some years shown increasing interest in the region. Ascalon’s conquest in 1153 opened the coastal road south from Palestine–known as the
Via Maris
–and, in 1160, King Baldwin III threatened an invasion, but halted his plans on the promise of a huge annual tribute of 160,000 gold dinars. Then, upon his untimely death in 1163, Baldwin (being childless) was succeeded by his younger brother, Amalric. The great Latin historian of Outremer, William of Tyre, who came to prominence under Amalric’s patronage, recorded an intriguingly frank description of the new monarch. Aged twenty-seven, Amalric was said to be earnest and taciturn, ‘a man of prudence and discretion’, who lacked his predecessor’s easy charm and eloquence, in part because he suffered from a mild stammer. Physically, Amalric ‘was of goodly height’, with ‘sparkling eyes’, a ‘very full beard’ and slightly receding blond hair. William praised his royal ‘bearing’, but acknowledged that, despite his extremely moderate consumption of food and wine, the king ‘was excessively fat, with breasts like those of a woman hanging down to his waist’.
²⁴

One of Amalric’s first goals as monarch was to reassert Jerusalem’s dominance over Egypt, with an–albeit abortive–siege of the city of Bilbais, which lay upon the banks of one of the Nile’s tributaries. Though the Latins were forced to retreat, over the coming years the Frankish king was to dedicate much of his energy and resources to the pursuit of power in Egypt.

Shirkuh ibn Shadi’s Egyptian campaigns

Nur al-Din’s attention was also being drawn south. Towards the end of 1163, the deposed vizier Shawar arrived in Damascus, hoping to secure political and military support for a counter-coup. Historians have sometimes lauded Nur al-Din’s decision to support him as visionary, arguing that he readily embraced the opportunity to wage a new proxy war against the Latins on Egyptian soil, all the while dreaming of the moment when the rule of Aleppo, Damascus and Cairo might be united, encircling Frankish Palestine.

In fact, at first Nur al-Din was reticent. He was aware that protracted entanglement in North Africa would sap resources even as he sought to consolidate his hold over Syria, and he doubted Shawar’s reliability as an ally (even though Shawar promised to reward Nur al-Din’s aid with one-third of Egypt’s grain revenues). But, after some months, the emir was persuaded to take action. Nur al-Din’s choice was driven partly by strategic imperative, because, left unchecked, the Jerusalemite Franks might gain an unassailable foothold in the Nile region, with disastrous consequences for the overall balance of power in the Levant. He was, however, also responding to the ambitions of his long-standing Kurdish lieutenant, Shirkuh, who was something of a gnarled veteran, having joined Zangi in the 1130s and then remained loyal to Nur al-Din. Even a Latin contemporary conceded that, despite being blind in one eye because of a cataract, ‘small of stature, very stout and fat [and] advanced in years’, Shirkuh was feared and respected as ‘an able and energetic warrior, hungry for glory and of wide experience in military affairs’. This wily old campaigner had already risen to a position of power within Nur al-Din’s inner circle, but in Egypt he saw grander opportunities for advancement. Muslim chroniclers described him as being ‘very eager’ to lead forces into North Africa, and he played a pivotal role in galvanising and shaping ‘Zangid’ involvement in the region during the years to come.
²⁵

In April 1164, Nur al-Din entrusted Shirkuh with command of a sizeable, well-equipped force, instructing him to ‘restore Shawar to his office’. At first the campaign proceeded well. The allies stormed into Egypt, seizing control of the town of Fustat, just south of Cairo. By late May Dirgham lay dead, slain by a stray arrow from one of his own men during a skirmish, and the caliph reinstated Shawar as vizier. But after this initial success, relations between the allies deteriorated. Shawar tried to buy off Shirkuh with the promise of 30,000 gold dinars in return for his departure from Egypt, but the Kurdish commander refused.

The newly installed vizier now demonstrated just the sort of elasticity of allegiance that Nur al-Din had feared, inviting Amalric of Jerusalem to come to Egypt’s rescue on the promise of bounteous financial rewards. The Frankish king willingly obliged, marching to link up with Shawar in midsummer 1164 and lay siege to Shirkuh, who had taken refuge in Bilbais. The city was only weakly fortified, with a low wall and no fosse, but Shirkuh organised a disciplined defence and for three months a stalemate held. Then, in October, news of Nur al-Din’s victories at Harim and Banyas reached Amalric, and he hurriedly negotiated a cessation of hostilities in Egypt, such that both Latins and Syrians were permitted to return to their own lands in peace, and Shawar was left in control of Cairo.

In the years that followed, Shirkuh was said to have ‘continued to talk about the project of invading [Egypt]’. By 1167 the Kurdish warlord had amassed an invasion force to overthrow Shawar. Shirkuh was now acting with increasing independence, and, although Nur al-Din did dispatch several warlords to accompany him, the emir apparently ‘disliked the plan’ to attack Egypt. The campaign was also joined by a rising star of the Damascene court, Shirkuh’s twenty-nine-year-old nephew, Yusuf ibn Ayyub. Renowned as one of Nur al-Din’s favourite polo partners, Yusuf may have fought at the Battle of Harim in 1164 and was certainly appointed in the following year as Damascus’
shihna
(the equivalent of police chief), in which post he acquired a reputation for firm law enforcement and, perhaps less reliably, for extorting money from prostitutes.

In January 1167, Shirkuh led his force across the Sinai Peninsula. This threat prompted Shawar to make a renewed appeal for aid from Palestine, promising in his extreme desperation to pay the Franks the amazing sum of 400,000 gold dinars. Amalric duly marched into Egypt in February, and North Africa once again became the proxy battleground in a wider struggle between Muslim Syria and Outremer. The two sides clashed in an inconclusive battle that March at al-Babayn, in the desert far to the south of Cairo, and Yusuf later proved his competence as a military commander during a gruelling siege of Alexandria, but neither the Franks nor the Syrians were able to achieve a definitive victory.

Just as in 1164, Shirkuh limped back to Syria with little to show for his efforts. Shawar remained in power, and recent events had only served to augment Frankish influence in the region, as Amalric agreed a new pact with the vizier that guaranteed an annual tribute of 100,000 dinars and installed a Latin prefect and garrison within Cairo itself. Egypt was now a client-state of the kingdom of Jerusalem. But far from punishing Shirkuh for this failure, Nur al-Din rewarded him with the command of Homs and granted Yusuf ibn Ayyub lands around Aleppo. For now, at least, the lord of Damascus was evidently keen to redirect the energies of these two Kurdish commanders towards Syrian affairs, keeping them close at hand to check any tendencies to independence.

This situation might well have endured, to the ultimate frustration of Shirkuh’s Egyptian ambitions, had Amalric not sought to overplay his hand. For a number of years the king had been trying to forge closer ties with Byzantium, in part to secure Greek participation in a joint invasion of North Africa, and the first fruits of this diplomacy came in late August 1167 when he married Emperor Manuel’s niece, Maria Comnena. Detailed plans for a combined expedition were discussed, and William of Tyre was sent as royal envoy to Constantinople to finalise terms. By the time he returned in autumn 1168, however, Amalric had already taken action. The king had gambled that he could prevail without Greek aid and thus forestall any need to divide Egypt’s riches with Manuel. Not content with Egypt’s client status, Amalric sought to conquer the Nile. With the vocal encouragement of the Hospitallers, he launched a surprise invasion in late October, marching from Ascalon to attack Bilbais. The city fell after just a few days, on 4 November, and the Franks engaged in a bloody and rapacious sack, sparing few among its populace and looting at will.

In the wake of this opening victory, however, the Latin offensive unravelled. Amalric may have hoped that a sudden savage assault would shatter Egyptian resistance, but in fact his betrayal of the truce with Cairo and the shock caused by the Franks’ unfettered ferocity at Bilbais hardened Muslim opposition throughout the Nile region. To make matters worse, the king now slowed the pace of his invasion, perhaps believing that the Vizier Shawar would readily surrender, and Amalric allowed himself to be stalled by offers of negotiation and promises of new tribute. In fact, the king’s entire strategy in late 1168 had been predicated upon a dreadful miscalculation. Believing that the events of 1167 had driven a wedge between Cairo and Damascus, he thought that Shawar would be bereft of allies and thus vulnerable, but he had underestimated the vizier’s diplomatic agility and Zangid ambition.