but on the caliphal palace. On the third day a dramatic and disturbing devel-
opment took place, when a shower of arrows rained down on Saladin's
men from the caliph's Armenian archers. A critical point in the battie had
approached; if al-Adid took the side of his regiments then Saladin's position
would be in great danger. At once Saladin summoned his brother, and the
two brothers became locked in urgent discussions. Then dramatically a
decision was taken and Saladin ordered that the Armenian archers and the
palace from where arrows had been fired should be set on fire with naphtha.
On this decision the battie turned; at once the caliph sent out a message to
Saladin assuring him that his flanks were safe and urging him to crush the
Sudanese regiments. Saladin's nerve had held and he now acted with deter-
mination and ruthlessness, throwing the remainder of his troops into battie
and driving the Sudanese back from the square down to Bab Zuwaila. He
had foreseen this and had prepared the ground - he had ordered that all the
side streets be blocked off so there could be no escape. At the Market of the
Sword Sellers, just short of Bab Zuwaila, the Sudanese made a valiant stand,
but it was fiitile because they could not withstand the momentum of the
Syrian forces. And when news reached them that Saladin had sent men to
burn down their quarters in the Mansuriya district, they became certain that
Saladin would show them no mercy. In vain they asked for quarter but none
was given; it was Turan Shah who pursued them all the way to Giza, where
he slaughtered them to the man. Never again would Saladin face a military
challenge in Cairo.''
No sooner had the Sudanese revolt been crushed than news arrived from
Damietta that a joint Franldsh-Byzantine force was approaching the city.
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SALADIN
The choice of Damietta was deliberate since it could be attacked by land
and by sea. A planned attack was co-ordinated which saw Amalric approach
by land while the Byzantine Andronicus Contostephanus commanded
the fleet. For Amalric the moment to seize Egypt seemed opportune, for
Saladin had yet to consolidate his position, and Amalric had discussed the
conquest of Egypt with the Byzantine emperor, whose grand-niece he had
married in 1167. Once again, however, Saladin's intelligence network
worked well, for he loiew where the attack would be. He still did not feel
secure enough to leave Cairo, as reports of further plots reached him daily,
so he dispatched his nephew Taqi ul-Din, together with his maternal uncle
Shihab al-Din al-Harimi, to man the defences of Damietta. Help also now
flooded in from Nur al-Din, who sent several amirs, including Qutb al-Din
Kliusrau, who himself had once vied for the vizierate. Even al-Adid, the
Fatimid caliph, contributed by dispatching the enormous sum of one mil-
lion dinars. Whether Ismaili or Sunni, it seemed that the determination was
the same: Egypt would not fall to the Franks. That which had been gained
would not easily be lost. The unity of the Muslims was not matched by that
of the Franks and the Byzantines and tension quicldy arose; Andronicus
urged a quick assault on Damietta using scaling ladders, but Amalric insisted
on a siege toWer being built. The crusaders began to build the needed war
machines but the people of Damietta were not lacldng in cunning; taking
advantage' of favourable winds, they launched a fire boat into the midst of
the fleet and only the vigilance of Amalric prevented the destruction of the
entire fleet. Delays in arrival also meant that the Byzantines were already
short of money, since the campaign had been estimated to last three months
and Amalric's laxity in arriving by land meant that though the fleet had set
out in August 1169 the assault on Damietta did not commence until
October. A tense situation was exacerbated when the Byzantines asked for
loans, a request which the Franks turned down. Unable to obtain provisions,
the Greeks were faced with a food shortage and foraged the countryside for
dates, raisins and chestnuts. For 50 days a fiitile siege took place, but the
heart had gone out of the besiegers and by December, with winter setting
back. To symbolise a miserable expedition, winter storms sunk several of the
Byzantine ships as they returned home.
6: M A S T E R OF EGYPT
The establishment of Saladin's authority in Egypt
The crisis was over. Saladin had faced down an army rebellion, an internal
plot and a foreign invasion all within six months of assuming the vizierate,
and he had emerged stronger. Throughout, he had been unable to leave
Cairo for fear of plots, but the victory at Damietta gave him confidence and
he now ordered the execution of several people in the city whom he sus-
pected of treacheiy. The property and lands that had once belonged to the
Sudanese regiments were allocated to Saladin's amirs. This was done for two
main reasons: obviously pardy as a reward for the service and loyalty shown,
but also in an attempt to tie the Syrian amirs to the land and to build a bond
between them and Egypt. Saladin had not forgotten how the caliph al-Adid
had wavered during the crisis and he now effectively put him under house
arrest, and the buildings and commerical properties which once belonged to
the Fatimid state were appropriated. The personnel of the Fatimid court,
including the slaves, was dispersed by Qaraqush, whom Saladin put as
supervisor of the palaces, and many gifts and tributes were either sold on the
open market or sent to Nur al-Din. As for Saladin, he chose as his residence
the former palace of the Fatimid viziers.
Saladin certainly felt more comfortable now, as Nur al-Din had sent
amirs whom he knew well and trusted. He had faced the sternest of chal-
lenges but had demonstrated shrewdness and calmness each time; already
we can see the qualities which he would carry with him later in life - the
careful planning, the cautiousness and the level-headedness. In addition,
and to his great joy, his father Ayyub arrived from Syria and around him
now gathered his brother Turan Shah and his nephew Taqi ul-Din, as well
as two other brothers, al-Adil and Tughtekin.®* Indeed the only other name
that can be recognised as being in the same level of seniority during this
period is Qaraqush. In gathering his family around him Saladin was simply
conforming to the tradition of collective familial sovereignty which he had
inherited from his father, and which Ayyub had taken from Shadi. They in
turn viewed him as the rising star, who could lead the family to great things.
Exacdy one year earlier Saladin had stubbornly refused to return to Egypt,
but now finally - despite the distant rumbfing of plots and mutinies, which
meant that the storm was never over - he could for the first time say he was
in control of Egypt. This achievement was symbolised by the birth, in
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SALAD I N
Egypt, of his first son, al-Afdal. Finally more secure in Egypt, Saladin made
his first move against the Franks
when, in November 1170, he attacked
Darum, which lay about 15 kilometres (9 miles) south of Gaza. The attack
was fierce and Darum would have fallen had Amalric not moved to relieve
it. Instead Saladin moved to Gaza, where he seized horses and cattle. He
then secured his first success by capturing the castle of Eilat, before return-
ing to Egypt in December 1170.
In June 1171 Nur al-Din, according to Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, who
was worldng as his secretary at that time, wrote to Saladin telling him to
establish the Abbasid caliph's name in the Friday sermons. In fact Saladin,
strengthened by his family and advised by al-Qadi al-Fadil, had already
begun to dismantle the Fatimid caliphate and introduce the tenets of Sunni
orthodoxy into Egypt. By the summer of 1170 the Shiite invocation of
'Hayy ala khayr al-amal' (come to the best of work) was eliminated from the
call to prayer, and shordy afterwards the names of the first three Orthodox
caliphs were put back in the Friday sermon in front of Ali's name. In the
same summer Isa al-Haldcari was appointed as a Shafii judge in Cairo, and
in March 1171 Saladin dismissed the Ismaili supreme judge of Egypt and
replaced him with a Shafii one who was also a Kurd - Sadr al-Din Ibn al-
Darbas al-Hadhabani, who wasted no time in replacing the Ismaili judges
with Sunni ones. At the end of the summer of 1171 al-Adid began to show
symptoms of a serious illness. In order to ensure that there could be no suc-
• cession to the caliph, Saladin loiew he had to move quickly. Subsequently,
when he received an invitation from al-Adid to visit him in the palace, the
cautious Saladin refused to go, as he feared treachery, though we are told
he regretted this later. On 10 September 1171 the name of the Fatimid
caliphate was dropped from the Friday prayer, but at this stage the Abbasid
caliph's name was not proclaimed and the explanation for this is clear -
Saladin was monitoring how the Egyptians would react. Tentative as he was
by nature, he preferred to take his time, but to his delight the removal of
al-Adid's name provoked no reaction and this encouraged him greatly. The
following day, on the Saturday, Saladin proceeded with an impressive show
of force and held a review of his troops in fiill sight of the Egyptians, and
more importantiy the Greek and Franldsh envoys who were present. When
news reached the frail, ill al-Adid that his name had been removed from the
Friday sermon, he asked whose name had been inserted. AVhen told that
none had been, he repUed, 'Next Friday it will be for a named man'. He
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6: M A S T E R O F EGYPT
would not live to see the next Friday, for on the Monday, 13 September
1171, al-Adid, who had not yet reached his twenty-first birthday, passed
away. News of al-Adid's death reached Saladin while he was seated with
al-Qadi al-Fadil and their immediate responses dramatically revealed their
mindsets: one that of a member of a military aristocracy, the other that of
a bureaucrat trained in political chicanery. 'If we had Imown', Saladin
remarked generously, 'that he would die this day, we would not have dis-
pleased him by eliminating his name from the [Friday] Idiutba [sermon].'
To this remark, al-Qadi al-Fadil looked up and replied immediately, 'Had
he known that you would not drop his name from the Idiutba, he would not
have died'. Although al-Adid had left behind a young son, there was it
seems no question of continuing with the Fatimid dynasty. The following
evening - 14 September - Saladin made a public appearance at a palace
gathering. It was unprecedented that a caliph should not be selected and
those gathered that evening awaited to hear what Saladin had to say about
the matter, but he chose to remain silent. Those still holding on to the
hope of salvaging the Fatimid dynasty received their answer on the Friday
17 September, when the name of the Abbasid caliph was pronounced in the
mosques of Fustat and Cairo.
The introduction of Sunni orthodoxy to Egypt
With Saladin, the spirit of Nizam ul-Mulk reached the land of Egypt. He
may not have possessed the scholarly instincts of Nur al-Din or the literary
habits of his closest adviser al-Qadi al-Fadil, who claimed that he had com-
posed 250,000 verses of poetry, but in Saladin's public actions at least he
was Nizam ul-Mulk's true spiritual heir. The first few months had been
devoted to stabilising a land seething with rebellion and plots, but as things
settled, and his family gathered around him, Saladin began to reveal that
he truly was a child of the Sunni Revival. His Sunnism was esoterically
ecumenical and exoterically intransigent - inwardly he was happy to accept
the different strands of Islam, but outwardly he was rigorously against other
religions, such as Christianity. Like most Kurds he was a Shafii, though in
Egypt he showed great favour to the Malilds and Hanafis. Theologically he
would have been an Asharite, though dogmatic theology never figured
highly in his piety. His Islam was deeply infiased with Sufism, though pas-
sively not actively, and we have already spoken about the influence of Abd
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SALAD I N
al-Qadir al-Jilani on those closest to Saladin: men such as Qutb al-Din
al-Nishapuri, Muwaffaq al-Din Ibn Qudama and Zein al-Din ibn Naja. He
was also influenced by the ecumenicalism of the vizier to the Abbasids,
Ibn Hubayra, whose effort to integrate moderate Shiism into the orthodox
Sunni body was reciprocated by Saladin. We are fortunate to have an eye-
witness in Ibn Jubayr, who wrote at a time when Saladin was at the height
of his power and who noted that in the Friday sermons, both in Mecca and
in Cairo, the preacher evoked at great length the merits of the Prophet
Muhammad, the four orthodox caliphs, the uncles of the Prophet, and the
sons of Ali (Hasan and al-Husayn), followed by the wives of the Prophet,
thereby offering a formula which united the Sunni and Shiite sects.
How far-reaching and profound the roots of this new Sunni Revival
would be can perhaps be better understood if viewed from a different
perspective. Here we turn to the work done by Tabbaa on the fascinating
development which took place in the writing of the Quran during this
period. For the first three centuries of Islam, Tabbaa notes, the Quran had
been written in an angular Kufic script, a script which was hard to read - in
places almost illegible - since Qurans were written less to be read than as
a validation for the recitation.® With the emergence of a new Sunnism,
Quranic calligraphy was gradually changed from a Kufic script to a cursive
one, one which reached its peak of excellence thanks to the pens of Ibn
Muqla and Ibn Bawwab. This transformation was not a coincidence. The
'uncompromising clarity of the new script must be seen as a direct reflection
of the Abbasid caliph's creed of the single and apparent truth in the
Q u r a n . T h e illegibility of the Kufic script had been used symbolically by
the Fatimids to emphasise the esoteric dimension of their religion, and in
contrast the clarity of the cursive script affirmed the
Sunni message. In other
words it was not just the word, but the image of the word which became a
symbol for the new Sunni orthodoxy. This symbol was rapidly assumed by
those dynasties who carried the Sunni message in the east, such as Mahmud
of Ghazna or Nur al-Din in Syria and Saladin in Egypt. The appropriation
of the Quranic script was both an act of homage towards the caliphate that
symbolised the Sunni orthodoxy as well as an attempt to legitimise the
dynasty that was paying homage. In other words political unity, which was
impossible to achieve, was replaced by ceremonial allegiance and caliphal
symbols, which were intended to reduce the gap between reality and myth.
The calligraphic transformation was one of the most visible and direct signs
• 92 •
6: M A S T E R OF EGYPT
of the adoption of the Sunni Revival, and the new cursive script was rapidly
adopted in public monumental inscriptions as an endorsement of Sunnism.
By 1174, and thanks largely to Nur al-Din, its use had become widely
adopted throughout Syria and upper Mesopotamia. Indeed the only place
which resisted this new script was Fatimid Egypt, and it was Saladin who
introduced it, an introduction that was as much a political statement as it
was a creative one. With the arrival of Saladin in Egypt, the Fatimid Kufic
script, the glory and pride of Fatimid art, was to be used no more in inscrip-
tions. Not only was the script transformed, the size and length of the
inscriptions were lowered from their elevated location as friezes and made
to cut across the walls and supports of the building. The combination of the
increased legibility of the script together with the lowering of the inscrip-
tional band created an image of a clear and direct message which announced
the beginning of a new Sunni era.'' In the Mudarraj Gate of the Cairo
citadel an inscription from the period of Saladin still remains. As Tabbaa
points out, the most strildng aspect about it is the poor quality of the script:
a spindly line, inconsistent letter forms, and neither points nor vowel marks
all reflect the inexperience of the calligraphers in this new calligraphic
s t y l e . O n e imagines Saladin busily importing calligraphers from Syria to