It could be called the honor of kings. They met in bloody war for the Holy Land, the champion of Christendom and Islam. King Richard the Lion Hearted and Saladin. Richard was tall and fair and handsome; as well known for his poetry as for his courage, and he loved beauty in every form. He could inspire in his followers a lifelong devotion. But there were weaknesses in his character. His witty poet’s tongue could say unforgivable things and in any company he must be first. He was stern, unyielding, truculent and avaricious as well as rumored to be too fond of handsome young men.
The idea , hardly new, was to wrest the Holy Land from the infidels, which ultimately involved knights looting, seizing and securing what they could for themselves while warring constantly with their Christian neighbors. A Christian community that was scarcely unified in the Middle East, consisting principally of the kingdom of Jerusalem which stretched from the Egyptian border to Beirut as well as some small associated states covering what is now Syria, Lebanon and southeast Turkey. It was a patchwork of descendants of the original knights who ran small feudal empires. The quarrels so weakened the commonwealth that Saladin in 1187 swept in through Judea and took Jerusalem. When the news of this disaster reached Europe, the Pope called for a third crusade.
”Monotheism, rather than offering a cosmological solution, is actually a social and cultural mechanism by which moral forces and submission to an higher power are combined, to evoke phalanx societies, which have a high degree of internal cooperation, which enables these societies to survive in crude Darwinian terms, by being more able to compete with and conquer other societies. Despite their pretenses to being under the banner of God, the merciful and compassionate, the realities are enforcement of moral codes through splitting the souls of believers between glowing accounts of heaven and dire penalties, both in this life and the imagined after-life, for any transgressor….The clash of the cultures between the Muslim and the tacitly Judeo-Christian Western world, although also accused of being rampantly materialist, exemplifies this incapacity to heal monotheism into one autonomous faith, except by conquest and submission, because of the intrinsic violence of domination and utopian supremacy implicit in all monotheistic faiths.”
The intra-European intrigues between the royal families resulted in mistrust on all sides.On the European continent, France and England had been quarreling for a generation. Recently Richard had made matters worse by refusing to marry King Philip of France’s sister Alice, to whom he had been betrothed since childhood, giving as reason, the rumors that she had been his father’s mistress. To clinch the matter, Richard’s mother brought Princess Berengaria of navarre down to Sicily, and Richard married her on the island of Cyprus.
Thus, Richard went into battle with the French, most of the native barons and the Germans all hostile to him for different reasons. His was not an enviable position. Saladin, had his own concerns. He made great efforts to relieve the blockaded city of Acre, for a great defeat might destroy his power. He lacked the prestige of hereditary rule, and unless he led him men to victory and plunder, they would desert him. All his soldiers hated the climate of the unhealthy coast, ravaged and stinking after four years of war. They would not stay unless they were pain punctually, and the money to pay them could come only from Egypt.
In 1191, Saladin was fifty-three and in poor health. Nonetheless, the Holy War was the great object in his life and he was fearless. If his army seemed to be bea
he would hold his ground to the last. In every respect he was the pattern of a Moslem ruler. He said his prayers regularly and kept the Fast of Ramadan. He loved to listen to readings from the holy books, even when he rode down the front of a hostile army. His almsgiving was so generous that when he died only one gold dinar remained in his treasury.
To his subjects, he was just, and even to Christians he kept his given word. His mercy was famous, but it was a Moslem mercy, and not to be judged by Christian standards. When Jerusalem surrendered to him, there were 60,000 Christian refugees in the town, and he set their ransom at the moderate figure of ten dinars a man. The money in the city treasury was reckoned toward this ransom, though Sladin might have claimed it as booty; to please his brother Saphadin, he freed a thousand captives and permitted the patriarch to beg off another seven hundred. Yet so many slaves remained that a pair of old shoes would buy a man.
Little is known of Saladin’s married life; but he had seventeen sons and at least one daughter, and took pains to bring them up properly. When the boys wished to join in a massacre of Christian prisoners he forbade it, explaining to his puzzled councillors that the children were too young to understand the true religion; if they were encouraged to kill helpless Christians, they might think it right to kill helpless Moslems.
When Richard reached the camp before Acre in June, 1191, the Moslem and Christian armies had been in close contact for three years, and truces were frequent, official or unofficial. Richard was eager to meet the champion of Islam , who in a single battle had overthrown a kingdom. Saladin answered that kings should not meet while they were at war, though if peace came he would be delighted to meet him. However, Richard was madly curious to learn more about his great antagonist and sent his envoy on a mission that was frivolous in the extreme; Richard had some fine hawks that he would like to send as a present to Saladin, but the hawks were sick, and in the besieged camp of the besiegers of Acre they could not get the fresh food they needed. Would Saladin please send them some chickens?
Saladin willingly sent the poultry, though he said with a laugh that Richard would eat them. The envoys passed to and fro. Richard sent the hawks and other Western curiosities and Saldin in return sent fruit and snow, precious luxuries in the blockaded camp. There was a sound political reason for these contacts. The Moslem leaders in Acre were preparing to surrender , and Ricjard wished to make sure that Saladin knew it. The surrender took place on July 12. The Moslems in Acre had offered to buy their lives with three things which were not theirs to give. A large sum of money, the True Cross which was captured at Hattin and a hundred named Christian knights.
Saladin eagerly collected the money but was reluctant to hand over the True Cross though he would probably have done so under pressure. And he failed to produce the named prisoners. Richard’s envoys refused to accept the money alone, though tempting sacks of gold were actually brought to their tent. Richard, realizing that the agreed ransom would never be fulfilled turned around and killed the Saracen soldiers in the surrendered garrison, along with their wives and children, to the number of 2700, though a few wealthy emirs bought their lives by the offer of large individual ransoms. It is worth noting that, although many modern historians reproach Richard, Saladin continued to negotiate and thought none the worse of him.
David..found this very ineresting,the more I read, the more I thought…omg….what must people have been like…ordinary people?? plunder..murder…..I think I am happy I am here today and in the present. thanks David..good read….df
Thanks Diane,
Well . We are still entangled in the Holy Land…so the basis of the conflict has not been resolved; each side cannot come to terms with its inherent contradictions, or so it appears.
Best,
D