Chapter 5

The Family of Aiyub

We know almost nothing about the personal life of Saladin before, in his twenty-eighth year, he took his first major command in the forces of Nur-ad-Din. Even the year of his birth is uncertain in the Christian calendar. He was born in the year 532 of the Muslim Hegira but the month is not known. The year 532 A.H.ran from 19 September A.D. 1137 to 8 September 1138. The statistical probability therefore places Saladin’s birth in the latter year. But if information on the young Saladin is scanty, the careers of his distinguished father and uncle are comparatively well documented.

He was descended from the Kurdish Rawadiya clan. His grandfather, Shadhi ibn-Marwan, launched the family fortunes through the good offices of a friend, Bihruz, who, from humble beginnings, had risen to become governor of Baghdad. He placed his old friend’s eldest son Aiyub as commander of the important city of Takrit about half-way between Baghdad and Mosul on the River Tigris. By a combination of luck, good judgement and influential contacts, Aiyub was to go far. In the year 1132 the watchmen on his fortess’s walls saw a troop of horsemen flying across the plain towards the river. Its general was the young Zengi, carving a distinguished career for himself in the tangled woods of Baghdad politics, but just at this moment on the verge of catastrophe. He had been defeated by the armies of the caliph and if his pursuers caught him his career was liable to come to an abrupt halt. He needed transport desperately and Aiyub sent a boat across.

Since Zengi and Bihruz had long been enemies this was a puzzling but outright act of betrayal. Not long after Aiyub again crossed his superior, refusing to order the execution of an important political prisoner committed to his custody. One supposes that there were reasons for these daring acts of insubordination, and the fact that he continued in his post shows that he calculated the political probabilities correctly. That at least is in tune with what we know of the man in later life. It is possible too that Bihruz was not entirely sure of his own position and that Aiyub had other, even more influential patrons in the capital. However, in 1138 Bihruz became military commander in Baghdad and when, in that year, news reached him that Shirkuh, Aiyub’s brother, had killed a man in an affray he finally relieved him of his command. Apparently the brothers and their families had to make their escape under cover of darkness; probably they had enemies enough by this time to make their fall from favour a signal for the settling of old scores. It was on this very night, so runs the tradition, that Aiyub’s third son, Salah-ad-Din Yusuf, was born.

Both probability and historical opinion are against the tale, but Saladin was not the first nor the last great man whose nativity received the attention of the myth makers. Within a year of their humiliation the family of Aiyub were notabilities at Zengi’s court in Mosul. The great man’s star was firmly in the ascendant and he had not forgotten that day on the Tigris, six years before. In 1138 he went on campaign against Damascus and took Aiyub with him. The city held out but its dependant, Baalbek, fell to the armies of Mosul and as we have seen Aiyub ibn-Shadhi was left there as commander. Zengi was too hard-nosed to consign such a vital strongpoint – an advance post in Damascene territory established for the next attack – on friendship alone. Clearly Aiyub was a man of considerable ability. He was also a man of unconventional piety and founded a college for the Sufi sect of mystics in the town.

For the next seven years he held Baalbek for Zengi. When his patron was murdered in 1146 he rapidly adjusted to the new situation. After a resistance determined enough to establish his bona fides as a loyal servant to the house of his patron, he surrendered the place back to Damascus. His new masters recognised his value and he remained in his post, rising in time to a high place in the Damascus administration. It seems that, although he was patently unable to relieve the siege of Baalbek, Nur-ad-Din resented Aiyub’s defection, and it was his brother, Shirkuh, who now maintained the family’s standing at the Syrian court. After their father’s death Nur-ad-Din and Saif-ad-Din hurried to secure themselves in the power bases bequeathed them – Saif-ad-Din to Mosul with his father’s vizir and Nur-ad-Din to Aleppo where he was proclaimed by Shirkuh.

He was a very different man from his brother. Aiyub emerges as a shrewd, calculating and circumspect character, wily in politics but decisive in action. Shirkuh, by contrast, was boisterous and impetuous. But he shared his brother’s ability for political manoeuvre and his persistence and was to become Nur-ad-Din’s right-hand man. He was short, with a cast in one eye, and, according to contemporaries, had the ‘coarse features of the low born’. Even in an age when gluttony was commonplace for those who could afford it, Shirkuh won a reputation for excess and, it is starkly recorded, died of over-eating. Yet this paunchy, unprepossessing little soldier, could look back on a battle career of real distinction. At the battle of Inab in 1149 he killed Raymond of Antioch in single combat, the greatest feat of arms that day. Loud mouthed and truculent, tough and courageous, Shirkuh was, more often than not, victorious, and was a thoroughly professional soldier with a careful eye for details of supply and the tactician’s feeling for terrain.

After Nur-ad-Din’s capture of Damascus in 1154, the brothers once again found themselves serving the same master. In fact the capitulation of the city smacks of a cosy family arrangement. Sent ahead of the main army as an ‘ambassador’, with an impressive force at his back, Shirkuh appeared before the walls to negotiate the terms for the alliance of Damascus and Aleppo. The ruler of the city refused to let him within the walls, or to go out to meet him. He had good reason to be wary. While his heralds argued with one brother across the fortifications, the agents of the other were fomenting discontent amongst the populace. As at Baalbek eight years before, Aiyub (now in the Damascus military high command) correctly sized up the drift of events. The populace was near rebellion and the massive army of Aleppo was bound to overcome the demoralised defenders sooner rather than later. He played the game of turncoat with his accustomed aplomb and he won a large prize. His part in the bloodless victory was acknowledged by the unparalleled privilege that he alone was allowed to sit in the presence of Nur-ad-Din when the king gave audience. When he returned to Aleppo, Aiyub was left as governor of Damascus. Saladin, now sixteen, grew to manhood a member of the ruling family of the richest and the second most important city in Syria.

Saladin’s education would have followed the traditional lines for an Arab gentleman. By an admonition of the prophet, the search for knowledge was incumbent on every man and woman. The worlds of learning, philosophy, science and religion were seen as an integrated whole, but central to adab, a gentleman’s education, was the concept of zarf – of elegance and refinement.Adab was founded in Koranic studies, Arabic grammar, rhetoric and poetry. In later life Saladin showed a passion and proficiency for theological debate. His father being a patron of Sufi mysticism, it has been suggested that Saladin was brought up in the Sufi tradition of renunciation of the world and the self. But these facts do not support the idea, put forward by many of Saladin’s biographers since Stanley Lane-Poole’s classic of the 1890s, that he led the life of a recluse and even, according to the French scholar Champdor, was a timid young man. Saladin may have had more than the nodding familiarity with theological debate expected of a gentleman, but he was no stranger to the social refinements of zarf. He was described as the perfect companion and conversationalist, being ‘well acquainted with the genealogies of the old families and the details of their victories and a master of all traditional lore; he had the pedigrees of the great Arab horses at his fingertips.’

He entered army service at the age of fourteen, when in 1152 he left Damascus to join his uncle at Aleppo; here he received a military ‘fief’ or iqta in the service of Nur-ad-Din. Four years later, aged eighteen, he was appointed to a post in the administration of Damascus and shortly after that entered the personal entourage of Nur-ad-Din as a liaison officer ‘never leaving him whether on the march or at court’.

There is nothing to suggest that he was notably pious during this period, and indeed some rather conclusive evidence that he was not. Between 1157 and 1161, when he was twenty-three, his father and uncle between them led three of the pilgrim caravans to Mecca. On the last occasion Nur-ad-Din took part. But Saladin did not. Why is not recorded, though there is no hint that he was ill. The pilgrimage is binding on all Muslims able to perform it; Saladin’s chief made time for it, despite a heavy official schedule; the fact that he, a young courtier with, one presumes, time on his hands, did not might suggest that there were more engagements on the social calendar. In his forties, he told his secretary Baha’-ad-Din that when he became vizir of Egypt, ‘in recognition of the blessings that God had vouchsafed to him, he gave up wine and the pleasures of the world’. Until that time he seems to have indulged them freely. His passion for hunting never left him, and as a young man he had been a renowned polo player.

This game had a special prestige in a military society as a peacetime sport that kept men and horses fit – it could also be highly dangerous. Many an oriental prince met his death in the mêlée as teams of ten or twenty riders clashed in the battle for the tchogan or ball. (A French traveller in the seventeenth century even recorded a Persian match involving three hundred riders with two or three balls in play simultaneously.) One medieval Syrian aristocrat had this advice for his son: ‘I shall have no objection if you wish to play polo once or twice a year, but even then, to avoid accidents, do not play in a crowded field. Six players on each side are quite sufficient.’

Such caution would have been despised by the young bloods at court. The tchogandar, or polo master, was a highly respected officer. As in any aristocratic society, diversions and etiquette were part of politics, so that when Saladin was invited by Nur-ad-Din to join his side in a polo match it was a sign of high favour.

During his life at Damascus and Aleppo, his father’s and his uncle’s stock continued to rise so that when, in 1157, Nur-ad-Din fell desperately ill, he deputed Shirkuh to mobilise Damascus against possible crusader attacks. Two years later the Syrian king again fell ill and the two brothers were once again to the fore – a hostile commentator even accused Shirkuh of planning a coup. Although probably a slander it indicates the ambitions of Shirkuh; in the autumn of 1163 a new theatre of opportunity seemed to open for them in Egypt.

In one of the periodic upheavals in Cairo the vizir, Shavar, had been ousted after a rule of only eight months. He made his way to Damascus and there offered Nur-ad-Din a third of the annual revenue of Egypt plus the costs of the expedition in return for his reinstatement. The reply was not immediate, though many of Nur-ad-Din’s advisers, among them Shirkuh, urged him to seize the opportunity. Then, any reservations he may have had about Shavar’s reliability were cut short when he heard that Amalric of Jerusalem, taking advantage of the chaos in Egypt, had invaded and won a large annual tribute plus a promise of indefinite truce from the Egyptians. Immediately the Syrian king prepared an expedition under the command of Shirkuh and in the following spring Dirgam, the new ruler in Cairo, was defeated at Bilbais. With the powerful Damascene army at the gates of Cairo he found himself deserted by the caliph and attempted to escape, but he was thrown from his horse and killed by the mob.

Shavar was back in power, but Shirkuh appears to have consulted Sunnite theologians in Cairo on the feasibility of ousting the heretical Fatimid régime. They advised against the attempt. Unaware of these machinations, Shavar now made it clear that he had no intention of keeping to the extravagant bargain he had struck with Nur-ad-Din. Very possibly he doubted whether he could. Committing a third of the caliph’s revenues to a foreign power was easy enough in Damascus, but to force that commitment through council was a different matter. Even if he succeeded, his responsibility for such a drain on the national resources would be a strong argument in the hands of any rival looking to supplant him. Taking the dilemma by the horns, Shavar denied Shirkuh and his troops entry to the walled city of Cairo and refused the indemnity. It was a sizeable piece of bravado and provoked an immediate response. On 18 July, the Syrian forces, swelled by large numbers of Bedouin, defeated a force of Egyptians and Shavar himself was almost lynched in the mêlée. He and his cause were saved only at the last moment when the caliph threw in the palace guard against the Syrians.

Shavar had already appealed for help to Amalric of Jerusalem. Unnerved by the prospect of Nur-ad-Din controlling both Egypt and Syria he responded with alacrity. By early August the Franks had forced Shirkuh back on to the defence in the fortress of Bilbais which Saladin had already garrisoned as a potential fall-back point. The combined armies of himself and his uncle were besieged there for three months. The pressure was released by events in Syria. Taking advantage of Amalric’s absence, Nur-ad-Din had struck against Antioch and won his triumph at Artah. Amalric was soon looking for terms which Shirkuh, his forces too weakened and exhausted to take advantage of Shavar once his protector had withdrawn, was willing to settle.

This Egyptian expedition, undertaken against Nur-ad-Din’s better judgement, had achieved nothing except to expose Shavar’s opportunism and to give Shirkuh the opportunity to size up the country and establish contact with some of the elements opposed to the régime. He was convinced that with better preparation and a larger investment in men and resources Egypt could easily be taken. He not only argued his case in Damascus but wrote to the caliph’s court at Baghdad, describing the situation in Egypt, the country’s immense potential wealth and the numerous orthodox Muslims there, subjects of the heretical Fatimid rule.

Baghdad’s enthusiasm for the Egyptian campaign, which it elevated to the status of a Holy War, was a big factor in Nur-ad-Din’s decision to venture south once more. In the interim, moreover, Shavar was faced with further unrest among the Bedouin. A general persecution of the malcontents in Cairo followed, and some escaped to the court at Damascus. In January 1167 a well-found force of Kurds, Turkomans and Bedouin set out for Egypt with Shirkuh in command and Saladin once more on the staff. Shavar, with ample warning of the invasion, sent for help to Amalric. At a meeting of the barons at Nablus it was decided to mobilise the whole force of the kingdom. Once again the Franks saw themselves faced with the threat of encirclement, but, remembering Nur-ad-Din’s triumphs in 1164 when the army was in Egypt, the kingdom was to be put on full defensive alert. Even as the mobilisation proceeded news came that Shirkuh’s force was entering Sinai. An attempted interception failed.

The Syrians were on a desert route specifically chosen to avoid the possibility of Frankish attack. A few days’ journey from the isthmus of Suez the army was struck by a tearing sandstorm. Given the time of year this was probably whipped up by the fierce south wind known in Syria as the simoom (‘evil’ or ‘polluted’) and feared as a carrier of infection. Some of the troops seem to have died in the ordeal while many more were probably weakened by inflammation of the nose and throat and resulting infections. In view of the convoluted campaign that was to follow it looks as though Nur-ad-Din had underestimated the strength of the Christian response and his expedition may have been under strength for the work it now had to do. If, as seems likely, the unexpected disaster of the sandstorm had weakened it still further then Shirkuh’s strategy in the weeks ahead, otherwise rather puzzling, can perhaps be explained.

After crossing the Suez isthmus Shirkuh took a line of march which, while ensuring him against Christian harassment, brought him to the Nile some forty miles south of Cairo. If the expedition’s objective was the overthrow of the Fatimid caliphate then it is difficult to see why the army did not march directly on the capital. Once at the Nile Shirkuh immediately crossed the river to the west bank. Since the caliphal palace was on the east bank, and since, of course, the river widened in its journey north and became increasingly difficult to cross, one is forced to conclude that Shirkuh was more concerned to put an effective barrier between himself and his enemies than to make an immediate strike against them. He probably knew that the combined Frankish and Egyptian armies heavily outnumbered his own.

He made camp at Giza, across the river from Cairo, and awaited developments. The most promising was that his enemies would fall out. At Shavar’s headquarters the atmosphere was tense. By involving Cairo in shameful dealings with the Christians he was risking isolation from court, yet it was the court party which controlled the purse strings and he needed money to pay his unpopular allies. King Amalric had once said that Egypt should be the milch cow of Jerusalem and now, persuaded by his barons, he was threatening to withdraw unless extravagantly well paid. If he did, Egypt would have to face Shirkuh alone and Shavar’s policy would be utterly discredited. While he argued terms with the Christians his tottering position was undermined by a message from the Syrian camp, proposing a joint Muslim alliance against them.

Perhaps Shirkuh had scented a whiff of desperation in the air wafting across the river from Fustat, where Shavar had his headquarters. His proposal ended with a persuasive plea for joint action in the Holy War: ‘I do not think,’ he concluded, ‘that Islam will ever have such a good opportunity as this.’ The implied criticism of a politician willing to ally with the infidel, followed up with a lofty appeal to the jihad, was in the best traditions of Aleppan diplomatic technique. But in the context the ploy seems faintly ridiculous. The commander, who six weeks before had set out with the avowed intention of deposing the heretical Fatimid vizir now appeals to him, and in the name of religion, to fight the allies he had called in to protect him – who were, in any case, virtually in control of the capital.

Shavar’s reply to this charade was a tetchy ‘What is wrong with the Franks?’ After all, Nur-ad-Din had allied with them on occasion. Unwisely the Syrian ambassador lingered at Fustat, awaiting another opportunity to reopen the subject. While he was there, a delegation of palace officials arrived, with the crucial down-payment on the terms negotiated with the Christian king. Before he and Amalric got into their final discussions, Shavar ordered the execution of the Syrian, to demonstrate good faith to Amalric and rejection of the Shirkuh alliance. What followed is reported only by William of Tyre.

William says that Amalric insisted on dealing direct with the caliph. To the horror of the court, the infidel was allowed into the sacred precincts and then, still more outrageous, the caliph himself clinched the treaty by shaking the Christian envoy’s hand with his own, ungloved, hand. A bargain had been struck which promised to bring Amalric 400,000 dinars, and in return he agreed to fight. But it was not so easy to come to grips with the enemy. For weeks the armies faced one another across the broad waters of the Nile until Amalric found a crossing down stream where a large island divided the river into two branches. The combined Egyptian and Frankish forces made the crossing in good order and Shirkuh now began a long retreat south up the river. Eventually he called a halt more than a hundred miles south of Cairo and was, apparently, preparing to cross the river. The majority of his officers advised against a fight. But one, who had formerly been a slave of Nur-ad-Din’s, pointed out that if the expedition returned without victory and without even having done battle with the enemy its leaders would be dispossessed of their lands and humiliated. Saladin was among those convinced by this combination, and the council decided, after all, in favour of making a stand.

Amalric was also hesitant. He was quite confident of extracting money from Egypt, one of his principal reasons for being there, and if his enemy seemed likely to slink off without further persuasion there seemed little grounds for a fight. The kingdom of Jerusalem was not so full of soldiers that it could afford to squander its fighting strength. However, according to the Christian historian William of Tyre, the king was visited by a vision of St Bernard, the preacher of the Second Crusade, who accused him of cowardice in the face of the Infidel. Thus, the commanders who had both been at first reluctant to fight found themselves locked in battle on 18 March 1167. In a conventional Turkish battle tactic, Shirkuh placed the baggage behind the centre of the army. Saladin was given command here with orders to retreat before the Frankish cavalry so as to lure it away from its allies. The baggage wagons provided a natural fall-back position round which the retiring troops could re-form if need be. The battle went according to plan. The general’s nephew executed his manoeuvre efficiently, giving Shirkuh and his picked cavalry ample time to scatter the Egyptians on the right wing. When the Frankish horse returned from their pursuit it was to find their allies routed and themselves in danger of encirclement. King Amalric barely escaped with his life. Despite this decisive victory Shirkuh did not feel strong enough to follow it up with an attack on Cairo. Instead he marched rapidly to Alexandria.

It was the second city of Egypt, an immensely rich trading port and currently the haven of Naim-ad-Din, a refugee from Shavar’s régime in Cairo. He had already promised funds and supplies to Shirkuh and the general found them waiting for him. Having supervised the organisation of the defences of Alexandria, he left Saladin in command of the city, with a garrison of a thousand troops, while he himself set out for the south to recruit support among the Bedouin and to plunder.

This new command was an important step in Saladin’s career. His part in the April battle had been effective, but the text-book tactics had demanded neither initiative nor improvisation. He owed his place in the high command primarily to his family connections and that was enough. But he was already in his thirtieth year and if he had any ambition to reach the top of his profession he would have to prove outstanding ability. So far he had done little more than conduct a routine set-piece manoeuvre in which failure would have been ridiculous and success was no more than to be expected. His competent garrisoning at Bilbais had shown some administrative talent in war but now, commanding a great city against superior forces, he faced a different and much more testing situation. Soon after Shirkuh had quitted the city Shavar and Amalric came up and prepared for a methodical siege, ignoring Shirkuh’s diversionary expedition to the south in favour of re-taking the rich prize of Alexandria. As the siege lengthened, conditions in the city rapidly worsened, and the enthusiasm which had greeted the Syrian army soon evaporated. Only Saladin’s firm command and inspiring leadership held the place long enough for his uncle to return from the south and even to threaten a siege of Cairo. The Frankish-Egyptian high command decided to seek terms.

Saladin had emerged as the second most influential and competent man on the expedition. Having held Alexandria brilliantly, he was left to organise its terms of surrender. With characteristic concern for his troops and subordinates he forced Shavar to guarantee immunity to all the citizens who had helped the Syrians and an arrangement with Amalric to transport the Syrian wounded to Acre in his ships to save them from the rigours of the long desert march. Unfortunately neither provision held for long. Shavar quickly forgot his assurances and Saladin had to intervene with Amalric to persuade his ally to stop his reprisals against collaborators. As to the wounded, those who had recovered on the passage were put to work in the sugar plantations round Acre and were only freed when King Amalric reached the port.

During the negotiation, Saladin made friends in the Christian camp and was entertained there for several days. The first elements in the western picture of him are sketched around this episode. Later a Christian writer told how Saladin, the chivalrous infidel, was knighted by Humphrey II of Toron. Fraternisation across the battle lines was not unusual and William of Tyre specifically refers to one friendship of Humphrey and a Saracen emir. Possibly, during some banquet or formal reception the Frankish knights honoured their chivalrous opponent with some ceremony from the ritual of knighthood, though of course, as he was not a Christian, the oath could not be administered.

After these courtly diversions he marched back with his uncle to Damascus – Shirkuh with 50,000 dinars as the price of his withdrawal. Once again a campaign had ended inconclusively. But so long as Egypt’s rulers were too weak to resist ambitious interference, the country would remain at the centre of the fight between Christian and Muslim.

Politics comes next to religion for an understanding of the place of Egypt and above all Cairo in Saladin’s world. Cairo, standing about fifteen miles north-east of the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, originated with the military base set up at al-Fustat by the Arab army that conquered Egypt from the Byzantine Empire in the 640s. Under Egypt’s Fatimid Shi’ ite regime (from 969) a new walled city, al-Qahirah, was built north of Fustat as the dynasty’s capital. The native Egyptians or Copts, practising their own variant of Christianity and paying the official religious tax, remained important in the bureaucracy, sometimes becoming vizirs. Saladin would continue this tradition of toleration (a tradition in decline, it seems, in our own day). It was in Egypt that the Jewish philosopher and polymath, Maimonides, a fugitive from the intolerant Almohad regime of his native Cordoba, settled in the 1160s. Here he wrote his famous Guide for the Perplexed and in Cairo he entered the service of Saladin as physician, later serving his son.

Trade, favourite theme of the tales from the famous ‘Arabian Nights’ collection (many with Egyptian settings), was central to the Islamic world. The Hajj made Mecca a hub of routes from the Red Sea; one powerful Adeni trading family, whose branches and agencies dominated those routes, had its own commercial enclave in Cairo. The Fatimid caliphs, trading on their own behalf and creaming taxes from other traders, were Egypt’s most active merchants; the profits fed the opulence of their court. Saladin continued the pattern through his commercial agents but channelled the proceeds to the public purse, above all to his military programme. Egyptians would grumble that he used the country’s wealth to win mastery in Syria, but no one would doubt that he had restored her influence.