Balian of Ibelin took command of the Christian forces. He had been captured at Hattin, and was well aware that, as a prisoner on parole, he was in an ambiguous position. He wrote to Saladin, explaining the circumstances under which he had assumed command of the city, begging forgiveness for breaking his parole, and urging Saladin to spare the city. This was something Saladin could not do. Balian of Ibelin made a heroic effort to place the city in a state of defense. Every boy who could prove noble descent and was capable of bearing arms was made a knight, and some thirty citizens were also knighted. The Tower of David contained a plentiful supply of arms. Balian took possession of the treasury and stripped the silver from the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Raiding parties brought in corn from the surrounding villages. The city was swollen with refugees, most of them women and children. Balian had no illusions about the difficulty of defending Jerusalem.
Saladin's army marched on Jerusalem like a slow and steady machine destroying everything in its path. On September 26, he was on the Mount of Olives, looking down on Jerusalem. He had already sent siege engines against the city, with little effect. The Christians surged out of the city and destroyed them. Under Balian's command Jerusalem had become a city of men so desperate that they were prepared to die rather than submit to the conqueror. Saladin realized that he would have to take each street of Jerusalem, house by house. He was not averse to a general massacre, but preferred a peaceful surrender. On September 30, Balian appeared in his tent to sue for terms.
Saladin rejoiced in his triumph. Simply to have Balian standing there as a suppliant was a boundless joy. Saladin pointed to his own standard flying from the walls of Jerusalem and said, “The city is captured. You cannot sue for terms.”
Balian answered that a single flag on the walls meant nothing, the fighting would go on, and there was more than the city at stake. There were five thousand Muslims in Christian hands, and thousands upon thousands of Christians would slaughter themselves to avoid being killed by the Muslims. He threatened to set Jerusalem on fire, to destroy all the holy places including the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque. All the
treasure would be destroyed, and every living creature. He described the new Jerusalem vividly, a city of ashes and flames. Outside the city walls, the Christians who could bear arms would hurl themselves at the Muslims. All would die, but in dying each would take a Muslim with him. He painted a picture of Doomsday.
Saladin, alarmed and convinced that Balian meant exactly what he said, agreed to terms. He would regard the population as prisoners who must pay a ransom: each man ten pieces of gold, a woman five pieces of gold, and a child one piece of gold. As for the poor, they could be released on payment of the thirty thousand bezants that remained in the keeping of the Hospitallers from the treasure of King Henry II. The people were given forty days to pay the ransom money. Those who failed to pay and remained behind would become slaves of the Muslims.
Saladin set his guards at the gates. They examined everyone who passed through the gates, exacting the appropriate tribute. Saracenic merchants came flocking to Jerusalem to see what they could buy for a few gold coinsâa house, a bed, a slave girlâand there was much cheating on the part of Christians and Muslims. Christians were fair bait and quickly dispossessed of their goods. Some, like Heraclius, paid their ten pieces of gold and walked out of Jerusalem laden with treasure. Heraclius took with him the gold plate of the churches of Jerusalem, even the gold plate of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and nobody stopped him. Saladin, told that the patriarch was going off with all the gold treasure remaining in Jerusalem, commented mildly that he must be allowed to do what he pleased: no one must lay a finger on the patriarch. Al-Adil, Saladin's brother, interceded for some poor Christians, saying, “Sire, I have helped you by God's grace to conquer the land and this city, and therefore I pray that you give me a thousand slaves from among the poor people.” Saladin granted his wish, and al-Adil set them free as an offering to God. Saladin himself proclaimed that old people who could not pay the ransom would be allowed to go free. Saladin's lieutenants reminded him frequently of the bloody massacres committed by the Crusaders when they first conquered Jerusalem, yet his mercy was widespread. The wives and daughters of knights, after paying their ransom, marched out of Jerusalem to Saladin's tent and cried out that their husbands and fathers should be returned to them. Some had died in battle, others were in prison. Saladin ordered that the women whose husbands had died should be paid from his treasury, and he ordered scribes to take down the names of the prisoners, promising that as soon as he could go to the prisons he would set them free. What was most extraordinary about the meeting was that Saladin wept when he saw the women weeping.
He could afford to be compassionate: to have Jerusalem in his grasp was his supreme achievement. By showing at last that the Christian kingdom could be struck a deathblow at its heart, he had demonstrated the power of
Islam to overcome all obstacles. He played his role with intelligence and sensibility. He had a simple aim and knew what he was doing, unlike the Christians who had blundered like sleepwalkers to defeat. Saladin, sitting in his tent, possessed the power of the Caesars. The East lay in the hollow of his hand and he could do what he wanted with it. He was the master of the Arabic world and was more than king. He had become an emperor, a man who ruled over many nations, disdaining the panoply of power, very quiet and singular.
But although the kingdom died, it lived on in the minds of the Christians who lived in fear, huddled along the seacoast of Palestine. In their eyes, a lost city was all the more vivid because it was lost. Jerusalem captured was Jerusalem freed from all ambiguity. A lost city, like an empty tomb, was all the more real, all the more desirable, because it was unattainable.
EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER FROM TERENCE, MASTER OF THE TEMPLE, TO ALL COMMANDERS AND BRETHREN OF THE ORDER, FROM TYRE, NOVEMBER 1187
BROTHER TERENCE, known as Grand Master of the most impoverished house of the Temple, himself the most impoverished of all the brethren, and that brotherhood almost completely destroyed, to all commanders and brethren of the Temple, greetings! May they utter sighs to God, at whom the sun and the moon are astounded!
The wrath of God has lately permitted us to be scourged by innumerable calamities which our sins have brought down to us. Neither in writing nor in the language of tears, so unhappy is our fate, can we tell the full measure of these things. Know that the Turks assembled an immense multitude of their people and with bitter hostility they invaded the territories of the Christians. . . . They spread themselves over nearly all the land: Jerusalem, Tyre, Ascalon and Beirout being all that is left to us and to Christendom. Since nearly all the citizens of these cities have been slain, we shall not be able to hold them unless we speedily receive divine assistance and the aid you can bring to us. At the present moment they are besieging Tyre relentlessly by day and night, and they are so numerous that they cover the entire land from Tyre to Jerusalem and Gaza, like swarms of ants.
Grant us, we beseech you, your aid with all possible speed. Grant succour to us and to Christendom, which is now all but ruined in the East, that with God's aid and by the great merits of the brotherhood and with your help, we may be able to save the few remaining cities. Farewell.
EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER FROM THE EMPEROR
FREDERICK I BARBAROSSA TO SALADIN, KING OF EGYPT, WRITTEN BEFORE THE FALL OF JERUSALEM WAS KNOWN IN THE WEST.
FREDERICK BY THE GRACE OF GOD Emperor of the Romans, the ever august and glorious victor over the enemies of the Empire and the fortunate ruler of the entire kingdom, to Saladin, the illustrious Governor of the Saracens. May he take warning from Pharaoh and touch not Jerusalem!
. . . [Y]ou have profaned the Holy Land over which we, by the authority of the Eternal King, bear rule, as guardian of Judaea, Samaria and Palestine, [and] solicitude for our imperial office admonishes us to proceed with due rigour against such presumptuous and criminal audacity. Wherefore, unless, before all things, you restore the land which you have seized, . . . [within] a period of twelve months, . . . you will experience the fortune of war, in the field of Zoan, by the virtue of the life-giving Cross and in the name of the true Joseph.
We can scarcely believe that you are ignorant of that which all antiquity and the writings of the ancients testify. . . . That. . . innumerable . . . countries have been subject to our sway?
All this is well known to those kings in whose blood the Roman sword has been so often steeped: and you, God willing, shall learn by experience the might of our victorious eagles, and be made acquainted with our troops of many nations. You will learn the anger of the Teutons who take up arms even in time of peace. You will know the inhabitants of the Rhineland and the youth of Istria, who never flee from battle, the towering Bavarians, the proud and cunning Suabians, the cautious Franconians, the Saxons who sport with their swords, Thuringians, Westphalians, the energetic men of Brabant and the men of Lorraine who are unaccustomed to peace, the fiery Burgundians, the nimble mountain men of the Alps, the Frisians with their javelins, the Bohemians who know how to die joyfully, the Poles fiercer than the beasts of the forest, the Austrians, the Istrians, the Illyrians, the Tuscans, the Venetians and the Pisansâand lastly, also, you will assuredly be taught how our own right hand, which you suppose to be enfeebled by old age, can still wield the sword on that day of reverence and gladness which has been appointed for the triumph of Christ's cause.
EXCERPTS FROM A LETTER FROM SALADIN TO FREDERICK I BARBAROSSA, WRITTEN AFTER THE FALL OF JERUSALEM.
TO THE GREAT KING, HIS SINCERE FRIEND, the illustrious Frederick, King of Germany, in the name of God the merciful, by the grace of the one God, the powerful, the almighty, the victorious, the everlasting of whose Kingdom there is no end. . . .
We make it known to the sincere and powerful King, our great and amicable friend, the King of Germany, that a certain man called Henry came to us professing to be your envoy, and he gave us a letter which he said was from your hand. We caused the letter to be read, and we heard him speak by word of mouth, and by the words which he spoke by word of mouth, we answered also in words. Here, therefore, is the answer to your letter:
You enumerate all those who are leagued with you against us, you name them and sayâthe king of this land and the king of that landâthis count and that count, and the archbishops, marquises and knights. But we wished to enumerate those who are in our service and who listen to our commands and obey our words and would fight for us, this is a list which could not be reduced to writing. If you reckon up the names of the Christians, the Saracens are more numerous than the Christians. If the sea lies between us and those whom you call Christians, then no sea separates the Saracens who cannot be numbered: between us and those who will come to aid us there is no impediment. The Bedouin are with us, and they alone would be sufficient to oppose all our enemies. And the Turkomans alone could also destroy them, and our peasants at our orders would fight bravely against any nations that invaded us and despoil them of their riches and exterminate them. And then we have the soldiers who opened up the land and took possession of it, and drove out our enemies. These together with all the kings of Islam will not be slow when we summon them, nor will they delay when we call them.
Whenever your armies are assembled, as you say in your letter, and whenever you lead them, as your messenger tells us, we will meet you in the power of God. We will not be satisfied with the land on the seacoast, but we will cross over with God's good pleasure and take from you all your lands in the strength of the Lord. For if you come, you will come with all your forces and will be present with all your people, and we know that there will be none remaining at home to defend themselves or fight for their country. And when the Lord, by his power, shall have given us victory over you, nothing will remain for us to do but freely to take your lands by His power and with His good pleasure.
The army of the Christian faith has twice come against us in Babylon, once in Damietta and again in Alexandria; the Christian
army reached into the land of Jerusalem, and toward Damascus, and into the land of the Saracens; in every fortress there was a lord who studied his own advantage. You know how the Christians returned every time and what happened to them. . . .
By the virtue and power of God we have taken possession of Jerusalem and its territories; and of the three cities that still remain in the hands of the Christians: Tyre, Tripoli, and Antioch, nothing remains but that we shall occupy them also. But if you desire war, we shall meet you with the power of God, who wills of his good pleasure that we shall occupy the whole land of the Christians. If you want peace, you have only to command the captains of these three cities to deliver them up to us, and we shall restore to you the Holy Cross, and we shall liberate the Christian captives in all our territory, and we will be at peace with you. We will allow you one priest at the Holy Sepulchre and we will restore the abbeys to their former state and we will do good to them. We will permit the pilgrims to come throughout our lifetime and we will be at peace with you.
If the letter that came to us by the hand of Henry is indeed the letter of a king, we have written this letter in reply and may God give us council according to His will. This letter is written in the year of the coming of the Prophet Muhammad 584, by the grace of the only God. And may God save our Prophet Muhammad, granting the salvation of our saviour, our illustrious lord and victorious king, the giver of unity, the true word, the adorner of the standard of truth, the corrector of the world and of the lawâfrom the Sultan of the Saracens and the infidels, the servant of the two holy houses and the holy house of Jerusalem, father of victories, YUSUF son of AYYUB.