Founded by Saladin during the Crusades
THE CITADEL OF CAIRO (4)

The Spanish Muslim traveller, Ibn Jubayr, visiting Cairo in 1183, the year the Citadel was completed, observed Crusader prisoners digging the moat beneath the eastern wall of the fortress. He remarked that their numbers were "incalculable" and that no other labor force was required for the construction of the Citadel.

Despite the presence of Christian captives in Cairo, Salah ad-Din spent most of the 12 years following Nur ad-Din's death at peace with the Latin Kingdom. He was preoccupied during this time, not with waging jihad, but with the conquest of Zangid Syria. His Zangid opponents regarded him as an ambitious upstart, for ruthlessly replacing the family of his former master with his own relatives, the Ayyubids.

Salah ad-Din, however, was more than just another tyrant. He was a man with a vision that elevated him above the petty ambitions of his day. He was shrewd and aggressive in his dealings with the Zangids, but made it a matter of principle to base his life on the tenets of Islam. In an age when perfidy was the norm, Salah ad-Din never broke a truce with either his Muslim or Christian enemies. Although of simple, even austere needs himself, he was generous to a fault with his followers. He was accessible to all, even in moments of exhaustion, and devoted the same care to listening to the complaints of his troops as to helping a Christian mother find her captive child. Ultimately, it was the strength of Salah ad-Din's personality, rather than the size of his army, that forged Egypt and Syria into a united empire.

Salah ad-Din's long years of campaigning against the Zangids in Syria left him little time for Cairo, apart from periodic tours of inspection. As a result, he never lived in the Citadel, and left Egypt for the last time a year before it was completed. The final stages of its construction were entrusted to his brother, al-'Adil, who acted as governor of Egypt in Salah ad-Din's absence. A carved FOUNDATION INSCRIPTION, recording the Citadel's completion in 1183, was placed over the Gate of the Steps, praising Salah ad-Din and acknowledging the labor of al-'Adil and Qaraqush.

By 1186, the Zangids had either been conquered or reduced to vassaldom. Salah ad-Din, now in control of the resources of Egypt and Syria, was at last able to devote himself to his most cherished dream: the elimination of the Crusaders from the Middle East. The following year, he invaded the Latin Kingdom at the head of 20,000 men and trapped the entire Crusader army next to the Sea of Galilee. In the ensuing Battle of Hattin, the Christian forces were decisively defeated, with their king Guy de Lusignan and their most sacred relic, a fragment of the True Cross, falling to Salah ad-Din. The Muslim victory was followed by the capture of Jerusalem and the conquest of the entire Latin Kingdom, except for a few coastal towns.

Picture right: The Battle of Hattin, from a medieval manuscript

When news of the Crusaders' defeat reached the West, the most powerful monarchs of Europe, Richard the Lionheart of England, Philip Augustus of France and Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, gathered their armies and set sail for Palestine to win back the Holy Land for Christendom. The invasion of this Third Crusade was the most serious challenge Salah ad-Din ever had to face.

His army was composed of a number of semi-independent military contingents led by his principal amirs (commanders). Each amir maintained his own army from the revenues he received from a feudal land grant, known as an iqta'. At the beginning of the summer campaign season, the amirs assembled their troops, but then dispersed to their estates in the autumn to supervise the harvest and the collection of taxes on which their livelihoods depended.

Salah ad-Din, confronted by the invasion of a determined, well-equipped enemy, was forced to keep his army in the field continuously for three years. The prolonged struggle was a severe strain on the resources of the Ayyubid Empire, which, throughout the hostilities, was in danger of collapsing under the relentless assault of the Crusaders. It is a testimony to Salah ad-Din's leadership that he managed to hold his feudal levies together and finally fight his Christian opponents to a standstill.

When the last of the crusading kings left for home in 1192, the Christians controlled only a narrow strip of the Palestinian coast, surrounded by the united Ayyubid Empire.

The Middle East, c. 1190. Saladin's empire and its vassals shown in red; territory recovered from the Crusader states 1187-1189 shown in pink. Light green indicates Crusader territories surviving Saladin's death.

Although the Latin Kingdom would survive for another 100 years, its power had been broken forever. His life's work completed, Salah ad-Din died the following year in Damascus.

Salah ad-Din's generosity, courage and honesty made him a legendary figure in his own lifetime, admired as much by his Christian enemies as by his Muslim followers. When Dante wrote The Divine Comedy in the early 14th century, he placed Salah ad-Din, not in the pit of Hell with other infidel Saracens, but in the company of Hector and Aeneas in the limbo reserved for virtuous pagans.

During his lifetime, Salah ad-Din had relied on his family, the Ayyubids, to help govern his empire. After his death, the territories under Ayyubid control were divided among his sons and brothers, who formed a federation of sovereign states, loosely held together by ties of family solidarity. The ruler of Egypt, the wealthiest and most centralized of the Ayyubid states, bore the title Sultan and exercised a vague suzerainty over the rest of his kinsmen. At first, the most important provinces, centered around Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo, were assigned to Salah ad-Din's three sons. They proved to be weak and inexperienced rulers, who were no match for their politically astute uncle, al'Adil. In the seven years following Salah ad-Din's death, al-'Adil managed to establish himself as the Ayyubid sultan, after deposing his nephews in Damascus and Cairo.