The Strategy of Saladin 2
Ruler of Egypt & Syria (1169-1186)
Hi, and welcome to Strategy Stuff. When we last left Saladin in the spring of 1169, he had just been appointed Vizier of Fatimid Egypt, one of the richest states of the medieval world, and quite the promotion for a thirty-something-year-old. Inevitably, such power earned him internal and external enemies whose attacks he needed to fend off. Beyond them, Saladin’s rulership would also be further tested as he sought to satisfy both his own dynastic ambitions, and the demands of Sunni Islam’s Holy War.
The 2nd Crusader Invasion and Fatimid Conspiracy, 1169
Saladin’s ascent to the Vizierate had not been legitimate: it was based on his leadership of the small-but-dominant Syrian occupying force which, acting under the orders of his late uncle and his Syrian liege-lord Nur ad-Din, had first repelled an invasion from the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, and then killed the preceding Egyptian Vizier. Furthermore, Saladin had little experience with something as sophisticated as Fatimid central government, whose officials, in turn, despised him as a culturally-inferior Kurd.
But for now, the most pressing threat Saladin faced was a second attack from Jerusalem, this time in league with the Byzantine Empire of Emperor Manuel Komnenos. Throughout the summer, the prospect of their invasion loomed over Egypt, threatening to destroy Saladin while he was still trying to find his feet. Luckily for him, the nobles of Jerusalem needed to recuperate from their first invasion of Egypt, and were also reluctant to see Byzantium make gains in their neighborhood. By the time the joint expedition finally set out in October, the Byzantine fleet had exhausted much of its supply. The allies could only manage a halfhearted siege of the Nile fortress of Damietta before giving up by year-end.
Saladin did not personally see to Damietta’s defense, choosing instead to stay in the capital of Cairo. He had good reason to do so: in the summer, he had uncovered a plot to overthrow him, involving both the Caliphal Palace and large sections of the Fatimid Army. They planned to wait until Saladin marched out to fight the Crusaders, before launching a coup within the city.
Upon the plot’s discovery, Saladin immediately took action against the conspirators, sparking a major battle within the walls of Cairo itself. The result was a massacre of Fatimid supporters within the capital, with the survivors fleeing to Upper Egypt. There, they would regroup and launch new pro-Fatimid rebellions over the next couple of years, each attempt bloodily suppressed by Saladin’s forces. These struggles severely destabilized this once-prosperous region and sent a large emigration wave into neighboring Nubia, inadvertently contributing to the Islamization of what is now modern Sudan.
With the defeat of the Crusaders and the Fatimid conspirators, Saladin had finally secured his power over Egypt. Now, he could finally start thinking about what to do with it.
Domestic Policy & The End of the Fatimids, 1169-71
The Egypt that Saladin inherited was far poorer than at the height of the Fatimids, due to decades of instability and Saladin’s suppression. Nevertheless, Saladin’s domestic policies focused not so much on rehabilitating the economy, but on redistributing wealth to his supporters and refashioning the country into a base for his dynasty.
As mentioned, despite his official titles, Saladin’s power ultimately came from his leadership of the Syrian force in Egypt, which, in turn, rested on Saladin’s ability to reward his sub-commanders with land and wealth. There was also a good military reason to do this: the past few years had fully demonstrated that Fatimid Egypt’s infantry-heavy army was no match for the Crusader and especially Syrian cavalry.
As such, Saladin re-assigned large portions of Egypt’s revenue to his allies and family members, expecting them to use some of the money to maintain personal cavalry forces that would then join Saladin on campaign. By 1171, this policy yielded a cavalry force of about 14 thousand, better suited to fighting Crusaders but also far smaller and more independent-minded than the Fatimid army had been.
The high expenses involved with raising cavalry meant cutbacks elsewhere, especially on the navy and coastal defense. Without the resources to fully secure his coastline, Saladin had little choice but to pre-emptively destroy vulnerable coastal settlements, foreshadowing Mamluk policy after the conquest of the Crusader Levant a century later.
Saladin’s financial problems were not eased by the other aspect of his domestic policy. Anxious to establish a claim to Egypt that didn’t come from either Nur ad-Din’s orders or the Fatimid Caliph’s titles, Saladin followed the example of his Syrian master and rebranded himself as a Holy Warrior who would use Egypt’s resources to fight the enemies of Sunni Islam. Under his government, un-Islamic goods were banned, and unsanctioned taxes were abolished outright. Sunni religious institutions received generous support from the state, while non-believers were re-subjected to the discrimination of religious law.
Cleverly, Saladin took advantage of the sophisticated Egyptian bureaucracy to produce exceptional propaganda, trumpeting his own austerity and piety while slandering his rivals as personally or politically irreligious. These works – written by subordinates such as Qadi al-Fadil or Imad ad-Din – form the base of Saladin’s reputation even today.
Nevertheless, all the propaganda in the world couldn’t cover the fact that this Sunni Holy Warrior was still the chief minister for a heretic Shiite Caliph. In 1171, this contradiction was finally put to the test when the Sunni Abbasid Caliph, along with Nur ad-Din, demanded that Saladin finally end the Fatimids.
Despite the reputation he was trying to build, Saladin moved cautiously. First, he slowly replaced outgoing Shiite religious leaders with Sunni ones. Then he quietly removed the Fatimid name from Friday prayers. Finally and conveniently, the Fatimid Caliph died soon after, and Saladin declined to name a successor. And so, in this rather stealthy manner, Egypt formally returned to Sunni Islam.
Ending Fatimid rule was undoubtedly an achievement for Saladin the Holy Warrior, but for Saladin the aspiring Dynasty-Builder this act opened up a major can of worms. Previously, whenever Saladin wanted to act differently to the wishes of his Syrian liege-lord Nur ad-Din, he could always claim to have a competing responsibility to the Fatimids as their Vizier. But now the Fatimids were gone, and the power that Saladin had so painstakingly amassed was now at risk of being usurped by Nur ad-Din.
Foreign Policy & Conflict with Nur ad-Din, 1169-74
Nur ad-Din had initially authorized the takeover of Egypt with one goal in mind: to break the strategic stalemate that had existed primarily between Syria, Egypt and the Crusaders, where no single side had the resources to both conquer one state and defend against the other’s intervention. Now that Egypt was in Syrian hands, Nur ad-Din wanted both states to coordinate their attacks and jointly overwhelm the Crusaders. Saladin’s role in all this was to merely follow Nur ad-Din’s direction, a point that the Syrian leader emphasized when he refused to acknowledge Saladin as Fatimid Vizier, instead addressing him only as the Syrian commander in Egypt.
Nur ad-Din wanted Saladin to do two things: send tribute to Syria, and send armies to support Syrian attacks. But Saladin, much to his liege-lord’s anger, failed to do either satisfactorily. When it came to tribute, Saladin repeatedly claimed, not unjustifiably, that his current revenues could barely support even Egypt’s own defense. These excuses exasperated Nur ad-Din to such a point that he actually sent a team to audit Egypt’s finances, a move that Saladin considered a personal insult.
Similarly, when it came to military support, Saladin again proved reluctant to coordinate with Syrian forces, even though the Crusader-Byzantine alliance against Egypt was still going strong. Twice in 1171 and 1173, Saladin had besieged major Crusader castles blocking the route between Egypt and Syria, only to pack up and leave as soon as Nur ad-Din’s army approached. To an enraged Nur ad-Din, these moves seemed to indicate that Saladin was plotting to separate Egypt from Syrian rule. In response, Nur ad-Din got the Abbasid Caliph to formally acknowledge Syrian rule over Egypt, and by 1174, was preparing to enforce this through yet another invasion.
This growing political pressure from Nur ad-Din, and the desire to escape it, might explain why Saladin sought expansion beyond the Crusader Levant. In 1172, an Egyptian force set out to take control of the Libyan oases, which over the next two decades developed into a small-scale war with the Almohads over modern-day Tunisia. Two years later, Saladin’s brother set out to conquer Yemen, claiming that its rulers had become heretics. Whatever the reasons, these minor conquests provided Saladin’s army with a small trickle of plunder, and his family members with a few impoverished lands that they quickly grew unsatisfied with.
All in all, despite Nur ad-Din’s expectations, the Syrian conquest of Egypt did not actually break the strategic stalemate in the region, because Saladin was more interested in defending his independence than executing the will of his liege-lord. Despite this, the Crusaders were now more isolated than ever before, not just because Saladin’s victory had removed Egypt as a potential ally, but also because of the collapse of the Byzantine-Crusader alliance in the mid-1170s, which led Emperor Manuel to even help Saladin fight off Sicilian naval raids. In any case, after Manuel’s death in 1180, Byzantium rapidly weakened and ceased to be a relevant factor in the region.
Lucky Deaths: The Conquest of Syria, 1174-86
Saladin’s diplomacy with the Byzantines showcased the highly personal and chance nature of medieval strategy, where the presence or absence of a single leader could generate sea changes in regional politics that would have been inconceivable only a short while before. Starting in 1174, Saladin would benefit from an incredible 13-year run of ‘lucky deaths’, which would cumulatively break the regional strategic stalemate, bring Syria under Saladin’s rule, and herald the Crusaders’ downfall.
In May 1174, right on the cusp of invading Egypt, the Syrian ruler Nur ad-Din died, leaving an underaged son, as-Salih. Almost overnight, Syria shattered into a collection of mutually-antagonistic regions, chief amongst them Aleppo, Damascus and Mosul. Saladin took the opportunity to declare himself as the rightful regent for as-Salih, claiming authority over all three cities.
Saladin’s ambitions received a further boost in August, when King Amalric of Jerusalem died and was succeeded by Baldwin IV, who was periodically incapacitated by leprosy. As Crusader nobles bitterly fought over their own regency and succession, Saladin rode into Damascus with 700 cavalry and swept through most of Syria, quickly reaching and besieging as-Salih’s base of Aleppo.
If Saladin believed that this bold stroke would conquer Syria and end the aforementioned strategic stalemate, he, like Nur ad-Din, was to be badly mistaken. Recognizing the greater danger, Mosul and the notorious Shiite sect of the Assassins came to Aleppo’s aid. And while Saladin easily defeated their forces in battle, his cavalry commanders were reluctant to spend much money and time sieging down their castles. Saladin therefore felt little choice but to settle with as-Salih in 1176, finally becoming a fully independent Sultan in his own right, but at the price of having a latent threat in his northeastern rear.
Saladin now turned against Jerusalem, but a similar story of stalemate awaited him there. An initial strike led to an embarrassing defeat at Montgisard in October 1177, though the Muslims would make up the loss 2 years later when they seized the half-built castle of Chastellet. But once again, Saladin’s cavalry commanders recoiled at the prospect of sieging down Jerusalem’s castles, and they pressured Saladin to turn his attention back northeast to Mosul. And so by 1180, despite the notorious raids of Reynald de Chatillon that were occurring at the same time, Saladin was back plundering the lands of northern Syria, claiming that the threats from Mosul and the Turkish Sultanate of Rum were preventing him from focusing on Jerusalem.
Here, Saladin caught another lucky break, as as-Salih of Aleppo died in December 1181, unleashing yet another succession dispute. Mosul initially took control of the city, but Saladin launched a year-long campaign in response and ultimately obtained it in June 1183. Syria and Egypt were now united under one ruler, but this still did not end the strategic stalemate. For one, Saladin’s commanders remained reluctant to wage a long siege campaign against Jerusalem, preventing Saladin from making much headway against the Kingdom.
More importantly, Saladin continued to prioritize Mosul first, seeing it both as a persistent distraction from Jerusalem and as an easier source of plunder. But the more he fought Mosul, the more he became enmeshed in a cycle of perpetual eastern wars. Just as happened during the first siege of Aleppo, Saladin’s aggression prompted other regional lords to support Mosul, forcing Saladin to commit more resources to this front instead of Jerusalem. Even worse, each victory over Mosul only served to heighten regional fears about Saladin’s power, prompting the formation of a fresh coalition to support Mosul once again. By 1185, Saladin’s army was campaigning in distant Armenia, fighting forces backed by Persian Hamadan – regions that had few connections to either Jerusalem or Mosul.
But then, in December 1185, Saladin suddenly fell ill, and for the next three months was on the brink of death. During this time, he doubtlessly reflected on his failure to pursue Holy War: in the decade since Nur ad-Din’s death, he had spent about a year campaigning against the Crusaders, as compared to 3 fighting other Muslims. Ashamed, Saladin swore that, if and when he recovered, he would refocus his efforts back on Jerusalem from then on.
He was helped in this commitment by yet another series of lucky breaks. In 1186, Hamadan fell into civil war. Seeing this, Mosul hastened to become Saladin’s vassal on lenient terms, abruptly cutting the cycle of coalition warfare that was keeping him in the east. But even this paled in significance to what was happening in Jerusalem at the same time, where both Baldwin IV and his successor, the immature Baldwin V had died within 18 months of each other. The resulting succession dispute amongst the Crusader lords would give the Muslims the opening that they had been waiting for.
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