THE CONQUEST OF JERUSALEM IN SALADIN'S DIPLOMACY

Аннотация

This article highlights the most important and central part of Salah ad-Din Ayyubi's career — the conquest of the city of Jerusalem. It covers his efforts and battles to capture the city. It also describes the assistance he provided to the Crusaders after the conquest of Jerusalem. Keywords:BattleofHattin, Balian deIbelin, Jamal ad-Din Sharwin ibnHasan ar-Razi, Izz ad- Din Isa ibnMalik, Patriarch Heraclius. Hattin is regarded as a decisive battle in the history of the Muslim-Crusader wars, as the kingdom of Jerusalem lost its main military forces in this battle, and the greatest Crusader army ever put together since the establishment of that Crusader entity was destroyed. The victorious commander in this battle, who prevailed over the Crusaders, became the leader of the whole Muslim world. After Hattin, the Crusaders, especially in the holy kingdom, no longer had any strength to boast about. Hence as soon as Ascalon and Gaza surrendered to Salah ad-Deen in September of the same year, Salah ad-Deen decided to set out with his army that had regrouped in southern Palestine, after having been spread out for several years to complete the unification of Greater Syria. As soon as this army began to head north towards Jerusalem to take it by the sword, thecity ofJerusalem beganto prepare to resist theMuslim commander who had come to challenge itsstrength and might after eighty-eight years of Crusaderoccupation. The number of Crusader fighters inside Jerusalem was more than sixty thousand horsemen, apart from the women and children, according to Abu Shamah in Kitab ar-Rawdatayn. It seems that the number of inhabitants, and hence the number of fighters, had increased due to the arrival of refuges from neighboring cities and villages of Palestine which had been exposed to danger during the Muslim-Crusader fighting. Runciman states that most of these refugees did not know how to fight and there were very few men among them; for every man there were fifty women and children. There were no more than two knights in the city, which prompted Balian to appoint as a knight every boy over the age of sixteen who was descended from a noble family. He recruited all the males who had reached this age and distributed weapons to everyone who was able to bear arms. The fighters spread out along the walls and fortifications, set out the mangonels and dug ditches. Abu Shamah remarked, “They (the Crusaders) set up a mangonel on every hill, dug deep ditches and fortified every part of the wall, and they put a group of fighters in every tower. Ibn al-Atheer differed with Runciman concerning the number of knights in Jerusalem before the recruitment of boys from noble families and their page68 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ISSN:2692-5206,ImpactFactor:12,23 AmericanAcademicpublishers,volume05,issue06,2025 Journal: https://www.academicpublishers.org/journals/index.php/ijai appointment as knights. He says that there were the Crusader knights who had survived the battleof Hattin, and that a lot of people had gathered in the city from surrounding areas, such as Ascalon and elsewhere. They all climbed onto the walls with their armour and weapons, set up themangonels andfortified thewalls as much as they could.[1. P-153.] Salah ad-Deen's military abilitywas manifested in the military plan that he followed in his jihad against the Crusaders to regain Jerusalem. This plan was based on forming a united Islamic front that included Egypt, Greater Syria and parts of Iraq, then confronting the Crusaders on their own territory and dealing a heavy blow to them, as happened at the Battle of Hattin. That was followed by his march to the cities of the Syrian coast in order to weaken the Crusaders physically and morally. If Salah ad-Deen had headed towards Jerusalem straight after his victory at Hattin, he would have been able to enter itwithout anydifficulty. However, capturing Jerusalem before gaining control of the coastal cities would not have guaranteed him full stability in Jerusalem. It was to be expected that Western Europe would send Crusader armies to the ports of Syria and their knights would come, in groups and individually, and enter into a heated conflict with Salah ad-Deen to take back Jerusalem. Jerusalem was dear to them because itcontained theChurch oftheHoly Sepulchre, which according to theirfalse belief, as Imad ad- Deen al-Isfahani says, was where the Messiah was crucified, and offered as a sacrifice, the divinewas incarnated and thehuman became divine, and thecross was raised. By the grace of Allah and this military plan that was implemented by Salah ad-Deen to gain control of the coastal strip, he isolated Jerusalem and prevented the arrival of reinforcements, thus dashing the hopes of all the Crusaders, whether in Western Europe or in Greater Syria, of reaching Jerusalem and saving it from theMuslim armies. When Salah ad-Deen took Ascalon and other cities that surrounded Jerusalem back from the Crusaders, and thus en