In 1174, Nuradin died. His last words were, ‘Only one thing
makes me unhappy: what will happen to my family at the hands
of Yusuf, son of Ayyub?’
Because Nuradin’s son, Al-Saleh, was only eleven years old,
many people wanted to rule Syria in the boy’s name. Then
two months later, King Amalric of Jerusalem died too. His
son, Baldwin, was thirteen, and was ill with leprosy. Saladin,
now thirty-six, saw that it was a good time to move against the
Franks, but he needed a bigger army.
‘If I can teach Nuradin’s son how to be a good ruler while he’s
still young, and I can rule Syria in his name, then all Muslims
will help my soldiers fight for the Holy Land,’ he thought.
But many Syrians were afraid of Saladin. The emirs said, ‘You
go too far, Yusuf! You were just a soldier, and now you want
all of Syria! You came from nothing. You are nothing. And we
won’t listen to you!’
But Saladin wanted to make Nuradin’s dream of winning
back the Holy Land come true. He took Damascus with little
trouble. Then he moved on to Aleppo. This was where the young
Al-Saleh went with his emirs after they saw how quickly Saladin
was winning the country. But Aleppo was difficult to take, so
Saladin attacked the castle of Azaz first. It fell after thirty-eight
days of fighting, and then Aleppo surrendered.
The emirs didn’t trust Saladin and thought that he really
wanted to be King of Syria, so they asked the Assassins, a secret
group of killers, to kill him. They tried twice, while Saladin
was asleep, but he was lucky and lived. He decided to fight the
Assassins in their mountain home, but it wasn’t easy. Some of
his soldiers said, ‘We were near Sinan, the Assassins’ general,
but he has great powers that we can’t explain. He looked at us,
and we couldn’t lift our swords to fight him!’
4248945 Saladin