Tariq Ali - The Book of Saladin

That night in bed, Rachel whispered in my ear.

“Can you imagine a grandson, my husband? I could never give you a boy, but our Maryam will, and soon, I’m sure.”

With imaginary grandsons on the way, I understood why news of my departure to a war in which I might be killed had not caused greater sorrow. I understood, but it would be a lie if I said that I was not a little hurt.

The Sultan pitches camp and soldiers begin to assemble from every quarter of his empire

THE JOURNEY ITSELF WAS uneventful. It took us two days to reach Ashtara, nothing compared to the agonies I suffered when we made the journey from Cairo to Damascus. It was, however, unbearably hot. Once we had abandoned the green fields and rivers outside Damascus, the trees became fewer and fewer. My mood began to get correspondingly worse. The disconcerting thing about the desert is that no birds sing to greet the dawn. Morning comes suddenly, and before one has time to wake fully and stretch, the sun is already beginning to hurt.

The Sultan had decreed that we should pitch camp at Ashtara, a small city surrounded by large plains. Here mock-battles could be fought and we would be blessed with an unlimited supply of water — always a crucial consideration, but a hundred times more so in times of conflict. For the next twenty-five days, we prepared for the battles that lay ahead.

Soldiers, archers and swordsmen began to assemble from all corners of the empire. Slowly our encampment grew and grew until the entire town was overwhelmed by the great city of tents that had sprung up in its midst. A hundred cooks, assisted by three hundred helpers, prepared food for the army. The Sultan insisted that everyone should eat the same meal. He told his emirs and secretaries that this simple rule recalled the earliest days of their faith. It was necessary to show both friend and enemy that, in a jihad, all were equal in the eyes of Allah.

To the great amusement of the emirs, Imad al-Din found it difficult to conceal his chagrin. He muttered under his breath that the early days of their religion were long past, now it should be just as important to let the Franj observe the richness and variety of the Damascus cuisine. The Sultan’s frown ended the frivolity. Imad al-Din’s tastes were very special and could only be satisfied by the cooks in two establishments in Damascus. For most other people the camp was well stocked with everything. There were several dozen cooks, each of whom had thirty cooking pots under his command. One of these pots could hold nine sheep-heads. In addition special baths had been dug in the ground and lined with clay. The Sultan knew that the stomach and hygiene of an army were crucial in maintaining its morale.

The camp routine was established from the first day, and newcomers were initiated from the moment of arrival. Trumpets and a roll of drums, punctuated by the cry of the muezzin, woke the whole camp at sunrise. This was the only call for collective prayers, except for Christians and Jews, who were exempted, though they had to rise at the same time. This was followed by a substantial breakfast, whose function was to keep the soldier strong till the evening meal. A short recreation followed, utilised mainly for purposes of defecation. Rows and rows of men went outside the town to empty their bowels in ditches dug for the purpose and covered with sand every second day to moderate the stench. A second drumroll summoned the men to carefully organised bouts of sword-fighting, archery and horse-riding. The foot-soldiers had to run for two hours every day.

Not a day passed without some excitement. The colours of the Caliph arrived, to be received by the Sultan amidst general acclaim and shouts of “Allah is great”. This did not stop al-Fadil whispering comments to Imad al-Din, loud enough to reach my ears:

“At least he has sent the Abbasid banners, but he will be sick with fear if our Sultan takes al-Kuds. That will make Salah al-Din the most powerful ruler in Islam.”

“Yes,” chuckled the great man of letters, “and his astrologers are already telling him to beware of him who prays first at the Dome on the Rock, for he will come to Baghdad and be greeted as the real Caliph.”

That the Caliph was jealous of our Sultan was hardly a secret. Every merchant travelling from Baghdad to Damascus came replete with court gossip, much of it exaggerated, but some of it confirmed by other sources, namely the spies of Imad al-Din, who sent him regular reports from the first city of the faith. What was surprising was the contempt with which the two men closest to the Sultan regarded the Caliph.

We had been at Ashtara for barely a week and it already felt like home. The reason for this was not the comfort of our surroundings but the general feeling of solidarity which suffused the atmosphere. Even the Kadi al-Fadil admitted that he had never experienced anything like it during previous campaigns. Soldiers spoke to emirs as virtual equals without threatening the discipline of the army. The emirs, for their part, and under the explicit orders of the Sultan, made a point of eating the evening meal with their men, dipping bread in the same bowl and tearing meat off the same bone.

It was in this spirit that one morning the colours of the Kurds were seen in the distance. A messenger rushed to inform the Sultan, who was out riding with Taki al-Din and Keukburi. I, on my poor horse, was trying to keep up with them. The three men were discussing whether their traditional tactics of charge and retreat, which owed a great deal to the Parthians, and were ideal for small formations of highly trained and skilled horsemen, could be applied with such a large army as was being assembled at Ashtara.

At this crucial juncture, the messenger announced the arrival of the Kurdish warriors. The three generals burst out laughing, for the indiscipline of the Kurds was well-known. Shirkuh was the only leader who had succeeded in taming their wilder instincts. Most of them had, till now, refused to fight under Salah al-Din. They claimed that he lacked his uncle’s audacity and his father’s cunning. This was why their arrival was greeted with joy by the Sultan, and we rode back ferociously to the camp.

The Kurds had arrived and cheered the Sultan’s arrival in their own language. Their leaders came forward and kissed Salah al-Din fiercely on both cheeks. He turned to me with a tear in his eye. I went close up to him and he whispered in my ear.

“I wish Shadhi were here to witness this day. Many of them remember him well.”

That night the spirit of fermented apricots dominated the camp. Even the Sultan was observed taking a sip from a flask covered in leather worn shiny with use. Then the Kurds began to sing. It was a strange mixture of lover’s laments, combined with chants of hope and love. An older warrior, who had imbibed too much potent apricot water, interrupted everyone with a lewd song. He sang of the woman he wanted, that she might have a vagina that burned like a furnace. Before he could continue, his sons took him aside, and we did not see him again till the next day.

The evening ended with a Kurdish war-dance which entailed several pairs of fighters leaping over the camp-fire with unsheathed swords and fierce expressions, and the carefully orchestrated clash of swords.

As I was walking back to my tent, I saw the Emir Keukburi and Amjad the eunuch in animated conversation with a man of medium height who I did not recognise. He was clearly a nobleman, probably from Baghdad. He was wearing the colours of the Caliph, and a black silk turban which matched his flowing beard. Even in the starlight a precious stone the colour of blood, set in the centre of the turban, shone splendidly. I bowed to the party, and Amjad introduced me to the stranger. It was Ibn Said from Aleppo, who had lost his power of speech as a child and could only communicate with gestures.