As soon as this singular interview had been concluded, the Egyptians and Franj met to elaborate a plan to cross the Nile and decimate Shīrkūh’s army, which was then heading south. An enemy detachment, commanded by Amalric, was hard on his heels. Saladin’s uncle wanted to create the impression that he was on the run. He was well aware that his major handicap was that he was cut off from his bases, and he therefore sought to put the pursuing army in the same position. When he was more than a week’s march from Cairo, he ordered his troops to halt and, in an impassioned harangue, told them that the hour of victory was at hand.
The confrontation actually came on 18 March 1167, near the town of al-Babayn, on the west bank of the Nile. The two armies, exhausted by their interminable race, threw themselves desperately into the fray, eager to get it over with once and for all. Shīrkūh had assigned command of the centre to Saladin, ordering him to retreat as soon as the enemy changed. Amalric and his knights rushed toward him banners unfurled, and when Saladin pretended to flee, they pursued him ardently without realizing that the right and left flanks of the Syrian army had already moved in to cut off any possible retreat. Losses among the Frankish knights were heavy, but Amalric managed to escape. He returned to Cairo, where the bulk of his troops remained, firmly resolved to seek vengeance at the earliest opportunity. He and Shāwar were already collaborating on preparations to lead a powerful army back south to Upper Egypt when some barely credible news arrived: Shīrkūh had seized Alexandria, Egypt’s largest city, situated in the far north of the country, on the Mediterranean coast.
What had happened was that immediately after his victory at al-Babayn, the unpredictable Kurdish general, without waiting even a single day and before his enemies had time to recover their wits, had crossed the entire length of Egypt at dizzying speed, from south to north, and had entered Alexandria in triumph. The population of the great Mediterranean port, hostile to the alliance with the Franj, greeted the Syrians as liberators.
Shāwar and Amalric, forced to keep pace with the hellish rhythm at which Shīrkūh was waging this war, decided to lay siege to Alexandria. Food was so scarce in the city that within a month the populace, faced with the threat of famine, began to regret having welcomed the Syrian expeditionary corps. When a Frankish fleet arrived and moored alongside the port, the situation seemed hopeless. Nevertheless, Shīrkūh refused to admit defeat. He turned over command of the troops in the city to Saladin, and then, assembling a few hundred of his best cavalry, organized a daring nocturnal sortie. He passed through the enemy lines at full speed and drove his troops, riding day and night, . . . back to Upper Egypt!
Meanwhile, the blockade of Alexandria was being steadily tightened. Famine was now compounded by epidemic, and by daily catapult attacks. The command was a weighty responsibility for the 29-year-old Saladin. But the diversion organized by his uncle worked. Shīrkūh was not unaware that Morri was anxious to wind up this campaign and get back to his kingdom, which was under constant harassment by Nūr al-Dīn. By opening a second front in the south instead of allowing himself to be bottled up in Alexandria, the Kurdish general threatened to prolong the conflict indefinitely. He even fomented an uprising against Shāwar in Upper Egypt, convincing many armed peasants to join him. Once he had enough troops, he moved towards Cairo and sent Amalric a cleverly worded message. We are both wasting time here, he said in substance. If the king would think things through patiently, he would understand that driving me out of this country would be in no one’s interest but Shāwar’s. Amalric was convinced, and agreement was soon reached: the siege of Alexandria was lifted, and Saladin left the city to the salutes of a guard of honour. In August 1167 the two armies both left Egypt, just as they had three years earlier, returning to their respective countries. Nūr al-Dīn, satisfied at having retrieved the best of his army, was now fed up with these futile Egyptian adventures.
And yet, as if decreed by fate, the race for the Nile broke out yet again the following year. When he had left Cairo, Amalric felt it prudent to leave a detachment of knights behind—just to make sure that his alliance with the Fatimids was properly observed. One of their major duties was to oversee the city gates and to protect the Frankish functionaries assigned to collect the annual tribute of one hundred thousand dinars that Shāwar had promised to pay the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Inevitably, the heavy tax burden, combined with the prolonged presence of this foreign force, aroused resentment among the citizenry.
Public opinion steadily mounted against the occupiers. It was suggested sotto voce, even within the caliph’s own entourage, that an alliance with Nūr al-Dīn would be a lesser evil. Behind Shāwar’s back, messages began to flow to and fro between Cairo and Aleppo. The son of Zangī, in no hurry to intervene, simply observed the reactions of the king of Jerusalem.
The Frankish knights and functionaries stationed in the Egyptian capital, well aware of the growing hostility, were frightened. They sent messages to Amalric begging him to come to their aid. At first the monarch hesitated. The wise choice would have been to withdraw his garrison from Cairo and be content with a neutral and inoffensive Egypt as his neighbour. But he was temperamentally inclined to the leap in the dark. In October 1168, encouraged by the arrival in the Middle East of a large number of Occidental knights eager to ‘crush the Saracen’, he decided to throw his army against Egypt for the fourth time.
This new campaign began with a slaughter as horrible as it was gratuitous. The Occidentals seized Bilbays and, without the slightest provocation, massacred the inhabitants: men, women, and children, Muslims and Christians of the Coptic church. As Ibn al-Athīr said quite correctly, if the Franj had acted differently in Bilbays, they could have taken Cairo with the greatest of ease, for the city’s notables were prepared to surrender it. But when they heard of the massacres perpetrated in Bilbays, people decided to resist regardless. As the invaders approached, Shāwar ordered that the old city of Cairo be put to the torch. Twenty thousand jugs of naphtha were poured onto market stalls, houses, palaces, and mosques. The inhabitants were evacuated to the new city, founded by the Fatimids in the tenth century, which comprised mainly palaces, administrative offices, and barracks, as well as the religious university of al-Azhar. The fire raged for fifty-four days.
In the meantime, the vizier tried to keep open the lines of communication to Amalric, in an effort to convince him to abandon this foolhardy enterprise. Shāwar hoped to be able to achieve this without any fresh intervention by Shīrkūh. But his faction in Cairo was losing strength. In particular, the caliph al-‘Āḍid had taken the initiative of dispatching a letter to Nūr al-Dīn asking him to rush to Egypt’s aid. In an effort to move the son of Zangī, the Fatimid sovereign enclosed some locks of hair with his missive. These, he explained, are locks of hair from my wives. They beseech you to come and rescue them from the outrages of the Franj.
Nūr al-Dīn’s reaction to this anxious message has been preserved thanks to particularly valuable testimony from Saladin himself, who is quoted by Ibn al-Athīr:
When the appeals from al-‘Āḍid arrived, Nūr al-Dīn summoned me and told me what was happening. Then he said: ‘Go and see your uncle Shīrkūh in Homs and urge him to come at once, for there must be no delay.’ I left Aleppo, and a mile from the city I encountered my uncle, who was already on his way. Nūr al-Dīn ordered him to prepare to leave for Egypt.
The Kurdish general then asked his nephew to accompany him, but Saladin demurred.
I answered that I was not prepared to forget the sufferings endured in Alexandria. My uncle then said to Nūr al-Dīn: ‘It is absolutely necessary that Yūsuf go with me.’ And Nūr al-Dīn thus repeated his orders. I tried to explain the state of financial embarrassment in which I found myself. He ordered that money be given to me and I had to go, like a man being led off to his death.
This time there was no confrontation between Shīrkūh and Amalric. Impressed by the determination of the Cairenes, who were prepared to destroy their city rather than surrender it to him, and
fearing that he could be attacked from behind by the Syrian army, the Frankish king withdrew to Palestine on 2 January 1169. Six days later the Kurdish general arrived in Cairo, to be hailed as a saviour by the population and the Fatimid dignitaries alike. Shāwar himself even seemed elated. But no one was taken in. Although he had fought against the Franj during past weeks, he was still considered their friend, and he had to pay for it. On 18 January he was lured into an ambush, sequestered in a tent, and then killed by Saladin himself, with the written approval of the caliph. That same day, Shīrkūh replaced him as vizier. But when he donned his brocade silk and went to his predecessor’s residence to move in, he found the place empty—there was not even a cushion to sit on. Everything had been stolen as soon as the death of Shāwar was announced.
It had taken the Kurdish general three campaigns to become the real ruler of Egypt. But he was not to savour his pleasure for long. On 23 March, just two months after his triumph, he was taken ill after an excessively sumptuous meal. He was seized by an atrocious sensation of suffocation and died within a few minutes. His death marked the end of an era, but also the beginning of another, one whose repercussions would be infinitely greater.
Upon the death of Shīrkūh, Ibn al-Athīr reports, the advisers of the caliph al-‘Āḍid suggested that he name Yūsuf the new vizier, because he was the youngest, and seemingly the most inexperienced and weakest, of the emirs of the army.
Saladin was indeed summoned to the sovereign’s palace, where he was given the title al-malik al-nāṣir, ‘the victorious king’, as well as the distinctive accoutrements of the vizier: a white turban stitched in gold, a robe with a scarlet-lined tunic, a jewel-encrusted sword, a chestnut mare with a saddle and bridle adorned with engraved gold and encrusted pearls, and many other precious objects. Leaving the palace accompanied by a great cortège, he headed for his official residence.
Yūsuf managed to establish his authority within a few weeks. He discharged the Fatimid functionaries whose loyalty seemed doubtful, replacing them with his own close collaborators; a revolt among the Egyptian troops was severely crushed. Finally, in October 1169, he repelled an absurd Frankish invasion, again led by Amalric, who had arrived in Egypt for the fifth and last time in the hope of capturing the port of Damietta, in the Nile delta. Manuel Comnenus, uneasy that one of Nūr al-Dīn’s lieutenants now stood at the head of the Fatimid state, had accorded the Franj the support of the Byzantine fleet. But in vain. The Rūm did not have enough supplies, and their allies declined to furnish any additional assistance. Within several weeks, Saladin was able to open talks with them and persuade them to bring the ill-conceived venture to an end.
By the end of 1169 Yūsuf was the unchallenged master of Egypt. In Jerusalem, Morri set his hopes on forging an alliance with Shīrkūh’s nephew against the main enemy of the Franj, Nūr al-Dīn. The king’s optimism may appear misguided, but it was not wholly without foundation. Saladin soon began to distance himself from his master. He continually assured Nūr al-Dīn of his loyalty and submission, of course, but real authority over Egypt could not be exercised from Damascus or Aleppo.
Relations between the two men finally became dramatically tense. Despite his solid power-base in Cairo, Yūsuf never dared to confront his elder directly. Whenever the son of Zangī invited him to a face-to-face meeting, Yūsuf would find some pretext to avoid it, not for fear of falling into a trap, but because he was afraid that he would weaken if he found himself in the presence of his master.
The first serious crisis came during the summer of 1171, when Nūr al-Dīn demanded that the young vizier abolish the Fatimid caliphate. As a Sunni Muslim, the master of Syria could not allow one of his dependencies to remain under the spiritual authority of a ‘heretical’ dynasty. He sent several messages to this effect to Saladin, who was nevertheless reluctant to act. He was afraid of offending the sentiments of the population, which was mainly Shi‘i, and of alienating the Fatimid dignitaries. Moreover, he was not unaware that he owed the legitimacy of his rule to his investiture by the caliph al-‘Āḍid. He feared that by dethroning the caliph he would lose whatever formal sanction he had for his power in Egypt, in which case he would be reduced to the status of a mere representative of Nūr al-Dīn. In any case, he considered the son of Zangī’s insistence on the matter as an attempt to tighten his own political grip on Egypt, rather than an act of religious zeal. At the beginning of August, the master of Syria’s demands that the Shi‘i caliphate be abolished became an imperious order.
His back to the wall, Saladin prepared himself to deal with possible hostile reactions from the population, and even drafted a public proclamation announcing the removal of the caliph. But he still hesitated to publish it. Although he was only twenty, al-‘Āḍid was seriously ill, and Saladin, who was bound to him by close ties of friendship, could not bring himself to betray his confidence. Then without warning, on Friday 10 September 1171, a citizen of Mosul visiting Cairo entered a mosque, climbed the pulpit ahead of the preacher, and said the prayer in the name of the ‘Abbasid caliph. Curiously, there was no reaction, either at the time or in the following days. Was this man an agent sent by Nūr al-Dīn to embarrass Saladin? Possibly. In any event, after this incident, the vizier could no longer postpone his decision, whatever his reluctance. The order was given that from the following Friday, there was to be no further mention of the Fatimids in the prayers. Al-‘Āḍid was then on his death-bed, half conscious, and Yūsuf forbade anyone to tell him the new. ‘If he recovers’, Saladin said, ‘then there will be plenty of time for him to find out. If not, let him die untormented.’ As it happened, al-‘Āḍid expired a short time later, never having learned of the unhappy fate of his dynasty.
As might well be expected, the fall of the Shi‘i caliphate after two centuries of often glorious rule was a source of great grief to the Assassins sect, which ever since the days of Ḥasan Ibn al-Ṣabbāḥ had hoped that the Fatimids would shake off their lethargy and usher in a new golden age of Shi‘ism. The adherents of the sect were so devastated when they saw this dream vanish for ever that their commander in Syria, Rashīd al-Dīn Sinān, known as ‘the old man of the mountain’, sent a message to Amalric announcing that he and all his supporters were prepared to convert to Christianity. At the time the Assassins held several fortresses and villages in central Syria, where they lived relatively peaceful lives, seemingly having renounced the spectacular operations of bygone years. Although Rashīd al-Dīn still commanded well-trained groups of killers and devoted preachers, many of the sect’s members had become law-abiding peasants, often even compelled to pay a regular tribute to the Order of the Templars.
By promising to convert, the ‘old man’ hoped, among other things, that his flock would be exempted from the tribute, which only non-Christians had to pay. The Templars, who did not take their financial interests lightly, observed these contacts between Amalric and the Assassins with some disquiet. When it seemed that an agreement was at hand, they decided to block it. One day in 1173, as several envoys of Rashīd al-Dīn were returning from an audience with the king, the Templars laid an ambush and massacred them. There would be no further talk of conversion by the Assassins.
Quite apart from this episode, the abolition of the Fatimid caliphate had another consequence as important as it was unexpected: it invested Saladin with a political dimension he had hitherto lacked. Obviously, Nūr al-Dīn had not foreseen any such result. The elimination of the caliph, instead of reducing Yūsuf to the rank of a mere representative of the master of Syria, made him the effective sovereign of Egypt and the legitimate custodian of the fabulous treasures amassed by the defunct dynasty. Relations between the two men would now grow steadily more embittered.
Soon after these events, Saladin led a daring expedition against the Frankish fortress of Shawbak, east of Jerusalem. As the garrison was about to capitulate, Saladin learned that Nūr al-Dīn had just arrived with his own troops to participate in the operation. Without a moment’s delay, Saladin ordered his
men to break camp and to return to Cairo at a forced march. The pretext, explained in a letter to the son of Zangī, was that turmoil had supposedly broken out in Egypt, forcing a precipitate departure.
But Nūr al-Dīn was not deceived. Accusing Saladin of disloyalty and treason, he swore that he would personally travel to the land of the Nile to take matters in hand. The uneasy young vizier assembled his closest collaborators, among them his father Ayyūb, and asked them what attitude they thought he should take if Nūr al-Dīn carried out his threat. When some of the emirs declared that they were ready to take up arms against the son of Zangī, and Saladin himself seemed to share their view, Ayyūb intervened, trembling with rage. Speaking to Yūsuf as though he were a mere factotum, he said: ‘I am your father, and if there is anyone here who loves you and wishes you well, it is I. But know this: if Nūr al-Dīn came, nothing could ever prevent me from bowing before him and kissing the ground at his feet. If he ordered me to lop off your head with my sabre, I would do it. For this land is his. You shall write this to him: I have learned that you wanted to lead an expedition to Egypt, but there is no need for you to do so. This country belongs to you, and you need only send me a charger or camel and I will come to you a humble and submissive man.’
When the meeting was over, Ayyūb gave his young son another lecture, this time in private: ‘In God’s name, if Nūr al-Dīn tried to take so much as an inch of your territory, I would fight to the death against him. But why allow yourself to appear overtly ambitious? Time is on your side. Let Providence act.’ Convinced, Yūsuf sent the message his father had suggested to Syria, and Nūr al-Dīn, now reassured, called off his punitive expedition at the last minute. But Saladin had learned something from this emergency, and shortly afterwards he sent one of his brothers, Tūrān-Shāh, to Yemen, his mission being to conquer this mountainous land in south-west Arabia to prepare a refuge for the Ayyūb family just in case the son of Zangī again considered taking control of Egypt. And Yemen was in fact occupied without much difficulty, ‘in the name of King Nūr al-Dīn’.