Saladin Takes Jerusalem From the Christians

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Introduction
The First Crusade (not counting the earlier Children’s Crusade) had been heroically successful. The Crusaders, having captured Jerusalem, established a new, Christian kingdom in Palestine. While it lasted a good seventy years, it failed on many levels. It failed to establish indigenous economic roots. It failed to establish and honor diplomatic commitments that were available to it. It failed to attract settlers from Europe.

Meanwhile, the Muslim world in the Middle East acquired a new ruler of quality. Saladin was smart, responsible, and honorable. He established control over Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Syria. The Crusader Kingdom had a formidable opponent.

Saladin was born in Tikrit in modern-day Iraq around 1137. His personal name was “Yusuf”; “Salah ad-Din” is a laqab, an honorific epithet, meaning “Righteousness of the Faith.” His family was of Kurdish ancestry, and had originated from the city of Dvin in medieval Armenia. The Rawadid tribe he hailed from had been partially assimilated into the Arabic-speaking world by this time.

The below narrative hints at the complexity of Middle Eastern politics. Complexity favored the Crusaders; simplicity favored the Muslims. Complexity provided opportunities for the Crusaders to exploit. They could play off one enemy against another.

The Crusaders had little margin of error. Other, stronger kingdoms could lose battles but could come back for more. The Crusaders had no residual strength. Once a knight was gone, there was no one to replace him. Compare to the early Romans. They also began with a small area (in Central Italy) but when they lost a key battle, they could always recruit replacements from their population. The inability of the Crusader Kingdom to do that was their downfall. The Crusader Army that stayed and protected the kingdom was like a beautiful flower in a pot with no roots. Over time it could only grow old, wither, and die.

Saladin’s army was based on firmer foundations.

The below selection is by Sir George W. Cox.

Time: 1187
Place: Jerusalem

Almost at the beginning of Almeric’s reign the affairs of the Latin kingdom became complicated with those of Egypt; and the Christians are seen fighting by the side of one Muslim race, tribe or faction against another. The divisions of Islam may have turned less on points of theology but they were scarcely less bitter than those of Christendom; and Noureddin, the sultan of Aleppo, eagerly embraced the opportunity which gave him a hold on the Fatimite Caliph of Egypt, when Shawer, the grand wazir of that Caliph, came into his presence as a fugitive. A soldier named Dargham had risen up and deposed him and the deposition of the wazir was the deposition of the real ruler, for the Fatimite caliphs themselves were now merely the puppets which the Merovingian kings had been in the days of Charles Martel and Pépin.

Among the generals of Noureddin were Shiracouh and his nephew Saladin (Salah-ud-deen) of the shepherd tribe of the Kurds. These Noureddin dispatched into Egypt to effect the restoration of Shawer. His enemy Dargham had sought by lavish offers to buy the aid of the Latins; but the terms were still unsettled when he was worsted in a battle by Shiracouh and slain. Shawer again sat in his old seat; but with success came the fear that his supporters might prove not less dangerous than his enemies. He refused to fulfil his compact with Noureddin and ordered his generals to quit the country. Shiracouh replied by the capture of Pelusium and Shawer, more successful than Dargham in obtaining aid from Jerusalem, besieged Shiracouh in his newly conquered city with the help of the army of Almeric. The Latin King after a fruitless blockade of some months found himself called away to meet dangers nearer home; and the besieged general, not knowing the cause, accepted an offer of capitulation binding him to leave Egypt after the surrender of his prisoners. But the Latin armies were transferred from Egypt only to undergo a desperate defeat at the hands of Noureddin in the territory of Antioch and thus to leave Antioch itself at the mercy of the enemy.

Noureddin may have hesitated to attack Antioch, from the fear that such an enterprise might bring upon him the arms of the Greek Emperor. He was more anxious to extinguish the Fatimite power in Egypt; in other words, to become lord of countries hemming in the Latin kingdom to the south as well as to the north; and it was precisely this danger which King Almeric knew that he had most reason to fear. To put the best color on his design, Noureddin obtained from Mostadhi, the caliph of Bagdad, the sanction which converted his enterprise into a war as holy as that which the Norman conqueror waged against Harold of England. The story of the war attests the valor of both sides, under the alternations of disaster and success. The Latin King had already entered Cairo, when a large part of the force of Shiracouh was overwhelmed by a terrific sandstorm. But the retreat of Shiracouh across the Nile failed to reassure the Egyptians. Almeric received two hundred thousand gold pieces for the continuance of his help, with the promise that two hundred thousand more should be paid to him on the complete destruction of their enemies; and the treaty was ratified in the presence of the powerless sovereign, whose consent was never asked for the alliances or treaties of the minister who was his master. The remaining events of the campaign were a battle, in which a part of the army of Almeric was defeated by Shiracouh and his nephew Saladin; the surrender of Alexandria on the summons of Shiracouh; and the blockade of that city by Almeric, who at length obtained from the Turk the pledge that after an exchange of prisoners he would lead his forces away from Egypt, on the condition that the road to Syria should be left open to him.

Continued.

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