Similar work was undertaken at the Aqsa mosque, which the Franks had first used as a royal palace and then reshaped as part of the Templars’ headquarters. A wall covering the mihrab (a niche indicating the direction of prayer) was removed and the entire building rejuvenated, so that, in the words of Imad al-Din, ‘truth triumphed and error was cancelled out’. Here the first Friday prayer was held on 9 October and the honour of delivering the sermon that day was hotly contested by orators and holy men. Saladin eventually chose Ibn al-Zaki, an imam from Damascus, to speak before the thronged, expectant crowd. Ibn al-Zaki’s sermon appears to have stressed three interlocking themes. The notion of conquest as a form of purification was emphasised, with God praised for the cleansing ‘of His Holy House from the filth of polytheism and its pollutions’ and the audience entreated ‘to purify the rest of the land from this filth which has angered God and His Apostle’. At the same time, the sultan was lavishly praised, acclaimed as ‘the champion and protector of [God’s] holy land’, his achievements compared to those of Muhammad himself, and the efficacious nature of jihad exhorted with the words: ‘Maintain the holy war; it is the best means which you have of serving God, the most noble occupation of your lives.’⁸²

Saladin’s achievement

The summer of 1187 brought Saladin two stunning victories. Seizing the moment after the Battle of Hattin, he reconquered Jerusalem, eclipsing the achievements of all his Muslim predecessors in the age of the crusades. Decades earlier, his patron Nur al-Din had ordered the construction of a staggeringly beautiful, ornate pulpit, imagining that he might one day oversee its installation within the sacred Aqsa. Now, in a final, telling act of appropriation, the sultan fulfilled his predecessor’s dream and shouldered his legacy, bringing the pulpit from its resting place in Aleppo to Jerusalem’s grand mosque, where it would remain for eight centuries.

Tellingly, even Saladin’s contemporary Muslim critic Ibn al-Athir acknowledged the unrivalled glory of the sultan’s accomplishments in 1187: ‘This blessed deed, the conquering of Jerusalem, is something achieved by none but Saladin…since the time of Umar.’ Al-Fadil, writing to the caliph in Baghdad, emphasised the transformative nature of the sultan’s defeat of the Franks: ‘From their places of prayer he cast down the cross and set up the call to prayer…the people of the Koran succeeded to the people of the cross.’⁸³ Eighty-eight years after the First Crusaders’ stunning triumph, Saladin had repossessed the Holy City for Islam, striking a momentous blow against Outremer. He had reshaped the Near East and now seemed poised to achieve ultimate and enduring victory in the war for the Holy Land. But as news of these extraordinary events reverberated throughout the Muslim world and beyond, eliciting shock and awe, Latin Christendom was stirred to action. A vengeful lust for holy war awakened in the West and, once again, vast armies set out for the Levant. Soon Saladin would be forced to defend his hard-won conquests against a Third Crusade, battling a towering new champion of the Christian cause–Richard the Lionheart.

III

THE TRIAL OF CHAMPIONS

13

CALLED TO CRUSADE

In late summer 1187, with Outremer still reeling from the cataclysm at Hattin and Saladin’s dismemberment of Frankish Palestine proceeding apace, Archbishop Joscius of Tyre set sail for the West. He bore tidings of Christendom’s calamitous defeat to the frail Pope Urban III, who promptly died of shock and grief. In the weeks and months that followed, the devastating news raced across Europe, eliciting alarm, anguish and outrage–triggering a new call to arms for the campaign known to history as the Third Crusade. The most powerful men in the Latin world took up the cross, from Frederick Barbarossa, mighty emperor of Germany, to Philip II Augustus, the astute young king of France. But it was Richard the Lionheart, king of England–one of the greatest warriors of the medieval age–who emerged as champion of the Christian cause, challenging Saladin’s dominion of the Holy Land. Above all, the Third Crusade became a contest between these two titans, king and sultan, crusader and mujahid. After almost a century, the war for the Holy Land had brought these heroes to battle in an epic confrontation: one that tested both men to breaking point; in which legends were forged and dreams demolished.¹

THE PREACHING OF THE THIRD CRUSADE

The injuries suffered by Christendom at Hattin and Jerusalem in 1187 moved the Latin West to action, rekindling fires of crusading fervour that had lain dormant for decades. After the failure of the Second Crusade in the late 1140s, Christian Europe’s enthusiasm for holy war had waned dramatically. At the time, some began to question the purity of the papacy and the crusaders. One German chronicler described the Second Crusade in damning terms, writing: ‘God allowed the Western Church, on account of its sins, to be cast down. There arose, indeed, certain pseudo-prophets, sons of Belial, and witnesses of the anti-Christ, who seduced the Christians with empty words.’ Even Bernard of Clairvaux, arch-propagandist and passionate advocate of crusading, could offer scant consolation, merely observing that the setbacks experienced by the Franks were part of God’s unknowable design for mankind. Christian sin was also advanced as an explanation for divine punishment–and, more often than not, the supposedly dissolute Franks living in the Levant were targeted as transgressors.²

Not surprisingly, attempts to launch major crusading expeditions after 1149 foundered. Muslim strength and unity in the Near East increased under Nur al-Din and Saladin, while Outremer faced a succession of crises: Prince Raymond of Antioch’s death in the Battle of Inab; the defeat at Harim in 1164; the incapacitation of Baldwin the Leper King. Throughout, the Levantine Franks made ever more desperate and frequent appeals to the West for aid, and, while some few came to defend the Holy Land in minor campaigns, in the main the calls went unanswered.

Meanwhile, western monarchs, now crucial to any major crusading venture, had their own kingdoms to preserve and defend–tasks, so it was widely believed, that were themselves divinely appointed. Caught up in the concerns of politics, warfare, trade and economy, the prospect of spending months, even years, in the East crusading often proved less than inviting. Inertia rather than action predominated.

This problem was exacerbated by deepening rivalries between Latin Europe’s leading powers. In 1152 power in Germany passed to the Hohenstaufen Frederick Barbarossa (or Red Beard), a veteran of the Second Crusade. Frederick assumed the title of emperor three years later, but spent decades trying to subdue warring factions within his own realm and seeking to secure control of northern Italy, all the while enmeshed in a rancorous conflict with the papacy and Norman Sicily. In France the Capetian dynasty retained the crown, but in terms of territorial dominion and political control the real authority wielded by King Louis VII and his son and successor Philip II Augustus (from 1180) was still severely constrained. The Capetians were challenged, above all, by the rise of the counts of Anjou.