The Moslem world was nominally divided between the Syrian caliph of Bagdad and the Egyptian caliph of Cairo. Egypt was wretchedly governed. The caliph of Cairo was but a creature of his viziers. Amaury, seeing the possibility of extending his domains to the Nile, took arms against him. In 1163 he sent an army which might have held the country, had it not been driven out by the enemy’s flooding the valley of the Nile. One party in Egypt invoked the assistance of Nourredin, who sent as his general Shirkuh the Kurd, uncle of Saladin. Amaury accomplished against him the capture of Pelusium in 1164. In 1167 he took Alexandria, commanded at the time by young Saladin. He later penetrated to Cairo and laid El Fostat in ashes. In 1168 Shirkuh renewed the war. Amaury, marching from Egypt to meet his antagonist in the desert, was flanked by that general, who suddenly occupied the land left undefended. Amaury, who had married a niece of the Emperor Manuel, made with the Greeks an unsuccessful attack upon Damietta. Here the Christians felt the hand of one who was destined ultimately to overthrow all their power in the East. Saladin was in command. On the death of Shirkuh he had been appointed vizier by the caliph of Cairo. The caliph, wearied of being controlled by designing and capable men who absorbed in their own interests the power they defended, selected Saladin, thinking that the young man’s inexperience would be less of a menace to the caliphate.
Nourredin, however, divined the genius of the young vizier and assigned to him the supreme command in Egypt. He then deposed the caliph, and with his reign brought to an end the dynasty of the Fatimites, which for two hundred years had held the land of the Nile. Thus Nourredin ruled supreme from Babylonia to the desert of Libya. Only the kingdom of Jerusalem marred the map of his dominion. To reconquer this for Islam was his incessant purpose. With his own hands he made a pulpit, from which he promised the faithful one day to preach in the mosque of Omar on the temple site.
But the Moslem world was already attached to one destined to be greater than Nourredin. The youth of Saladin had been one of apparent indolence and dissipation, but he veiled beneath his indifference the finest genius and most unbounded ambition. As soon as he felt the possession of power he assumed a corresponding dignity, and men recognized him as one appointed of Heaven. Turbulent emirs, who had ignored him as a chance holder of position, now sat reverently before him. Even the priests were struck with the sincere austerity of his devotion. The caliph of Bagdad bestowed upon him the distinguished dignity of the vest of honor. Poets began to mingle his name with those of heroes as the rising star. The pious included it in their prayers as the hope of Islam.
Knowing that experience is often wiser than genius, Saladin judiciously guarded himself from the errors of youth by associating his father, Ayoub, with him in the government of Egypt. Nourredin, whose successful career had allowed him no jealousy of ordinary men, showed that he was restless at the popularity and ability displayed by his young subaltern, and was preparing to take Egypt under his own immediate government when death, his first vanquisher, came upon the veteran (May, 1174). Saladin immediately proclaimed himself Sultan of Egypt, and hastened to secure the succession of Nourredin’s power as Sultan of Damascus.
Two months later (July, 1174) Amaury followed his great competitor to the grave, and the kingdom of Jerusalem fell to his son, Baldwin IV., a leprous lad of thirteen years. The personal contrast of this sovereign with Saladin was ominous of the contrast between the coming history of the two powers they respectively led. The education of Baldwin was conducted by William of Tyre, the chief historian of this period. The regency of the kingdom was disputed by Milo de Plausy and Raymond, Count of Tripoli. Raymond was great-grandson of Raymond of Toulouse, the renowned leader of the first crusade, and inherited, together with his ancestor’s bravery, his impatience and passion for personal precedence. He deemed that he had a right to the highest emoluments of the kingdom as compensation for having suffered eight years’ imprisonment among the Infidels. Milo was elected regent by the barons, but was shortly afterwards assassinated by unknown hands on the street. Raymond succeeded to the regency. The suspicion of having instigated the murder of his rival was supplemented by a later suspicion that he secretly betrayed the Christian cause in the interest of Saladin. It is not necessary to believe this, as the prowess of the new ruler of Egypt is sufficient to account for his successes. Raymond was unwise in his movements; he busied himself with a wretched attempt upon Alexandria, and then made truce with Saladin in the north just at a moment when peace enabled the young Saracen to strengthen his power over his Mohammedan neighbors.
In time Baldwin IV. took the reins into his own hands. Saladin was pouring his forces over the Holy Land. His newly organized troop of Mamelukes formed his body-guard. Baldwin shut himself up in Ascalon, but soon the general devastation of his kingdom maddened the Christians to desperation. They issued from Ascalon with such fury that the Egyptian army was swept from the field and but few of Saladin’s soldiers lived to accompany their young leader back to Cairo.
This defeat, far from depressing the courage of Saladin, only taught him new lessons of caution. Little by little his sword carved away the Christian kingdom, until Baldwin was forced to sign a truce. Renaud, Lord of Carac, broke this compact, and with the aid of an army of Templars plundered the Moslem caravans, massacring defenceless men and capturing the women. He made an incursion as far as Arabia, and announced his purpose of going to Mecca to plunder the tomb of the Prophet. But the swift riders of Saladin were upon his track. Renaud barely escaped, many of his troops being captured. Most of these were put to death in Egypt, a few being reserved as victims in the annual sacrifice at Mecca. Saladin was infuriated by Renaud’s breach of faith, and won the title of “Scourge of God,” even among the Christians, by the swift and fearful retaliation which he took upon the cities of northern Palestine.
The increasing leprosy of Baldwin rendered him incapable of discharging his royal duties. A sort of political leprosy or dry-rot seemed to infect the state. The crown retained its shape, but not its lustre, for it could not control the internecine strife of the Christian barons, who waged war upon one another from their mountain fastnesses. The Hospitallers and Templars, too, combined against the priesthood, and hooted and shot at them as they went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The priests retaliated by gathering the arrows and placing them on the Mount of Olives, calling heaven to avenge the insult offered to its ministers. The various nations represented by the influx of pilgrims added to the confusion by reviving in Palestine the prejudices of sections of Europe. Vice everywhere had open license. William of Tyre, in describing the condition of affairs, drops his pen, lest his readers should accuse him of defaming human nature by his recital. Agents were sent to the courts of Europe, appealing for succor to the kingdom, which was falling to pieces in punishment of its own demerits. The piety of Christendom made no response except in pity for a government which they called “Christ’s Second Crown of Thorns.”
Baldwin IV. died in 1185. Baldwin V., a child, had been crowned as his successor two years before. This prince was the child of Sibylla by her first husband, the Marquis of Montferrat. Since the death of the marquis she had married Guy of Lusignan. Little King Baldwin died a year later (1186). Sibylla was accused of having poisoned her own child to advance her new husband’s interest. The suspicion was not lessened by her adoption of a disgraceful ruse to gain for Guy the vacant throne. As the daughter of one king of Jerusalem and sister of another, she might have held the sovereignty but for the opposition to Guy, whom she associated with herself in the government. She proposed to the chiefs that she should divorce Guy, saying, “If a divorce takes place between me and my husband, I wish you to make me sure by your oaths that whomsoever I shall make choice of for my husband you will choose for your head and lord.” She then swore that she would award him whom she regarded as the ablest defender of Jerusalem with her hand and crown. This was agreed to. The patriarch solemnly announced her divorce and placed the crown in her hands. Sibylla, to the surprise of all, turned to Guy and, placing the crown upon his head, boldly declared, “I make choice of thee as king and as my lord; for whom God hath joined together let not man put asunder.” The audacity of Sibylla apparently cowed the warriors about her; they acquiesced, and some even applauded the cleverness of her deceit.