Jerusalem: The Biography

On 31 October, Richard set off slowly towards Jerusalem while continuing to negotiate with the urbane Safadin. They met in magnificent tents, exchanged gifts and attended each other’s feasts. ‘We must have a foothold in Jerusalem,’ insisted Richard. When he was criticized for the negotiations by his French knights, he beheaded some Turkish prisoners and ghoulishly posed their heads around the camp.

At this fraught moment, Saladin received bad news: his dissolute nephew, Taki al-Din, who had been trying to build his own private empire, was dead. Saladin hid the letter, ordered his tent cleared, then ‘wept bitterly, choked by his tears’, before washing his face with rosewater and returning to the command: it was no time to show weakness. He inspected Jerusalem and her new Egyptian garrison.

On 23 December, Richard advanced to Le Thoron des Chevaliers (Latrun) where he, his wife and his sister celebrated Christmas in splendour. On 6 January 1192, amid rain, cold and mud, Richard had reached Bayt Nuba, 12 miles from the city. The French and English barons wanted Jerusalem at any cost but Richard tried to convince them that he did not have the men for a siege. Saladin waited in Jerusalem hoping that the rain and snow would discourage the Crusaders. On 13 January, Richard retreated.^*

It was stalemate. Saladin used fifty stonemasons and 2,000 Frankish prisoners to refortify Jerusalem, demolishing the higher floors of Our Mary of Jehoshaphat at the foot of the Mount of Olives and the Coenaculum on Mount Zion to provide the stones. Saladin, Safadin and their sons themselves worked on the walls.

Richard meanwhile captured and fortified Ashkelon, the gateway to Egypt, offering Saladin a partition of Jerusalem, with Muslims keeping the Haram and Tower of David. But these talks, almost comparable in complexity to those between Israelis and Palestinians in the twenty-first century, were in vain: both still hoped to possess Jerusalem totally. On 20 March, Safadin and his son Kamil visited Richard with an offer of access to the Sepulchre and the return of the True Cross: in the classic beau geste of chivalry, Lionheart dubbed young Kamil, girding him with the belt of knighthood.

Yet this theatre of chivalry was unpopular with the mutinous French knights, who demanded the immediate storming of Jerusalem. On 10 June Richard led them back to Bayt Nuba, where they proceeded to set up camp in the parching heat and for three weeks argued about what to do next. Richard relieved the tension by riding out on reconnaissance, at some point reaching Montjoie, where he dismounted to say his prayers but held up his shield to hide the glory of Jerusalem, supposedly saying, ‘Lord God, I pray thee not to let me see thy Holy City that I could not deliver from thine enemies!’

Lionheart employed spies in the sultan’s army who now informed him that one of Saladin’s princes was leading a caravan of reinforcements from Egypt. Richard, sporting Bedouin dress, led out 500 knights and 1,000 light cavalry, to ambush the Egyptians. He dispersed the troops, captured the caravan, bagging 3,000 camels and ample packhorses of supplies – enough perhaps to march on Jerusalem or Egypt. ‘This was grievous to Saladin’s heart,’ said his minister Ibn Shaddad, ‘but I tried to calm him.’ Within a fraught Jerusalem, Saladin was close to panic, his stress unbearable. He poisoned the wells around the city and positioned his meagre contingents under the command of his sons. His armies were inadequate and he anxiously recalled Safadin from Iraq.

On 2 July, he convened a council of war, but his amirs were just as unreliable as Richard’s barons. ‘The best thing we can do,’ said Ibn Shaddad, opening the meeting, ‘is assemble at the Dome of the Rock to prepare ourselves for death.’ Then there was silence, the amirs sitting so still it was ‘as though there were birds on their heads’. The council debated whether the leader should make a last stand within the city or avoid being trapped in a siege. The sultan himself knew that without his own presence his henchmen would soon surrender. Finally Saladin said, ‘You’re the army of Islam. Turn your reins away and they’ll roll up these lands like a scroll. It’s your responsibility – that’s why you’ve been funded by the treasury all these years.’ The amirs agreed to fight, but the next day they returned to say they feared a siege like that of Acre. Was it not better to fight outside the walls and at worst, temporarily lose Jerusalem? The generals insisted that Saladin or one of his sons had to stay in Jerusalem or else his Turks would fight his Kurds.