Текст книги "The Crusades. The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land"

Автор книги: Thomas Asbridge

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9

THE WEALTH OF EGYPT

For much of the 1160s the conflict between Zangid Islam and the Levantine Franks centred on Egypt, as both powers tried to assert control over the Nile region. In strategic terms, dominion of Egypt might allow Nur al-Din effectively to encircle Outremer–with control of Aleppo and Damascus secured, the addition of Cairo could shift the balance of power in the Near East irrevocably in his favour. The division between Sunni Syria and Shi‘ite Egypt had long undermined any hope of a concerted drive to defeat the Latins. If that rift was somehow overcome, Islam would stand united for the first time since the coming of the crusades.

The Nile’s fabulous wealth was also alluring. The great river’s annual August flood bestowed enormous fertility upon the arable land along its banks throughout the Nile Delta. In a good year, Egypt enjoyed an abundant agricultural surplus and, by association, bounteous tax revenues. The region likewise benefited from burgeoning trade between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, because the critical land route linking the two crossed Egypt. Popular with Italian and Byzantine merchants, the Nile region became one of the world’s leading commercial hubs.

MEDIEVAL EGYPT

Egypt often is characterised as having been a Muslim territory in the age of the crusades, but this is a misleading simplification. The region was conquered in 641 CE during the first wave of Arab Islamic expansion, but the Arab ruling elite was largely concentrated in two centres: the port city of Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great some 1,500 years earlier; and the new settlement of Fustat, established by the Arabs at the head of the Nile Delta. Elsewhere, Egypt’s indigenous Coptic Christian population predominated. Over the centuries the Copts were Arabised in a cultural sense, for example taking on the Arabic language, but their adoption of the Islamic faith was far more gradual. Even in the twelfth century this Coptic Christian rural underclass remained.

From 969 Egypt was ruled by the Shi‘ite Fatimid dynasty, who broke free from the Sunni Abbasid rulers of Baghdad. The Fatimids built a formidable navy, with which they came to dominate Mediterranean shipping. They also constructed a new capital city north of Fustat, which they named Cairo (meaning ‘the Conqueror’), and established a rival Shi‘ite caliph (‘successor’ to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad), challenging the universal authority of the Sunni caliph in Baghdad. By the twelfth century the walled city of Cairo was the political heart of Egypt. Here, two fabulously opulent, labyrinthine caliphal palaces stood as testament to the limitless wealth of the Fatimids–housing exotic menageries and hordes of court eunuchs. The city was also home to the tenth-century al-Azhar mosque, renowned as a centre of Islamic scholasticism and theological study, while at the end of a canal running to the Nile, on the small island of Roda, was the Nilometer, a carefully calibrated structure that allowed the great river’s flood to be measured precisely and, therefore, the harvest predicted.

Cairo became the seat of Fatimid power, but ancient Alexandria retained its status as the focal point of Egypt’s economy into the crusading era. Located on the Mediterranean coast to the west of the Nile Delta, possessed of the great wonder that was Pharos’ Lighthouse, this port was perfectly positioned to exploit the trade in luxury goods such as spices and silks flowing from Asia, through the Red Sea and on to Europe. One Latin then living in Palestine observed that ‘people from the East and the West flock to Alexandria, and it is a public market for both worlds’.

By the time of the crusades the ability of Fatimid caliphs to exercise real power over the Nile region had dwindled and, for the most part, Egypt was governed by the caliph’s chief administrator, his vizier. After the death of the Vizier al-Afdal in 1121, however, this political system faltered and Cairo was soon gripped by intrigue. A noxious cycle of dissolute conspiracy, unbridled brutality and murder brought Fatimid Egypt to its knees. As one Muslim chronicler observed, ‘in Egypt the vizierate was the prize of whoever was the strongest. The caliphs were kept behind the veil and viziers were the de facto rulers…It was rare for anyone to come to office except by fighting and killing and similar means.’ Beset by political instability, the Nile region fell into decline, and the once great Fatimid fleet was left to decay. Against this backdrop of endemic weakness it was no wonder that the ruling powers of Syria and Palestine began to regard Egypt as a prime target.²³

THE NEW BATTLEGROUND

In the early 1160s, Egypt was spiralling ever deeper into chaos. By 1163 nominal power lay in the hands of the eleven-year-old boy Caliph al-Adid (1160–71), while the vizierate was held by the former governor of Upper Egypt, Shawar. He came to power in early 1163, but within eight months had been overthrown by his Arab chamberlain, Dirgham. Shawar escaped with his life to Syria and, like so many of the usurpers before him, Dirgham ‘put to death many of the Egyptian emirs to clear the lands of rivals’. After decades of infighting the country had now been all but stripped of its ruling elite. In this weakened state, Egypt was desperately vulnerable to the predations of its Christian and Muslim neighbours.

The kingdom of Jerusalem had for some years shown increasing interest in the region. Ascalon’s conquest in 1153 opened the coastal road south from Palestine–known as the Via Maris–and, in 1160, King Baldwin III threatened an invasion, but halted his plans on the promise of a huge annual tribute of 160,000 gold dinars. Then, upon his untimely death in 1163, Baldwin (being childless) was succeeded by his younger brother, Amalric. The great Latin historian of Outremer, William of Tyre, who came to prominence under Amalric’s patronage, recorded an intriguingly frank description of the new monarch. Aged twenty-seven, Amalric was said to be earnest and taciturn, ‘a man of prudence and discretion’, who lacked his predecessor’s easy charm and eloquence, in part because he suffered from a mild stammer. Physically, Amalric ‘was of goodly height’, with ‘sparkling eyes’, a ‘very full beard’ and slightly receding blond hair. William praised his royal ‘bearing’, but acknowledged that, despite his extremely moderate consumption of food and wine, the king ‘was excessively fat, with breasts like those of a woman hanging down to his waist’.²⁴

One of Amalric’s first goals as monarch was to reassert Jerusalem’s dominance over Egypt, with an–albeit abortive–siege of the city of Bilbais, which lay upon the banks of one of the Nile’s tributaries. Though the Latins were forced to retreat, over the coming years the Frankish king was to dedicate much of his energy and resources to the pursuit of power in Egypt.

Shirkuh ibn Shadi’s Egyptian campaigns

Nur al-Din’s attention was also being drawn south. Towards the end of 1163, the deposed vizier Shawar arrived in Damascus, hoping to secure political and military support for a counter-coup. Historians have sometimes lauded Nur al-Din’s decision to support him as visionary, arguing that he readily embraced the opportunity to wage a new proxy war against the Latins on Egyptian soil, all the while dreaming of the moment when the rule of Aleppo, Damascus and Cairo might be united, encircling Frankish Palestine.

In fact, at first Nur al-Din was reticent. He was aware that protracted entanglement in North Africa would sap resources even as he sought to consolidate his hold over Syria, and he doubted Shawar’s reliability as an ally (even though Shawar promised to reward Nur al-Din’s aid with one-third of Egypt’s grain revenues). But, after some months, the emir was persuaded to take action. Nur al-Din’s choice was driven partly by strategic imperative, because, left unchecked, the Jerusalemite Franks might gain an unassailable foothold in the Nile region, with disastrous consequences for the overall balance of power in the Levant. He was, however, also responding to the ambitions of his long-standing Kurdish lieutenant, Shirkuh, who was something of a gnarled veteran, having joined Zangi in the 1130s and then remained loyal to Nur al-Din. Even a Latin contemporary conceded that, despite being blind in one eye because of a cataract, ‘small of stature, very stout and fat [and] advanced in years’, Shirkuh was feared and respected as ‘an able and energetic warrior, hungry for glory and of wide experience in military affairs’. This wily old campaigner had already risen to a position of power within Nur al-Din’s inner circle, but in Egypt he saw grander opportunities for advancement. Muslim chroniclers described him as being ‘very eager’ to lead forces into North Africa, and he played a pivotal role in galvanising and shaping ‘Zangid’ involvement in the region during the years to come.²⁵

In April 1164, Nur al-Din entrusted Shirkuh with command of a sizeable, well-equipped force, instructing him to ‘restore Shawar to his office’. At first the campaign proceeded well. The allies stormed into Egypt, seizing control of the town of Fustat, just south of Cairo. By late May Dirgham lay dead, slain by a stray arrow from one of his own men during a skirmish, and the caliph reinstated Shawar as vizier. But after this initial success, relations between the allies deteriorated. Shawar tried to buy off Shirkuh with the promise of 30,000 gold dinars in return for his departure from Egypt, but the Kurdish commander refused.

The newly installed vizier now demonstrated just the sort of elasticity of allegiance that Nur al-Din had feared, inviting Amalric of Jerusalem to come to Egypt’s rescue on the promise of bounteous financial rewards. The Frankish king willingly obliged, marching to link up with Shawar in midsummer 1164 and lay siege to Shirkuh, who had taken refuge in Bilbais. The city was only weakly fortified, with a low wall and no fosse, but Shirkuh organised a disciplined defence and for three months a stalemate held. Then, in October, news of Nur al-Din’s victories at Harim and Banyas reached Amalric, and he hurriedly negotiated a cessation of hostilities in Egypt, such that both Latins and Syrians were permitted to return to their own lands in peace, and Shawar was left in control of Cairo.

In the years that followed, Shirkuh was said to have ‘continued to talk about the project of invading [Egypt]’. By 1167 the Kurdish warlord had amassed an invasion force to overthrow Shawar. Shirkuh was now acting with increasing independence, and, although Nur al-Din did dispatch several warlords to accompany him, the emir apparently ‘disliked the plan’ to attack Egypt. The campaign was also joined by a rising star of the Damascene court, Shirkuh’s twenty-nine-year-old nephew, Yusuf ibn Ayyub. Renowned as one of Nur al-Din’s favourite polo partners, Yusuf may have fought at the Battle of Harim in 1164 and was certainly appointed in the following year as Damascus’ shihna (the equivalent of police chief), in which post he acquired a reputation for firm law enforcement and, perhaps less reliably, for extorting money from prostitutes.

In January 1167, Shirkuh led his force across the Sinai Peninsula. This threat prompted Shawar to make a renewed appeal for aid from Palestine, promising in his extreme desperation to pay the Franks the amazing sum of 400,000 gold dinars. Amalric duly marched into Egypt in February, and North Africa once again became the proxy battleground in a wider struggle between Muslim Syria and Outremer. The two sides clashed in an inconclusive battle that March at al-Babayn, in the desert far to the south of Cairo, and Yusuf later proved his competence as a military commander during a gruelling siege of Alexandria, but neither the Franks nor the Syrians were able to achieve a definitive victory.

Just as in 1164, Shirkuh limped back to Syria with little to show for his efforts. Shawar remained in power, and recent events had only served to augment Frankish influence in the region, as Amalric agreed a new pact with the vizier that guaranteed an annual tribute of 100,000 dinars and installed a Latin prefect and garrison within Cairo itself. Egypt was now a client-state of the kingdom of Jerusalem. But far from punishing Shirkuh for this failure, Nur al-Din rewarded him with the command of Homs and granted Yusuf ibn Ayyub lands around Aleppo. For now, at least, the lord of Damascus was evidently keen to redirect the energies of these two Kurdish commanders towards Syrian affairs, keeping them close at hand to check any tendencies to independence.

This situation might well have endured, to the ultimate frustration of Shirkuh’s Egyptian ambitions, had Amalric not sought to overplay his hand. For a number of years the king had been trying to forge closer ties with Byzantium, in part to secure Greek participation in a joint invasion of North Africa, and the first fruits of this diplomacy came in late August 1167 when he married Emperor Manuel’s niece, Maria Comnena. Detailed plans for a combined expedition were discussed, and William of Tyre was sent as royal envoy to Constantinople to finalise terms. By the time he returned in autumn 1168, however, Amalric had already taken action. The king had gambled that he could prevail without Greek aid and thus forestall any need to divide Egypt’s riches with Manuel. Not content with Egypt’s client status, Amalric sought to conquer the Nile. With the vocal encouragement of the Hospitallers, he launched a surprise invasion in late October, marching from Ascalon to attack Bilbais. The city fell after just a few days, on 4 November, and the Franks engaged in a bloody and rapacious sack, sparing few among its populace and looting at will.

In the wake of this opening victory, however, the Latin offensive unravelled. Amalric may have hoped that a sudden savage assault would shatter Egyptian resistance, but in fact his betrayal of the truce with Cairo and the shock caused by the Franks’ unfettered ferocity at Bilbais hardened Muslim opposition throughout the Nile region. To make matters worse, the king now slowed the pace of his invasion, perhaps believing that the Vizier Shawar would readily surrender, and Amalric allowed himself to be stalled by offers of negotiation and promises of new tribute. In fact, the king’s entire strategy in late 1168 had been predicated upon a dreadful miscalculation. Believing that the events of 1167 had driven a wedge between Cairo and Damascus, he thought that Shawar would be bereft of allies and thus vulnerable, but he had underestimated the vizier’s diplomatic agility and Zangid ambition.

The return to the Nile

When the Franks attacked Egypt, Shawar dispatched a flurry of messages to Nur al-Din, begging for assistance and, notwithstanding his earlier misgivings about involvement in North African affairs, the emir now responded with sure and swift resolution. By early December 1168 a full-strength Syrian expeditionary force–including 7,000 mounted troops and thousands more infantrymen–had been assembled south of Damascus. Shirkuh was given overall command, a war chest of 200,000 dinars and full treasury funding to equip his army. But to curtail the Kurd’s capacity for independent, self-serving action, Nur al-Din also took care to send a number of other trusted warlords, including the Turk Ayn al-Daulah. Despite their familial connection, Nur al-Din also seems to have placed considerable trust in Shirkuh’s nephew, Yusuf ibn Ayyub, who apparently needed some persuading to return to the Nile, haunted as he was by dark memories of the Alexandrian siege.

When news reached Amalric that Shirkuh was marching across the Sinai at the head of ‘an innumerable host’, the Latin king was horrified. Rushing to muster his forces at Bilbais, Amalric marched east into the desert in late December, hoping to intercept the Syrians before they could join forces with Shawar. But he was too late. Scouts reported back that Shirkuh had already crossed the Nile and, judging that he would now be too heavily outnumbered, Amalric made the difficult and humiliating decision to retreat to Palestine empty-handed.²⁶

Egypt, at last, lay open to Shirkuh, and he wasted little time in pressing his advantage. In the first days of January 1169 Shawar made desperate attempts to negotiate terms, but his base of political and military support was faltering. His policy of alliance with the Franks–which had included the deeply unpopular, even scandalous, provision of opening Cairo itself to Latin soldiers–lay in ruins. Shirkuh represented Sunni Syria, traditional enemy of the Shi‘ite Fatimids, but for many in the Egyptian capital he was nonetheless preferable to the Christians of Jerusalem, and on 10 January the Caliph al-Adid appears privately to have indicated his own support for the Kurd. On a foggy morning eight days later, an unsuspecting Shawar rode out to continue talks in Shirkuh’s camp, only to be attacked and unhorsed by Yusuf ibn Ayyub and another Syrian, Jurdik. Within a few hours the vizier had been executed and his head placed before the caliph. Even now, however, Syrian success was not assured. Riding into Cairo to be appointed as al-Adid’s new chief minister, Shirkuh was confronted by an angry mob. Penned in among the Old City’s narrow streets, he was said to have ‘feared for his life’, but in a moment of canny quick thinking he redirected the unruly throng to loot the late Shawar’s mansion, and thereby managed to reached the caliphal palace in safety.

In theory, Shirkuh’s elevation to the post of Fatimid vizier confirmed Zangid power in the Nile region, heralding a new era of Muslim unity in which Aleppo, Damascus and Cairo might join forces to prosecute the jihad against the Franks. Contemporary Muslim sources indicate that, in public at least, Nur al-Din celebrated Shirkuh’s achievement, ordering his ‘conquest of Egypt’ to be proclaimed throughout Syria, even if the emir harboured concerns about the future loyalty of his lieutenant. In fact, Shirkuh’s true intentions were never made manifest, for barely two months later he died of an acute, suppurating throat infection, having gorged himself on coarse meats.

Records detailing the emergence of Shirkuh’s successor–both as commander of the Syrian expedition and as vizier–are confused and contradictory. He was survived by his Kurdish nephew, Yusuf ibn Ayyub, the veteran of al-Babayn and Alexandria, who might count on the support of most of his uncle’s personal military entourage (or askar), made up of 500 mamluks (slave soldiers). But there were other, perhaps more obviously powerful claimants, including the pro-Zangid Turk, Ayn al-Daulah, and another of Shirkuh’s lieutenants, the talented Kurdish warrior al-Mashtub. After days of debate and intrigue it was Yusuf who emerged victorious. Demonstrating a remarkable gift for the subtleties of court politics, Shirkuh’s nephew played the other Syrian candidates against one another, using suggestion and innuendo, emerging as the compromise candidate. His spokesman and advocate throughout this process was Isa, a silver-tongued Kurdish jurist and imam. Only Ayn al-Daulah remained implacable, returning to Damascus with the promise that he would never serve such an upstart. At the same time, Yusuf showed the caliph and his inner circle of Egyptian advisers a different face–one that led them to believe that, as chief minister, he would prove pliable and ineffectual, an outsider who might later be readily overthrown to usher in a Fatimid resurgence. In late March 1169, his ‘command of the [Syrian] troops and appointment as al-Adid’s vizier’ were duly confirmed.²⁷

Whatever the Egyptian caliph’s expectations, Yusuf ibn Ayyub soon revealed his true qualities, crushing an attempted palace coup and brutally suppressing a military revolt within months of taking office. Indeed, in the years that followed, it became clear that his ambitions far outstripped those of his uncle, Shirkuh. Capable, in turn, of extreme ruthlessness and principled magnanimity, gifted with political and military acuity, Yusuf’s achievements would eclipse even those of his overlord Nur al-Din, in time earning him the grand appellation by which he is more commonly known to history: Salah al-Din, ‘the goodness of faith’, or, in the western tongue, Saladin.

SALADIN, LORD OF EGYPT (1169–74)

Despite the seismic impact he would have upon history and the war for the Holy Land, no physical description of Saladin has survived. In 1169 few could have guessed that this thirty-one-year-old Kurdish warrior would establish the Ayyubids (named for Saladin’s father Ayyub) as the new rising power within Islam. Some medieval chroniclers, and many modern historians, have suggested that Saladin’s relationship with his Syrian overlord Nur al-Din soured almost as soon as the former took up the office of Egyptian vizier; that the shadows of imminent conflict between Cairo and Damascus were immediately apparent. In reality, despite a limited degree of friction during an initial period of adjustment, there is plentiful evidence to suggest continued cooperation and little to indicate an early move, on Saladin’s part, to assert independence. The balance of power and interplay of loyalty between these two potentates–champions of the Zangid and Ayyubid dynasties–would, in time, become a pressing issue, but in 1169 Saladin had more urgent concerns.²⁸

Challenges

Upon succeeding his uncle as vizier to the Fatimid Caliph al-Adid, Saladin’s prospects for survival were bleak. During the preceding fifteen years the vizierate had changed hands no fewer than eight times; embittered factionalism, treachery, betrayal and murder were all pervasive and ingrained features of Cairene politics. Saladin came to this volatile, lethal environment as an isolated outsider–a Sunni Kurd in a Shi‘a world–backed by limited military and financial resources. Few can have expected him to prevail.

In spring 1169, Saladin’s first instinct was to gather swiftly around him an inner core of loyal and able supporters. Throughout his career he seems to have placed great faith in the fidelity of blood; all but alone in Egypt, he turned to his family, asking Nur al-Din to allow members of the Ayyubid line to quit Syria for the Nile. Within months Saladin was joined by his elder brother, Turan-Shah, and nephew, Taqi al-Din. They were later followed by others, including Saladin’s father, Ayyub, and another, younger brother, destined to rise to prominence, al-Adil. As vizier, Saladin entrusted key positions of power within Egypt to his relations, but he also won over many of his late uncle Shirkuh’s askar, who were known as the Asadiyya–a play on his full name, Asad al-Din Shirkuh ibn-Shadi.

These included the fellow Kurd al-Mashtub, who had himself challenged for the vizierate; the forceful and forthright mamluk Abu’l Haija the Fat, who in later life reached such an extreme of obesity that he had difficulty standing; and the astute, but rather brutish Caucasian eunuch Qaragush. In years to come these men would prove themselves to be among Saladin’s most faithful lieutenants. He also began to assemble his own askar, the Salahiyya. Saladin even found some allies inside the fractious Fatimid court itself. The scribe, poet and administrator al-Fadil, a native of Ascalon, who had been employed by a number of viziers, now entered Saladin’s service, becoming his secretary and close personal confidant. Al-Fadil was an avid correspondent, and copies of his letters today serve as a vital corpus of historical evidence.

Within months of assuming the vizierate, Saladin needed the support of these trusted allies as he faced a series of assaults on his position. He also revealed a capacity for nuanced political operation in dealing with these threats–one that would prove a signal characteristic of his career. When necessary, Saladin could act with pitiless determination, but he was also able to employ caution and diplomacy. In the early summer of 1169, Mutamin, the leading eunuch within the caliph’s palace, sought to engineer a coup against Saladin, opening channels of negotiation with the kingdom of Jerusalem in the hope of prompting yet another Frankish invasion of Egypt to topple the Ayyubids. A secret envoy was dispatched from Cairo, disguised as a beggar, but passing near Bilbais a Syrian Turk spotted that he was wearing new sandals whose fine quality jarred with his otherwise ragged appearance. With suspicions aroused, the agent was arrested and letters to the Franks discovered, sewn into the lining of his shoes, revealing the plot. Saladin curtailed the independence of the Fatimid court, executing the eunuch Mutamin in August and replacing him with Qaragush, who from this point forward presided over all palace affairs.²⁹

Saladin’s severe intervention elicited an outbreak of unrest among Cairo’s military garrison. The city was packed with some 50,000 black Sudanese troops, whose loyalty to the caliph made them a dangerous counter to Ayyubid authority. For two days they rioted through the streets, marching on Saladin’s position in the vizier’s palace. Abu’l Haija the Fat was sent to stem their advance, but Saladin knew that he lacked the manpower to prevail in open combat and soon adopted less direct tactics. Most of the Sudanese lived with their families in the al-Mansura quarter of Cairo. Saladin ordered that the entire area be set alight, according to one Muslim contemporary leaving it ‘to burn down around [the rebelling troops’] possessions, children and women’. With their morale shattered by this callous atrocity, the Sudanese agreed a truce, the terms of which were supposed to provide for safe passage up the Nile. But once out of the city and travelling south in smaller, disorganised groups, they fell victim to treacherous counter-attacks from Turan-Shah and were virtually annihilated.

Saladin continued to use cold-blooded retaliation when he thought the situation demanded it, but often he adopted more subtle, piecemeal methods to deal with his opponents. Once in office as Fatimid vizier, Saladin faced repeated pressure from the caliph in Baghdad, and from Nur al-Din in Damascus, to depose Egypt’s Shi‘ite caliph, a heretic in the eyes of Sunni orthodoxy. But Saladin resisted, making no incautious move to topple al-Adid, cultivating instead a mutually beneficial alliance with the young ruler–one that may even have been shaded by a degree of real friendship. Saladin’s position in the Nile region was far too precarious to risk direct dynastic revolution. To endure as vizier he recognised that, to begin with at least, he needed the measure of stability, and, even more importantly, the bounteous financial benefaction attendant upon caliphal support.

This policy proved its worth in late summer 1169. Still smarting from the humiliation of his retreat from Egypt the preceding winter, King Amalric of Jerusalem chose this moment to launch another assault, this time targeting the port of Damietta, in the eastern reaches of the Nile Delta, with the assistance of a massive Byzantine fleet. This attack posed a grave threat to Saladin, yet he proved more than capable of meeting the challenge. He raised and equipped a huge army, funded by a truly colossal grant of 1,000,000 gold dinars from al-Adid’s treasury. Rather than command the relief of Damietta in person, leaving Cairo prey to revolt, Saladin wisely deputised his nephew, Taqi al-Din, while he remained in the capital. When this force linked up with Syrian troops sent by Nur al-Din, Amalric found himself outnumbered and, unable adequately to coordinate Latin–Greek military operations, his offensive collapsed. This Muslim victory effectively brought to an end the contest for control of Egypt, waged against the Latins throughout the 1160s. The Franks continued to dream of the Nile’s conquest, but for now that region remained in the grasp of Islam, and Saladin.³⁰

Having withstood the early challenges of his first year as vizier, Saladin–echoing Nur al-Din’s approach to the exercise of power–initiated programmes of civil and religious rejuvenation. Alexandria’s fortifications were strengthened, while in Cairo and its southern suburb of Fustat new centres of Sunni Islamic law were erected. Saladin later abolished non-Koranic taxation of trade in Egypt (although he did hike up other forms of levy in order to make up for the shortfall in state income). In November 1170 he also appeared to take up the mantle of mujahid, leading his first invasion of Frankish Palestine. At the head of a sizeable army, Saladin overran the small Latin fortress of Darum, just south of Gaza, and skirmished with King Amalric’s hastily assembled relief force before marching to the shores of the Red Sea to occupy the port of Aqaba. While blows were evidently struck against the Christians during this campaign, Saladin’s primary objective may have been to shore up the land route between the Nile region and Damascus, and it would probably be wrong to regard this venture as the first blossoming of his dedication to the holy war.

LIEUTENANT OR COMMANDER

As Saladin’s control of Egypt solidified, his continued lack of independence came ever more sharply into focus. He was a Sunni warlord, possessed of growing power and resources, yet still only second in command to a Shi‘ite caliph and bound by ties of subservience to Nur al-Din. Caution had served Saladin well to this point, but by late summer 1171, with his hold over Cairo secured, he was ready to oust the Fatimids. Even now, however, he moved with marked restraint, largely forsaking the traditional aberrations of Egyptian politics–bloody coup d’état and wholesale murder. This approach was, in part, made possible by the young Caliph al-Adid’s failing health. Around the end of August he contracted a severe illness and, though barely twenty years old, was soon at death’s door.³¹