Jerusalem. The Biography

discovered yet another fragment of the True Cross, a timely miracle which elated the ranks. But the French under the Duke of Burgundy and the Anglo-Angevins under Richard were almost at daggers drawn, taunting each other with silly slogans and filthy ditties. Richard, the troubadour, penned a jingle of his own.
    Saladin was almost sick with the tension: on the night of Thursday 3 July, Ibn Shaddad was so worried that he prescribed the comfort of prayer: ‘We are in the most blessed place we could be on this day.’ At Friday prayers the sultan should make two ritual
rakas
, bows from the waist then two full prostrations. Saladin performed these rituals and openly wept. By nightfall, his spies reported that the Franks were packing up. On 4 July, Richard led the retreat.
    Saladin was exuberant, riding out to meet his favourite son Zahir,kissing him between the eyes and escorting him into Jerusalem, where the prince stayed with his father in the palace of the Master of the Hospitallers. But both sides were exhausted: Richard was receiving reports that back in England his brother John was close to open rebellion. If he wished to save his lands, he needed to return home soon.
    Encouraged by Richard’s problems, on 28 July Saladin sprang a surprise attack on Jaffa, which he swiftly captured after a bombardment by his mangonels. While Ibn Shaddad was negotiating the surrender, his son Zahir fell asleep on watch. Suddenly Richard the Lionheart appeared offshore in a scarlet-flagged galley. He had arrived just in time: some Franks were still holding out. Firing an arbalest crossbow, he waded on to the beach – ‘red haired, his tunic red, his banner red.’ Without even time to take off his waders and don his armour, wielding a Danish battleaxe, accompanied by just seventeen knights and a few hundred infantry, Richard managed to retake the town in a stupendous display of flamboyant shock-fighting.
    Afterwards, he teased Saladin’s minister: ‘This sultan of yours is a great man [yet] how is it he departed merely because I arrived? I only had my seaboots on and not even my breastplate!’ Saladin and Safadin were said to have sent Arabian horses to Lionheart as a gift, but such chivalry was often a delaying tactic for they soon counter-attacked. Richard repulsed them and then challenged the Saracens to single combat. He galloped with his lance up and down the ranks – but there were no takers.
    Saladin ordered another attack, but his amirs refused. He was so enraged that he considered a Zangi-style crucifixion of his mutinous generals. However, he calmed himself and then invited them to share some juicy apricots that had just arrived from Damascus.
    The king and the sultan had fought themselves to a standstill. ‘You and we together are ruined,’ Richard confided to Saladin. As they negotiated, both the warlords collapsed, desperately ill, their resources and wills utterly exhausted.

1193–1250
     
    THE DEATH OF THE SULTAN
     
    On 2 September 1192, sultan and king agreed the Treaty of Jaffa, the first partition of Palestine: the Christian kingdom received a new lease of life with Acre as its capital, while Saladin kept Jerusalem, granting full Christian access to the Sepulchre.
    On the way back to Jerusalem, Saladin met his brother Safadin who kissed the ground to thank God, and they prayed together at the Dome of the Rock. Though Richard refused to visit Islamic Jerusalem, his knights flocked there to make their pilgrimages and were received by Saladin. The sultan showed them the True Cross, but afterwards that ultimate relic was lost – and vanished for ever. When the king’s adviser Hubert Walter was in Jerusalem, he discussed Richard with Saladin who offered the view that Lionheart lacked wisdom and moderation. Thanks to Walter, Saladin allowed Latin priests back into the Sepulchre. When the Byzantine emperor Isaac Angelus demanded it for the Orthodox, Saladin decided that they must share it under his supervision and appointed Sheikh Ghanim al-Khazraji as Custodian of the Church, a role still performed today by his descendants, the Nusseibeh family.
    The two protagonists never met. On 9 October, Richard sailed for Europe. * ’Saladin appointed Ibn Shaddad, whose memoirs have been such a vivid source, to oversee his plans in Jerusalem. Presently Saladin left for Damascus. 18
    There, the joys of family life awaited him – he had seventeen sons – but he was now fifty-four and worn out. His son Zahir could not