The ongoing problem of Richard’s betrothal to Philip II’s sister Alice of France was also resolved. The Lionheart had skirted around the issue since taking the English crown, despite the French king’s repeated demands that the marriage take place. Now, with the journey to the Holy Land begun and Philip committed to the campaign, Richard revealed his hand. He had no desire or intention to wed Alice. Instead, a new marriage alliance had been arranged with Navarre–an Iberian Christian kingdom whose support would protect the southern Angevin Empire against the count of Toulouse during Richard’s absence. In February 1191 the Navarrese heiress Princess Berengaria arrived in southern Italy, chaperoned by the Lionheart’s indefatigable mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was now in her seventies.

Philip Augustus was confronted with a fait accompli. When Richard threatened to produce witnesses who would testify to the fact that Alice had been Henry II’s mistress and had borne the old king an illegitimate child, the Capetian monarch cut his losses. In return for 10,000 marks, he released the Lionheart from his betrothal. Open conflict had been averted, but Philip was humiliated and the whole sordid affair restoked his simmering hostility towards the Angevin king.

Finally, with the coming of spring, the sea lanes reopened and the crusading kings began the last stage of the journey to the Holy Land. Philip set sail on 20 March 1191 and on 10 April Richard’s fleet followed suit, with Joanne and Berengaria among its passengers. Almost four years had passed since the Battle of Hattin. In that time much had changed in the Levant.

14

THE CONQUEROR CHALLENGED

Jerusalem’s capture on 2 October 1187 was the crowning glory of Saladin’s career–the fulfilment of a passionately held personal ambition and the realisation of a publicly avowed and doggedly pursued campaign of jihad. The Latin kingdom was on the brink of extinction, its ruler in captivity, its armies decimated. It is easy to imagine that, in the wake of such a titanic victory, the Muslim world would rally to the sultan’s cause as never before, united in their admiration for his achievements, now almost abject in their acceptance of his right to lead Islam. Surely Saladin himself had earned a moment’s pause, to look back on all that he had achieved, to celebrate as the first chill of autumn brushed the Holy City? In fact, the conquest of Jerusalem brought him little or no respite, but, rather, begat new burdens and new challenges.

IN THE AFTERMATH OF VICTORY

Jerusalem’s repossession was a triumph, but it was not the end of the war against Latin Christendom. Saladin now had to balance the responsibilities of governing his expanded empire and completing the destruction of the Frankish settlements in the East, all while preparing to defend the Holy Land against the wrathful swarm of western crusaders who, he rightly guessed, would soon seek to avenge Hattin and retake Jerusalem. Even so, Saladin should have been in the ascendant in 1187. In reality, from this point on his strength gradually began to ebb. Amidst the bitter trials to come, he often seemed shockingly isolated–a once great general humbled, deserted by his armies, striving just to survive the storm of the Third Crusade.

Empires have always proved easier to build than to govern, but Saladin faced a profusion of difficulties after October 1187. Resources were of paramount importance. That autumn, Saladin’s subjects and allies were exhausted, and the sultan’s ill-managed financial resources were already drained by the costs of intense campaigning. In the following years, as the stream of wealth from new conquests turned from a torrent to a trickle, the Ayyubid treasury struggled to slake the greed of Saladin’s followers, and it proved increasingly difficult to maintain huge armies in the field.

The seizure of the Holy City had other, less obvious, consequences. Saladin had assembled an Islamic coalition under the banner of jihad. But with the central goal of that struggle achieved, the jealousies, suspicions and hostilities that had lain dormant within the Muslim world began to resurface. In time, the sense of purpose that had briefly united Islam before Hattin dissolved. The historic success at Jerusalem also prompted some to wonder where Saladin would next train his all-conquering gaze–to fear that he would prove himself a tyrannical despot, bent upon overthrowing the established order, sweeping away the Abbasid caliphate to forge a new dynasty and empire.

As a Kurdish outsider who usurped authority from the Zangids, Saladin had never enjoyed the unequivocal support of Turkish, Arab and Persian Muslims. Nor could he claim any divine right to rule. Instead, the sultan had carefully constructed his public image as a defender of Sunni orthodoxy and a dedicated mujahid. Following the advice of counsellors like al-Fadil and Imad al-Din, Saladin had also taken pains to cultivate the support of the Abbasid Caliph al-Nasir in Baghdad, because his backing brought with it the seal of legitimacy. After 1187 the sultan persevered with this policy of showing deference to al-Nasir, but with Ayyubid might now seemingly unassailable, relations became increasingly strained.¹⁷

Driving the Franks into the sea

Saladin’s overriding strategic concern in late 1187 was to sweep up the remaining Latin outposts in the Levant, sealing the Near East against any crusade launched from western Europe. But the work of eradicating the remaining vestiges of Frankish power promised to be neither swift nor easy. In the wake of the victory at Hattin, much of Palestine had been conquered, and the major ports of Acre, Jaffa and Ascalon were now in Muslim hands, but a number of Frankish strongholds in Galilee and Transjordan still held out. Elsewhere, the northern crusader states of Tripoli and Antioch were still intact, even though one of Saladin’s potential opponents, Count Raymond III of Tripoli, had died from illness that September, having escaped the battlefield at Hattin and taken refuge in northern Lebanon.

The most pressing issue was Tyre. Through summer 1187 the port city had become a focal point of Latin resistance in Palestine, and Saladin had allowed thousands of Christian refugees to congregate within its walls. Tyre might well have fallen to the sultan’s armies soon after Hattin had not command of its garrison and defences been seized by Conrad, the marquis of Montferrat. A northern Italian nobleman and brother of the late William of Montferrat (Sibylla of Jerusalem’s first husband and father to Baldwin V), Conrad had been serving the latest Byzantine Emperor Isaac II Angelus in Constantinople. But after murdering one of Isaac’s political enemies in early summer 1187, the marquis decided to cut his losses and make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, arriving in Palestine in July 1187–coincidentally just days after Hattin.

Conrad found Tyre in a beleaguered state. The marquis’ arrival proved to be a major boon for the Franks and an unforeseen, troublesome intrusion for Saladin. Conrad was profoundly ambitious–guileful and unscrupulous as a political operator, competent and authoritative as a general–and he embraced the opportunity for advancement presented by Tyre’s predicament, quickly assuming control. Galvanising the Latin populace to action, he immediately set about bolstering the city’s already formidable fortifications. Saladin’s decision to channel his energy into the siege of Jerusalem in September 1187 afforded the marquis a valuable breathing space; one which he put to good effect, drawing in the support of the Military Orders and Pisan and Genoese fleets to prepare Tyre for attack.