The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land

by Thomas Asbridge

  Saladin has often been criticised for this failure. The Iraqi contemporary Ibn al-Athir offered a withering appraisal of the sultan’s generalship, observing that: ‘This was Saladin’s custom. When a town held out against him, he would grow weary of it and the siege and leave…no one can be blamed in this matter except Saladin, for it was he who sent armies of the Franks to Tyre.’ In part, the sultan’s decision can be justified by the inherent weaknesses of his military regime. By the end of 1187, after months of campaigning, with Ayyubid resources stretched to breaking point and the loyalty of some of his allies wavering, Saladin was obviously struggling to keep soldiers in the field. Judging that his base of support depended on his continued ability to pay and reward his troops, reluctant to stick with the task and risk insurrection, he chose to move on to pursue less intractable quarry. In truth, though, the smarting humiliation at Tyre was telling. The sultan’s earlier decision in September 1187 to prioritise the devotional and political objective of Jerusalem had possessed a certain logic. But by turning his back on an unconquered Tyre in January 1188, the sultan laid bare his limitations. For all the energy exerted in uniting Islam, all the preparations made for holy war, ultimately Saladin possessed neither the will nor the resources to complete the conquest of the Palestinian coastline. For the first time since Hattin it appeared that the all-conquering Ayyubids might fail to drive the Franks into the sea.19

  Sweeping up pawns

  Saladin spent the remainder of that winter resting in Acre. Anxious about the prospect of a Christian counter-offensive, he considered razing the city to the ground to prevent it falling into enemy hands, but eventually elected to leave this ‘lock for the lands of the Coast’ intact, summoning Qaragush from Egypt to oversee Acre’s defence. From spring 1188 onwards, Saladin began to march through Syria and Palestine, seeking out vulnerable Latin settlements, outposts and fortresses, sweeping up relatively easy conquests. Passing through Damascus and the Biqa valley, that summer he launched attacks on the principality of Antioch and the northern reaches of the county of Tripoli. The major Syrian port of Latakia was captured, while down the coast the Muslim qadi (religious judge) of Latin-held Jabala engineered that port’s surrender. The sultan also seized castles such as Baghras and Trapesac in the Amanus Mountains north of Antioch and Saone and Bourzey, in the southern Ansariyah range.

  Saladin made significant gains in the northern crusader states, but showed a profound reluctance to commit to any prolonged investments. The imposing Hospitaller and Templar castles at Krak des Chevaliers, Marqab and Safita were all bypassed, and no real effort was made to threaten the Latin capitals of Tripoli and Antioch–with Saladin agreeing an eight-month truce with the latter (albeit on punitive terms) before returning to Damascus. The sultan then prosecuted a winter campaign in Galilee, securing the surrender of the region’s last remaining Frankish strongholds: Templar-held Safad and Hospitaller Belvoir. Around the same time, Ayyubid troops captured Kerak in Transjordan, and six months later nearby Montreal capitulated. The key factor in these successes was Latin isolation. Surrounded, deep in what was now Muslim territory, the garrisons of all four of these mighty ‘crusader’ castles found themselves in hopeless situations. With no possible prospect of holding out indefinitely, they laid down their arms, allowing Saladin to consolidate his dominion over Palestine. Sweeping through the Levant, the sultan had maintained martial momentum throughout 1188, but at the cost of leaving Antioch inviolate and the county of Tripoli all but untouched.

  In the course of that year’s campaigning, Baha al-Din ibn Shaddad joined Saladin’s inner circle of advisers. A highly educated Mosuli religious scholar trained in Baghdad, Baha al-Din had acted as a negotiator for the Zangids in 1186 when, in the wake of the sultan’s severe illness, he agreed terms with Izz al-Din of Mosul. In 1188 Baha al-Din took advantage of the recent Muslim conquest of the Holy Land, making a pilgrimage to Mecca and then Jerusalem. It was at this point that Saladin invited Baha al-Din to join the Ayyubid court, evidently impressed by the Mosuli’s piety, intellect and wisdom. When the two met, Baha al-Din presented a copy of his newly authored treatise on The Virtues of Jihad to the sultan and was then appointed as qadi of the army. He rapidly became one of Saladin’s closest and most trusted counsellors, staying with him almost constantly throughout the years that followed. Baha al-Din later composed a detailed biography of his master, which now serves as a critically important historical source, particularly for the period after 1188.20

  The loss of focus

  Despite having laid plans to launch new, more determined offensives against Tripoli and Antioch with the onset of the new fighting season, Saladin failed to return to the north in 1189. Instead, seemingly worn down by the burden of rule and near-incessant campaigning, the sultan became uncharacteristically indecisive and ineffectual. With each passing month, the prospect of western retaliation loomed larger. Saladin certainly appears to have been aware that the Third Crusade was afoot–in a letter written later that year, his adviser Imad al-Din demonstrated an incredibly detailed and accurate understanding of the crusade’s scope, organisation and objectives. Yet the sultan made no last-ditch attempt to overcome the likes of Tyre before the inevitable storm struck. Instead, inexplicably, he wasted the spring and early summer of 1189 in protracted negotiations over the fate of Beaufort, a relatively insignificant and isolated Latin fortress, perched in the mountains of southern Lebanon, high above the Litani River.

  Another questionable decision proved still more costly. As victor on the field of battle at Hattin in July 1187, Saladin had taken Guy of Lusignan, the Latin king of Jerusalem, prisoner. In summer 1188, however, the sultan decided to release Guy from captivity (apparently after repeated appeals from Guy’s wife Sibylla). The motive behind this seemingly injudicious act of magnanimity is difficult to divine. Perhaps Saladin judged Guy to be a spent force, incapable of rousing the Franks, or possibly hoped that he might cause dispute and dissension among the Christians, challenging Conrad of Montferrat’s growing power in Tyre. Whatever his reasons, the sultan probably did not expect Guy to honour the promises he made in exchange for his release–to relinquish all claim to the Latin kingdom and immediately leave the Levant–pledges which Guy renounced almost as soon as he was at liberty.21

  If Saladin did take Guy for a broken man, he was sorely mistaken. At first the Latin king struggled to make his will felt among the Franks, and Conrad twice refused him entry to Tyre. But by summer 1189, Guy was preparing to make an unexpectedly bold and courageous move.

  THE GREAT SIEGE OF ACRE

  The blistering heat of midsummer 1189 found Saladin still bent upon the conquest of the intractable stronghold of Beaufort. But in late August news reached him in the foothills of the Lebanese highlands that stirred feelings of dread and suspicion–the Franks had gone on the offensive. In 1187–8 Conrad of Montferrat had played a crucial role defending Tyre against Islam, yet he still baulked at the notion of initiating an aggressive war of reconquest. Secure within the battlements of Tyre, Conrad seemed content to await the advent of the Third Crusade and the great monarchs of Latin Europe–willing, by and large, to wait out the coming war, looking for any opportunity for his own advancement.

  Now, the unlikeliest of figures decided to seize the initiative. The disgraced king of Jerusalem, Guy of Lusignan, whose ignominious defeat at Hattin had condemned his realm to virtual annihilation, was attempting the unthinkable. In the company of his redoubtable brother, Geoffrey of Lusignan, a recent arrival in the Levant, as well as a group of Templars and Hospitallers and a few thousand men, Guy was marching south from Tyre towards Muslim-held Acre. He seemed to be making a suicidal attempt to retake his kingdom.

  The Siege of Acre during the Third Crusade

  At first Saladin greeted this move with scepticism. Believing that it was merely a feint designed to lure him away from Beaufort, he held his ground. This allowed King Guy to negotiate the narrow Scandelion Pass, where, one Frank wrote, ‘all the gold in Russia’ could
not have saved them had the Muslims moved to block their advance. Realising his mistake, Saladin began a cautious advance south to Marj Ayun and the Sea of Galilee, waiting to assess the Christians’ next move before turning west towards the coast. Benefiting from his enemy’s circumspection, Guy followed the road south to arrive outside Acre on 28 August 1189.22

  Acre was one of the great ports of the Near East. Under Frankish rule it had become an important royal residence–a vibrant, crowded and cosmopolitan commercial hub, and the main point of arrival for Latin Christian pilgrims visiting the Holy Land. In 1184 one Muslim traveller described it as ‘a port of call for all ships’, noting that ‘its roads and streets are choked by the press of men, so that it is hard to put foot to ground’ and admitting that ‘[the city] stinks and is filthy, being full of refuse and excrement’.

  Built upon a triangular promontory of land jutting into the Mediterranean, Acre was stoutly defended by a square circuit of battlements. A crusader later observed that ‘more than a third of its perimeter, on the south and west, is enclosed by the flowing waves’. To the north-east, the landward walls met at a major fortification, known as the Cursed Tower (where, it was said, ‘the silver was made in exchange for which Judas the Traitor sold the Lord’). In the south-east corner the city walls stretched into the sea to create a small chained inner quay, and an outer harbour, protected by a massive wall running north–south that extended to a natural outcrop of rock–the site of a small fortification known as the Tower of Flies. The city stood at the northern end of a large bay arcing south to Haifa and Mount Carmel, surrounded by a relatively flat, open coastal plain, some twenty miles in length and between one and four miles in breadth. About one mile south of the port the shallow Belus River reached the coast.

  The city stood at the gateway to Palestine–a bastion against any Christian invasion from the north, by either land or sea. Here Saladin’s resilience, martial genius and jihadi dedication would be tested to the limit, as Islam and Christendom became caught up in one of the most extraordinary sieges of the crusades.23

  Early encounters

  When King Guy reached Acre his prospects were incredibly bleak. One Frankish contemporary remarked that he had placed his meagre force ‘between the hammer and the anvil’, another that he would need a miracle to prevail. Even the Muslim garrison apparently felt no fear and began jeering from Acre’s battlements when they caught sight of the ‘handful of Christians’ accompanying the king. But Guy immediately demonstrated that he was developing a more acute sense of strategy; having surveyed the field that night, under the cover of darkness, he took up a position on top of a squat hill called Mount Toron. Some 120 feet high, lying three-quarters of a mile east of the city, this tell afforded the Franks a measure of natural protection and a commanding view over the plain of Acre. Within a few days a group of Pisan ships arrived. In spite of the punishing siege to come, many of the Italian crusaders on board had brought their families with them. These hardy men, women and children proceeded to land on the beach south of Acre and make camp.24

  The measured pace of Saladin’s advance to the coast almost had disastrous consequences. Outnumbered and exposed as he was outside Acre, Guy decided to risk an immediate frontal assault on the city even though, as yet, he had no catapults or other siege materials. On 31 August the Latins attacked, mounting the walls with ladders, protected only by their shields, and might have overrun the battlements had not the appearance of the sultan’s advance scouts on the surrounding plain prompted a panicked retreat. Over the next few days Saladin arrived with the remainder of his troops, and any hopes the Latins entertained of forcing a speedy capitulation of Acre evaporated; instead, they faced the dreadful prospect of a war on two fronts–and the near-certainty of destruction at the hands of the victor of Hattin.

  Yet, at the very moment that Saladin needed to act with decisive assurance, he wavered. Allowing Guy to reach Acre had proved to be a mistake, but the sultan now made an even graver error of judgement. True, Saladin lacked overwhelming numerical superiority, but he outnumbered the Franks and, through a carefully coordinated attack in conjunction with Acre’s garrison, he could have surrounded and overwhelmed their positions. As it happened, he adjudged a rapid, committed assault to be too risky and instead took up a cautious holding position on the hillside of al-Kharruba, about six miles to the south-east, overlooking the plain of Acre. Unbeknownst to the Latins, he managed to sneak a detachment of troops (presumably shielded by the darkness of night) into the city to bolster its defences and, while skirmishers were dispatched regularly to harass Guy’s camp on Mount Toron, Saladin chose to hold back the bulk of his forces and wait patiently for reinforcement by his allies. On this occasion, such caution, so often the hallmark of the sultan’s generalship, was inappropriate, the product of a significant misreading of the strategic landscape. One crucial factor meant that Saladin could ill afford to bide his time–the sea.

  When Saladin reached Acre in early September 1189, the city was invested by Guy’s army and the Pisans. But in the aftermath of Hattin and the fall of Jerusalem, it was almost inevitable that the Frankish siege of this coastal port would become the central focus of Latin Europe’s retaliatory anger. During an inland siege, the king’s forces could have been readily isolated from supply and reinforcement, and Saladin’s circumspection would have made sense. At Acre, the Mediterranean acted like a pulsing, unstemmable artery, linking Palestine with the West, and while the sultan waited for his armies to assemble, ships began to arrive teeming with Christian troops to bolster the besieging host. Imad al-Din, then in Saladin’s camp, later described looking out over the coast to see a seemingly constant stream of Frankish ships arriving at Acre and a growing fleet moored by the shoreline ‘like tangled thickets’. This spectacle unnerved the Muslims inside and outside the port, and to boost morale Saladin apparently circulated a story that the Latins were actually sailing their ships away every night and ‘when it was light…[returning] as if they had just arrived’. In reality, the sultan’s prevarication gave Guy a desperately needed period of grace in which to amass manpower.25

  A significant group of reinforcements arrived around 10 September–a fleet of fifty ships, carrying some 12,000 Frisian and Danish crusaders as well as horses. The western sources describe its advent as a moment of salvation, a tipping point beyond which the Latin besiegers had at least some chance of survival. Among the new troops was James of Avesnes, a renowned warrior from Hainaut (a region on the modern border between France and Belgium). Likened by one contemporary to ‘Alexander, Hector and Achilles’, a skilled veteran in the art of war and the politics of power, James had been one of the first western knights to take the cross in November 1187.

  In the course of September, crusaders continued to arrive, swelling the ranks of the Frankish army. Among their number were potentates drawn from the upper ranks of Europe’s aristocracy. Philip of Dreux, the bishop of Beauvais, said to be ‘a man more devoted to battles than books’, and his brother Robert of Dreux came from northern France, as did Everard, count of Brienne, and his brother Andrew. They were joined by Ludwig III of Thuringia, one of Germany’s most powerful nobles. By the end of the month even Conrad of Montferrat had decided, apparently at Ludwig’s insistence, to come south from Tyre to join the siege, bringing with him some 1,000 knights and 20,000 infantry.26

  Saladin too was receiving an influx of troops. By the second week of September the bulk of the forces summoned to Acre had arrived. Joined by al-Afdal, al-Zahir, Taqi al-Din and Keukburi, the sultan moved on to the plain of Acre, taking up position on an arcing line running from Tell al-Ayyadiya in the north, through Tell Kaisan (which later became known as the Toron of Saladin) to the Belus River in the south-west. Just as he settled into this new front, the Franks tried to throw a loose semi-circular cordon around Acre–running from the northern coast, through Mount Toron and across the Belus (which served as a water supply) to the sandy beach to the south. Saladin saw off this first Latin attempt at
a blockade with relative ease. As yet, the crusaders lacked the resources to effectively seal off every approach to the city, and a combined assault by Acre’s garrison and a detachment of troops under Taqi al-Din broke the weakest part of their lines to the north, enabling a camel train of supplies to enter the city via St Anthony’s Gate on Saturday 16 September.

  By mid-morning that day Saladin himself had entered Acre, climbing its walls to survey the enemy camp. Looking down from the battlements upon the thronged crusader host huddled on the plain below, now surrounded by a sea of Muslim warriors, he must have felt a sense of assurance. With the city saved, his patiently amassed army could turn to the task of annihilating the Franks who so arrogantly had thought to threaten Acre, and victory would be achieved. But the sultan had waited too long. For the next three days his troops repeatedly sought either to overrun the Latin positions or to draw the enemy into a decisive open battle, all to no avail. In the weeks since King Guy’s arrival the swelling crusader ranks had dug into their positions, and they now repulsed all attacks. One Muslim witness described them standing ‘like a wall behind their mantlets, shields and lances, with levelled crossbows’, refusing to break formation. As the Christians clung with stubborn tenacity to their foothold outside Acre, the strain of the situation began to tell on Saladin. One of his physicians revealed that the sultan was so racked with worry that he barely ate for days. Frankish indomitability soon prompted indecision and dissension within Saladin’s inner circle. With some advisers arguing that it would be better to await the arrival of the Egyptian fleet and others advocating that the approaching winter should be allowed to wreak its depredations upon the crusaders, the sultan wavered, and the attacks on the Christian lines ground to a halt. A letter to the caliph in Baghdad offered a positive summary of events–the Latins had arrived like a flood, but ‘a path had been cut to the city through their throats’ and they now were all but defeated–but in reality, Saladin must have begun to realise that the siege of Acre might prove difficult to lift.27