by Robert Payne
The confrontation between Saladin and the king was high drama. Everyone was watching them closely. Both the king and Reynald were trembling, probably not so much from fear as from exhaustion, hunger, and a thirst that could not be quenched by a goblet of snow-cooled water. Saladin had not yet decided what he would do with his high-ranking prisoners. Quite suddenly he left the tent and rode off on his horse for a tour of the battlefield. He was probably accompanied by Imad ed-Din, who is known to have ridden over the battlefield that afternoon, and who wrote:
I rode across the battlefield, and learned many lessons. I saw what the elect have done to those who are entirely rejected, and the fate inflicted on their leaders provided me with a moral. I saw heads lying far from their bodies, eyes gouged out, bodies coated with powdery ashes, their beauty marred by the clawmarks of birds of prey, limbs mangled in battle and scattered and scattered about, naked, torn, shreds of flesh, stumps of flesh, crushed skulls, cloven necks, loins smashed, sliced heads, feet cut off, noses cut off, extremities hacked away, empty eyes, open bellies, bodies cut in two, shrivelled mouths, gaping foreheads out of which eyes trickled, twisted necks, all lifeless and contorted among the stones and as rigid as the stones. And what a moral this conveys! These faces glued to the earth, no longer animated by desires, made me think of the words of the Koran: The infidel shall say: Would to God that I might become dust. And yet what a sweet odour rises from this charnel house.
Imad ed-Din was a moralist of the old order, ready to find lessons in brooks and stones and crushed skulls. Saladin’s ride over the battlefield led him, too, to some moral conclusions. The infidel must die, and he must make an example of Reynald with his own hands. Returning to his tent, he summoned Reynald into his presence and immediately stabbed him in the throat, killing him. Saladin then ordered that his head be cut off and the headless body dragged in front of the king. Pointing to Reynald’s body, Saladin said, “This man was guilty of unimaginable crimes. His perfidy and insolence brought about his death. You should have no fear, for a king does not kill a king.” The trunk was then thrown out of the tent but the head was kept. Stuck on a lance, it would decorate Saladin’s triumphal march through Damascus.
On July 5, the day following the battle, Saladin rested. His only known act on that day was to send a chivalrous message to the countess of Tripoli, who had remained in the heavily fortified castle at Tiberias, offering her safe-conduct through the Galilee to rejoin her husband. Her servants, her bodyguard, her soldiers, and all her possessions were allowed free passage through the country.
On Monday, July 6, he put into action the moral conclusions he had reached two days earlier. He was prepared now, after long contemplation, to murder his captives. The Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller were sentenced to be killed by the mullahs and religious teachers who accompanied his army. Imad ed-Din, who watched the executions, describes them as “men of pious and austere sentiments, devout sufis, men of the law, learned and initiated in asceticism and mystical knowledge.” Some two hundred knights were drawn up outside Saladin’s tent; each mullah and religious teacher was given a sword. Saladin spoke briefly about the harm done by the knights and how the world must be set free from these people who represented the worst of the infidels. Then, one by one, the knights were killed. It took a long time. Some executioners did a good job and were applauded, some botched it and were excused, and some put on such a ridiculous performance that they had to be replaced. Imad ed-Din, standing close by, observed the smiling Saladin, and pondered the merit granted to him by Allah for cutting off so many heads.
The same day, Saladin sent an order to the governor of Damascus to cut off the heads of all the knights imprisoned in his dungeons. The only people he spared were the king, his brother, Humphrey of Toron, Hughes of Jebail and Gerard of Ridfort, the Master of the Temple, and the other knights of noble blood. They were all sent to Damascus except for Balian of Ibelin, who asked permission to go to Jerusalem on parole to look after his wife, Maria Comnena, the former queen of Jerusalem, the widow of Amaury I. Kingship weighed heavily on Saladin. It seemed to him that even Christian kings and queens received their titles from God and were under divine protection. He therefore permitted Balian to make the journey to Jerusalem.
After Hattin, Saladin’s chief task was to secure the coast of Palestine. Acting with great speed, his army reached the walls of Acre four days after the battle of Hattin. Three days later, Saladin attended public prayers in the mosque, which had been a church for three generations. He freed four thousand Muslim captives and acquired the wealth of the richest city on the Palestinian coast. He summoned his brother al-Adil (Saphadin) to help him reduce all Palestine with his Egyptian army. Al-Adil marched up the coast to Jaffa and laid siege to the city, which refused to surrender. He therefore took it by storm, and the entire population was made captive, to be sold eventually in the slave markets of Aleppo. In Acre the Christians fared better for they were allowed to leave unharmed with their private possessions.
From Acre, Saladin’s forces fanned out over the Galilee and Samaria, receiving the surrender of Nazareth and Sephoria, while others marched along the coast to capture Haifa and Caesarea. Nablus fell, and so did Toron, which was besieged for six days. By the first week in August, Saladin was master of Sidon, Beirut, and Jebail. Beirut alone put up stiff resistance, holding out for eight days. In these cities Saladin offered the same terms he had offered to Acre: the citizens could leave freely. Only Jerusalem, Tyre, and Ascalon remained in Christian hands, and Jerusalem was doomed.
Tyre survived because Saladin was in no hurry to capture it. This was a mistake. Conrad of Montferrat, who had been in the service of the Byzantine emperor, left Constantinople suddenly as a result of a blood feud and sailed in his own ship first to Acre, then, as soon as he realized that Saladin’s army was in possession of the city, he sailed to Tyre, where he found the Christians downcast by the defeat at Hattin and disturbed by Reynald of Sidon, who was preparing to surrender the city to Saladin. Conrad took command, expelled Reynald, and issued orders that everyone in the city must man the defenses. Conrad was fiery, ruthless, and absolutely determined.
Saladin brought up his army and attacked. Tyre proved to be impregnable. By order of Saladin the old marquis of Montferrat, Conrad’s father, was brought from his dungeon in Damascus, paraded outside the city walls, and threatened with death unless the city surrendered. Conrad answered that he would not bargain over his father’s life; he would not surrender. Saladin permitted the old marquis to return to his dungeon, and continued the attack.
The defense of Tyre was crucial to the survival of the Crusaders. Conrad knew this, and fought all the more ardently. At last Saladin pulled out his army and sent it against Ascalon, where there was no one like Conrad capable of stirring up the population to uncompromising defiance of the enemy. Just as the old marquis had been brought to Tyre to be shown to the people standing on the walls, so now before the walls of Ascalon Saladin paraded the king and the master of the Temple, who had been brought from Damascus, promising them their liberty if Ascalon surrendered. But Ascalon refused to surrender and continued to fight for another two weeks. Then, when it became clear that Saladin would take the city by assault and that such assaults were generally accompanied by a general massacre, the king intervened, and on his authority the city surrendered. He was not given his liberty immediately. Instead he was imprisoned in Nablus, where he was permitted to see Queen Sibylla. The following summer, he was released with his brother together with all the nobles captured at the battle of Hattin.
None of these excursions was so important to Saladin as the certain surrender of Jerusalem, to which he now turned his attention. Jerusalem had no army capable of defending it, and no commander capable of arousing the people in a levée en masse. Heraclius, who was in command, was distrusted by the inhabitants, and detested by the clergy and the captains of the garrison. On the day Ascalon surrendered—it was September 4, 1187—there took place a partial eclipse o
f the sun. On this day, in near darkness, Saladin received a delegation from Jerusalem, fifty miles away, consisting of its leading citizens. Saladin asked them when they were prepared to surrender the city. They answered that they would defend it to the very end. Angrily, he sent them home, reminding them that he had the power to capture Jerusalem and destroy all the Christians in it.
Balian of Ibelin took command of the Christian forces. He had been captured at Hattin, and was well aware that, as a prisoner on parole, he was in an ambiguous position. He wrote to Saladin, explaining the circumstances under which he had assumed command of the city, begging forgiveness for breaking his parole, and urging Saladin to spare the city. This was something Saladin could not do. Balian of Ibelin made a heroic effort to place the city in a state of defense. Every boy who could prove noble descent and was capable of bearing arms was made a knight, and some thirty citizens were also knighted. The Tower of David contained a plentiful supply of arms. Balian took possession of the treasury and stripped the silver from the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Raiding parties brought in corn from the surrounding villages. The city was swollen with refugees, most of them women and children. Balian had no illusions about the difficulty of defending Jerusalem.
Saladin’s army marched on Jerusalem like a slow and steady machine destroying everything in its path. On September 26, he was on the Mount of Olives, looking down on Jerusalem. He had already sent siege engines against the city, with little effect. The Christians surged out of the city and destroyed them. Under Balian’s command Jerusalem had become a city of men so desperate that they were prepared to die rather than submit to the conqueror. Saladin realized that he would have to take each street of Jerusalem, house by house. He was not averse to a general massacre, but preferred a peaceful surrender. On September 30, Balian appeared in his tent to sue for terms.
Saladin rejoiced in his triumph. Simply to have Balian standing there as a suppliant was a boundless joy. Saladin pointed to his own standard flying from the walls of Jerusalem and said, “The city is captured. You cannot sue for terms.”
Balian answered that a single flag on the walls meant nothing, the fighting would go on, and there was more than the city at stake. There were five thousand Muslims in Christian hands, and thousands upon thousands of Christians would slaughter themselves to avoid being killed by the Muslims. He threatened to set Jerusalem on fire, to destroy all the holy places including the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque. All the treasure would be destroyed, and every living creature. He described the new Jerusalem vividly, a city of ashes and flames. Outside the city walls, the Christians who could bear arms would hurl themselves at the Muslims. All would die, but in dying each would take a Muslim with him. He painted a picture of Doomsday.
Saladin, alarmed and convinced that Balian meant exactly what he said, agreed to terms. He would regard the population as prisoners who must pay a ransom: each man ten pieces of gold, a woman five pieces of gold, and a child one piece of gold. As for the poor, they could be released on payment of the thirty thousand bezants that remained in the keeping of the Hospitallers from the treasure of King Henry II. The people were given forty days to pay the ransom money. Those who failed to pay and remained behind would become slaves of the Muslims.
Saladin set his guards at the gates. They examined everyone who passed through the gates, exacting the appropriate tribute. Saracenic merchants came flocking to Jerusalem to see what they could buy for a few gold coins—a house, a bed, a slave girl—and there was much cheating on the part of Christians and Muslims. Christians were fair bait and quickly dispossessed of their goods. Some, like Heraclius, paid their ten pieces of gold and walked out of Jerusalem laden with treasure. Heraclius took with him the gold plate of the churches of Jerusalem, even the gold plate of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and nobody stopped him. Saladin, told that the patriarch was going off with all the gold treasure remaining in Jerusalem, commented mildly that he must be allowed to do what he pleased: no one must lay a finger on the patriarch. Al-Adil, Saladin’s brother, interceded for some poor Christians, saying, “Sire, I have helped you by God’s grace to conquer the land and this city, and therefore I pray that you give me a thousand slaves from among the poor people.” Saladin granted his wish, and al-Adil set them free as an offering to God. Saladin himself proclaimed that old people who could not pay the ransom would be allowed to go free. Saladin’s lieutenants reminded him frequently of the bloody massacres committed by the Crusaders when they first conquered Jerusalem, yet his mercy was widespread. The wives and daughters of knights, after paying their ransom, marched out of Jerusalem to Saladin’s tent and cried out that their husbands and fathers should be returned to them. Some had died in battle, others were in prison. Saladin ordered that the women whose husbands had died should be paid from his treasury, and he ordered scribes to take down the names of the prisoners, promising that as soon as he could go to the prisons he would set them free. What was most extraordinary about the meeting was that Saladin wept when he saw the women weeping.
He could afford to be compassionate: to have Jerusalem in his grasp was his supreme achievement. By showing at last that the Christian kingdom could be struck a deathblow at its heart, he had demonstrated the power of Islam to overcome all obstacles. He played his role with intelligence and sensibility. He had a simple aim and knew what he was doing, unlike the Christians who had blundered like sleepwalkers to defeat. Saladin, sitting in his tent, possessed the power of the Caesars. The East lay in the hollow of his hand and he could do what he wanted with it. He was the master of the Arabic world and was more than king. He had become an emperor, a man who ruled over many nations, disdaining the panoply of power, very quiet and singular.
But although the kingdom died, it lived on in the minds of the Christians who lived in fear, huddled along the seacoast of Palestine. In their eyes, a lost city was all the more vivid because it was lost. Jerusalem captured was Jerusalem freed from all ambiguity. A lost city, like an empty tomb, was all the more real, all the more desirable, because it was unattainable.
Three Letters
EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER FROM TERENCE, MASTER OF THE TEMPLE, TO ALL COMMANDERS AND BRETHREN OF THE ORDER, FROM TYRE, NOVEMBER 1187
BROTHER TERENCE, known as Grand Master of the most impoverished house of the Temple, himself the most impoverished of all the brethren, and that brotherhood almost completely destroyed, to all commanders and brethren of the Temple, greetings! May they utter sighs to God, at whom the sun and the moon are astounded!
The wrath of God has lately permitted us to be scourged by innumerable calamities which our sins have brought down to us. Neither in writing nor in the language of tears, so unhappy is our fate, can we tell the full measure of these things. Know that the Turks assembled an immense multitude of their people and with bitter hostility they invaded the territories of the Christians. . . . They spread themselves over nearly all the land: Jerusalem, Tyre, Ascalon and Beirout being all that is left to us and to Christendom. Since nearly all the citizens of these cities have been slain, we shall not be able to hold them unless we speedily receive divine assistance and the aid you can bring to us. At the present moment they are besieging Tyre relentlessly by day and night, and they are so numerous that they cover the entire land from Tyre to Jerusalem and Gaza, like swarms of ants.
Grant us, we beseech you, your aid with all possible speed. Grant succour to us and to Christendom, which is now all but ruined in the East, that with God’s aid and by the great merits of the brotherhood and with your help, we may be able to save the few remaining cities. Farewell.
EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER FROM THE EMPEROR FREDERICK I BARBAROSSA TO SALADIN, KING OF EGYPT, WRITTEN BEFORE THE FALL OF JERUSALEM WAS KNOWN IN THE WEST.
FREDERICK BY THE GRACE OF GOD Emperor of the Romans, the ever august and glorious victor over the enemies of the Empire and the fortunate ruler of the entire kingdom, to Saladin, the illustrious Governor of the Saracens. May he take warning from Phara
oh and touch not Jerusalem!
. . . [Y]ou have profaned the Holy Land over which we, by the authority of the Eternal King, bear rule, as guardian of Judaea, Samaria and Palestine, [and] solicitude for our imperial office admonishes us to proceed with due rigour against such presumptuous and criminal audacity. Wherefore, unless, before all things, you restore the land which you have seized, . . . [within] a period of twelve months, . . . you will experience the fortune of war, in the field of Zoan, by the virtue of the life-giving Cross and in the name of the true Joseph.
