Once in control of Aleppo, Saladin immediately sought to limit civil unrest and engender an atmosphere of unity. Non-Koranic taxes were abolished and, later that summer, a law was enacted ordering non-Muslims within the city to wear distinctive clothing, a measure seemingly designed to promote cohesion among Aleppo’s Sunni and Shi‘ite Muslims and to hasten their acceptance of Ayyubid rule.

Aleppo’s occupation was a major achievement for Saladin. After almost a decade he had united Muslim Syria, and could now claim dominion over a swathe of territory between the Nile and the Euphrates. A number of surviving letters reveal the manner in which the sultan celebrated and publicised his success. As always, he also took care to justify his conquest, declaring that he would happily share leadership of Islam if he could, but noting that, in war, only one man could command. Aleppo’s subjugation was described as a step on the road to the recapture of Jerusalem and he declared proudly that ‘Islam is now awake to drive away the night phantom of unbelief’.⁵⁴

Against the backdrop of this rhetoric, it was obvious by late summer 1183 that Saladin had, to some extent at least, to fulfil the promise implicit in his propaganda by attacking the Franks. To shore up the defences of northern Syria he agreed to a truce with Bohemond III of Antioch, securing extremely favourable terms for Islam–including the release of Muslim prisoners and territorial concessions–before travelling south to Damascus to orchestrate a show of force against the kingdom of Jerusalem.

THE WAR AGAINST THE FRANKS

The balance of power in Frankish Palestine had shifted significantly in recent years. In the late 1170s, with King Baldwin IV’s health worsening, a marriage alliance had been planned between his widowed sister Sibylla and the eminent French nobleman Duke Hugh III of Burgundy. King Louis VII of France’s death in 1180, leaving his young son Philip Augustus as heir to the throne, upset this scheme, because the attendant power struggle in France meant Hugh was unwilling to abandon his dukedom. A new match for Sibylla, therefore, had to be found. At this point Raymond III of Tripoli and Bohemond III of Antioch seem to have decided that, in the interests of their own ambitions and Jerusalem’s continued security, Baldwin IV needed to be edged from power. Around Easter 1180, the pair tried to orchestrate what was, in essence, a coup d’état, by forcing Sibylla to marry their chosen ally, Baldwin of Ibelin, a member of the increasingly powerful Ibelin dynasty. Had this match proceeded, the leper king might have been sidelined, but Baldwin IV was unwilling to forgo his influence over the succession. With the encouragement of his mother and uncle, Agnes and Joscelin of Courtenay, he seized the initiative. Before Raymond and Bohemond could intervene, the king wed Sibylla to his own preferred candidate, Guy of Lusignan, a noble-born Poitevin knight, recently arrived in the Levant.

In part Baldwin’s choice was governed by necessity, as Guy was the only unmarried adult male of sufficiently high birth then present in Palestine. Guy’s connection with Poitou–a region ruled by the Angevin King Henry II of England–may also have been a factor, for with Capetian France in disarray, England’s importance as an ally was increased. Nonetheless, Guy’s emergence as a leading political player was both sudden and unexpected. With his marriage to Sibylla, Guy of Lusignan became heir designate to the Jerusalemite throne. He would also be expected to fulfil the role of regent should Baldwin IV be incapacitated by his affliction. The question was whether Guy’s precipitous elevation would alienate and embitter other leading members of the court, including Raymond of Tripoli and the Ibelins. Guy’s qualities as a political and military leader also remained untested, as did his willingness to restrain his own ambitions for the crown while Baldwin IV lived on, clinging to power.⁵⁵

The spur of Latin aggression

Saladin’s decision to launch an offensive against Frankish Palestine in autumn 1183 was not simply triggered by a desire to affirm his jihad credentials. To an extent, his attacks were also a retaliatory response to recent Latin aggression. In late 1182, during the sultan’s absence in Iraq, the Franks raided the regions surrounding Damascus and Bosra, retaking the Cave de Sueth.

To the south in Transjordan, Reynald of Châtillon initiated a more deliberately belligerent campaign; one for which he had been preparing, probably in concert with the king, for some two years. Saladin’s intelligence network had warned that the lord of Kerak was planning an attack, but the sultan wrongly assumed that this would focus upon the route across the Sinai linking Egypt and Damascus, and so tasked al-Adil to strengthen the fortifications at the key muster point of al-Arish. In fact, Reynald’s scheme was far bolder and more daring, even if it was, in strategic terms, less judicious. In late 1182 to early 1183, five galleys, constructed in sections at Kerak, were transported on camel-back to the Gulf of Aqaba, reassembled and launched on to the Red Sea. This was the first time in centuries that Christian ships had plied these waters. Reynald divided his fleet, with two vessels blockading the Muslim-held port of Aqaba, which he himself then attacked by land, and the remaining three galleys sent south, equipped with Arab navigators and manned by soldiers. Apparently, news of the extraordinary exploits of this small three-ship flotilla never reached the Franks. A sole Latin source recorded that, after their launch, ‘nothing was heard of them and nobody knows what became of them’, and, having inflicted some damage on Aqaba, Reynald returned home.

In the Muslim world, however, the shocking and unprecedented Red Sea expedition caused outrage. For weeks the three Christian galleys wreaked havoc upon the unsuspecting ports of Egypt and Arabia, harassing pilgrims and merchants, and threatening Islam’s spiritual heartland, the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina. It was even rumoured that the Christians intended to steal Muhammad’s body. Only when al-Adil portaged his own fleet from Cairo to the Red Sea were they hunted down. Forced to beach their vessels on the Arabian coast, the Christian crew fled into the desert, but, once cornered, 170 of them surrendered, probably in return for promises of safe conduct. In the event, however, their lives were not spared.

Informed of events while in Iraq, Saladin insisted that an example be made: officially, he argued that infidels who knew the paths to Islam’s holiest sites could not be allowed to live; in private, of course, he must have been only too conscious of an uncomfortable truth. At this very moment of infamous crisis he, the self-proclaimed champion of the faith, was absent, fighting fellow Muslims. Thus, despite al-Adil’s evident disquiet, the sultan demanded retribution for the ‘unparalleled enormity’ of the Latin prisoners’ crimes and, according to Arabic testimony, insisted that ‘the earth must be purged of their filth and the air of their breath’. Most of the captives were sent singly or in pairs to various cities and settlements across the Ayyubid realm and publicly executed, but two were held back for a still more ghastly fate. At the time of the next Hajj they were led to a site on the outskirts of Mecca, where traditionally livestock are offered for slaughter and their flesh given to feed the poor, and here the two unfortunate captives were butchered ‘like animals for sacrifice’ before a baying pilgrim throng. The defilement of Arabia had been punished and the sultan’s image as Islam’s resolute defender affirmed, but the bitter memory of the Franks’ scandalous Red Sea campaign endured, and its architect, Reynald of Châtillon, now became a despised figure of hate.⁵⁶