SALADINO

Many sources claim that his studies were closer to Islamic law and the Quran, typical of an cadi, which propitiated to the militia.7 It is believed that the seizure of Jerusalem by the Crusaders in the First Crusade, a great social event of the time, could have morally influenced him.7 He is also reputed with great knowledge in genealogies, biographies and stories of the Arabs, as well as of the lineages of Arab horses. Saladin knew Abu Tammam's Hamasah by heart.

Saladin's military career began under his uncle Shirkuh, general of Nur al-Din, who took over him. Fighting with the Christians Battle of Montgisard After leaving the mountains of al-Nusayri, Saladin returned to Damascus and licensed his Syrian troops. He left his brother Turan Shah in charge of Syria and marched to Egypt with his personal court, reaching Cairo on September 22.

After two years absent, he had a lot to supervise in the country of the Nile, particularly works and projects that he had left in Cairo. He repaired and expanded the city walls and began construction of the Citadel of Cairo.67 He also ordered the construction of the 85-meter well Bir Yusuf. His greatest public work outside the city was a large bridge in Giza, which aimed to facilitate the defense against blackberry invasions.68 Saladin remained in Cairo overseeing his government and building the Swordmakers’ Madrasa.

In November 1177, he launched a razzia over Palestine. The Crusaders had penetrated the territory of Damascus and Saladin took the truce as something that was no longer of value to preserve. The Christians sent a large portion of their army to besiege Harem, on the route from the Christian Antioch to Aleppo, neglecting its southern border.68 Saladin believed that the occasion was ripe and marched against Ashkelon, which he called the “girlfriend of Syria.”

William of Tyre records that the Ayyubid army consisted of 18 000 black slaves from the Sudan and 8 000 elite Turkmen and Kurdish soldiers. The army ravaged the countryside, plundered Ramla and Lod and reached the gates of Jerusalem.69 Saladin allowed King Baldwin to enter Ashkelon with the Knights Templar of Gaza without taking precautions against a surprise attack. Although the Crusaders had barely 375 knights, Saladin hesitated to ambush them in the presence of veteran troops and expert officers.

On 25 November 1177, with the bulk of his army absent, Saladin and his troops were surprised at Tell Jezer, near Ramallah. Before they could form in battle order, the Templars broke their lines. Saladin initially tried to organize his men, but at the death of his guard he saw the defeat inevitable and with the few remaining troops he had a camel mounted to Egypt.

• In the Christian chronicles it is known as the Battle of Montgisard.70 Without being discouraged by his defeat at Tell Jezer, Saladin prepared to fight with the Crusaders again. In the spring of 1178, he camped under the walls of Homs while skirmishes took place between his generals and the Crusaders. His troops in Hama won a battle and brought him the spoils of the enemy, with many prisoners to Saladin, who ordered his beheading to “wash the lands of the Believers with garbage.”
• He spent the rest of the year in Syria, without fighting with his enemies.71 The Spais of Saladin informed him that the Crusaders were planning an expedition in Syria. The Sultan ordered his general Farrukh-Shah to patrol the Damascus border with a thousand soldiers awaiting an attack to retreat without presenting battle and warning with torches in the hills for Saladin to march.
• In April 1179, the crossers led by Balduino, who expected no resistance to their surprise attack east of the Golan Heights, began the expedition. They advanced too fast in pursuit of Farrukh-Shah, which concentrated its troops southeast of Quneitra, and were defeated by the Ayubids in the so-called Battle of Maryayún.
• With the victory, Saladin brought reinforcements and requested five hundred horsemen from his brother al-Adil in Egypt.72 In the summer of 1179, Baldwin had built an outpost on the road to Damascus and intended to fortify a passage through the Jordan River, known as Jacob's ford, which controlled access to the plain of Banias, divided between Muslims and Christians.
• Saladin offered a hundred thousand pieces of gold to Baldwin in exchange for abandoning the project, particularly offensive as a holy place for Muslims, but there was no deal. Thus he resolved to destroy the fortress and moved its barracks to Banias. As the Crusaders rushed to attack their forces, they lost the formation. After an initial success, they pursued the enemy until they lost any order and were overwhelmed by Saladin’s troops.
• This battle of the Ford of James and the seizure of the fortress on August 30, 1179 was a key victory for Saladin.73 In the spring of 1180, while Saladin was in the vicinity of Safad, hoping to begin a new campaign, Baldwin sent messengers with peace proposals. After droughts and poor harvests, he was short of supplies and accepted.

Raymond III of Tripoli opposed the truce, but a raid on his lands and the vision of the Saladin fleet in Tartus convinced him.74 Caudillo of Islam Diplomacy in Peacetime Saladin assured the protection of the routes of caravans traveling to distant lands. In June 1180, Saladin received Nur al-Din Muhammad, ortuquid emir of Keyfa in Geuk Su, giving him and his brother Abu Bakr gifts worth a hundred thousand dynars according to Imad al-Din. He thus tried to establish an alliance with that dynasty and to impress other emirs of Mesopotamia and Anatolia.

She also offered to mediate between him and Kilij Arslan II, Sultan of the Rum, who claimed the land she gave as a dowry for her daughter who had complained about the treatment of her husband. Nur al-Din asked Saladin for help, but Arslan did not accept him as a mediator.75 Following the meeting with Nur al-Din, the most powerful of the Seljuk lords, Ikhtiyar al-Din al-Hasan, obtained the submission of Arslan, which forced an agreement.

Saladin later received a message from Arslan complaining of further abuse of his daughter, becoming angry. Saladin’s response was to threaten to attack Malatya, two days away, without getting off the horse until entering the city. Frightened by the ultimatum, the Turks negotiated. Saladin felt that Arslan was doing well when he cared about his daughter, but he could not abandon a vassal that had asked him for protection and betray him.

The final agreement gave the woman a year out of her husband’s home and Saladin’s commitment to abandon Nur al-Din if he failed to comply with the deal.75 Leaving Farrukh-Shah in charge of Syria, Saladin returned to Cairo in early 1181. According to Abu-Shama, he intended to pass the Ramadan fast in Egypt and then make the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj). For unknown reasons he changed his mind and is known to have personally inspected the banks of the Nile in June. He confronted the Bedouins, who were dispossessed of two-thirds of their lands with which he rewarded the peasants of El Fayum whose property he had confiscated.

The Bedouins were accused of trading with the Crusaders, their grain confiscated and forced to settle further west. The Egyptian fleet also confronted the Bedouin pirates in Lake Tanis.76 In the summer of 1181, Saladin Karakush's eunuch and administrator led the arrest of Majd al-Din — former lieutenant of Saladin's brother Turan-Shah in Zabid, Yemen, while entertaining Imad al-Din at his expense in Cairo.

Those close to Saladin accused him of embezzlement of Zabid’s benefits, but Saladin said there was no evidence. He acknowledged the error and released Majd al-Din in exchange for compensation of 80 000 dinars and other sums to the brothers of Saladin al-Adil and Taj al-Muluk Bari.

This is one of several episodes in Yemen’s controversial Turan-Shah march. Although his lieutenants continued to send him benefits from the province, leadership was lacking and struggles broke out between the Izz al-Din Uthman of Aden and Hittan of Zabid. Saladin wrote in a letter to al-Adil: Yemen is a treasure house... we conquered it, but to this day we have had no benefits or advantages of it. There have only been countless expenses, shipments from our troops... and expectations that were not met in the end.

**Conquest of Mesopotamia **

The chief Zenguid prince, Saif al-Din, died in June of that year succeeding his brother Izz al-Din in Mosul.78 On 4 December, the son of Nur al-Din and theoretical head of the as-Salih family died after having made his officers swear allegiance to Izz al-Din, in an attempt to create a zenguid power that could compensate Saladin. Izz al-Din was welcomed in Aleppo, but his government's expectations as leader of the dynasty surpassed him and he exchanged Aleppo for Sinjar to his brother Imad al-Din Zangi. Saladin did not lend any opposition in respect of peace treaties with the family.79 On 11 May 1182, Saladin with half of his army and numerous non-combatants marched from Cairo to Syria.

At that time, Balian of Ibelin, a member of one of the main noble families, asked Saladin, to be able to go of Tyre, where he was fighting, to Jerusalem, to get his wife and children out of there in exchange for not collaborating in the defense of this city. However, he was recognized, and asked to command the resistance of the city so he sent Saladin a message asking him to exempt him from keeping his word of not fighting against him, to which Saladin agreed. Initially every proposal for capitulation was rejected, for no Christian wanted to give up the city, which they considered holy as Muslims.

• Saladin therefore decided to take it by force. In October 1187 the situation of the defenders was already desperate, and Balian tried to negotiate surrender. Saladin refused because he had vowed to take the city by force when his initial offers were rejected and he no longer had reason to give in to anything (it is said that while Balián suddenly explained his conditions a Saracen banner was hoisted in a bulwark, a sign that Saladin’s troops had already entered).
• However, when Balian threatened to completely destroy the city rather than deliver it unconditionally, Saladin consulted with his emirs and decided to agree to negotiations that included forgiving all inhabitants’ lives in exchange for surrender, although they demanded that they pay a tax per head. Once in possession of the city he gave the Christian holy sites to Orthodox priests.
• Although he turned churches into mosques, he took steps to prevent his soldiers from exalting Christian spirits. Balian and Patriarch Heraclius paid the purchase of almost ten thousand poor and many who could not pay the tax to leave Jerusalem still had relative luck: Saladin's brother, Saif ed-Din (Al-Adil), paid for a good number of them, like alms to Allah for victory. He was not the only one, being followed by several members of the court. Saladin himself, in an act of generosity, forgave all the elders of the city. On 2 October 1187, he entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holy place for Muslims after Mecca and Medina. Back on the coast, he faced the stubborn resistance of Tyre, which after the initial surprise was almost impregnable.
• He also had the support from overseas of the Italian and Sicilian fleets. Some chronicles, usually contrary to Conrado, claim that Saladin took Conrad's father, William V of Montferrato, who had been arrested in Hattin. He offered to release William in exchange for his surrender, but his elderly father encouraged him to resist. Saladin allegedly exclaimed, “This man is a pagan and very cruel!” and ended up releasing him to come back to his son.

He had more luck with the seizure of Tartus, Giblé and Latakia, ports that fell despite the support of the Kingdom of Sicily. He also took Sahyun, a hospital fortress on a nearby mountain and advanced taking Sarminiyah on 11 August after a brief site 107 and the province of the Orontes bank. He thus reached the border of the Principality of Antioch, to which Barzouyeh snatched and whose capital besieged before agreeing a truce. Kerak, Safed, Belvoir, Kabouab and Chaubac (Montreal), Transjordan fortresses were subjected to long sieges and after bitter resistance from the military orders that defended them, subdued around 1189. Beaufort also fell, along with Tripoli.

The Third Crusade The Elite Garrison of the Saladinian Armies during the siege of Acre Richard the Lionheart and Saladin Main article: Third Crusade The consequences of the fall of Jerusalem did not wait: Pope Urban III convened a new crusade, the third, to which the main Christian kings attended. Two Christian expeditions were organized on this call. The first of them, led by the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I Barbarossa crossed the Balkans and Anatolia on foot, where, to the voice of the Muslims, he drowned when crossing a river. Without him, his army disintegrated, providentially disappearing the greatest threat to Saladin. The other, led by Philip Augustus of France, Richard the Lionheart of England and Duke Leopold of Austria, marched by sea.

After landing in March 1191, they laid siege to San Juan de Acre, who Saladin tried to help. However, he failed to break the place, recovering the city by the Christians. Fortunately for Saladin, the Crusaders would soon argue with each other. The king of France left the crusade after the proud Richard stayed with the best palace and did not treat it as equals, and the Duke of Austria after being offended by his banner by Richard, who threw him out of a bulwark. Saladin then undertook intense diplomatic activity to free the captives that the Christians had made. However, when after arduous negotiations an agreement had been reached, Ricardo had executed them before the continuous postponements of the payment by Saladin. The agreement stipulated that Saladin would hand over the Vera Cruz in exchange for the 3,000 Muslims that Richard held in a cell hostage.

But this one believed an unnecessary expense to keep those prisoners. The act was a blow to Saladin’s prestige, who could not save those who had resisted in the city. The English king distinguished himself throughout that year in combat, beating Sald in Arsuf.