The question of Taqi al-Din’s continued subservience reflected a wider issue. To sustain his burgeoning empire, Saladin relied upon the support of his wider family, but the sultan was also determined to protect the interests of his sons, the direct perpetuators of the Ayyubid bloodline. Saladin had to achieve a delicate balance–he needed to harness the drive and ambition of kinsmen like Taqi al-Din, because their energy was vital to the continued preservation and expansion of the realm; but at the same time, their independence had to be curbed. In Taqi al-Din’s case, Saladin hoped to ensure loyalty by offering his nephew the prospect of continued advancement in Upper Mesopotamia.

ISLAM UNITED?

Saladin’s attempts to shape the dynastic fortunes of the Ayyubid Empire in 1186 were, to some extent, a direct function of the increased power and territory he had now accumulated. Since emerging as a political and military force in 1169, he had masterminded the subjugation of Near Eastern Islam, extending his authority over Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo and large stretches of Mesopotamia. The Fatimid caliphate’s abolition had brought the crippling division between Sunni Syria and Shi‘ite Egypt to an end, ushering in a new era of pan-Levantine Muslim accord. These achievements, unparalleled in recent history, surpassed even those of Nur al-Din. On the face of it, Saladin had united Islam from the Nile to the Euphrates; his coinage, circulating throughout his realm and far beyond, now bore the inscription ‘the sultan of Islam and the Muslims’, stark proclamation of his all-encompassing, almost hegemonic authority. This image has often been accepted by modern historians–an attitude typified by one scholar’s recent assertion that after 1183 ‘the rule of all Syria and Egypt was in [Saladin’s] hands’.⁶⁴

Yet the notion that Saladin now presided over a world of complete and enduring Muslim unity is profoundly misleading. His ‘empire’, constructed through a mixture of direct conquest and coercive diplomacy, was in truth merely a brittle amalgam of disparate and distant polities, many of which were administered by client-rulers whose allegiance might easily falter. Even in Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo–the linchpins of his realm–the sultan had to rely upon the continued fidelity and cooperation of his family, virtues that were never assured. Elsewhere, in the likes of Mosul, Asia Minor and the Jazira, Ayyubid supremacy was largely ephemeral, dependent upon loose alliances and tainted by barely submerged antipathy.

In 1186 the spell held. But it did so only because Saladin had survived his illness and still possessed the wealth, might and influence to manifest his will. In the years that followed, the work of sustaining and governing such a geographically expansive and politically incongruent empire tested the sultan to breaking point. And the struggle to counteract the ingrained centrifugal forces that could so readily rip apart the Ayyubid Empire proved constant and consuming.

Even after some seventeen years of unrelenting struggle, Saladin’s work was not done. Amidst the holy war to come, he could call upon a dedicated, loyalist core of battle-hardened troops, but for the most part the sultan stood at the head of a fragile, often restive, coalition, ever conscious that his realm might be disrupted by insurrection, rebellion or cessation. This fact was of paramount importance, for it shaped much of his thinking and strategy, often forcing him to follow the path of least resistance to seek swift, self-perpetuating victories. Contemporaries and modern historians alike have sometimes criticised Saladin’s qualities as a military commander in this later phase of his career, arguing that he lacked the backbone to prosecute costly and prolonged sieges. In fact, he depended upon speed of action and ongoing success to maintain momentum, clear in the knowledge that if the Muslim war machine ground to a halt, it might well collapse.

At a fundamental level, Saladin’s empire had also been forged against the backdrop of jihad; at every step he justified the extension of Ayyubid authority as a means to an end. Unity beneath his banner may have been bought at a heavy price, but he argued that it was directed at one sole purpose: the jihad to drive the Franks from Palestine and liberate the Holy City. This ideological impulse had proved to be an enormously potent instrument, fuelling and legitimising the motor of expansion, but it came at a near-unavoidable cost. Unless Saladin wished to be revealed as a fraudulent despot, all his promises of unbending devotion to the cause must now be fulfilled and the long-awaited war waged. Certainly, in the aftermath of his illness, and what may have been a period of deepening spirituality, the sultan’s promulgation of the jihad became ever more active. Revered Islamic scholars like the brothers Ibn Qudama and Abd al-Ghani, both long-time proponents of Saladin’s cause, were among those who contributed to a quickening of religious fanaticism. In Damascus, and across the realm, religious tracts and poems on the faith, the obligation of jihad and the overriding devotional significance of Jerusalem all were recited at massed public gatherings with increasing regularity. By the end of 1186, it appears that the sultan had not only recognised the political necessity for an all-out assault on the Latins, but had also embraced the struggle ahead at a personal level. This is borne out by the testimony of one of Saladin’s few critics among contemporary Muslim commentators, the Mosuli historian Ibn al-Athir. Recording a war council from early 1187, the chronicler wrote:

One of [Saladin’s] emirs said to him: ‘The best plan in my opinion is to invade their territory [and] if any Frankish force stands against us, we should meet it. People in the east curse us and say, “He has given up fighting the infidels and has turned his attention to fighting Muslims.” [We should] take a course of action that will vindicate us and stop people’s tongues.’

Ibn al-Athir’s intention was to censure Ayyubid expansionism, while evoking the tide of public pressure and expectation now attendant on the sultan. But he went on to suggest that Saladin experienced a brief, but significant, moment of self-realisation at this meeting. According to Ibn al-Athir, the sultan declared his determination to go to war and then mournfully observed that ‘affairs do not proceed by man’s decision [and] we do not know how much remains of our lives’. Perhaps it was the sultan’s own sense of mortality that moved him to action; whatever the reason, a change does seem to have occurred. Real questions remain about the true extent of his determination to combat the Franks in the long years between 1169 and 1186, but regardless of what had gone before, in 1187 Saladin brought the full force of his empire to bear against the kingdom of Jerusalem. He was now doggedly resolved to bring the Christians to full and decisive battle.⁶⁵

A KINGDOM UNDONE

This upsurge of Ayyubid aggression coincided with a deepening crisis in Latin Palestine. At some point between May and mid-September 1186 the young King Baldwin V of Jerusalem died, and a rancorous succession dispute erupted. Count Raymond of Tripoli, who had been acting as regent, schemed to seize the throne, but he was outmanoeuvred by Sibylla (Baldwin IV’s sister) and her husband, Guy of Lusignan. Having won the support of Patriarch Heraclius, a large proportion of the nobility and the Military Orders, Sibylla and Guy managed to have themselves crowned and anointed as queen and king. Raymond tried to engineer an outright civil war, proclaiming Humphrey of Toron and his wife Isabella as the rightful monarchs of Jerusalem. But, perhaps mindful of the terrible damage that might be wrought should this claim be pursued, Humphrey declined to step forward.