by John Man
Saladin was now secure; the more so when early the following year his father, Ayyub, joined him. Other family members followed, and with their help he was able to build his army. He had some 5,000 Kurdish cavalrymen, under their own officers. He had inherited from Shirkuh a force of 500 mamluks (former slaves), to which he added another 500 to form his own personal guard. He ordered the building of new ships to strengthen the navy and safeguard the coast. He dispersed those local units that he had beaten, some 40,000 of them – Egyptians, Armenian archers, the unruly Nubians – being sent off to man the frontiers in Yemen and north Africa.
But securing his power had political implications for Saladin. It made him increasingly independent of Nur al-Din back in Damascus, and Nur al-Din was worried that his protégé might have ambitions beyond his station. He would have done something to reassert his authority, except that in June 1169 northern Syria was struck by the worst earthquake in living memory. Baalbek, Homs, Hama, Aleppo – these, though not Damascus, were turned to rubble. Muslims and Christians alike wondered what they had done to deserve it. Both sides agreed that it was some sort of divine judgement; both decided it was best not to risk further retribution by making any wrong move; both stopped fighting to recover their dead and repair the damage.
That bought Saladin three months’ grace. Then in September another reprieve: Nur al-Din’s brother, Qutb, chief of Mosul, died. Rumours of a plot pointed to Qutb’s administrator, a Christian. There were complicated implications for the family, because Nur’s daughter was married to Qutb’s son, Imad, who had been named as heir but then, in some family wrangle, rejected for his brother, Sayf. In a swirl of military actions and negotiations, Nur took matters into his own hands, seized Mosul and settled it on Sayf, giving Imad only a small town, thus inadvertently causing animosity between the brothers.
Meanwhile, Saladin was free to expand his power-base, putting his father in control of Alexandria and Damietta and his elder brother, Turanshah, in charge of the upper Nile. He also took steps to prove his Islamic credentials by taking up the cause of holy war. This took the form of a raid into Amalric’s territory with some 8,400 cavalry – half his army, but still a force that outnumbered Amalric’s four to one. Amalric retreated and wisely refused to retaliate, so other than proving Saladin’s willingness to engage in jihad, the raid accomplished nothing.
But a second one did. The aim was to retake the castle of Eilat – Ayla as it is in Arabic – which had been seized by the Franks over fifty years before. It sat on a lump of rock jutting up from the sea 12 kilometres from the head of the Gulf of Aqaba, some 250 metres off the Sinai coast. Set on its rocky spine, called Île de Graye by the Franks, it had been built to guard pilgrims en route to St Catherine’s monastery in Sinai, but it could sustain only a small garrison because it had no water supply of its own, relying on a source from the mainland. Today, its coral reefs make it popular with divers. Back then, with the unification of Syria and Egypt, it was suddenly worth attention, because it was on the main road between Damascus and Cairo, and one day, possibly, its little garrison might pose a threat. That’s why Saladin decided to take it out.
It was an easy victory. On the last day of 1170, having dismantled a few ships and packed them on camels for the desert approach, Saladin’s force crossed the few metres of sea and landed on the island’s rocky shore. One look was enough. The castle surrendered without a fight.
It was now 1171. Saladin continued to consolidate. He visited Alexandria, where he ordered stronger fortifications. He reversed many of the legal and administrative moves by which the former Shia leaders had dominated their mainly Sunni population. He fired Egypt’s Shia judges and replaced them with Sunni ones. He founded two Sunni law schools. He favoured Sunni bureaucrats, making one of them, Qadi al-Fadil, his top civil servant – in fact, the very man who had composed the ringing words read out by the caliph at Saladin’s investiture as vizier.
A major obstacle to his rise remained: Cairo’s caliph, al-Adid, the main pillar of Shia influence and the most notable – if only nominal – remnant of Fatimid/Shia power. He had already lost all his troops in battle. Of course, Baghdad’s caliph and Nur al-Din wanted him out. The most significant step would be to have Baghdad’s caliph included in Cairo’s Friday noon prayer, the public khutba (address) in which the imam prays for the head of state. In politics, words are actions. If the top cleric blesses a new head of state, that’s pretty much the end of the old one.
But Saladin was smart enough to bide his time. There was no point making himself an even more obvious target for assassins loyal to the local caliph. Weeks passed. Saladin played for time. His secret police made rebellious emirs vanish. He paid private visits to the caliph, treating him as a friend, while also confiscating his possessions, including the horses on which he had once made public appearances. The caliph, still only twenty, must have seen his days were numbered. Perhaps it was too much to bear, because in late August he fell ill.
The tenth of September 1171 was the first Friday in the new year of 567, according to the Muslim calendar. Saladin took the decisive step and ordered Cairo’s caliph to be replaced by that of Baghdad. Sources disagree on exactly how it happened. In one version, a Persian emir mounted the main pulpit ahead of the local preacher and read out the new names. In another, Saladin gave the order through his father, who threatened to kill the preacher if he did not replace the old names with the new in his prayers. The preacher half-complied, by omitting al-Adid’s name without actually naming the Abbasid caliph, al-Mustadi, because (he said) he didn’t know all the titles – but he added he would insert them the following week.
However it happened, it certainly did happen, and everyone knew it. There was a risk of rebellion, because the caliph, though a political cipher, claimed descent from the Prophet and was head of a dynasty that had ruled for 200 years. The following day Saladin countered the possibility of a threat with a huge display of military might, a march-past through the streets of Cairo by 147 units, each of which had between 70 and 200 men, almost 90 per cent of his army, which now numbered some 16,000. These were formidable men – mounted archers by the thousand, lightly armoured but fast-moving; catapult teams hauling their vast machines; sappers who knew about undermining walls; men who could build siege-towers; loose-robed Bedouin on camels – all out to impress the crowds. ‘Those who saw this review,’ wrote Saladin’s right-hand man, Qadi al-Fadil, ‘thought that no king of Islam had ever possessed an army to match this.’ If the khutba had inspired opposition, the march-past killed it.
And anyway, two days later the caliph died. Rumours flew, of course: he had been poisoned, or poisoned himself, or was murdered, or committed suicide. But in fact he had been ill for weeks. Did Saladin play a role in the young man’s death? If he did, it was indirect, as one story suggests:19 ‘If I had known he was going to die,’ he said to Qadi al-Fadil, ‘I would not have crushed him by removing his name from the khutba.’ To which his chief administrator replied, ‘If he had known you would have kept his name on the khutba, he would not have died.’
The ultimate source is ibn Abi Tayy, a Shia living in Aleppo, whose works are lost, but who is much quoted by Abu Shama.
Fortunately for Saladin, the circumstances allowed him to act the respectful, generous sultan, as he now became, accompanying the caliph’s body to the grave, looking after his children and giving the surviving family members their own quarters, though separating them to prevent them producing a new generation, but very obviously not executing them, which is what most new rulers would have done; while also not announcing a successor, in the knowledge that the next Friday’s khutba would include the name of Baghdad’s caliph, al-Mustadi. Like any king or caesar, Saladin proclaimed his new-found power by minting coins with the Baghdad caliph’s head on one side, his own as sultan on the other.
It all worked perfectly, with no hint of trouble.
Saladin’s takeover as virtual dictator of Egypt marked the start of a revolution, what would now
be called a ‘peace dividend’. Cairo’s suburb of Fustat, burned by Shawar, was restored. Building up the army, with weapons, siege-engines, horses and camels, and the navy all demanded skilled labour and a boost in trade. Saladin sent off an expedition westwards along the coast, looking for lumber, bases and recruits (it reached Tunisia, and was away for sixteen years). Buildings taken over from the Fatimid government became hospitals, covered markets, jails and colleges. Estates (iqtas) seized from Fatimid officials were handed over to Saladin’s men, and raised taxes. He encouraged – in fact enforced – almsgiving, which was after all one of the five Pillars of Islam, but at the same time he abolished an unpopular tax on merchants, traders, artisans and manufacturers, to widespread applause. The economy grew, and so did foreign trade, even with Europeans – notably Italians, mostly from Pisa, who in their main enclave in Alexandria built their own offices, houses and a bathhouse. European goods were vital, in particular for the growing army and navy – chemicals, fabrics, lumber, iron and pitch. Peace also allowed trade goods to flow in from the east – spices, perfumes, dyes and cloth. Christians and Jews, though kept in their places by petty restrictions on their religious practices, were still valued for their administrative and business skills.
And, occasionally, their genius. The most famous Jewish intellectual of his age, Maimonides20 – philosopher, astronomer, theologian, physician – found sanctuary in Cairo. Faced with the extreme anti-Semitism of the Arab rulers in his native Spain, he chose exile over forced conversion or death, and settled in Fustat in about 1168. After his brother David drowned on his way to India, taking the family fortune with him, Maimonides focused on the most lucrative of his many skills, and became physician first to the vizier Qadi al-Fadil, then to Saladin himself, a virtual guarantee of Saladin’s lasting tolerance.
Abu Imran Musa ibn-Maymun in Arabic, Mosheh ben-Maimon in Hebrew.
With his economy flourishing, power in his hands, and all Fatimid property his for the taking, it was not hard for Saladin to raise 60,000 dinars, which he handed over to Nur al-Din as proof of his loyalty. Nur al-Din was not much reassured. He wanted not the occasional lump sum, but regular payments on which he could count when planning holy war. After all, Saladin now commanded the wealth of Egypt. What was that worth? Nur al-Din decided to send in his auditors to find out and set up, as it were, a standing order. There seemed a distinct possibility that Saladin’s boss and role model might turn out to be his nemesis. ‘Knife cuts and needle pricks’, that’s how Saladin described Nur al-Din’s actions. Seething but compliant, he opened his books, explaining how expensive it was to administer his realm and guard it against anti-Islamic Crusaders and pro-Fatimid subversives.
As it happened, a plot was discovered even as the accounting went on. Former Fatimid officials, Armenians, Nubians, Amalric, the Assassins, the Crusaders – they were all in on it, according to Saladin’s agents. The conspirators were caught before completing their plans and were crucified, the crosses being set up in key public places as evidence of the dangers faced by the state and a warning to future dissidents.
Nur al-Din had cause for concern. Saladin had begun to empire-build on his own account.21 In Yemen, a local chief had ambitions to restore the old regime. In response, Saladin sent his older brother, Turanshah, south to Aden, the port that was a gateway to Africa and the east, to impose Syrian rule. Military forays to secure the frontier went off to Libya and Arabia, displaying Saladin’s military might. Clearly he had the resources to fight Nur al-Din, if it came to that.
At the end of July (1173), Saladin’s father, Ayyub, injured himself falling off his horse, and ten days later he was dead.
But it didn’t, because, as the physician and chronicler al-Athir put it, ‘there came a command from God that he [Nur al-Din] could not disobey.’ On 6 May 1174, in Damascus, Nur al-Din was playing polo when he lost his temper and had some sort of fit. He lingered for another few days, when al-Athir and a team of other doctors were called to his bedside. The chronicler – and one of Saladin’s top administrators – Baha al-Din ibn Shaddad says he was suffering from quinsy, an extreme form of tonsillitis that blocks the throat:
We found him lying in a small room in the citadel in Damascus, in the clutches of an attack of angina and even then at the point of death – he could not even speak loudly enough to be heard. When we entered the room and I saw the condition he was in I said, ‘You should not have waited until you were as ill as this to call us. You should be moved at once into a large, well-lit room. In an illness such as this it is important.’
We gathered round to examine him, and blood-letting was advised.
Then he spoke: ‘You would not bleed a man of sixty.’
And he refused to be treated. So we tried other specifics, but they did him no good, and he grew worse, and died.
So ended the life of a man who would have been the light of his age, at least for Sunnis, if he had not been outshone by Saladin.
A panegyric by the thirteenth-century historian Abu Shama summarizes Nur al-Din’s virtues, as seen by a Sunni:22
In Book of the Two Gardens, by which he means the two dynasties of Nur al-Din and Saladin.
He took the lead in everything that was good about his age. He re-established order everywhere, thanks to his even-handedness, his courage, and the universal respect he inspired, which he did despite serious setbacks and extended disasters. In the lands he conquered, he found the resources necessary to continue Holy War, so that he made it easy for his successors to continue the same course. In Aleppo, he established orthodoxy, abolished impious novelties which heretics had introduced into the call to prayer, and eradicated the Shi’ite heresy. He endowed the city with colleges and pious foundations and caused justice to flourish. Having finally conquered Damascus, he re-established order, surrounded the city with ramparts, built colleges and mosques, repaired roads and enlarged markets. He punished those who used wine severely. In war, he distinguished himself by his firmness, by his use of the bow and by the vigour of his swordsmanship . . . His script was fine. He took pleasure in reading religious books, and followed the traditions of the Prophet. Passionate in his determination to do good, he was restrained in the pleasures of the table and the harem, moderate in spending and simple in his tastes.
His death left a power vacuum in Syrian politics that his eleven-year-old son could not possibly fill.
5
Back to Syria, and a Dead-end
NO, NUR AL-DIN’S ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD SON, AL-SALIH, COULD not fill the void left by his father’s death. But Saladin could, because he could now see before him a grand vision. He could unite Egypt and Syria as a firm foundation for holy war against the Christian invaders. Egypt was too far away to assault Jerusalem. He needed to be back in Syria.
To rule Syria, he would need patience and a good deal of luck, for there were other contenders: Nur al-Din’s two nephews, Sayf in Mosul and his scorned elder brother, Imad. But neither had the power to seize all Syria, and as rivals they would never cooperate. In Damascus and Aleppo, officials and top families jockeyed for influence. Over the border, the Frankish leader Amalric saw a chance to regain lost ground for Jerusalem, but he had dysentery and died in mid-July. This was a sign of God’s favour, as far as Saladin was concerned: Jerusalem was left in the shaky hands of Amalric’s thirteen-year-old son Baldwin IV, removing the threat of invasion for a while. Alliances formed and re-formed, plot countered plot, until al-Salih’s regent, the eunuch Gumushtegin, based in Aleppo, emerged as the front-runner and Saladin’s top opponent.
Saladin’s best weapon, as often, was masterly inactivity. He had a big stick, in the form of the Egyptian army, but in the tradition of Nur al-Din he preferred soft speech to force. He wrote some very careful letters, one to little al-Salih, calling his father’s death ‘an earthquake shock’ that deprived Islam of her Alexander; and another to the leaders of Damascus. He would serve them if asked, if it served a nobler cause – that of Islam: ‘In the interests of Islam and its people
we put first and foremost whatever will combine and unite them in one purpose.’ That meant remaining loyal to Nur al-Din’s will. Unity and loyalty – those were the necessities.
Good for him that he did nothing precipitate, because in July 1174 came a Christian invasion led by William II, the Norman king of Sicily. These Normans were the descendants of the Norsemen – the Vikings – who had raided their way around the coast of Europe into the Mediterranean; so pillage was in their blood. They had, perforce, come to terms with their Arab and Christian neighbours, and had themselves adopted Christianity. But they made unreliable allies. In this case, they had planned an assault on Alexandria with those other raiders, Jerusalem’s Crusaders under Amalric. The whole operation was a disaster for William, for many reasons. The Normans didn’t know that Amalric had just died; nor that Manuel of Constantinople had warned Saladin of a Norman invasion (Manuel and William having quarrelled because Manuel had offered his daughter in marriage, then withdrawn the offer); nor that Saladin was near enough to be told of the landing by pigeon-post, which brought the news from Alexandria in a few hours. After bombarding the walls of Alexandria for three days, the Normans learned of Saladin’s imminent arrival and fled – giving Saladin a propaganda coup, allowing him to claim to be the right man to deal with outside threats to Islam.
