The Whites and the Blues

by Alexandre Dumas

Ibn-Alatir, one of Saladin's physicians, has, among others, left us an interesting account of the Mussulman camp.

"In the midst of the camp (it is Ibn-Alatir who is speaking) was a vast square where the farriers' forges were located. There were one hundred and forty of them. We can judge of the rest of the camp in proportion.

"In a single kitchen there were twenty-nine pots, each one large enough to hold a sheep. I myself counted the number of shops registered as markets. I counted seven thousand. You must know that they are not like our city shops. A shop in a camp would make a hundred of ours. All were well supplied. I have heard that when Saladin changed his camp to retire to Karouba, although the distance was short, that it cost one butter-merchant seventy gold pieces to move his shop. As for the old and new clothes shops, they were something beyond description. There were more than one thousand baths in the camp. They were kept by Africans, and it cost a piece of silver to take a bath.

"The camp of the Christians was like a fortified city. All the trades and all the mechanical arts were represented there."

The markets were supplied with meat, fish and fruits as completely as the capital of a great kingdom could have been. There were even churches with bells there. Therefore it was usually at the hour of mass that the Saracens attacked the camp.

"A poor English priest," says Michaud, "built a chapel dedicated to the dead at his own expense on the plain of Ptolemais. There was a vast plot of consecrated ground around the chapel, whither he followed the remains of more than one hundred thousand pilgrims, chanting their burial service himself. Forty lords of Lubeck and Bremen made tents with the sails of their vessels for the poor soldiers of their country and took care of them in sickness. This was the origin of a celebrated order which still exists under the name of the Teutonic Order."

Whoever has travelled in the East, in Egypt, or to Constantinople, has made the acquaintance of the famous Turkish Punchinello, called Caragous. The exploits of our Punchinello are as nothing when compared to his; and he, the cynic of cynics, would blush at the most innocent jokes of his turbaned colleague.

It was during this siege, in which Richard Cœur-de-Lion and Saladin played such an important part, that the ancestor of the modern Caragous appeared. He was an Emir.

Another historical date, no less important to verify, is that of the first bill of exchange. Emad-Eddin speaks of an ambassador of the Caliph of Bagdad who was the bearer of two loads of naphtha and reeds, and who brought with him five persons skilled in the distillation and the use of naphtha. It is admitted that naphtha and Greek fire are one and the same. Furthermore, this same ambassador brought a note of hand for twenty thousand pieces of gold on the merchants of Bagdad. Thus the bill of exchange and the note of hand are not inventions of modern commerce, as they were used in the East in the year 1191.

It was during this two years' siege that the besieged invented the Zenbourech, which the popes afterward forbade the Christians to use. It was a sort of arrow about twelve inches long and four inches thick. It had four sides, an iron point, and a feathered head. Vinisauf relates that this dreadful arrow, thrown by the instrument which was used to shoot it, would at times pass through the bodies of two men armed with shields, and then bury itself in the wall.