The raids which Saladin made on the Latin kingdom met at first with little success. He was defeated at Gezer in 1177, and his incursions to Jezreel in 1183 and to Nâblus in 1184 had no permanent effect, nor was he able to take the strong fortress of Kerak, east of the Dead Sea. He was involved in a struggle with the Atabeks at Môsul, and not until he had signed peace with them, on March 3, 1186, was he free to turn his whole force against the Franks. They were well aware of his intentions, and early in the following year King Guy summoned his feudatories to assemble at the great springs a mile west of Sepphoris in Lower Galilee. In March, Renaud of Chatillon broke the truce by capturing a Moslem caravan from Mekkah, and leading his prisoners to Kerak. Saladin marched against him, and meantime an advanced guard of his army, under his son Melek el Afḍal, raided the neighbourhood of Nazareth. On May 1 they encountered near Kefr Kenna the masters of the Temple and Hospital, who had only an hundred and forty knights with them. The knights were defeated, and the master of the Hospital with the marshal of the Temple Order were slain. Saladin at once joined his son, and 50,000 fighting men gathered at the Fountain of Sepphoris to oppose him. The fatal battle of Ḥaṭṭîn was lost by King Guy through a strategical mistake. He was warned by Raymond of Tripoli not to advance, because there was no water on the route. But the Templars were burning with rage at their recent defeat, and the master over-persuaded the king to attack the position which Saladin held covering the springs on the plateau west of Tiberias. The Christians perished from heat and thirst; and, excepting Raymond of Tripoli and Balian of Ibelin, who cut their way out, all the Frank leaders were taken prisoners. They were all well treated except Renaud, whom Saladin slew, as the cause of the war and the most dangerous of the enemies of Islâm. Like Titus, he also considered that priests must die when conquered, and he therefore commanded the execution of all the Templars (except the master) and the Hospitallers. Thus two hundred of the most dreaded defenders of the Latin kingdom, all the surviving knights of both orders, were beheaded as being under religious vows.
So rapid were Saladin’s marches after this victory that all Palestine and Syria—except the seaboard cities of Tyre and Tripoli, and the northern capital of Antioch—fell into his hands before any help could come from Europe.[550]
SALADIN’S SIEGE
On December 20, 1187, the Moslems appeared on the west side of Jerusalem, but the sulṭân afterwards shifted his camp to the north. We have two accounts of the siege, one by Bernard the Treasurer, the other by Beha-ed-Dîn. Balian of Ibelin had thrown himself into the city, where he found not a single knight. He made fifty new ones, and stripped off the silver ornaments of the Holy Sepulchre, coining them to pay his troops. Saladin offered terms, which were refused. The chronicler records an extraordinary incident, which casts a strange light on the superstitions of the age. “The ladies of Jerusalem took cauldrons, and placed them before Mount Calvary, and having filled them with cold water, put their daughters in them up to the neck, and cut off their tresses and threw them away.”[551] This hair-offering to an offended Deity was a survival of that ancient sacrifice of the first-born which, among Canaanites and Phœnicians, was common in seasons of dire distress, as when the king of Moab slew his son on the wall. On the eighth day of the siege Saladin camped opposite St. Stephen’s Gate, and thus attacked the north wall of the city with mangonels and mines. A breach was effected at the north-east angle of the rampart, but the storming party was repulsed, and at length Balian yielded, and Saladin was only too willing to grant favourable terms. The city was full of starving women and children, and of priests who made processions in vain. On Friday, October 2—the day on which Muḥammad was believed to have ascended to heaven—Jerusalem was given up, and all the lives of the inhabitants were spared. They numbered 7,000 men, besides women and children—probably at least 30,000 in all. The ransom agreed upon is variously stated[552] at 30 and at 70 shillings for each man, payable within 50 days. Meanwhile, all gates were closed except that on the west, where Saracens were admitted to buy what Christians wished to sell. Balian and the patriarch seized the treasure of the Hospital to pay the ransom of the poor; but, as this did not suffice, Seif-ed-Dîn (Saladin’s brother) begged for 1,000 captives, who would remain as slaves, and released them all. Saladin gave 700 others as a present to the patriarch, and 500 to Balian; the remainder of the poor he allowed to depart by the Postern of St. Lazarus without payment. He restored many prisoners to their wives, and “gave largely, from his own private purse, to all the ladies and noble maidens, so that they gave thanks to God for the honour and wealth that Saladin bestowed upon them.” This is the statement of the Christian chronicler. The Moslem account says that—after the ancient manner of Arab princes—the sulṭân bestowed all the treasure he received, amounting to over £100,000, on his emîrs and soldiers, and on the ’Ulema, and dervishes who accompanied the army, keeping nothing for himself. The Christians were safely escorted to Tyre, and 3,000 Moslems who were captives in the city were set free.
The first act of Saladin, entering the city on Friday—the Moslem day of rest—was to attend public prayer in the Aḳṣa Mosque, and to hear a sermon from the khâṭib. He caused the great cross above the Dome of the Rock to be pulled down, and afterwards removed the altar and the marble flagstones from the Ṣakhrah, with the images of Christ already described. He caused a beautiful mimbâr, or pulpit of wood inlaid with ebony and ivory, to be brought from Aleppo. It still stands in the Aḳṣa Mosque, with an inscription giving the name of Nûr-ed-Dîn, and a date answering to 1168 A. D. The mihrâb, or prayer recess, was found covered over by a wall in the Templar Church, and was now again brought to light and cased with marble. The frescoes in the Dome of the Rock were effaced, and covered also with marble veneering on the inside of the outer wall. According to a later account, the Ḥaram was not only swept and purified, but was even washed with rose-water. Two extant inscriptions refer to Saladin’s restorations, and, being very characteristic of Moslem style, may be here given. The first[553] is over the chief mihrâb of the Aḳṣa Mosque, dating from 1188 A. D.: “In the name of God merciful and pitying. Has ordered the repair of this holy mihrâb, and the restoration of the Aḳṣa Mosque—piously founded—the servant of God, and His regent, Yûsef, son of Aiyûb, the father of victory, the conquering king, Ṣalâḥ-ed-dunya-wa-ed-Dîn [benefactor of the world and of the faith], after God had conquered by his hand during the [seventh] month of the year 583. And he asks God to inspire him with thankfulness for this favour, and to make him a partaker of pardon through His mercy and forgiveness.”
TEXTS OF SALADIN
The other text, two years later,[554] is on the tiles inside the drum of the Dome of the Rock: “In the name of God merciful and pitying. Has commanded the renewal of the gilding of this noble dome our lord the sultan, the conquering king, the wise, the just, Ṣalâḥ-ed-Dîn Yûsef. In the name of God the merciful the pitying ... in the latter third of the month Rejeb,[555] in the year 585, by the hand of God’s poor servant Ṣalâḥ-ed-Dîn Yûsef, son of Aiyûb, son of Shâdi, may God enfold him in His mercy.”
The disappearance of the Franks was regarded with satisfaction by the Eastern Churches: for Saladin followed the commands of the prophet in tolerating their presence; and the sites of which they had been robbed by the Latins fell again into their power. It is said that St. Anne was now converted into a college for ’Ulema (or learned men), of the Shaf’ii sect of orthodox Moslems, and it remained in their hands until 1856, when the site was given to the emperor Napoleon III., who caused the church to be rebuilt, in Norman style, a few years later. The Church of St. Chariton, north of the Holy Sepulchre, was also taken and (according to Mejîr ed Dîn) was endowed by Saladin as a khanḳah or “cloister.” Yâkût (in 1225) says that it was the place of prayer of the Kerrâmi sect.[556] It still bears the name of “Saladin’s Cloister,” and remains in Moslem possession, being on the south side of the old “Street of the Sepulchre,” north of the Latin Chapel of the Apparition, not far from the corner where the street crosses the north end of Patriarch Street. But the great churches remained undisturbed; and such was the bitterness of feeling against the Latin hierarchy that the Armenian Catholicus of Ani wrote to Saladin to report the advance of Frederick Barbarossa, while the emperor Isaac Angelus also allied himself with the sultan, and wrote to say that the Germans would never reach Syria, and could do no harm even if they did.[557]
The sudden collapse of the kingdom of Jerusalem was announced to Europe, and was received with consternation. It was due in great measure to the degeneracy of the third generation of Frank colonists, and to the decay of the ancient just rule which, at first, made native Christians and Moslems alike willing to live under the feudal laws. The third Crusade[558] was at once undertaken as being necessary for the peace of Europe. The hero of this campaign was Richard Lion-heart, and the treaty which he finally made with Saladin, being often renewed later, formed the basis of agreements between Franks and Moslems for nearly a century. Frederick Barbarossa was the first in the field, but he died of a chill in Asia Minor in 1189 A. D., and only some 5,000 Germans reached Acre, out of 200,000 who left Germany, having been much harassed by the Turks on their way by land to Antioch. The French king Philip Augustus brought perhaps 60,000 men to aid King Guy at the siege of Acre in the spring of 1191 A. D., but after the capture of the city he went home, and the French were never very cordial supporters of the English, who, for the first time, appeared in force in Palestine under Richard.[559] After the great battle of Arsûf (between Cæsarea and Jaffa), in which Saladin was badly beaten by Richard, the sulṭân retired with his disheartened army to Jerusalem, where he passed the winter of 1191–2 A. D. On April 13 of the next year the Christian army again advanced to Beit Nûba, at the foot of the Jerusalem hills, and the French were eager to undertake the re-conquest of the Holy City. But Richard knew that Saladin had stopped up all the wells and springs outside, and he remembered the cause of disaster at Ḥaṭṭîn, as did the Templars and Hospitallers, who advised him to march on Egypt. They were only 12 miles from Jerusalem, but the discordant counsels of the leaders led to a final breach with the French, who refused to serve any longer under Richard. Had he known the despondency of the defeated Moslems, the result might have been different; but the lands of the two great Orders were now secured, and the seaports contented the great trading republics of Italy. Richard and Saladin—both exhausted by the conflict—were both anxious to arrive at a settlement, and negotiations went on during the whole winter preceding the final advance now interrupted.
SALADIN’S PRAYER