by John Man
Now it was Saladin who was wrong-footed. He sent a message to Richard again proposing peace. Again, they argued over terms; again, Ascalon proved a sticking point; and now Richard’s main force had arrived. Saladin attacked with his cavalry, Richard fended them off with spears and volleys of arrows, then headed a counter-charge, all of this going on in full view of Saladin, who was aghast with admiration at Richard’s élan. When the king’s horse fell wounded, Saladin sent an aide leading two horses as replacements. The battle of Jaffa, the last of the Third Crusade, ended in a draw. Saladin retreated to Jerusalem, leaving Richard to collapse into an exhausted fever.
In the end, it was not further victory or defeat that ended the Crusade, but sheer fatigue. Saladin offered the same terms: give up Ascalon, or there would be no deal – an offer he backed up with a gift of peaches and pears and an ice-cold drink from his store of snow from Mount Hermon. Richard could not go on. He was sick, his troops were tired and his brother John looked likely to seize the English throne. He agreed. Pilgrims could come and go, the Christians would keep their little rump-state – 100 kilometres of coast – well clear of Jerusalem, and Ascalon would remain out of reach, disarmed.
On 2 September, he signed the Treaty of Jaffa, ending the Third Crusade, and so the next day did Saladin. It really was over at last.
A small party of Crusaders made a final visit to Jerusalem, where Saladin gave them an audience, chatting affably with Hubert Walter, bishop of Salisbury, about Richard’s virtues and vices (brave, certainly, but lacking wisdom and moderation, in Saladin’s opinion). And what, asked Saladin, do they say in England about me and my people? The bishop was the soul of diplomacy: ‘My lord, in my humble opinion, if anyone were to bring your virtues into comparison with those of King Richard, and were to take both of you together, there would not be two other men in the world who could compete with you.’ After such flattery, Saladin was magnanimous. At the bishop’s request, he allowed for four prelates to serve the needs of Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth. This was not generosity, but pure politics. When the Orthodox asked for an extension of their responsibilities to full control of the Orthodox Church, Saladin refused. Peace depended on every religion and every sect having its fair share, and no more.
The True Cross? He still had it. Queen Tamar of Georgia offered to buy it for 200,000 dinars. He turned her down. He would keep it as a bargaining chip, a ‘trump’, as he put it, in case of future need.
Richard left on 9 October 1192, to start an adventure that became one of the best-known in English history, in both its factual and legendary versions. It is also a story that spotlights the power of coincidence and the significance of the inter-relationships of Europe’s royal families.
A storm forced him into Corfu, which was owned by the Byzantine emperor, Isaac Angelus. After being the victim of extreme violence by crusading Europeans, the Orthodox hated the westerners almost as much as they hated Muslims (more, perhaps, since they had a treaty with Saladin). Fearing arrest, Richard disguised himself as a Templar knight and fled with four aides in a pirate boat that was wrecked on the other side of the Adriatic. On they went, aiming for Saxony and its ruler Henry the Lion, who was his brother-in-law, being married to his sister Matilda. To get there, he had to cross Austria, ruled, as bad luck would have it, by the same Leopold whose flag he had cast down when taking over Acre. Stories about Richard’s spiteful act had spread, and so had the rumours connecting him to the murder of Conrad, who, by another unfortunate coincidence, had been Leopold’s cousin. So Richard was infamous in Austria. And now it was somehow known that he was on the run.
At an inn near Vienna he was recognized, arrested and delivered to Leopold, who accused him of the murder of Conrad, imprisoned him in Dürnstein castle for three months, then handed him on to the emperor, Henry VI, whose father, Frederick Barbarossa, had been a long-time opponent of Richard’s brother-in-law Henry the Lion. The emperor promised to release him in exchange for an oath of vassaldom and an immense ransom – 65,000 silver pounds, as much as the whole Saladin Tithe and over twice the English Crown’s annual income. Richard’s mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, the government and the Church taxed, begged, borrowed and seized cash and treasure, while his brother John actually offered half the amount of the ransom to the emperor to keep his prisoner captive. The emperor declined, the ransom was raised and Richard released. He then spent five years fighting in France, never learned English and spent only six months of his life in the country he supposedly ruled. Eventually, he forgave John his treachery and named him heir. He died in 1199, aged forty-two, of gangrene after being hit by a crossbow bolt fired from a rebel French castle. In his magisterial History of the Crusades, Steven Runciman sums up Richard’s life: ‘He was a bad son, a bad husband and a bad king, but a gallant and splendid soldier.’
Much later, a legend arose telling the story of Richard’s minstrel, Jean, nicknamed ‘Blondel’ for his long, blond hair, who supposedly went from castle to castle singing a special song outside each of them as a way of finding his master, until eventually Richard revealed his presence by joining in the song. Details vary, but in any event it’s probably nothing but legend: the tale – not mentioned in the Itinerarium Peregrinorum (though Richard’s capture and imprisonment are) – emerged only seventy years later, and scholars are not sure whether ‘Blondel’ was Jean I, the father, or his son, Jean II. From the eighteenth century onwards, the story became part of the romance surrounding Richard as portrayed in songs, novels, films and a musical.
15
Death, and Enduring Life
SALADIN HAD FREED JERUSALEM; BUT THE CHRISTIANS WERE still there, not tossed into the sea. He could do no more. He was fifty-four, old for the times, and tired and ill. All this while, he had hoped to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, and still kept hoping, but duty called him home to Damascus, where he arrived on 4 November 1192.
Next day, he held an audience, ‘to which everyone was allowed to come and satisfy their thirst to see him’. The words are those of Baha al-Din, who recorded his master’s decline in vivid and painful detail. Saladin’s status was that of national hero and saint, a sort of medieval version of Nelson Mandela. ‘People of all classes were admitted, and poets recited poems in his praise: “that he spread the wings of Justice over all, and rained down boons on his people from the clouds of his munificence and kindness”.’ Death was far from Saladin’s mind – he worked during the day, and occasionally went hunting gazelles. The mood was more of recuperation than decline.
Actually, this part of Baha al-Din’s report was secondhand, because he came to Damascus from Jerusalem only in mid-February 1193, through torrential rain that turned the roads to mud. When Baha arrived, Saladin summoned him through a crowd of officials: ‘Never before had his face expressed such satisfaction at the sight of me; his eyes filled with tears, and he folded me in his arms.’
But by now Saladin was a shadow of his former self. There were no more receptions, and he had trouble moving. Once when he was surrounded by some of his younger children, the sight of ambassadors with shaven faces and close-cropped hair made one of the boys cry, so, according to Baha, Saladin dismissed the visitors without hearing what they had to say. ‘“It’s a busy day,” he said, in his usual kindly way. Then he added: “Bring me whatever you have ready.” They brought him rice cooked in milk and other light refreshments, and he ate them, but without much appetite as it seemed to me.’
Saladin asked about the pilgrimage to Mecca. When Baha said the pilgrims would arrive through the mud the next day, Saladin said he would go and meet them, despite the fact that ‘he no longer had the good spirits I knew so well.’
As they rode out together – with people crowding round to get a glimpse of the great man – Baha noticed that Saladin had forgotten his usual cloak. When Baha pointed this out, ‘he seemed like a man waking from a dream’, and asked for it, but the wardrobe master was not to hand. The incident upset Baha. He thought, ‘The Sultan is asking fo
r something he never used to be without, and he cannot get it! . . . I was heavy of heart, for I feared very much for his health.’
That evening and the next day, lassitude and a low-grade fever set the sultan on a downward path. On the fourth day of his illness, his physicians ‘thought it necessary to bleed him and from that moment he grew seriously worse.’ On the sixth day, he drank some water – too hot, he complained, and then, when he tried the next cup, too cold: ‘“Oh, God,” he said, but not in an angry way, “perhaps there is no one who can make the water at the right temperature.” Al-Fadil [Saladin’s secretary] and I left him with tears streaming from our eyes, and he said to me, “What a great soul the Muslims will lose! By God, any other man in his place would have thrown the cup at the head of the man who brought it.”’
Three days later, Saladin’s mind began to wander and he became unconscious. Everyone – his staff, his family, the whole city – knew the end was near. ‘It is impossible to give any idea of the sorrow and trouble with which one and all were oppressed . . . When we came out, we used to find the people waiting to gather from the expression of our faces what was the Sultan’s state.’ A brief moment of consciousness, a sip of barley-water, a little perspiration on the legs – tiny signs of life brought temporary hope.
Saladin’s son and heir, al-Afdal, caused consternation by demanding that the Syrian emirs take an oath of loyalty to Saladin, each one pledging ‘from this moment forth, with single aim and unflinching purpose . . . consecrating to his service my life and wealth, my sword and my men, as long as he lives, and afterwards I will keep the same faith with his son’, swearing to God, failure being punished by enforced divorce, sale of slaves and a barefoot pilgrimage to Mecca. Some agreed, some refused outright, some agreed if they were assured of their estates. It left a bad feeling: oaths are not demanded by the strong.
On the evening of Tuesday, 3 March (27 Safer in the Muslim calendar), the twelfth night of his undefined illness, ‘he remained sometimes with us, sometimes wandering’. A sheikh stayed with him all night, reading from the Quran. Saladin died around dawn the following morning, the 4th. ‘I was reciting the Divine Word to him,’ reported the sheikh to Baha al-Din, ‘and had just reached the great verse 59:22, He is God; there is no god but He. He is the knower of the Unseen and the Visible; He is the All-merciful, the All-compassionate, and I heard him say – God have mercy on him – “It is true!” And this at the time of his passing away, and it was a sign of God’s favour to him.’
Could it have been so perfect? Well, the truth in these circumstances is more about what is fitting than about facts. The same sheikh gave a slightly different version, equally perfect, to others – that he was reading 9:129, Allah is sufficient for me, there is no god but He; in Him I have put my trust, when Saladin smiled, his face grew radiant and he went in peace.
Either way, it inspired Baha al-Din. Never since the time of the first khalifs had Islam suffered such a blow, he wrote. God alone could fathom the intensity of the grief. ‘I had often heard people say they would lay down their lives for that of someone very dear to them, but I thought it was only a manner of speaking . . . but I swear before God that had we been asked that day “Who will redeem the Sultan’s life?” there were several of us who would have replied by offering his own.’
The body was washed and put in its shroud. ‘All the products used for this purpose had to be borrowed, for the Sultan possessed nothing of his own.’ Baha al-Din was asked to watch, but could not bring himself to do so. The coffin was carried in, draped with a piece of striped cloth, and carried out through the wailing crowd to the palace where the sultan had spent his last days. Since he had not had either the time or the will to arrange the building of a mausoleum for himself, he was buried in the soffa (summerhouse).
A few months later, al-Afdal sent an embassy to al-Nasir, the caliph in Baghdad, to obtain recognition that he, al-Afdal, was Saladin’s true heir. He sent along Saladin’s sword, coat of mail and other war equipment, and a letter in praise of his father, which ran in part:
It was he who subjugated the infidel princes and placed a chain around their necks; he who captured the fiends of idolatry and bound them with heavy bonds; who subdued the worshippers of the Cross and broke their backs; who unified the Believers, preserved them, and put their affairs in order; who closed our borders, directing our affairs with a sure hand; humiliated every enemy outside your august house.
Next door to the Umayyad mosque, al-Afdal had a domed building built with a window so that the people could look out over a small, square, domed mausoleum into which his father’s coffin was moved two years after his death. The historian ibn Khallikan recorded that the coffin was inscribed with the date of Saladin’s death, and these words: ‘Almighty God! Let his soul be acceptable to thee and open the gates of Paradise; that being the last conquest for which he hoped.’
And what of the True Cross, the symbol of what the Christians had been fighting for, the loss of which had deprived them of hope at Hattin? After Saladin’s death, his son al-Afdal sent it to the ungrateful caliph in Baghdad. In 1221, it was supposed to be returned to the Christians as part of the peace that ended the Fifth Crusade, but, in Runciman’s words, ‘when the time came for its surrender, it could not be found.’ No one has heard of it since.
16
A Brief History of Leadership
HERO AND ‘UNIFIER’ OF ISLAM, THE LEADER WHO CRUSHED the Crusaders and reclaimed Jerusalem, admired by followers and enemies alike, admired then, admired now: what was Saladin’s secret?
The answers involve more than biography and the history of the period. It is possible to draw on other examples and other ideas of great leadership, and on modern psychology and leadership theory.
One key to his success was that he combined two styles of leadership, exercising what modern theorists call hard and soft power. Several times in history leadership has been equated with the ruthless exercise of power. One exponent was Lord Shang, writing in China in about 400 BC. He advised that for those who rule might is right, power everything. Human beings are idle, greedy, cowardly, treacherous, foolish and shifty. The only way to deal with them is to entice, terrify, reward and punish. He was writing when China was divided between seven warring states. Two thousand years later, Machiavelli was confronted by similar circumstances, Renaissance Italy’s warring mini-states, and argued that without the ruthless – indeed cynical, even deceptive – exercise of power there is no state, no guarantee of peace, no possibility of progress.
Saladin might have taken the same hard-power approach across the board, imposing his will on Shia and Sunni alike, then turning with unremitting ruthlessness on the Crusaders. But he didn’t. He mixed force with persuasion. Such subtlety makes him seem an exemplar of modern leadership. It’s not quite that simple, because he was also capable of brutal acts. It was the combination that made him so effective.
But where did that come from?
It has become a cliché of leadership theory that the quality we should be looking for in a great leader is ‘charisma’. Originally, a charisma (or ‘charism’, as the OED puts it, without the ‘a’) was any ‘gift or favour specially vouchsafed by God; a grace, a talent’, such as the power of healing or prophecy. It has the same root as ‘charity’, the divine gift of generosity. It was the German political philosopher Max Weber (1864–1920) who popularized the word as the quality ‘by virtue of which [a person] is set apart (originally by prophets, healers, law-givers, hunting-leaders or war-heroes) and seen as possessing supernatural, superhuman, or at least in some way exceptional powers or qualities not available to anyone else. These powers are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on this basis he is treated as “leader”.’68
Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 1922; translated as Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Chapter 3 on ‘The Nature of Charismatic Authority and its Routinization’ translated by A. R. Anderson and Talcot Parsons, 1947.
There is a problem here: if char
isma is magical, or the result of divine inspiration, it explains nothing. It’s tautological, like saying ‘he’s a leader because he’s a leader’. What we are after is understanding: how did he become charismatic?
One key almost certainly lay in Saladin’s childhood, about which we know nothing. In an article in the Harvard Business Review devoted to leadership, the psychoanalyst Manfred Kets de Vries comments on business leaders: ‘They can’t be too crazy or they generally don’t make it to senior positions, but they are nonetheless extremely driven people. And when I analyse them, I usually find that their drives spring from childhood patterns and experiences that have carried over into adulthood.’69 The successful leader carries enough insecurity to inspire a desire to change the world, and enough of a sense of security to confront this challenge without lapsing into paranoia, criminality or any number of behaviour patterns that undermine his aims.
Diane L. Coutu, ‘Putting Leaders on the Couch: A Conversation with Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries’; see Bibliography.
I once interviewed a number of survivors for TV and radio, about twenty-five of them. They were all people who had endured terrible experiences, yet come through well psychologically, as opposed to others who were left with debilitating emotional scars. It seemed to me that what they shared was a belief that the universe is fundamentally a supportive place, that it rewards action, and that any setback is a challenge to be overcome. Insecurity in early childhood can act like acid, eating away at this foundation, destroying the very basis of survival, simply because a setback becomes a symbol of a malevolent universe that will get you in the end, undermining your will to fight. Security – whether provided by parents, or a wider family, or a group, or a class system, or education – gives a foundation for independence, self-confidence, and possibly leadership.
