All Things Medieval

The Crusader royal line had now devolved into a weak, chaotic state from which it never recovered. The leper king left two sisters, with the direction that European kings should decide between them. Although Jerusalem could no longer actually be ruled by either one, the European lords still all coveted the title. The “kingdom” of Jerusalem could go on.

Saladin granted Sibylla’s request to free her husband Guy of Lusignan. Guy and Sibylla sought refuge in Tyre, but Conrad refused to let them in. They literally camped outside the walls as they could, until an epidemic wiped out Sibylla and her daughters. Guy still claimed to be the King, but the faction against him forced young Isabella to divorce her husband and marry Conrad, the lord who now ruled Tyre. Conrad could now claim the same right to be king! Both were utter newcomers to the region, but in a time of chaos, that doesn’t matter much.

Even before the European kings started to arrive, Guy had already begun a siege of the port of Acre, using all of the refugee forces available. The King of Sicily had sent ships, and so did the Archbishop of Pisa. Other forces arrived, so that during 1189, knights from Flanders, France, Germany, Italy and even Armenia took part. Saladin’s army had tried to lift the siege, leading to a complicated battle in which first one side, then the other, had the upper hand. At one critical point, Frankish knights charged up the hill to where Saladin’s field camp stood. Slaves in the Muslim camp began doing their own looting and escaping, while the Frankish knights also got distracted and joined in. Muslim soldiers chased the slaves, German knights chased an escaping horse, and chaos reigned. In the end, the besieging army hung on, not exactly by winning, but by not budging from their trenches.

Saladin’s army completely encircled them on land, although he could not dislodge them. Reinforcements came from Mosul and Baghdad. But every month, a new contingent of eager Crusaders arrived. Every month, too, many of them died from tropical diseases to which they had little immunity. The two sides were built up at almost an even rate, each army growing to match the other.

Muslim records say that at one point, a fleet of Frankish prostitutes landed and set up camp on the beach. The Muslim historians laughed, but not only did their own men sometimes slip away to visit the French girls, those same girls became part of a beach-based, knife-wielding shore patrol. Muslim frogmen trying to take messages into the harbor of Acre had one more hazard.

The siege of Acre, lasting so long and involving so many men from all over Europe, served as a military training school. Both sides had similar technology, such as Greek fire, and both sides could use mechanical engines like catapults. Both sides had fleets of ships to support them. The advantage was now with one side, now with the other. Inside Acre, a craftsman from Damascus invented a variant of Greek fire, a new chemical formula, and burnt down the first round of Crusader siege engines. On the sea, the Europeans gained the advantage in a ferocious sea battle, allowing them to restrict food ships from arriving in Acre. Saladin snuck a few ships in with a plan of the sailors shaving their beards and dressing like Franks, flying Cross flags, and letting pigs run around on deck! (It worked.) On land, the Europeans dug trenches and heaped up earthworks so that in the next pitched field battle, they could resist a tremendous assault.

If the Europeans had been primitive by comparison with the “developed world” of the Near East during the First Crusade, their engineers and leading knights now had learned all the tricks. (And all of these devilish ways of slaughtering other human beings came straight back to bolster the dynastic wars of Europe.) The siege of Acre was a milestone in European military history.

King Philip of France arrived and his men began to build more siege engines. Then King Richard came from Cyprus with Guy, who had rushed to join him on the nearby island. Richard supported Guy’s right to be king, while Philip supported Conrad’s. The Crusader leadership was more divided than ever.

But meanwhile, the siege went on. Diseases continued to ravage both sides, but especially in the Frankish trenches. Among them, King Richard fell ill with something like scurvy and could only lead the troops from a litter. The mood on both sides grew more desperate and vicious. Corpses were used to fill moats and trenches; more corpses were used to pollute the rivers. More and more siege engines were built, and they included engineering advances. They could throw larger stones longer distances, because they had more leverage and speed. Large stones rained on Acre mercilessly. Towers and walls grew weak, mined from below and smashed from above. There was vicious hand to hand fighting at every point where the walls had begun to fall. It went on, day after day.

At length, the starving city sent word to Saladin that it was ready to negotiate terms of surrender. Surrender was accepted by the Franks, with provisional terms including the return of the True Cross relic. The fighting ended; Saladin’s army moved back a quarter mile. Christian forces occupied the city, and the Muslim garrison became hostages to the negotiation process.

Meanwhile, a disastrous thing happened: the King of France and Duke of Austria both went home, leaving Richard to handle it all. Both had very pressing matters in their kingdoms that they really had to attend. Richard was the supreme commander now, the highest ranking ruler.

Saladin began collecting the ransom money for Acre’s Muslim garrison prisoners, and the terms were negotiated back and forth. A first payment was made, and some Christian prisoners released, when suddenly Richard rejected the terms of the negotiation and asked for a complete list of prisoner names. Saladin didn’t produce a list immediately, and Richard decided that he was stalling for time, hoping a reinforcing army would arrive to restart the battles. This may have been true, but it was not in keeping with Saladin’s personal history for handling terms. It was, however, in keeping with Richard’s personal history for impatience.

King Richard held a mass execution of all Muslim prisoners, the whole garrison. European records state that there were about 2600 men executed. He even marched them up to the same hill where Saladin’s camp had once been pitched. The negotiation was over; there was nothing left to talk about, except for everyone in the region to marvel at the savagery of the English king. His execution order became the most famous event of Richard’s life. And Saladin executed all Christian prisoners in retaliation.

They say the current Pope died of a stroke when he heard about the loss of Jerusalem and the True Cross relic. The new Pope Gregory VIII of course began his tenure by proclaiming a new Crusade. Loss of the Holy City had been punishment for their sins; Hebrew prophets like Jeremiah could be borrowed for sermons on repentance. Christendom must repent of their luxurious, worldly ways and give an extra tithe to raise a new army.

In Constantinople, the dynasty of the Komnenoi had been overthrown by members of its extended family. The Emperor was now Isaac Angelos, and the plain fact was that Isaac did not want a new Crusade. He wanted to stabilize the local status quo, push back the Seljuk Turks on his eastern side, and accept Saladin. It was hard enough to maintain his own power against palace coups and revolts. He married his sister to a Norman knight to gain European alliances, and that knight (Conrad of Montferrat) then became the guy who took over Tyre in its hour of chaos! So his brother in law ruled Tyre (and by extension, Tripoli), and Greek rites were back in Jerusalem’s churches. Things were pretty good for the Byzantine Empire.

The aging Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I Barbarossa, set out pretty quickly on his own Crusade. Emperor Isaac actually sought an alliance with Saladin, terrified that a new wave of Latin trouble was coming. The German army arrived on Byzantine territory and asked permission to cross, but the Emperor tried to block them. The Germans occupied a Greek city and defeated the Byzantine army sent to remove them. So that’s about how the Third Crusade started out, as to cooperation. It worked out badly for Emperor Isaac, too; his power dwindled until finally a coup removed and blinded him.

The Germans didn’t get far. In June 1190, the Holy Roman Emperor’s horse slipped on a rock while crossing a river in Turkey. He died, and here we get those horrible royal burial details again. His son had the flesh boiled off his bones, so that the bones could go on with them to the Holy Land, fulfilling his oath. With difficulty, the remaining Germans brought the bones to Tyre, where cousin Conrad helped bury them in Acre.

Meanwhile, the really spectacular part of the Third Crusade was still ramping up, back in England and France. Henry II thought he’d join and started taxing England for the Crusade, but he died. That left Richard being crowned midway through the taxing process, inheriting the mission. Richard was all too happy to leave London as soon as possible and head out on a war adventure. He had been working on overthrowing his father with France’s help; now he joined the Crusade with his dear friend, the French King Philip II.

Saladin’s siege of Jerusalem was almost an anti-climax to the Battle of Hattin. He had already made a post-battle sweep of the region, seizing Nablus (where the Dowager Queen had been living), Ascalon, Acre, Jaffa, Sidon, and Beirut.

In most of these port towns, terms of surrender were accepted. Once it became known that Saladin kept his terms, more towns surrendered. Christians who did not want to live under “dhimmi” terms, paying the special tax, were allowed to leave. The roads were full of refugees trudging toward Tripoli, if it could take them all in.

The only city that did not fall to Saladin in this sweep was Tyre, which remained the sole Crusader foothold by the end of 1187. That’s where all of the battle survivors fled, and a freshly-arriving Norman lord took control. Saladin might have assaulted Tyre, but he chose to go for easy, fast momentum and keep his eye on Jerusalem.

In late September, Saladin camped outside Jerusalem. The city’s commander was the Dowager Queen Mother’s second husband, if you can follow that. Sure, he was a Norman nobleman, but you can see how the chain of command had been disrupted by the losses at Hattin. With most of the monastic knights captured and executed, and most other cities taken, he had few choices. After holding out for a few weeks, he surrendered the gate key to Saladin.

Saladin’s siege had collapsed some outer wall portions, but for a siege, the damage had been light. His original terms of surrender had been generous, but after he was put to the trouble of a siege (with many casualties and much cost), he demanded it unconditionally. Count Balian, the commander who negotiated with him at the wall, told him that in the case of unconditional surrender, the city’s inhabitants would begin a program of destruction. Al-Aqsa Mosque and all Muslim slaves would be the first to go, then they would destroy treasures and other holy sites, and then they would start to kill their own families. This may have been an exaggeration, but perhaps not by much. Balian had been willing to give up weeks ago, but the city had refused to go without a defense, saying they preferred death. Saladin certainly took Balian at his word, and they started to negotiate.

In the end, each family was assessed for a self-ransom to be permitted to leave, and the king’s treasury would pay a reduced sum for the poor. In the administration of the surrender, Saladin’s orders tended to be generous (and, his records say, actually checking the purchased ransom of every individual turned into a fiasco). Women got the benefit of the doubt, as did native Christian Syrians. Some Frankish Christians snuck away in the night over the wall, or dressed as Muslims to saunter out without paying. Thousands of the poor who could not pay were rounded up for slavery, then some freed. Muslim slaves were freed, and the cross atop Al-Aqsa came down. Priests were allowed to carry away their relics and church treasures, permitting a very large sum to slip out of Saladin’s grasp.

Saladin’s attitude to Jerusalem was definitely special and religious. He was very aware of the symbolism of its capture, and he wanted to recreate it for the glory of Islam. Although he had been pragmatic in his alliances many times, he was gradually becoming more motivated in war to defend the faith. Around this time, they began to refer to the holy war against invading Christians as Jihad. As bad as that word’s connotation is to us, in this case it meant that Saladin gave the holy city more generosity.

The refugees left Jerusalem in long, columns, heading toward Tyre. But they had a rough time. Fighting men were welcomed to Tyre and Tripoli, but really nobody wanted the ransomed poor. Antioch didn’t want them. They drifted from city to city, some settling in Armenia, some going all the way to Alexandria. Histories say that Italian ships were reluctantly willing to carry them to Europe, where perhaps some found their way back to Sicily or even Normandy.

Saladin began remodeling the city. He decided to keep the Church of the Holy Sepulchre open, but pilgrims from Europe would be paying a fee now. On the other hand, Coptic Christians who had been kept out of the city were now completely welcome since Saladin was their own Sultan. Al-Aqsa was turned back into a mosque, with the Templars’ horse mess swept out and carpets lining the floor. Saladin invited local Muslims and Jews to return to populate the city, too. As a final touch, the Byzantine Emperor asked to have all the Latin churches converted back to Greek rites.

By the end of 1187, when Saladin had circled back to mop up the remaining castles, it seemed like the last 87 years had been rolled back. Muezzins called faithful Syrians from Al-Aqsa’s minaret, Jews from Ascalon repopulated the bazaars, and Greek priests and monks filed quietly through the alleys to their services. The crack that had opened, the vulnerability caused by Turkish invasion and disunity, had been closed. And so it seemed, for about forty years. That’s a blink of the eye to us, but it was long enough for the old folks to die and children to grow up. Long enough for Saladin’s city to become the new normal.

When Saladin became Vizier of Egypt, he was technically the agent of at least two higher powers. One was Nur ad-Din, the ruler of Aleppo, Mosul and Damascus; the other was, of course, the Sunni Caliph in Baghdad, who wasn’t very powerful by now. It didn’t take long for Saladin to make Nur ad-Din pretty concerned about his independence. Once you’re effectively the Sultan of Egypt, why should you be at the beck and call of some Emir of Mosul? right?

So Nur ad-Din would command, Saladin would sorta cooperate. Saladin sent him gifts from the conquests, and he joined in one military operation—almost. It looked like there would be a showdown between the ad-Dins; the Crusaders would have loved making popcorn and working out where to fit their interests in. But then suddenly Nur ad-Din died, and he left a child heir. Now what?

Nur ad-Din’s father Zengi had appointed various relatives to ruling posts all over Syria and Iraq, and they were all still working together. It was in their family interests to support the little boy, al-Salih. Saladin needed their cooperation unless he planned to just outright conquer their cities, so at first, he sent condolences and support for al-Salih. But he didn’t *do* anything supportive. He was busy in Egypt…

First, Saladin had to build up his own family ruling network. Nobody could make it for long without a sort of mafia like this. Saladin had (at least) four brothers who were all capable generals: Turanshah, Tuktegin, Ahmed and Taj Buri. Turanshah immediately became Saladin’s right hand, fighting an invading force of Nubians while Saladin tried to shore up loyalty in Cairo.

Turanshah took an Egyptian army to Yemen in 1174. He conquered its key port city of Aden and became the Emir of Yemen. That was the first in a string of Emirships for Turanshah, who was also the Governor of Upper (Southern) Egypt and had received tribute from Nubia. Brother Ahmed became known as al-Adil and was Saladin’s substitute ruler in Cairo when he had to leave. Eventually, he became Sultan himself (but that’s some years off). When Saladin eventually fought Crusaders, al-Adil handled many of the field operations and negotiations. The other brothers were field commanders, and Saladin’s sons began to get old enough to join them.

Saladin put a lot of energy into Egypt. His political infrastructure included a theological school for Malikis, the type of Sunni theology now dominant in Africa. This was smart, as it surely opened up embassy ties for previously isolated Shi’ite Egypt.

But that troublesome question of Syria, and the child heir, still persisted…was Saladin the boy’s subordinate, or was his power base grown to where Saladin should be master of Syria too?

Saladin had a propaganda problem in conquering Syria. Technically, there was a Caliph in Baghdad whose name featured in Friday prayers, and Nur ad-Din’s child should have been Saladin’s feudal lord as well. Saladin could only take power legally if he was preventing anarchy, if he was each time arriving in a Muslim city at the “request” of its ruler or to rescue it from revolt or Crusader attack. Feigning Crusader attack, he conquered Homs; then Nur ad-Din’s remaining relatives rose up against him, and in clean battle he conquered most of Syria’s cities. The remaining cities negotiated to recognize him as King (Arabic Malik) of Syria. He even married Nur ad-Din’s widow.

Saladin’s growing power was a direct threat to the Crusader kingdoms. The Crusaders had only achieved limited success in a time when Baghdad, the Turks to the north, and the Fatimids to the south were not united. Now surely Saladin would force them out unless they could move to limit his power. They tried; Amalric’s son Baldwin IV defended Ascalon and attacked Damascus, but while the Crusaders were still too strong to be driven out, Saladin was too strong for them to win. In 1179 the Crusaders built a fortress by the Jordan River, but Saladin fought a tough battle against the Templar knights to capture it. In 1180, both sides backed off from open war and concluded a truce.

A truce with the Crusaders allowed Saladin to build up his Cairo power base better. He rebuilt walls and bridges and founded more schools. His political base in the city became secure. He skirmished with Bedouins who were pirates in the Red Sea and rogue traders, sometimes acting as paid guides to Crusader armies.

In 1182, the extended family of Nur ad-Din and Zengi, still rulers of various cities, revolted against him. Saladin prepared to take half the Egyptian Army north to reconquer Syria; he would remain away from Cairo for the rest of his life.

Most Syrian cities capitulated again to negotiation and threat, without a bloodbath. He besieged Mosul, but he had to be careful since the legal supreme ruler was still the Caliph of Baghdad, nearby. Saladin was not willing to overthrow the Caliph (who had religious authority). Instead, after a period of small battles and shifting alliances, he promised the Caliph that he would conquer territory for him, in exchange for Mosul.

Saladin set out to fulfill his promise. Chief among his targets was Jerusalem, the idea of which was waved like a banner. Jerusalem became the ideal of Muslim redemption; it was deemed the third holy city after Mecca and Medina. When it was a Muslim holding, it had not been considered that way, it had mostly been important to Jews and Christian pilgrims. But now, used as a rallying cry for Saladin’s rise to top leadership, its importance grew.

In 1169, Nur ad-Din’s agent Saladin became Vizier to the last Fatimid Caliph in Cairo. There was one armed revolt in protest, but Saladin had already been diligently executing possible rebel commanders, so it didn’t last long. Saladin then inherited the vast Fatimid Army, which included black African regiments, as well as North Africans and conscripted Egyptians. With this army, he set out to extend Egyptian power. By this time, the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem had gradually pushed its power into the southern desert, from Gaza to the Red Sea.

Saladin’s first challenge was an alliance between Emperor Manuel Komnenos and King Amalric of Jerusalem; they married each other’s cousins and planned to invade Egypt.  King Amalric was the second son of Melisende and Fulk, born after Fulk’s palace-coup defeat briefly healed the marriage. Brother Baldwin III died childless, but Amalric had married young to a Norman heiress and had three children already. When Amalric became King, he was forced to divorce his wife for reasons that are unclear, but the three children were happily accepted as a downstream source of heirs. Amalric was more of a scholar than a warrior, but still he made a strong king, and when he made an alliance with the Emperor, things looked good for Jerusalem’s power to rise.

Manuel and Amalric seemed to be counting on Egypt to put up little defense. They probably knew about the infighting among viziers and generals. In 1168, Amalric and the Hospitaller Knights rode into Egypt and seized the fort of Bilbeis, north of Cairo. They marched straight at Cairo just before Saladin became Vizier; his predecessor offered a huge sum of gold to Amalric to go home. That’s how low Fatimid Egypt’s power had sunk.

Then Saladin happened.

In 1169, twenty Byzantine war ships, 150 galleys, and a flotilla of support craft sailed to Damietta, the nearest Egyptian port city. Some of the ships were personnel carriers who brought a large land army with knights to land at Damietta. Amalric settled into a siege of its fortress, but he would have needed to act with speed and force—and he didn’t. The besiegers ran out of supplies while the new Vizier Saladin put down the revolt and took control of the army. Then he turned north to Damietta.

In disarray, Amalric had to withdraw and sign a truce with Saladin. Saladin followed up quickly by invading Eilat, a port city on the Red Sea. (It marks the base of the sharp south-pointing triangle on a map of Israel.) Eilat had been the Crusaders’ one Red Sea port; now gone. He also seized Gaza, then a Crusader southern outpost. Gaza had a garrison of Templars, the most aggressive knights, but Saladin feinted an attack elsewhere to draw them off.

The Kingdom of Jerusalem felt seriously threatened. It was obviously a terrible thing to have an agent of Nur ad-Din now ruling Egypt; Crusader strategy had been based on playing Turks and Egyptians off each other. Briefly, it appeared that perhaps Saladin had rebelled against Nur ad-Din and there might be a “Clash of the ad-Dins” for the Franks to profit from. Then Nur ad-Din died. Sultan Saladin ruled unopposed.

Saladin and Richard the Lion-Heart are the most famous names of the Crusades, and finally we’re getting to their stories. We met Richard via his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine; now we meet Saladin through Zengi’s successor Nur ad-Din. First, why were so many of these leaders named Something ad-Din? This name is a Laqab, a descriptive surname parallel to “the Lion-Heart” or “the Good.” Din means Faith in Arabic; Nur ad-Din was the Light of the Faith, while Salah ad-Din was the Righteous of the Faith. Their given name, used at home by Mom, is usually forgotten (Saladin’s childhood name was Yusuf).

During the Second Crusade period, Zengi’s son Nur ad-Din ruled Aleppo and Edessa. He married the princess of Damascus, Ismat ad-Din (Purity of the Faith) Khatun (“princess” in Turkic). Damascus hovered between alliances with Turks and Crusaders, depending who seemed stronger, but eventually its ruler died and Nur ad-Din absorbed it. He appointed the former Governor of Tikrit Ayyub  to be its ruler under his authority. Ayyub’s brother was one of Nur ad-Din’s field generals.

All we can say about Ayyub’s family background is that it’s the same mix that produced Nur ad-Din: Turkic, Kurdish, Arab, probably intermarried until it didn’t matter. Their tribal name is in Kurdish, but it means “nomads,” so the root ancestry could be the Arabs who brought herds of goats to the valley of the Tigris River, back in the 8th century. Ayyub is “Job” in Arabic, while his brother always went by a Kurdish name.

Ayyub’s son Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub went into active military service. Nur ad-Din was ambitious to extend his father Zengi’s project: unifying the former Caliphate by conquest, including the jewel in the crown: Egypt. Remember Cairo was built by Shi’ites who aggressively sent missionaries into Persian and Arab lands to agitate against Turkish rule (since Turks were by no possible pretense descended from Mohammed’s tribe).

So Nur ad-Din sent General Shirkuh (“Mountain Lion” in Kurdish) and his nephew Salah ad-Din down to Egypt. The Fatimid dynasty was so weakened that the teenage Caliph had no real control, and the viziers were playing out power games. One vizier thought allying with Nur ad-Din would return him to power, and it did, but Shirkuh and nephew Saladin stayed on in Cairo. Saladin actually befriended the weak Caliph and, ultimately, Saladin was appointed Vizier to the Ismaili Shi’ite Caliph!

When the Caliph died in 1171, Saladin saw no reason to continue the charade. He abolished the office and appointed himself Sultan. For Egypt, it was just another regime change; most Egyptians were still Christians, and the Muslims were still mostly Sunni. The big question was whether Saladin’s new dynasty would rule well or not. Saladin’s descendants are known as the Ayyubids, not the Saladinids, because “ibn Ayyub” was in both his name and his son’s. Arab/Egyptian tradition names each individual as Himself son of Father son of Grandfather (the Town/Region Resident).

I have a whole small book about Egyptian Christians under Ayyubid rule! As soon as I get the Third Crusade out of the way, we’ll talk about it!