By early November, when Saladin finally marched on Tyre, he found the city to be all but invulnerable. Built upon an island and approachable by land only via a narrow man-made causeway, this compact fortress settlement was protected by double battlements. A Muslim pilgrim who visited a few years earlier commended its ‘[marvellous] strength and impregnability’, noting that anyone ‘who seeks to conquer it will meet with no surrender or humility’. Tyre was also renowned for its excellent deep-water anchorage, its northern inner harbour being protected by walls and a chain.¹⁸

For more than six weeks, into the depths of winter, Saladin laid siege to Tyre by land and sea, hoping to pummel Conrad into submission. Fourteen catapults were erected by the Muslims, ‘and night and day [the sultan had them] constantly hurling stones into [the city]’. Saladin was also soon reinforced by leading members of his family: his brother and most valued ally, al-Adil; al-Afdal, the sultan’s eldest son, heir apparent to the Ayyubid Empire; and al-Zahir, one of Saladin’s younger sons, now designated as ruler of Aleppo, who received his first experience of battle at Tyre. The Ayyubid fleet, meanwhile, was summoned from Egypt to blockade the port. Yet, despite the sultan’s best efforts, little progress was made. Around 30 December the Franks scored a notable victory, initiating a surprise naval attack and capturing eleven Muslim galleys. This setback seems to have dampened Ayyubid morale. A Templar later wrote in a dispatch to Europe that Saladin himself was so distressed that ‘he cut the ears and tail off his horse and rode it through his whole army in the sight of all’. With the morale of his exhausted army faltering, the sultan decided to throw everything into one final offensive. On 1 January 1188, he unleashed a blistering frontal assault along the causeway, but even this was turned back. Beaten to a standstill, Saladin raised the siege, leaving Conrad in possession of Tyre.

Saladin has often been criticised for this failure. The Iraqi contemporary Ibn al-Athir offered a withering appraisal of the sultan’s generalship, observing that: ‘This was Saladin’s custom. When a town held out against him, he would grow weary of it and the siege and leave…no one can be blamed in this matter except Saladin, for it was he who sent armies of the Franks to Tyre.’ In part, the sultan’s decision can be justified by the inherent weaknesses of his military regime. By the end of 1187, after months of campaigning, with Ayyubid resources stretched to breaking point and the loyalty of some of his allies wavering, Saladin was obviously struggling to keep soldiers in the field. Judging that his base of support depended on his continued ability to pay and reward his troops, reluctant to stick with the task and risk insurrection, he chose to move on to pursue less intractable quarry. In truth, though, the smarting humiliation at Tyre was telling. The sultan’s earlier decision in September 1187 to prioritise the devotional and political objective of Jerusalem had possessed a certain logic. But by turning his back on an unconquered Tyre in January 1188, the sultan laid bare his limitations. For all the energy exerted in uniting Islam, all the preparations made for holy war, ultimately Saladin possessed neither the will nor the resources to complete the conquest of the Palestinian coastline. For the first time since Hattin it appeared that the all-conquering Ayyubids might fail to drive the Franks into the sea.¹⁹

Sweeping up pawns

Saladin spent the remainder of that winter resting in Acre. Anxious about the prospect of a Christian counter-offensive, he considered razing the city to the ground to prevent it falling into enemy hands, but eventually elected to leave this ‘lock for the lands of the Coast’ intact, summoning Qaragush from Egypt to oversee Acre’s defence. From spring 1188 onwards, Saladin began to march through Syria and Palestine, seeking out vulnerable Latin settlements, outposts and fortresses, sweeping up relatively easy conquests. Passing through Damascus and the Biqa valley, that summer he launched attacks on the principality of Antioch and the northern reaches of the county of Tripoli. The major Syrian port of Latakia was captured, while down the coast the Muslim qadi (religious judge) of Latin-held Jabala engineered that port’s surrender. The sultan also seized castles such as Baghras and Trapesac in the Amanus Mountains north of Antioch and Saone and Bourzey, in the southern Ansariyah range.

Saladin made significant gains in the northern crusader states, but showed a profound reluctance to commit to any prolonged investments. The imposing Hospitaller and Templar castles at Krak des Chevaliers, Marqab and Safita were all bypassed, and no real effort was made to threaten the Latin capitals of Tripoli and Antioch–with Saladin agreeing an eight-month truce with the latter (albeit on punitive terms) before returning to Damascus. The sultan then prosecuted a winter campaign in Galilee, securing the surrender of the region’s last remaining Frankish strongholds: Templar-held Safad and Hospitaller Belvoir. Around the same time, Ayyubid troops captured Kerak in Transjordan, and six months later nearby Montreal capitulated. The key factor in these successes was Latin isolation. Surrounded, deep in what was now Muslim territory, the garrisons of all four of these mighty ‘crusader’ castles found themselves in hopeless situations. With no possible prospect of holding out indefinitely, they laid down their arms, allowing Saladin to consolidate his dominion over Palestine. Sweeping through the Levant, the sultan had maintained martial momentum throughout 1188, but at the cost of leaving Antioch inviolate and the county of Tripoli all but untouched.

In the course of that year’s campaigning, Baha al-Din ibn Shaddad joined Saladin’s inner circle of advisers. A highly educated Mosuli religious scholar trained in Baghdad, Baha al-Din had acted as a negotiator for the Zangids in 1186 when, in the wake of the sultan’s severe illness, he agreed terms with Izz al-Din of Mosul. In 1188 Baha al-Din took advantage of the recent Muslim conquest of the Holy Land, making a pilgrimage to Mecca and then Jerusalem. It was at this point that Saladin invited Baha al-Din to join the Ayyubid court, evidently impressed by the Mosuli’s piety, intellect and wisdom. When the two met, Baha al-Din presented a copy of his newly authored treatise on The Virtues of Jihad to the sultan and was then appointed as qadi of the army. He rapidly became one of Saladin’s closest and most trusted counsellors, staying with him almost constantly throughout the years that followed. Baha al-Din later composed a detailed biography of his master, which now serves as a critically important historical source, particularly for the period after 1188.²⁰

The loss of focus

Despite having laid plans to launch new, more determined offensives against Tripoli and Antioch with the onset of the new fighting season, Saladin failed to return to the north in 1189. Instead, seemingly worn down by the burden of rule and near-incessant campaigning, the sultan became uncharacteristically indecisive and ineffectual. With each passing month, the prospect of western retaliation loomed larger. Saladin certainly appears to have been aware that the Third Crusade was afoot–in a letter written later that year, his adviser Imad al-Din demonstrated an incredibly detailed and accurate understanding of the crusade’s scope, organisation and objectives. Yet the sultan made no last-ditch attempt to overcome the likes of Tyre before the inevitable storm struck. Instead, inexplicably, he wasted the spring and early summer of 1189 in protracted negotiations over the fate of Beaufort, a relatively insignificant and isolated Latin fortress, perched in the mountains of southern Lebanon, high above the Litani River.