DANCING-GIRLS AND APHRODISIACS: THE COURT OF SALADIN
The young princes, according to the satirist al-Wahrani, held orgies where the hosts ran naked on all fours howling like dogs and sipped wine from the navels of singing girls while cobwebs took over in the mosques. In Damascus, the Arabs grumbled about Saladin’s rule. The writer Ibn Unain mocked Saladin’s Egyptian officials, particularly the black Sudanese: ‘If I were black with a head like an elephant, bulky forearms and a huge penis, then you would see to my needs.’ Saladin exiled him for this impertinence.
Saladin’s nephew Taki al-Din was his most talented general, but also the most ambitious and debauched of the princes. His hobbies were so notorious that it was said his words were ‘sweeter than a beating with a prostitute’s slipper’. The satirist Wahrani suggested ironically, ‘If you resign from the government, you could turn away from repentance and collect the prostitutes of Mosul, the panders of Aleppo and the singing-girls of Iraq.’
Such was Taki’s priapic over-indulgence that he started losing weight, energy and erection. He consulted his Jewish doctor Maimonides, who advised his own community against excessive ‘eating, drinking and copulation’ but treated his princely patients differently. The royal doctor wrote Saladin’s nephew a special work entitled On Sexual Intercourse, prescribing moderation, limited alcohol, women not too old nor too young, a cocktail of oxtongue plant and wine and, finally, a ‘wondrous secret’ of medieval Viagra: massage the royal penis for two hours before intercourse with oils mixed with saffron-coloured ants. Maimonides promised the erection would last long after the act.
Saladin loved Taki, whom he promoted to viceroy of Egypt, but was then exasperated by his nephew’s attempt to create his own fiefdom. He moved him to rule swathes of Iraq instead. Now this exuberant nephew and most of Saladin’s family arrived to enjoy the liberation of Jerusalem.16
SALADIN’S CITY
Saladin watched the Latin Christians leave Jerusalem for ever: the Jerusalemites had to pay a ransom of ten dinars per man, five per woman, one per child. No one could leave without a receipt of payment, but Saladin’s officials made fortunes as bribes were paid and Christians were lowered from the walls in baskets or escaped in disguise. Saladin himself had no interest in money and, though he received 220,000 dinars, much of the cash went astray.
Thousands of Jerusalemites could not afford their ransom. They were led away into slavery and the harem. Balian paid 30,000 dinars to ransom 7,000 poor Jerusalemites, while the Sultan’s brother Safadin asked for a thousand unfortunates and freed them. Saladin gave five hundred each to Balian and to Patriarch Heraclius. The Muslims were shocked to see the latter pay his ten dinars and leave the city laden with carts of gold and carpets. ‘How many well-guarded women were profaned, nubile girls married, virgins dishonoured, proud women deflowered, lovely women’s red lips kissed, untamed ones tamed,’ recalled Saladin’s secretary Imad al-Din with a rather creepy glee. ‘How many noblemen took them as concubines, how many great ladies sold at low prices!’
Under the eyes of the sultan, the two columns of Christians looked back one last time and wept at the loss of Jerusalem, reflecting, ‘She who was named the mistress of other cities had become a slave and handmaid.’
On Friday 2 October, Saladin entered Jerusalem and ordered the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, to be cleansed of the infidel. The Cross over the Dome of the Rock was thrown down to cries of ‘Allahu Akhbar’, dragged through the city and smashed, the Jesus paintings torn out, the cloisters north of the Dome demolished, the cubicles and apartments within the Aqsa removed. Saladin’s sister arrived from Damascus with a camel caravan of rosewater. The sultan himself and his nephew Taki personally scrubbed the courts of the Haram with rosewater, accompanied by a cleaning-party of princes and amirs. Saladin brought Nur al-Din’s carved wooden minbar from Aleppo and set it up in al-Aqsa Mosque where it remained for seven centuries.
The sultan did not so much destroy and rebuild as adapt and embroider, reusing the gorgeous spolia of the Crusaders with their foliate patterns, capitals and wetleaf acanthus; his own architecture is thus constructed with the very symbols of his enemies, which makes it hard to distinguish between the buildings of the Crusaders and Saladin.
Every respected member of the ulema, Muslim clergy and scholars, from Cairo to Baghdad, wanted to preach at Friday prayers, but Saladin chose the Qadi of Aleppo, giving him a black robe to wear: his sermon in al-Aqsa praised the fadail – the merits – of Islamic Jerusalem. Saladin himself had become the ‘light that shines in every dawn that brings darkness to the believers’ by ‘liberating the brother shrine of Mecca’. Saladin then walked to the Dome to pray in what he called ‘the jewel of the signet-ring of Islam’. Saladin’s love for Jerusalem was ‘as great as mountains’. His mission was to create an Islamic Jerusalem and he considered whether to destroy the Dungheap – the Holy Sepulchre. Some of his grandees called for its demolition, but he mused that the place would still remain holy whether or not the Church stood there. Citing Omar the Just, he closed the Church for only three days and then gave it to the Greek Orthodox. Overall, he tolerated most churches, but aimed to diminish the Christian Quarter’s non-Islamic character. Church bells were again banned. Instead, for hundreds of years right up until the nineteenth century, the muezzin held the monopoly of sound and the Christians announced prayers with the clack of wooden clappers and the clash of cymbals. He destroyed some churches outside the walls and commandeered many prominent Christian buildings for his own Salahiyya endowments – which still exist today.*
Saladin brought many Muslim scholars and mystics to the city; but Muslims alone could not repopulate Jerusalem, so he invited back many Armenians, who became a special community that endures today (they call themselves the Kaghakatsi); and many Jews – ‘the entire race of Ephraim’ – from Ashkelon, Yemen and Morocco.17
Saladin was exhausted but he reluctantly left Jerusalem to mop up the last Crusader fortresses. He took the great sea base of Acre. Yet he never finished off the Crusaders: he chivalrously released King Guy and failed to conquer Tyre, which left the Christians with a vital seaport from which to plan a counter-attack. Perhaps he underestimated the reaction of Christendom but the news of Jerusalem’s fall had shocked Europe, from kings and popes to knights and peasants, and mobilized a powerful new Crusade, the Third.
Saladin’s mistakes would cost him dear. In August 1189, King Guy appeared before Acre with a small force and proceeded to besiege the city. Saladin did not take Guy’s brave exploit too seriously but sent a contingent to swat his little army. Instead Guy fought Saladin’s men to a standstill and rallied the Crusader fightback. Saladin besieged Guy but Guy besieged Acre. When Saladin’s Egyptian fleet was defeated, Guy was joined by shiploads of German, English and Italian Crusaders. In Europe, the kings of England and France and the German Emperor took the Cross; fleets were being collected; armies mustered to join the battle for Acre. This was the start of a grindingly bloody two-year struggle, soon joined by the greatest kings of Europe who were determined to win back Jerusalem.