THE LIFE OF SALADIN AND THE FALL OF THE KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM

CHAPTER XV.

THE RALLY AT TYRE.

1187-1188.

WHEN all the Franks had departed, and only the slaves and rescued Moslem captives remained, with the native Christians, who begged to stay and pay tribute, Saladin ordered the holy places to be purified and restored for the worship of Islam. The golden cross had been torn down from the Dome of the Rock, and all traces of the Templars’ additions were removed from the Haram where stood the ancient Mosque of Omar. Doctors and divines and pilgrims hastened from all parts to share in the great consecration. Deputations thronged the Sultan's tent outside the city, chanting the Koran, reciting poems, declaiming panegyrics in his honor. The secretaries labored to spread the good news to the ends of the kingdoms of Islam: Imad-ed-din himself wrote seventy dispatches on the day of the recapture of Jerusalem. On Friday the 9th of October an immense congregation assembled to pray with Saladin in the sanctuary of el-Aksa. The chief Kady of Aleppo preached the sermon. He praised God for the triumph of the faith and the cleansing of his Holy House; he declared the pure creed of the Koran, and pronounced the blessings upon the Prophet and the Caliphs, in the prescribed form of the Mohammedan bidding-prayer.

Then, “O Men”, he cried, “rejoice at good tidings! God is well-pleased with what ye have done, and this is the summit of man's desire; he hath help you to bring back this strayed camel from misguided hands and to restore it to the fold of Islam, after the infidels had mishandled it for nearly a hundred years. Rejoice at the purifying of this House, which God allowed to be raised and permitted his name to be said therein, over which he spread his tent and wherein he established his holy rites; the house whose foundations were laid on the creed of the One God, the best of foundations, and the walls whereof were built to his glory, and stand firm upon piety from ancient times until now. It was the dwelling- place of your father Abraham, the spot whence your prophet Mohammed, God bless him, ascended into Heaven, the kibla to which ye turned to pray in the early time of Islam, the abode of the prophets, the resort of the saints, the grave of the apostles, the place where God's revelation came down, and where all mankind must gather on the Day of Resurrection and of Judgment. . . . It is the city to which God sent his servant and apostle, the Word which entered into Mary, Jesus, the spirit of God, whom he honored with his mission and ennobled with the gift of prophecy, yet without raising him above the ranks of his creatures: for the Most High hath said, Christ will not disdain to be God's servant nor will the angels who surround his presence . . . “

Had ye not been of God's chosen servants, he had not honored you by this grace, wherein ye can never be rivaled nor shall any ever share in its perfectness. Blessed are ye, who have fought like those at Bedr, who have been steadfast as Abu-Bekr, victorious as Omar, who have recalled the hosts of Othman and the onslaughts of Ali! Ye have renewed for Islam the glorious memories of Kadisiya, of the Yarmuk, of Khaibar, and of Khalid, the Sword of God. The Almighty recompense you, and accept the offering of the blood ye have shed in his service, and grant you Paradise, happy for ever. . . .

“And prolong, O Almighty God, the reign of thy servant, humbly reverent, for thy favor thankful, grateful for thy gifts, thy sharp sword and shining torch, the champion of thy faith and defender of thy holy land, the firmly resisting, the great, the victorious King, the strengthener of the true religion, the vanquisher of the worshippers of the Cross, the Honor of the World and the Faith [Saladin], Sultan of Islam and of the Moslems, purifier of the holy temple, Abu-l-Muzaffar Yusuf, Son of Ayyub, reviver of the empire of the Commander of the Faithful. Grant, O God, that his empire may spread over all the earth, and that the angels may ever surround his standards; preserve him for the good of Islam; protect his realm for the profit of the Faith; and extend his dominion over the regions of the East and of the West. . . . Save him, O God, and his children after him; may they rule the land till the end of time; preserve his days, and his sons and his brethren, strengthen his power by their long lives; and, inasmuch as by his means thou hast brought this lasting good to Islam, to endure whilst months and years shall roll, grant him, O God, the kingdom that never ends in the mansions of the blest, and hear his prayer that he prayeth unto thee: — O Lord! help me to be thankful for thy favor wherewith thou hast favored me and my father’s, that I may do that which is right and well-pleasing unto thee; and bring me at last of thy mercy to dwell amongst thy righteous servants”

This noble khutba, with its beautiful peroration, was pronounced with such overwhelming effect, writes the Kady el-Fadil, that “the heavens almost cracked, not in wrath, but to drop tears of joy, and the stars left their places, not to shoot upon the wicked, but to rejoice together”. The delight of the Moslems at the recovery of the Sanctuary was unbounded.

Saladin restored it to its former beauty and simplicity, and brought from Damascus an exquisite carved pulpit which Nur-ed-din had caused to be designed at Aleppo twenty years before. It is there to this day, and over the great niche of the Mosque may still be read the inscription :

“In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful! Hath ordered the repair of this holy Mihrab and the restoration of the Mosque el-Aksa, founded on piety, the servant and agent of God Yusuf son of Ayyub Abu-l-Muzaffar el-Melik en-Nasir Salahed-dunya wa-d-din, when that God by his hand had triumphed, in the month of the year [of the Flight] 583: and he prayeth God to endue him with thankfulness for this favor and to make him a partaker in the remission of sins, through his mercy and forgiveness”.

1187] Siege of Tyre.

Jerusalem and Ascalon were regained; Karak and Mont Real in “Oultre Jourdain” and Safed and Belvoir near Tiberias, alone of all the Crusaders’ castles south of Tyre, still held Christian garrisons; but every one of these castles was masked by a sufficient force, and it was only a question of time when they must be starved out. Tyre was the only important place in all Palestine that Saladin had not conquered; and to Tyre he despatched his jubilant army on the 1st of November, 1187. Twelve days later he arrived to take command. He found the city full of the garrisons which he had suffered to capitulate at other places. Conrad of Montferrat had worked night and day, strengthening the works, encouraging the defenders, and “directing them with superior ability”. He had deepened and extended the moats till Tyre became “like a hand spread upon the sea, attached only by the wrist”, an island approached by so narrow a spit that it could be easily defended by a small force, as well as covered by the cross-bows on the shielded Christian barges or barbotes, Saladin was supported by his brother, sons, and nephew, with their contingents from Egypt, Aleppo, and Hamah; but he was unable to bring his greatly superior strength to bear upon the enemy. He had indeed seventeen engines playing upon the walls day and night, but only a small number of men could advance at a time upon the spit of land, and these had not only to meet the frequent sallies of the Franks in front, led by the valiant Knight in Green, but to protect themselves from the flank attacks of the barbotes drawn up on either side. Ten of the Saracen ships were brought from Acre, and soon drove the Tyrian galleys into port; but early on the morning of the feast of the holy martyr, St. Thomas of Canterbury (Dec. 29th), half the Moslem fleet was surprised and captured by the enemy, and the rest were sent to Beyrut, as they were not strong enough to hold the galleys in check. Even as they went, they were pursued by the Tyrians, and in a panic all but two of their ships went ashore, where they had to be burnt. The failure at sea was followed by a reverse on shore: the Saracens, taking advantage of the diversion by sea, had scaled the barbican wall and were attempting the main wall, when Conrad sallied out at the head of his men and drove them out with heavy loss.

1188] Retreat from Tyre

Upon this Saladin called a council of war. Some of the emirs were for retreat; they alleged, with reason, the inclemency of the season — for it was now late in December, when rain and snow convert the plain into a sea of mud, and damp and cold breed sickness among the soldiers and horses; — they spoke of the number of dead and wounded, and the want of stores and money; and proposed to raise the siege, and return to the attack in the spring. Against these easy-going advocates, others urged that it was of the first importance to conquer Tyre, since it was the only hope of the Franks on that coast, and if it fell there would be no more reinforcements coming from beyond the sea.

The timider counsels prevailed, however, and on New Year's Day, 1188, Saladin dismissed the various contingents to their homes in Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia, and withdrew with his own personal troops to Acre.

The retreat from Tyre was the turning-point in Saladin’s career of victory. It was a fatal, irremediable error. It was a fixed principle with him to avoid long sieges whenever possible, nor was the principle wrong. His troops consisted largely of an ill-disciplined feudal militia, of different races and dialects, who were bound together more by the hope of booty than by devotion to the Sultan or even zeal for the Holy War. Well led, they could fight with success on a pitched field, and when a town or castle could be taken by assault, the prospect of loot and sheer love of combat would lend the storming party a furious valor. But a long siege discouraged them, and opened occasions for the jealousies and discontents inevitable in so mixed an army. Instead of the incitement of rapid triumphs and frequent prizes, there were the weary sapping of strong walls, the daily exposure to sharpshooters on the battlements and desperate charges from the sally-port. In the case of a regular Crusaders’ castle, well garrisoned and commanded by a capable leader, the odds were against the besiegers, whose clumsy mangonels were uncertain of aim and discharged stones, ponderous indeed, but doubtfully effective against a well-constructed wall of stone twenty feet thick. Mining, though wood had to be fired instead of gunpowder or dynamite, was more successful than bombardment, but it was conducted at great risk when a determined garrison harassed the sappers, nor was the modern science of trench approaches and zigzags and other protective devices familiar to the Saracen engineers. A close blockade, ending in starving out the garrison, was the surest method; but this involved keeping a large body of men in discontented inaction, perhaps in the trying winter season, and without a fleet it was of course useless against a coast town which could be provisioned by sea.

It is not wonderful, therefore, that Saladin avoided long sieges, for which, moreover, he did not show the same capacity that he displayed in set battles and rapid campaigns. His dislike to siege operations may account, as well as his natural clemency, for his usual practice of accepting the surrender of a fortress and letting the garrison go free, even when there was a near prospect of carrying a place by assault. He never seems to have considered that every garrison thus released went to swell the forces of the enemy, and that even if he exacted their parole they were certain to break it at the first opportunity for revenge. Obviously the prudent way was to hold them prisoners of war at Damascus, or some other distant city, until the campaign was over and peace was made. Tyre was full of these capitulated garrisons, and Saladin had chiefly himself to reproach for the strength of the defenders.

1188] Saladin’s Strategy.

Nevertheless, whatever the difficulties of the siege, Delenda est Tyrus should have been his immutable resolve. He should have built a new fleet, destroyed the Tyrian galleys, filled the moats, breached the walls, if he lost half his army in so doing. The only answer is that Saladin knew his men, and felt that he could not count upon their endurance. But even this does not explain his neglect to blockade the city by sea and land, to keep off reinforcements, and to starve its crowded population. However we look at it, Saladin's measures against Tyre appear to be neither soldierly nor statesmanlike. Tyre became the rallying-point from which the Crusaders recovered part of their lost power and prestige along the coast of Palestine: and had this one city not held out, it is a question whether the Third Crusade would ever have been heard of at Acre.

The effects of this serious check were not, of course, immediately apparent. Europe took time to assemble its forces for the recovery of the Holy Land, and meanwhile Saladin, still ignoring the danger from Tyre, led a triumphant campaign in the north. Hitherto he had been content with the subjection of the Kingdom of Jerusalem; he now extended his conquests in the County of Tripolis and the Principality of Antioch. Bohemond III was its Prince, and his son Raymond had succeeded to the County of Tripolis by the will of his namesake, the unhappy survivor of the battle of Hittin. Father and son had cheerfully left Tyre to its fate, and it was no thanks to them that Conrad had beaten off the invaders. Raymond indeed sent some galleys towards the beleaguered city, but an opportune storm had enabled them to return to Tripolis with a plausible excuse for doing nothing. So fearful was Bohemond of adding to his responsibilities that he had turned away the refugees from Jerusalem lest they should exhaust his store of food, and had at the same time relieved them of such money as they carried, in order to supply his own necessities. The northern princes had long pursued a policy of conciliation towards Saladin, and this meanness was perhaps intended as a proof of good feeling, which the generous Sultan can hardly have commended. It did not, at least, prevent him from attacking the northern provinces.

1188] March on Tripolis.

The winter was spent at Acre, where Saladin occupied the Palace of el-Afdal, which had been converted into a Templars’ castle. The divines were installed in the Hospital of St. John, and the bishop's palace was made a hospital: both were richly endowed by Saladin out of the spoils. Meanwhile Karakush, the fortifier of Cairo, was sent for to strengthen the defences of Acre. Leaving the coast in the spring, and after inspecting in March the blockade at Belvoir (Kaukab), the castle of the Hospitallers south of Tiberias, which he found far too strong to be stormed, Saladin visited Damascus, and then on the 14th of May marched north. The immediate cause was a movement of the Franks upon Jubeyl, but the direction of his march shows that his designs pointed towards Tripolis or Antioch. He camped near Emesa, whence he reconnoitred the country. Ernoul says that Saladin actually laid siege to Tripolis, but found it so largely reinforced that he withdrew. William of Sicily, first of all the princes of Europe to come to the rescue, had sent five hundred knights and a fleet of fifty galleys under his brave admiral Margaritus, whose exploits had won him the name of “the King of the Sea”  and “a second Neptune”, and the Sicilians brought invaluable aid to the survivors of the Crusades. Conrad of Montferrat had also hastened to the assistance of his phlegmatic neighbor. With Conrad came the famous Green Knight, whose prowess again compelled the admiring notice of Saladin. The Sultan invited him to his tent; he came, and Saladin made him very welcome, gave him horses and jewels, and offered lands and possessions if he would take service with him. But the Green Knight refused everything; he said he had not come to the Holy Land to stay with Saracens, but to hurt and confound them; which he would do whenever he could. So they parted in honest respect.

Abandoning any designs he had upon Tripolis, Saladin returned to his camp near the Hospitallers’ virgin fortress, Crac des Chevaliers (Hisn el-Akrad, “the Kurds’ Castle”), and, joined by his vassals from Mesopotamia under the leadership of Imad-ed-din of Sinjar, formed his army in order of battle. He set out on his campaign on Friday, his favorite day, the 1st of July. There was no Christian army to oppose him, and the campaign is a monotonous record of the storming or surrender of city after city, castle after castle. Tortosa (Antartus) was the first to feel the brunt of his wrath, for his unusually harsh treatment of the city shows that his ill-success at Tripolis had galled him. Arriving on the 3rd of July, he formed his army in a crescent round the place, from sea to sea, and ordered an immediate assault. It was carried before the followers had time to pitch the Moslems’ tents; and they sacked, and burnt, and razed it to the ground. Of the two castles, however, only one was destroyed; the Templars’ Tower resisted all assaults and had to be left, a standing support to the Christians. Valenia was deserted by its inhabitants; but the great fortress of Margat defied capture. Jebela opened its gates, and its citadel surrendered on Friday the 15th of July. On the following Friday the garrison of Ladikia capitulated; on the Friday after that, Saone (Sahyun), the great castle of the Hospitallers on the hills, was carried by assault, but the Sultan held the garrison and people to ransom on the same terms as at Jerusalem. On three Fridays in August fell the twin fortresses of the Orontes, Bukas and esh-Shughr, hitherto deemed impregnable, and the town of Sarmin. The capture of six strongholds on six successive Fridays assured the Moslems that the prayers of the faithful on the day of worship had been accepted, and they remembered the sacred promise that a good deed done on Friday would be doubly rewarded in Paradise.

Barzuya, on the east of the Orontes, a fort so strong that its impregnability became a proverb, was carried by assault after hard fighting on the 23rd of August; its defenders were made prisoners, and the Moslems were laden with the spoils. Only the governor and his relations, who were kin to the Prince of Antioch, were set free and escorted to their friends. Among them were a newly married couple whom the Saracens had ruthlessly separated. Saladin pitied their misfortune, sought them out, and sent them, reunited, to safety. Bohemond was not likely to forget this generosity, and after the Moslems had taken Darbesak and Baghras, important frontier fortresses commanding the Beylan pass north of Antioch, and were actually marching upon the capital itself, its Prince sued for peace. Saladin's army was glutted with booty, and weary of conquest. They had had three months of hard marching and not a little hard fighting. The officers were eager to go home with their spoils, and give their men time to rest and recruit their strength. Like all Moslem armies, it was a married army, and the troops wanted their wives. A truce for eight months was concluded on the 1st of October; the Prince of Antioch released all the Saracen captives in his power, and agreed to deliver up his city if it were not rescued before the end of the truce.

1188] Fall of Belvoir, Safed, and Karak

At Aleppo, the Mesopotamian contingents under the Prince of Sinjar, who had been eager to depart, were dismissed to their homes; and after ovations in the Grey Castle, where Saladin’s son ez-Zahir commanded, and at Hamah, which was under his bravest nephew Taki-ed-din, the Sultan returned to Damascus about the 20th of October. He had granted his vassals and kinsmen their well-earned repose, but he took no rest himself that winter. The month of Ramadan was at hand, but even the holy fast must give way to the urgent duty of fighting for the faith. North and south of the Lake of Galilee, Safed and Belvoir still held out against the long blockade of the Moslems. Setting aside the thoughts of rest and home which every Moslem cherishes during the sacred month, and despising the rigors of a Syrian winter, Saladin led his own guard against the Templars’ fortress. The Saracens invested the rocky hill of Safed. Rain was falling in torrents, and the ground was a swamp, but the Sultan himself marked out the places for his five mangonels, and refused to sleep till they had been erected. Orderlies went backwards and forwards all night to report the progress of the work. The siege was pressed for a month, night and day without intermission, till the garrison at last surrendered (December 6th). They were suffered to depart to Tyre with the honors of war. Belvoir was next attacked, the fastness “set amid the stars, like a falcon's nest”, “the city of barking, whose dogs ever yelped and bears growled”. The siege was carried on in storms of rain and wind, with a sea of mud under foot. After heavy losses a breach was at last effected, and the Hospitallers followed the example of the rival Order and capitulated (January, 5, 11 89). About the same time news arrived that the fortress which had so long troubled the peace of the Moslems, and which Saladin had so often besieged, had at length been starved out: Karak had surrendered to el-Adil. The garrison had been reduced to driving out their women and children, and eating their horses, before they would abandon their trust, though they had themselves been abandoned by the Christians and no lord was there to lead them. It is worthy to record that Saladin sought out these women and children, bought them himself, and gave them back to their stoical kinsmen. Then he sent them all safely into Christian territory.

Thus the year 1188, after a series of conquests, closed with a triple crown of victory. Belvoir, Safed, and Karak, would no longer menace the peaceful merchants and pilgrims on the roads from Egypt and Arabia, and along the Jordan valley. But events soon proved that even these gains did not outweigh the loss which the empire of Saladin was to suffer from the unchecked rallying of the Christians at Tyre.