The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land (32 page)

The return to the Nile

When the Franks attacked Egypt, Shawar dispatched a flurry of messages to Nur al-Din, begging for assistance and, notwithstanding his earlier misgivings about involvement in North African affairs, the emir now responded with sure and swift resolution. By early December 1168 a full-strength Syrian expeditionary force–including 7,000 mounted troops and thousands more infantrymen–had been assembled south of Damascus. Shirkuh was given overall command, a war chest of 200,000 dinars and full treasury funding to equip his army. But to curtail the Kurd’s capacity for independent, self-serving action, Nur al-Din also took care to send a number of other trusted warlords, including the Turk Ayn al-Daulah. Despite their familial connection, Nur al-Din also seems to have placed considerable trust in Shirkuh’s nephew, Yusuf ibn Ayyub, who apparently needed some persuading to return to the Nile, haunted as he was by dark memories of the Alexandrian siege.

When news reached Amalric that Shirkuh was marching across the Sinai at the head of ‘an innumerable host’, the Latin king was horrified. Rushing to muster his forces at Bilbais, Amalric marched east into the desert in late December, hoping to intercept the Syrians before they could join forces with Shawar. But he was too late. Scouts reported back that Shirkuh had already crossed the Nile and, judging that he would now be too heavily outnumbered, Amalric made the difficult and humiliating decision to retreat to Palestine empty-handed.
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Egypt, at last, lay open to Shirkuh, and he wasted little time in pressing his advantage. In the first days of January 1169 Shawar made desperate attempts to negotiate terms, but his base of political and military support was faltering. His policy of alliance with the Franks–which had included the deeply unpopular, even scandalous, provision of opening Cairo itself to Latin soldiers–lay in ruins. Shirkuh represented Sunni Syria, traditional enemy of the Shi‘ite Fatimids, but for many in the Egyptian capital he was nonetheless preferable to the Christians of Jerusalem, and on 10 January the Caliph al-Adid appears privately to have indicated his own support for the Kurd. On a foggy morning eight days later, an unsuspecting Shawar rode out to continue talks in Shirkuh’s camp, only to be attacked and unhorsed by Yusuf ibn Ayyub and another Syrian, Jurdik. Within a few hours the vizier had been executed and his head placed before the caliph. Even now, however, Syrian success was not assured. Riding into Cairo to be appointed as al-Adid’s new chief minister, Shirkuh was confronted by an angry mob. Penned in among the Old City’s narrow streets, he was said to have ‘feared for his life’, but in a moment of canny quick thinking he redirected the unruly throng to loot the late Shawar’s mansion, and thereby managed to reached the caliphal palace in safety.

In theory, Shirkuh’s elevation to the post of Fatimid vizier confirmed Zangid power in the Nile region, heralding a new era of Muslim unity in which Aleppo, Damascus and Cairo might join forces to prosecute the
jihad
against the Franks. Contemporary Muslim sources indicate that, in public at least, Nur al-Din celebrated Shirkuh’s achievement, ordering his ‘conquest of Egypt’ to be proclaimed throughout Syria, even if the emir harboured concerns about the future loyalty of his lieutenant. In fact, Shirkuh’s true intentions were never made manifest, for barely two months later he died of an acute, suppurating throat infection, having gorged himself on coarse meats.

Records detailing the emergence of Shirkuh’s successor–both as commander of the Syrian expedition and as vizier–are confused and contradictory. He was survived by his Kurdish nephew, Yusuf ibn Ayyub, the veteran of al-Babayn and Alexandria, who might count on the support of most of his uncle’s personal military entourage (or
askar
), made up of 500
mamluks
(slave soldiers). But there were other, perhaps more obviously powerful claimants, including the pro-Zangid Turk, Ayn al-Daulah, and another of Shirkuh’s lieutenants, the talented Kurdish warrior al-Mashtub. After days of debate and intrigue it was Yusuf who emerged victorious. Demonstrating a remarkable gift for the subtleties of court politics, Shirkuh’s nephew played the other Syrian candidates against one another, using suggestion and innuendo, emerging as the compromise candidate. His spokesman and advocate throughout this process was Isa, a silver-tongued Kurdish jurist and
imam
. Only Ayn al-Daulah remained implacable, returning to Damascus with the promise that he would never serve such an upstart. At the same time, Yusuf showed the caliph and his inner circle of Egyptian advisers a different face–one that led them to believe that, as chief minister, he would prove pliable and ineffectual, an outsider who might later be readily overthrown to usher in a Fatimid resurgence. In late March 1169, his ‘command of the [Syrian] troops and appointment as al-Adid’s vizier’ were duly confirmed.
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Whatever the Egyptian caliph’s expectations, Yusuf ibn Ayyub soon revealed his true qualities, crushing an attempted palace coup and brutally suppressing a military revolt within months of taking office. Indeed, in the years that followed, it became clear that his ambitions far outstripped those of his uncle, Shirkuh. Capable, in turn, of extreme ruthlessness and principled magnanimity, gifted with political and military acuity, Yusuf’s achievements would eclipse even those of his overlord Nur al-Din, in time earning him the grand appellation by which he is more commonly known to history:
Salah al-Din
, ‘the goodness of faith’, or, in the western tongue, Saladin.

SALADIN, LORD OF EGYPT (1169–74)

Despite the seismic impact he would have upon history and the war for the Holy Land, no physical description of Saladin has survived. In 1169 few could have guessed that this thirty-one-year-old Kurdish warrior would establish the Ayyubids (named for Saladin’s father Ayyub) as the new rising power within Islam. Some medieval chroniclers, and many modern historians, have suggested that Saladin’s relationship with his Syrian overlord Nur al-Din soured almost as soon as the former took up the office of Egyptian vizier; that the shadows of imminent conflict between Cairo and Damascus were immediately apparent. In reality, despite a limited degree of friction during an initial period of adjustment, there is plentiful evidence to suggest continued cooperation and little to indicate an early move, on Saladin’s part, to assert independence. The balance of power and interplay of loyalty between these two potentates–champions of the Zangid and Ayyubid dynasties–would, in time, become a pressing issue, but in 1169 Saladin had more urgent concerns.
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Challenges

Upon succeeding his uncle as vizier to the Fatimid Caliph al-Adid, Saladin’s prospects for survival were bleak. During the preceding fifteen years the vizierate had changed hands no fewer than eight times; embittered factionalism, treachery, betrayal and murder were all pervasive and ingrained features of Cairene politics. Saladin came to this volatile, lethal environment as an isolated outsider–a Sunni Kurd in a Shi‘a world–backed by limited military and financial resources. Few can have expected him to prevail.

In spring 1169, Saladin’s first instinct was to gather swiftly around him an inner core of loyal and able supporters. Throughout his career he seems to have placed great faith in the fidelity of blood; all but alone in Egypt, he turned to his family, asking Nur al-Din to allow members of the Ayyubid line to quit Syria for the Nile. Within months Saladin was joined by his elder brother, Turan-Shah, and nephew, Taqi al-Din. They were later followed by others, including Saladin’s father, Ayyub, and another, younger brother, destined to rise to prominence, al-Adil. As vizier, Saladin entrusted key positions of power within Egypt to his relations, but he also won over many of his late uncle Shirkuh’s
askar
, who were known as the Asadiyya–a play on his full name, Asad al-Din Shirkuh ibn-Shadi.

These included the fellow Kurd al-Mashtub, who had himself challenged for the vizierate; the forceful and forthright
mamluk
Abu’l Haija the Fat, who in later life reached such an extreme of obesity that he had difficulty standing; and the astute, but rather brutish Caucasian eunuch Qaragush. In years to come these men would prove themselves to be among Saladin’s most faithful lieutenants. He also began to assemble his own
askar
, the Salahiyya. Saladin even found some allies inside the fractious Fatimid court itself. The scribe, poet and administrator al-Fadil, a native of Ascalon, who had been employed by a number of viziers, now entered Saladin’s service, becoming his secretary and close personal confidant. Al-Fadil was an avid correspondent, and copies of his letters today serve as a vital corpus of historical evidence.

Within months of assuming the vizierate, Saladin needed the support of these trusted allies as he faced a series of assaults on his position. He also revealed a capacity for nuanced political operation in dealing with these threats–one that would prove a signal characteristic of his career. When necessary, Saladin could act with pitiless determination, but he was also able to employ caution and diplomacy. In the early summer of 1169, Mutamin, the leading eunuch within the caliph’s palace, sought to engineer a coup against Saladin, opening channels of negotiation with the kingdom of Jerusalem in the hope of prompting yet another Frankish invasion of Egypt to topple the Ayyubids. A secret envoy was dispatched from Cairo, disguised as a beggar, but passing near Bilbais a Syrian Turk spotted that he was wearing new sandals whose fine quality jarred with his otherwise ragged appearance. With suspicions aroused, the agent was arrested and letters to the Franks discovered, sewn into the lining of his shoes, revealing the plot. Saladin curtailed the independence of the Fatimid court, executing the eunuch Mutamin in August and replacing him with Qaragush, who from this point forward presided over all palace affairs.
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Saladin’s severe intervention elicited an outbreak of unrest among Cairo’s military garrison. The city was packed with some 50,000 black Sudanese troops, whose loyalty to the caliph made them a dangerous counter to Ayyubid authority. For two days they rioted through the streets, marching on Saladin’s position in the vizier’s palace. Abu’l Haija the Fat was sent to stem their advance, but Saladin knew that he lacked the manpower to prevail in open combat and soon adopted less direct tactics. Most of the Sudanese lived with their families in the al-Mansura quarter of Cairo. Saladin ordered that the entire area be set alight, according to one Muslim contemporary leaving it ‘to burn down around [the rebelling troops’] possessions, children and women’. With their morale shattered by this callous atrocity, the Sudanese agreed a truce, the terms of which were supposed to provide for safe passage up the Nile. But once out of the city and travelling south in smaller, disorganised groups, they fell victim to treacherous counter-attacks from Turan-Shah and were virtually annihilated.

Saladin continued to use cold-blooded retaliation when he thought the situation demanded it, but often he adopted more subtle, piecemeal methods to deal with his opponents. Once in office as Fatimid vizier, Saladin faced repeated pressure from the caliph in Baghdad, and from Nur al-Din in Damascus, to depose Egypt’s Shi‘ite caliph, a heretic in the eyes of Sunni orthodoxy. But Saladin resisted, making no incautious move to topple al-Adid, cultivating instead a mutually beneficial alliance with the young ruler–one that may even have been shaded by a degree of real friendship. Saladin’s position in the Nile region was far too precarious to risk direct dynastic revolution. To endure as vizier he recognised that, to begin with at least, he needed the measure of stability, and, even more importantly, the bounteous financial benefaction attendant upon caliphal support.

This policy proved its worth in late summer 1169. Still smarting from the humiliation of his retreat from Egypt the preceding winter, King Amalric of Jerusalem chose this moment to launch another assault, this time targeting the port of Damietta, in the eastern reaches of the Nile Delta, with the assistance of a massive Byzantine fleet. This attack posed a grave threat to Saladin, yet he proved more than capable of meeting the challenge. He raised and equipped a huge army, funded by a truly colossal grant of 1,000,000 gold dinars from al-Adid’s treasury. Rather than command the relief of Damietta in person, leaving Cairo prey to revolt, Saladin wisely deputised his nephew, Taqi al-Din, while he remained in the capital. When this force linked up with Syrian troops sent by Nur al-Din, Amalric found himself outnumbered and, unable adequately to coordinate Latin–Greek military operations, his offensive collapsed. This Muslim victory effectively brought to an end the contest for control of Egypt, waged against the Latins throughout the 1160s. The Franks continued to dream of the Nile’s conquest, but for now that region remained in the grasp of Islam, and Saladin.
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Having withstood the early challenges of his first year as vizier, Saladin–echoing Nur al-Din’s approach to the exercise of power–initiated programmes of civil and religious rejuvenation. Alexandria’s fortifications were strengthened, while in Cairo and its southern suburb of Fustat new centres of Sunni Islamic law were erected. Saladin later abolished non-Koranic taxation of trade in Egypt (although he did hike up other forms of levy in order to make up for the shortfall in state income). In November 1170 he also appeared to take up the mantle of
mujahid
, leading his first invasion of Frankish Palestine. At the head of a sizeable army, Saladin overran the small Latin fortress of Darum, just south of Gaza, and skirmished with King Amalric’s hastily assembled relief force before marching to the shores of the Red Sea to occupy the port of Aqaba. While blows were evidently struck against the Christians during this campaign, Saladin’s primary objective may have been to shore up the land route between the Nile region and Damascus, and it would probably be wrong to regard this venture as the first blossoming of his dedication to the holy war.