At this fraught moment, Saladin received bad news: his dissolute nephew, Taki al-Din, who had been trying to build his own private empire, was dead. Saladin hid the letter, ordered his tent cleared, then ‘wept bitterly, choked by his tears’, before washing his face with rosewater and returning to the command: it was no time to show weakness. He inspected Jerusalem and her new Egyptian garrison.
On 23 December, Richard advanced to Le Thoron des Chevaliers (Latrun) where he, his wife and his sister celebrated Christmas in splendour. On 6 January 1192, amid rain, cold and mud, Richard had reached Bayt Nuba, 12 miles from the city. The French and English barons wanted Jerusalem at any cost but Richard tried to convince them that he did not have the men for a siege. Saladin waited in Jerusalem hoping that the rain and snow would discourage the Crusaders. On 13 January, Richard retreated.*
It was stalemate. Saladin used fifty stonemasons and 2,000 Frankish prisoners to refortify Jerusalem, demolishing the higher floors of Our Mary of Jehoshaphat at the foot of the Mount of Olives and the Coenaculum on Mount Zion to provide the stones. Saladin, Safadin and their sons themselves worked on the walls.
Richard meanwhile captured and fortified Ashkelon, the gateway to Egypt, offering Saladin a partition of Jerusalem, with Muslims keeping the Haram and Tower of David. But these talks, almost comparable in complexity to those between Israelis and Palestinians in the twenty-first century, were in vain: both still hoped to possess Jerusalem totally. On 20 March, Safadin and his son Kamil visited Richard with an offer of access to the Sepulchre and the return of the True Cross: in the classic beau geste of chivalry, Lionheart dubbed young Kamil, girding him with the belt of knighthood.
Yet this theatre of chivalry was unpopular with the mutinous French knights, who demanded the immediate storming of Jerusalem. On 10 June Richard led them back to Bayt Nuba, where they proceeded to set up camp in the parching heat and for three weeks argued about what to do next. Richard relieved the tension by riding out on reconnaissance, at some point reaching Montjoie, where he dismounted to say his prayers but held up his shield to hide the glory of Jerusalem, supposedly saying, ‘Lord God, I pray thee not to let me see thy Holy City that I could not deliver from thine enemies!’
Lionheart employed spies in the sultan’s army who now informed him that one of Saladin’s princes was leading a caravan of reinforcements from Egypt. Richard, sporting Bedouin dress, led out 500 knights and 1,000 light cavalry, to ambush the Egyptians. He dispersed the troops, captured the caravan, bagging 3,000 camels and ample packhorses of supplies – enough perhaps to march on Jerusalem or Egypt. ‘This was grievous to Saladin’s heart,’ said his minister Ibn Shaddad, ‘but I tried to calm him.’ Within a fraught Jerusalem, Saladin was close to panic, his stress unbearable. He poisoned the wells around the city and positioned his meagre contingents under the command of his sons. His armies were inadequate and he anxiously recalled Safadin from Iraq.
On 2 July, he convened a council of war, but his amirs were just as unreliable as Richard’s barons. ‘The best thing we can do,’ said Ibn Shaddad, opening the meeting, ‘is assemble at the Dome of the Rock to prepare ourselves for death.’ Then there was silence, the amirs sitting so still it was ‘as though there were birds on their heads’. The council debated whether the leader should make a last stand within the city or avoid being trapped in a siege. The sultan himself knew that without his own presence his henchmen would soon surrender. Finally Saladin said, ‘You’re the army of Islam. Turn your reins away and they’ll roll up these lands like a scroll. It’s your responsibility – that’s why you’ve been funded by the treasury all these years.’ The amirs agreed to fight, but the next day they returned to say they feared a siege like that of Acre. Was it not better to fight outside the walls and at worst, temporarily lose Jerusalem? The generals insisted that Saladin or one of his sons had to stay in Jerusalem or else his Turks would fight his Kurds.
Saladin stayed – and his spies kept him well informed about Richard’s problems. As 15 July, the anniversary of the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, approached, the Crusaders discovered yet another fragment of the True Cross, a timely miracle which elated the ranks. But the French under the Duke of Burgundy and the Anglo-Angevins under Richard were almost at daggers drawn, taunting each other with silly slogans and filthy ditties. Richard, the troubadour, penned a jingle of his own.
Saladin was almost sick with the tension: on the night of Thursday 3 July, Ibn Shaddad was so worried that he prescribed the comfort of prayer: ‘We are in the most blessed place we could be on this day.’ At Friday prayers the sultan should make two ritual rakas, bows from the waist then two full prostrations. Saladin performed these rituals and openly wept. By nightfall, his spies reported that the Franks were packing up. On 4 July, Richard led the retreat.
Saladin was exuberant, riding out to meet his favourite son Zahir, kissing him between the eyes and escorting him into Jerusalem, where the prince stayed with his father in the palace of the Master of the Hospitallers. But both sides were exhausted: Richard was receiving reports that back in England his brother John was close to open rebellion. If he wished to save his lands, he needed to return home soon.
Encouraged by Richard’s problems, on 28 July Saladin sprang a surprise attack on Jaffa, which he swiftly captured after a bombardment by his mangonels. While Ibn Shaddad was negotiating the surrender, his son Zahir fell asleep on watch. Suddenly Richard the Lionheart appeared offshore in a scarlet-flagged galley. He had arrived just in time: some Franks were still holding out. Firing an arbalest crossbow, he waded on to the beach – ‘red haired, his tunic red, his banner red.’ Without even time to take off his waders and don his armour, wielding a Danish battleaxe, accompanied by just seventeen knights and a few hundred infantry, Richard managed to retake the town in a stupendous display of flamboyant shock-fighting.
Afterwards, he teased Saladin’s minister: ‘This sultan of yours is a great man [yet] how is it he departed merely because I arrived? I only had my seaboots on and not even my breastplate!’ Saladin and Safadin were said to have sent Arabian horses to Lionheart as a gift, but such chivalry was often a delaying tactic for they soon counter-attacked. Richard repulsed them and then challenged the Saracens to single combat. He galloped with his lance up and down the ranks – but there were no takers.
Saladin ordered another attack, but his amirs refused. He was so enraged that he considered a Zangi-style crucifixion of his mutinous generals. However, he calmed himself and then invited them to share some juicy apricots that had just arrived from Damascus.
The king and the sultan had fought themselves to a standstill. ‘You and we together are ruined,’ Richard confided to Saladin. As they negotiated, both the warlords collapsed, desperately ill, their resources and wills utterly exhausted.
THE SALADIN DYNASTY
1193–1250
THE DEATH OF THE SULTAN
On 2 September 1192, sultan and king agreed the Treaty of Jaffa, the first partition of Palestine: the Christian kingdom received a new lease of life with Acre as its capital, while Saladin kept Jerusalem, granting full Christian access to the Sepulchre.
On the way back to Jerusalem, Saladin met his brother Safadin who kissed the ground to thank God, and they prayed together at the Dome of the Rock. Though Richard refused to visit Islamic Jerusalem, his knights flocked there to make their pilgrimages and were received by Saladin. The sultan showed them the True Cross, but afterwards that ultimate relic was lost – and vanished for ever. When the king’s adviser Hubert Walter was in Jerusalem, he discussed Richard with Saladin who offered the view that Lionheart lacked wisdom and moderation. Thanks to Walter, Saladin allowed Latin priests back into the Sepulchre. When the Byzantine emperor Isaac Angelus demanded it for the Orthodox, Saladin decided that they must share it under his supervision and appointed Sheikh Ghanim al-Khazraji as Custodian of the Church, a role still performed today by his descendants, the Nusseibeh family.