Saladin

Hero of Islam

Geoffrey Hindley

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781848849228
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Militär- & Seefahrtsgeschichte

This biography of the 12th century Islamic military leader provides a fascinating view of the Crusades and the Medieval Muslim world. Saladin was a Kurdish military leader who led the fight against the Crusades and rose to become first Sultan of Egypt and Syria. He united warring Muslim lands, reconquered the bulk of Crusader states and faced King Richard I of England in one of the most famous confrontations in medieval warfare. His extraordinary character and career are the key to understanding the Battle of Hattin, the fall of Jerusalem and the failure of the Third Crusade. Historian Geoffrey Hindley's study of Saladin's life and times presents a nuanced portrait of this remarkable man who dominated the Middle East in his day. It also offers fascinating insight into the politics and culture of the 12th century Muslim world.

Chapter 8

Triumph in the North

Saladin marched out of Egypt once again as a champion of the jihad on 18 November 1177. His spies had told him that the alliance between the Franks and the Byzantines had broken down and also that Count Philip of Flanders, whose arrival in the summer had seemed to threaten the Muslims, had no serious military intentions. As the Egyptian army moved up the coast to Palestine it seemed at first to be aiming for Gaza. The Templars, who garrisoned the place, called up all available reserves only to see the enemy march past on the road to Ascalon. King Baldwin, with 500 knights and the bishop of Bethlehem, was able to get into the fortress before Saladin arrived. The king sent out urgent messages for reinforcements but, leaving a small force to hem in the royal army, Saladin marched confidently on Jerusalem. The road was wide open, the Christians had been divided and decoyed to positions away to the rear of the fast-moving attack. The army was jubilant at the prospect of reconquering the Holy City, and Saladin, pleased at the success of his manoeuvre, relaxed the usually strict discipline. At an uncertain location known to William of Tyre as ‘Mons Gisardi’ and as the ‘Battle of Ramla’ by Arab sources, the carefree razzia was to be routed.

Young King Baldwin the Leper now roused his kingdom to a heroic effort. A message was smuggled through the Muslim blockade of Ascalon, ordering the Templars at Gaza to join the royal army. When they arrived Baldwin and his knights were able to break out of the encirclement and the combined forces thundered up the road to Ibelin and there turned inland towards Jerusalem. ‘Howling like dogs’ down the rugged ravines, they took the scattered Egyptian army completely by surprise. Saladin barely escaped with his life; whole detachments were slaughtered where they stood; thousands of others fled in terror without any thought of taking up their battle formations. In headlong flight southwards, they abandoned camp, booty, prisoners and even their weapons. It was a crucial Christian victory. With Jerusalem at his mercy Saladin had held the fate of the kingdom in his hand, but his own over-confidence and the lightning recovery of the Christians had transformed a triumph for the jihad into humiliating defeat. The Egyptians were harassed by Bedouin as they struggled back across Sinai, and Saladin, knowing the blow his prestige had suffered, sent messengers ahead on racing camels to Cairo to proclaim his safety and return. From the capital the news was broadcast through the country by pigeon post, and the possibility of rebellion was averted. The Egyptians were back in force in Palestine the next year – but the capture of Jerusalem had been put back a decade.

Baldwin was not strong enough to march on Damascus and so undo all Saladin’s progress in Syria, but he did strengthen his own frontiers. Humphrey of Toron, the constable and one of the kingdom’s most revered elder statesmen, built a fortress on the Hill of Hunin that commanded the road from Banyas to his castle. The king built a new fortification on the upper Jordan overlooking an important crossing known as Jacob’s Ford. It was on sensitive territory. The local peasantry who owed allegiance to Damascus or Jerusalem depending on the side of the river they had their homes used the ford regularly to take their flocks from one grazing to another. Treaty agreements governed the place and the Franks had promised never to fortify it. For this reason Baldwin, despite his great victory, was reluctant to take action which could only be provocative. Urged on by the Templars, however, he did go ahead with the building. The fortress, by militarising a ‘friendly’ stretch of the frontier, angered Baldwin’s own subjects amongst the peasant population as well as those of Damascus. Soon they were appealing to Saladin to force the Christians to abide by their treaty obligations. It was a bad time to ask his help for he was rearranging the administration at Damascus.

His brother Turan-Shah, the governor of Damascus, had been lax in his duties and had also been on suspiciously good terms with as-Salih at Aleppo. Saladin installed his nephew Farrukh-Shah as the new governor, and, much against his will, pacified his brother with the lordship of Baalbek – even though for the past three years it had been loyally held by Ibn-al-Muqaddam. With things so unsettled in his high command, Saladin was unwilling to risk a campaign to satisfy peasant petitioners. Instead he offered to buy the king off with 60,000 gold pieces; when this was refused, he upped the offer to 100,000, and when the Christians still refused to dismantle their castle he warned them it would be destroyed and swore an oath to settle the affair as soon as events were propitious.

In the spring of the next year, 1179, the seasonal movement of flocks across Jacob’s Ford sparked off the war that was bound to come sooner or later. King Baldwin, based at the new castle, was preparing to round up the flocks and in April Saladin sent Farrukh-Shah with a small force to reconnoitre. In fact they came on the Christians unexpectedly and, attacking promptly, came near to destroying the army and capturing the king. Thanks to a heroic rearguard by Humphrey of Toron, he did escape, but Humphrey himself was mortally wounded and died a few days later at the castle of Hunin. Even his Muslim enemies had respected the grand old man, and his death was a severe blow to Christian morale. Once again Saladin, perhaps caught unprepared by the unexpected success, felt unable to follow up the victory. He laid siege to the castle at Jacob’s Ford but withdrew after only a few days to his base at Banyas. From there he sent out detachments of troops to plunder the harvest from Sidon to Beirut while Baldwin moved in force to Toron, across the river from Saladin’s headquarters, to deal with the raiders on their return.

Scouts soon brought the Christian leaders news of a plundering party moving slowly south from Sidon under the command of the redoubtable Farrukh-Shah. It was the ideal opportunity to pay off an old score, and the Christians moved up to intercept the isolated column, laden with booty and flushed with success, sure of an easy victory. The armies met in the Valley of the Springs between the Litani river and the upper waters of the Jordan. The king quickly scattered the Muslims while the Templars and a force led by Raymond of Tripoli moved on up the valley, screening the action of the royal troops and reconnoitring the ground for an advance into Muslim territory. Even an attack on Damascus itself must have seemed a possibility. In fact at the head of the valley the Christian advance guard found itself face to face with the main Muslim army commanded by Saladin. Keeping a keen look-out for his raiding parties, which he knew would be vulnerable on their return, he had seen the herds on the opposite side of the Jordan stampeding and had guessed that they had been disturbed by the Christian army on the march. Rapidly mobilising his men he had gone out to the rescue.

Although the Christians had been taken by surprise, the result of the coming battle was by no means a foregone conclusion. The Muslim army was fresh, but so were the Templars and Tripolitans that faced them. Down the valley Baldwin’s force had dispersed Farrukh-Shah’s men and needed only time to re-form to meet the new threat. Had the Christian advance guard stood firm the whole army might systematically have been brought to bear on Saladin. As it was, the Templars charged haphazard the moment the enemy was sighted. Soon they were being rolled back down the valley on to the disordered, though victorious, troops of Baldwin. In the rout that followed some of the Christian fugitives made their way to safety and the coast while the king and Count Raymond of Tripoli were able to bring part of the army to the crusader castle of Beaufort on the west bank of the Litani. Hundreds stranded on the east bank were massacred or taken prisoner. The dimensions of the disaster were measured by the many noble prisoners taken. Among them was the master of the Temple, who contemptuously refused an offer of his freedom in exchange for one of Saladin’s captured emirs, declaring that the Muslim world could not boast a man that was his equal. He died at Damascus the following year. Of the other distinguished prisoners Baldwin of Ibelin was released in exchange for 1,000 Muslim prisoners-of-war and a promise to find a ransom of 150,000 gold pieces.

It had been a great victory yet Saladin did not feel able to push his advantage too far. The royal army had been scattered but a relief force led by Raymond of Sidon, though it had been too late to join the battle, was still in the field. The troops in Beaufort formed the nucleus round which the fugitives could rally; the garrisons at Hunin and Jacob’s Ford were still intact and in addition news reached Saladin of the arrival of a large body of knights from Europe led by Henry II of Champagne. But Saladin did decide to fulfil the oath he had taken to destroy the castle at Jacob’s Ford. In the last days of August 1179 the place was overrun, the garrison put to the sword and the fortifications levelled to the ground. The chivalrous company from France proved more interested in pilgrimage than sieges and returned to France. Once more Saladin’s operations in Palestine lapsed and the only offensive for the rest of the year was a dramatic raid by the Egyptian fleet on the shipping in the harbour at Acre. It was a tribute to the fighting efficiency of Saladin’s new model fleet and cost the Christians a good deal in merchandise and vessels, but it had little impact on the campaign.

The year 1180 opened with a highly successful raid into Galilee. But neither side was much interested in continuing hostilities. A drought during the winter and early spring threatened both. King Baldwin’s offers of truce were accepted by Saladin, and in May a two-year truce was signed. Hostilities with Tripoli continued for a while – the Egyptian navy made a successful raid on the port of Tortosa but Saladin was repulsed in a foray inland in al-Buqai‘ah. Soon after this he came to terms with Raymond and turned his attention northwards.

He had been called on to intervene in a dispute between Nur-ad-Din Muhammad, prince of Hisn Kaifa, and Kilij Arslan the Selchük ruler of Konya. Nur-ad-Din owed his throne at Hisn Kaifa to the patronage of his great namesake. His father had died when he was still young, and the town had been in danger of coming under the domination of Mosul, then ruled by Qutb-ad-Din, brother of the lord of Aleppo. The great Nur-ad-Din had held his brother back and protected the young prince, but Hisn Kaifa still had reason to distrust Mosul and on Nur-ad-Din’s death had allied with Saladin. The young Nur-ad-Din had also taken to wife one of the daughters of Kilij Arslan but had subsequently treated her so badly that her father was threatening to march and take reprisals. The approach of Saladin’s army from Syria was enough to pacify the angry sultan of Konya, and he even sent an envoy to discuss long-term peace with the new king of Syria. A conference at Samosata on the Euphrates, held we are told in October, settled a two-year truce. This, with the agreement he had already reached with the Christians, gave Saladin time to stabilise his position in Egypt and confirm his hold on Syria.

Arriving in Cairo early in 1181, he spent the rest of that year engrossed in Egyptian affairs, but important developments were soon to draw him north again. During the summer the Frankish lord of al-Karak, Raynald of Chatillon, broke the truce, and in December as-Salih died at Aleppo. The career of Raynald explodes erratically over the next six years, with disastrous effect for the Christian cause, and during that time Saladin learnt to hate him with a personal intensity that he rarely showed towards his enemies. A brief look at the man’s antecedents will help to explain why this should have been so.

Raynald came to the Middle East in the train of Louis VII of France, on the ill-fated Second Crusade. The younger son of a minor French noble, he had no prospects at home and decided to stay on in Palestine in the service of King Baldwin III. He was the typical European newcomer. Bigoted in religion, insensitive to diplomacy, land hungry and brutal, he made a promising start as a robber baron in the best Western tradition. He was young, well built, and a brave soldier, and he caught the eye of Constance, princess of Antioch. The marriage of this young adventurer to the greatest heiress in the Frankish East raised a few eyebrows, but Raynald soon proved his soldierly competence by extending the frontier of the principality of Antioch. In a rapid campaign against the Armenian prince, Toros, he reconquered the territory round the port of Alexandretta and handed it over to the Order of the Temple. This was the beginning of a friendship between the prince and the knights that was to have momentous consequences for the Christian states.

It was also a snub for the Byzantine emperor, Manuel, who claimed suzerainty in Antioch. Worse was soon to follow. The emperor, a loyal and valuable friend of the Latin states, had resigned himself to Raynald’s marriage and had offered to subsidise him if he would fight for the empire against the Armenians. Raynald considered his side of the bargain fulfilled by the Alexandretta campaign, which had in fact cost him little and had benefited nobody but himself and the Templars, but Manuel now refused to pay the promised subsidy until the Armenians had been thoroughly beaten or the empire had received some tangible advantage. Raynald always found deeply repugnant the notion that treaties he signed could lay obligations on him. Furious at what he saw as Manuel’s double-dealing, he promptly teamed up with Toros, recently his enemy, for an invasion of Cyprus. The new allies were temporarily hampered by shortage of funds but Raynald solved this simply enough by torturing, in a particularly bestial manner, the patriarch of Antioch. In a month of rapine and pillage Cyprus was so effectively devastated and the population so terrorised that two years later the Egyptian fleet, traditionally wary in Cypriot waters, was able to plunder there at will.

Four years later, in the late autumn of 1160, Raynald was on a raid in Nur-ad-Din’s territory. Returning, loaded with booty, he and his army were overwhelmed in an ambush. Raynald was taken prisoner and held at Aleppo for sixteen years, being released in an exchange of prisoners late in 1175. His first wife had died while he was in prison, yet, now in his fifties, he soon won himself another rich bride, the heiress of the frontier province of Transjordan and the great castle of al-Karak which glowered over the caravan and pilgrim routes from Damascus to Mecca.

From the moment Baldwin and Saladin signed the truce of May 1180 al-Karak was a potential flash-point. To Raynald it seemed outrageous that, thanks to appeasement politics, Muslim merchants should be able to pass unmolested. The fact that the kingdom, torn by political intrigue and harassed by the drought and famines of early 1180, needed the respite was quite beside the point. In the summer of 1181 he led a detachment out of al-Karak south-east to the oasis town of Taima’ in Arabia on the Mecca road where, as he learnt from his spies, a major caravan, virtually without escort, was to halt. The Christians took rich plunder and many prisoners. Saladin first demanded compensation from Baldwin, but the king was not able to force Raynald to make restitution. In the autumn a convoy of Christian pilgrims was forced by bad weather to take shelter in the port of Damietta, not realising the strained international situation. They disembarked and were promptly imprisoned to be held as hostages until Raynald should disgorge his plunder. When he still proved adamant, the pilgrims were sold into slavery and Saladin prepared to take reprisals.

The death of the eighteen-year-old as-Salih at Aleppo in December was another reason to move north. There were two obvious candidates for the succession, both grandsons of the great Zeng...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Plates
• Maps
• Introduction
• Jerusalem
• Across the Battle Lines
• The Quadrilateral of Power
• Nur-ad-Din and the Propaganda of the Jihad
• The Family of Aiyub
• Vizir of Egypt
• The Critical Years
• Triumph in the North
• Dynast and Hero
• Oh! Sweet Victory
• The Threat from the North
• Acre, the City for which the World Contended
• Saracens and Crusaders
• The Death of a Hero
• Epilogue
• Notes and Sources
• Select Bibliography
• Glossary