Al-Masq

Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean

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The Byzantines and Saladin: Some Further

Arguments
Savvas Neocleous
To cite this article: Savvas Neocleous (2013) The Byzantines and Saladin: Some Further
Arguments, Al-Masq, 25:2, 204-221, DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2013.799952
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2013.799952

Published online: 22 Aug 2013.

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Al-Masaq, 2013
Vol. 25, No. 2, 204221, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2013.799952

The Byzantines and Saladin: Some Further

Arguments

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SAVVAS NEOCLEOUS

ABSTRACT This is the second of two articles by the same author arguing against the thesis
that there was a conspiracy between the Byzantine emperors and Saladin, sultan of Egypt
and Syria, against the crusader states and the Third Crusade in the 1180s. While the focus
of the first article was primarily on the Latin sources, the present study shifts the focus to the
Arabic primary material, hitherto largely neglected or inadequately treated by modern
historians. Through a critical re-examination and re-interpretation of the Arabic sources,
backed by the introduction and discussion of new Latin material when necessary, this
article presents expanded arguments on the relations between the Byzantine Empire, the
Sultanate of Konya and Saladin in the 1180s. The conclusions lend further support to
the view that the Byzantine rulers and Saladin never concluded an alliance against the
Latin settlers of Outremer and the Third Crusade.

Keywords: Politics and diplomacy; Saladin, sultan of Egypt; Andronikos I

Komnenos, Byzantine emperor; Isaac II Angelos, Byzantine emperor; Crusades
Third Crusade (11891192); Rum (sultanate) politics

In the articles The Byzantines and Saladin: Opponents of the Third Crusade?1
and Byzantine-Muslim Conspiracies against the Crusades: History and Myth,2
published in 2010, I argued against the thesis that there was a conspiracy between
the Byzantine rulers and Saladin (r. 570589/11741193), sultan of Egypt and
Syria, against the crusader states and the Third Crusade in the 1180s. This view
was first articulated by Charles Brand in his 1962 study The Byzantines and
Saladin, 11851192: Opponents of the Third Crusade,3 and has since been
Correspondence: Savvas Neocleous, Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Trinity College Dublin,
College Green, Dublin 2, Ireland. Email: neocles@tcd.ie
NB. Quotations from modern translations are frequently corrected and amended according to my own
understanding of the original texts.
This article was completed during my tenure as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Pontifical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, Toronto (20112012).
1
Savvas Neocleous, The Byzantines and Saladin: Opponents of the Third Crusade?, Crusades 9 (2010):
87106.
2
Savvas Neocleous, Byzantine-Muslim Conspiracies against the Crusades: History and Myth, Journal
of Medieval History 36 (2010): 253274, esp. 265271, 274.
3
Charles M. Brand, The Byzantines and Saladin, 11851192: Opponents of the Third Crusade,
Speculum 37 (1962): 167181. See also idem, Byzantium Confronts the West, 11801204 (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 177.
2013 Society for the Medieval Mediterranean

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supported by a great number of scholars, including Georg Ostrogorsky, Jonathan RileySmith, Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Michael Angold, Paul Magdalino, Andrew Jotischky,
Thomas Madden, Dimiter Angelov, Jonathan Phillips, and Thomas Asbridge.4 In
my 2010 articles, the focus was primarily on the Latin sources used by earlier scholars
as evidence for the theory that there was a Byzantine-Muslim alliance against the Latins
of Outremer and the Third Crusade. These sources were re-dated, reinterpreted and
shown to be based on rumour, which mainly evolved and flourished among the rank
and file of the crusader armies one of them was shown to be fake. In light of
further research on the topic, the present study shifts the focus to the Arabic sources,
hitherto largely neglected or inadequately treated by modern historians, in addition to
presenting some new material and expanded arguments. The aim is to provide
further evidence against the view that the Byzantine rulers in the 1180s were in
league with Saladin against the Latin settlers of Syria and the Third Crusade.
The Byzantine Empire, the Sultanate of Konya and Saladin in the 1180s
In the aforementioned studies, I accepted the widely held view that in 577/1181 the
Protosebastos Alexios Komnenos, the effective ruler of the Byzantine Empire from
1180 until 1182, concluded a truce with Saladin, which was designed to create a
balance of power against the Saljuq Turks in Asia Minor.5 I also argued that a
formal treaty with the same aim was signed between Saladin and the Byzantine
Emperor Andronikos I (r. 11831185), while probably by 1186, the Emperor
Isaak II (r. 11851195, 12031204), who had succeeded Andronikos I in 1185, dispatched yet another embassy to the sultan to renew the alliance.6 According to the
4
Georg Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State, trans. Joan Hussey, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1968), pp. 4067; Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A Short History (London and New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1987), p. 111; Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States, 1096
1204, trans. J.C. Morris and Jean E. Ridings (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 2302, 241;
Michael Angold, The Fourth Crusade: Event and Context (Harlow: Pearson, 2003), pp. 36, 645; Paul Magdalino, The Byzantine Empire 11181204, in The New Cambridge Medieval History, volume IV, part II,
ed. David Luscombe and Jonathan Riley-Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004),
pp. 61143, esp. 6312; Paul Magdalino, Isaak II, Saladin and Venice, in The Expansion of Orthodox
Europe: Byzantium, the Balkans and Russia, ed. Jonathan Shepard (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 93
106, esp. 948, 1035; Andrew Jotischky, The Fate of the Orthodox Church in Jerusalem at the End
of the Twelfth Century, in Patterns of the Past, Prospects for the Future: The Christian Heritage in the
Holy Land, ed. Thomas Hummel, Kervork Hintlian and Ulf Carmesund (London: Melisende, 1999),
pp. 17994, esp. 1824; Andrew Jotischky, Crusading and the Crusader States (Harlow: Pearson, 2004),
p. 159; Thomas F. Madden, The New Concise History of the Crusades (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield,
2005), pp. 802; Dimiter G. Angelov, Domestic Opposition to Byzantiums Alliance with Saladin:
Niketas Choniates and his Epiphany Oration of 1190, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 30 (2006):
4968, pp. 4951, 545, 5965; Jonathan Phillips, Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades
(London: Random House, 2009), p. 143; Thomas Asbridge, The Crusades: The War of the Holy Land
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), p. 382. For a discussion of these works particularly the
more detailed studies of Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Paul Magdalino, and Dimiter G. Angelov and a refutation of their arguments, see Neocleous, The Byzantines and Saladin.
5
Neocleous, The Byzantines and Saladin, 87. This view is also adopted by: Jonathan Phillips, Defenders
of the Holy Land: Relations between the Latin East and the West, 1119-1187 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996),
p. 251; Bernard Hamilton, The Leper King and his Heirs: Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 170.
6
Neocleous, The Byzantines and Saladin, 8889; Neocleous, Byzantine-Muslim Conspiracies, 267.
This view is also favoured by: Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States, 230232; Jonathan Harris, Byzantium and the Crusades (London: Hambledon, 2003) p. 122; Phillips, Defenders of the Holy Land, 251.

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Egyptian historian al-Maqrz (d. 845/1442), in Safar 577/23 June-21 July 1181, the
to Cairo and a treaty was agreed
Protosebastos Alexios had indeed sent an embassy
between the Byzantines and Saladin. However, the only provision of the treaty
reported by al-Maqrz is that the Byzantines agreed to release 180 Muslim
prisoners.7
Negotiations between Byzantine emperors and Muslim rulers for the release of
prisoners of war were not without precedent. Following the defeat of the crusaders
by a Fatimid army at the Battle of Ramla on 20 Rajab 495/17 May 1102, a number of
leaders and many knights were taken captive and led to Cairo.8 Three
crusading
years later they were set free through the intervention of the Byzantine Emperor
Alexios I (r. 10811118). According to the emperors daughter, Anna Komnena
(d. 1153), a Byzantine official was sent with sums of money and a letter from
Alexios to the court of the Fatimid caliph of Egypt. In his letter, the emperor

demanded the release of the [Latin]

counts, promising many favours if they were
set free from their bonds and allowed to go.9 On receipt of Alexioss message,
the Fatimids released the prisoners and sent them to Constantinople. Conrad, the
of the Emperor Henry IV of Germany (r. 10561106), and Arpin of
marshal
Bourges, a French knight, were amongst the Westerners who were released from
Egyptian captivity through the Byzantine rulers intervention. Albert of Aachen
(d. after 1119), a well-informed French chronicler of the First Crusade, commends
Alexios, the great king of the Greeks (regi magno Grecorum), for sending an
embassy to the Fatimid caliph to secure Conrads release. Conrad was brought
forth from prison and fetters and on account of love and mutual obligation
[between the Byzantine emperor and the caliph] was restored to Alexios.10 The
Anglo-Norman chronicler Orderic Vitalis (d. c. 1141) records that Arpin of
Bourges sent a message to the Byzantine ruler requesting of him to intercede
with the emir to free him from the sufferings of captivity.11 Upon receiving the
message, Alexios intervened with the caliph on behalf of the French knight, who
was released and sent to Constantinople.
Alexioss policies were adopted by his grandson, the Emperor Manuel (r. 1143
1180). Between 1 and 10 Jumada I 554/28 May and 6 June 1159, Manuel intervened
with the ruler of Syria Nur al-Dn (r. 541569/11461174) for the release of a
large number of Frankish prisoners. As recorded by the Damascene historian Ibn
al-Qalanis (d. 555/1160):
the request of the king of the Greeks for the liberation of the Frankish
leaders detained in the confinement of the king Nur al-Dn and their transference to his own camp was granted, and Nur al-Dn dispatched them all to
Al-Maqrz, Histoire dgypte, trans. Edgar Blochet, Revue de lOrient Latin 8 (19001901): 165212,
501553, esp. 539; Franz Dlger and Peter Wirth, Regesten der Kaiserurkunden des ostrmischen Reiches,
volume II: Regesten von 10251204, rev. 2nd ed. (Munich: A.M. Hakkert, 1995), no. 1549k.
8
On the battle of Ramla, see Christopher Tyerman, Gods War: A New History of the Crusades (London:
Penguin, 2006), p. 175.
9
Anna Komnena, Alexias, ed. Diether R. Reinsch and Athanasios Kambylis [Corpus Fontium Historiae
Byzantinae, volume XL/I] (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2001), p. 360. English translation: The
Alexiad of Anna Comnena, trans. E.R.A. Sewter (London: Penguin, 1969), p. 370.
10
Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana, History of the Journey to Jerusalem, ed. and trans. Susan
B. Edgington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 754755.
11
Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall, volumes IVI (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 19691980), V: 3503.
7

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him The king of the Greeks recompensed this generous act with gifts rivalling those of the greatest and most powerful sovereigns: magnificent
brocade robes of various kinds and in large numbers, precious jewels, a
brocade tent of great value, and a gratifying number of local horses.12
Even more recently, as recorded by Robert, a monk at the Premonstratensian house
of Saint-Marien of Auxerre, Emperor Manuel interceded with the Saljuq Sultan
Qilij-Arslan of Konya (r. 551588/11561192) in 1180 and secured the release of
Henry I of Champagne (r. 11521181), who was seized by the Turks while
passing through Asia Minor on his way from Jerusalem to Western Europe.13
Following long-established precedent, the agreement of 577/1181 between
Saladin and the regency in Constantinople pertained to the release of Muslim prisoners of war, probably Trkmens of Asia Minor. The Trkmen nomads living on
the border of the Saljuq state in western Asia Minor frequently attacked and plundered Byzantine territory.14 In the autumn of 576/1180, Saladin attacked the
kingdom of Armenian Cilicia, the ruler of which stood accused of having attacked,
seized and imprisoned Trkmens living within his domains and confiscated their
property.15 It is therefore likely that Saladin took an interest in the fate of Trkmens
imprisoned in Constantinople as part of his strategy to promote himself as the champion of Islam. Besides, Trkmen were of particular value as potential recruits. What
Saladin offered in exchange for their release is not mentioned by al-Maqrz. This
was certainly not an alliance against the Saljuq Turks of Konya. Had an agreement
as important as an alliance against Qilij-Arslan been concluded between the regency
in Constantinople and Saladin, al-Maqrz would certainly have been at pains to
mention it.
That a formal treaty against the Saljuqs was concluded between Saladin and the
Byzantine Emperor Andronikos I, and subsequently Isaak II, is only mentioned in
an anonymous letter preserved in the Chronicon of the German monk Magnus of
Reichersberg (d. 1195).16 It is a letter composed by an anonymous Western correspondent in Palestine and sent to the West; it has no addressee and breaks off
abruptly.17 The report details an elaborate tale according to which the Byzantine
12

Ibn al-Qalanis, The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades, trans. H.A.R. Gibb (Mineola, NY: Dover,
2002), p. 355. See also Malcolm Barber, The Crusader States (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2012), p. 214.
13
Robert of Auxerre, Chronicon, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger [Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores,
volume XXVI] (Hanover: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1882), pp. 21976, esp. 244.
14
For a good discussion on the Trkmen nomads of Asia Minor, see Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Twelfthcentury Byzantine and Turkish States, Byzantinische Forschungen 16 (1991): 3551, pp. 389.
15
Baha al-Dn Ibn Shaddad, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin, trans. D.S. Richards (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2001), p. 55; Ibn al-Athr, The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athr for the Crusading Period from al-Kamil fl-ta
rkh, trans. D.S. Richards, volumes IIII (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006-8), II: 2723. See also M.C. Lyons
and D.E.P. Jackson, Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1979), p. 151.
16
Magnus of Reichersberg, Chronicon, ed. Wilhelm Wattenbach [Monumenta Germaniae Historica
Scriptores, volume XVII] (Hanover: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1861), pp. 439534, esp. 5112.
English translation of the letter in The Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa: The History of the Expedition of the
Emperor Frederick and Related Texts, trans. G.A. Loud (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 1535.
17
For a detailed discussion of the letter, including authorship and date of composition, see Neocleous,
The Byzantines and Saladin, 8890, 934, 978, 1034. For a discussion of the anonymous authors
downright prejudice against Isaak, which makes his account the only Latin or Old French narrative
that depicts Andronikos I in a sympathetic light, see Savvas Neocleous, Tyrannus Grecorum: The

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Savvas Neocleous

emperors Andronikos I and Isaak allied themselves with Saladin against both the
crusader states and the Third Crusade. Although the unreliability of this report as
a source of historical information has been illustrated, its assertion that there was
collusion between Saladin and the Byzantine rulers, Andronikos and Isaak,
against Qilij-Arslan has been accepted as corresponding to the truth.18
In 2003, in accepting Magnuss evidence, Jonathan Harris argued that mutual aid
against the Saljuq Turks of Konya had featured in Manuels earlier negotiations with
Nur al-Dn, Saladins predecessor.19 Indeed, relations between Qilij-Arslan of
Konya, on the one hand, and Nur al-Dn and Saladin on the other, had been strained
in the 565575/1170s.20 This situation, however, changed in the 575585/1180s. The
well informed Muslim historians Imad al-Dn (d. 597/1201), who was Saladins
secretary, Baha al-Dn (d. 632/1234), who served as judge (qad ) of the sultans

army, and Ibn al Athr (d. 637/1239) agree that on 10 Jumada I 576/1 October 1180,
21
Qilij-Arslan and Saladin concluded a peace treaty. This treaty was followed by a
pact between Qilij-Arslan and the regency in Constantinople,22 presumably a
renewal of the peace treaty agreed between the Saljuq sultan and Manuel in 1179.23
In the summer of 1181/577, Saladin was back in Egypt.24 It was at that point that he
received the Byzantine embassy. Since a treaty had been agreed less than a year
earlier between Saladin and Qilij-Arslan as well as between the regency in Constantinople and the Saljuq sultan, it would be unreasonable to accept that the Ayyubid
sultan had concluded an alliance with the Byzantines against his Saljuq counterpart.
The amicable relations established between Saladin and Qilij-Arslan in Jumada I 576/
October 1180 seem to have continued during the 575585/1180s. In early 580/1185,
Saladin agreed to a truce with the kingdom of Armenian Cilicia on condition that the
(footnote continued)
Image and Legend of Andronikos I Komnenos in Latin Historiography, Medioevo Greco 12 (2012): 195
284, pp. 2412, 2623.
18
Neocleous, The Byzantines and Saladin, 889. Other scholars who favour the view that there was
collusion between Saladin and the Byzantine emperors against Qilij-Arslan include: Lilie, Byzantium
and the Crusader States, 2302; Harris, Byzantium and the Crusades, 122; Phillips, Defenders of the Holy
Land, 251.
19
Harris, Byzantium and the Crusades, 122. See also Lilie, Twelfth-century Byzantine and Turkish
States, 38, who states that Saladin was an enemy of the Seljuqs [of Konya] as Nur al-Dn had been
before him.
20
Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 634, 1378, 148.
21
Baha al-Dn, History of Saladin, 556; Ibn al-Athr, Chronicle, II:2712; Lyons and Jackson, Saladin,
1489.
22
Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 171.
23
On the peace treaty of 1179 between Manuel and Qilij-Arslan, see Paul Magdalino, The Empire of
Manuel I Komnenos, 1143-1180 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 99100. The Byzantine historian and archbishop of Thessaloniki, Eustathios, records that Qilij-Arslan owed loyalty [w
] to Alexios [II (11801182)] through his father Manuel (Eustathios of Thessaloniki, The Capture of
Thessaloniki, ed. and trans. John R. Melville Jones [Byzantina Australiensia, volume VIII] [Canberra,
ACT: Australian Association of Byzantine Studies, 1988], pp. 567). It is not unlikely that a clause on
Alexios IIs protection was included in the peace treaty of 1179. In early 1180, Andronikos, the future
emperor, was made to swear an oath of loyalty to Emperor Manuel and his son Alexios whereby he
would protect and defend them against all threats (Niketas Choniates, Historia, ed. Jan-Louis van
Dieten [Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, volume XI/I] [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1975], pp. 2268;
English translation: O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniates, trans. Harry J. Magoulias
[Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1984], pp. 12830. See also Brand, Byzantium, 268). A
similar oath may well have been taken by the Seljuk sultan.
24
Baha al-Dn, History of Saladin, 56; Ibn al-Athr, Chronicle, II: 2767, 281.

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209

Armenians release Qilij-Arslans men held by them as prisoners. An ultimatum was also
issued: had the Armenians refused, Saladin would have marched against their
kingdom.25 This move by Saladin provides further support to the thesis, already
advanced in this article, that the Muslim prisoners released by the Byzantines in 577/
1181 were Trkmens of Qilij-Arslan indeed, as the French chronicler Robert of
Torigni relates, in 1179 Manuel took his revenge for the defeat at Myriokephalon
(1176) by putting to flight the Saljuq sultan and capturing many of his men.26 In
both 577/1181 and 580/1185, Saladin negotiated and secured the release of
Qilij-Arslans men as a favour to his Saljuq counterpart, an ally since Jumada I 576/
October 1180. According to Baha al-Dn, in Rab I 581/June 1185, when Saladin
marched to besiege Mosul, Qilij-Arslan sent an embassy to the Ayyubid sultan to
inform him that the princes of the East had all agreed that they would attack the
sultan.27 As we are informed by Imad al-Dn, while Saladin was wintering in Acre
between Shawwal and Dhu l-Hijja 583/ January and February 1188, he received an
had received news of the Ayyubid sultans conquest
embassy from Qilij-Arslan, who

of Jerusalem in Rajab 583/October 1187 and wanted to congratulate him on his

success.28 The importance ascribed to this delegation is testified by the fact that it was
committed to the most eminent of his [Qilij-Arslans] ambassadors, who was delegated to renew the pacts [and] reaffirm the contracts between Qilij-Arslan and
Saladin.29 Saladins reception of the Saljuq ambassador is described in considerable
detail by Imad al-Dn. In short, the envoy was allowed to remain standing in Saladins
presence, to speak without interruption, to settle in the Ayyubid sultans court, to be
given what he desired, and to be granted every favour.30 He eventually departed after
the solidity of the agreements concluded between Qilij-Arslan and Saladin was
affirmed.31 In Safar, Rab I, Rab II 586/March, April and May of 1190 i.e. both

before the Germans

entered Saljuq territories in late April as well as after QilijArslan, presumably alarmed by German victories over the Greeks, dispatched a
stream of letters to Saladin, in which, as the Ayyubid sultan reported in a missive sent
to Baghdad later in the same year, he tried to secure support against the approaching
German emperor talking of mutual aid assistance and alliance.32
Given the relations between Qilij-Arslan and Saladin in the 575585/1180s,
the possibility that the Ayyubid sultan had concluded a treaty with the
Byzantines against the sultanate of Konya must be ruled out. Besides, chronological
considerations also argue against the reliability of the anonymous letter in Magnus of
Reichersbergs chronicle according to which Andronikos turned to Saladin after the
25

Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 222.

Robert of Torigni, Chronica, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. Richard
Howlett [Rolls Series, volume LXXXII/IV] (London: Longman, 1889), p. 283. Robert may well refer to
Emperor Manuels successful relief of Klaudiopolis, besieged by the Turks in late 1179 (Choniates, Historia, 1978 [trans. Magoulias, 111-2]) or to the emperors driving the Turks out of Panasion and Lakerion in 1177 (Choniates, Historia, 195 [trans. Magoulias, 110]).
27
Baha al-Dn, History of Saladin, 66. The princes of the East must refer to the allies of Izz al-Dn of
Mosul, namely Shah-Arman of Khilat, al-Pahlawan, who was the ruler of Hamadan, Isfahan and the lands

of Khurasan, and the latters brother, Qyzyl-Arslan, who was the lord of Azerbaijan.
28
Imad al-Dn al-Isfahan, Conqute de la Syrie et de la Palestine par Saladin, trans. Henri Mass (Paris :

Librairie Orientaliste P. Geuthner, 1972), pp. 10911.

29
Ibid., 110.
30
Ibid., Conqute, 11011.
31
Ibid., Conqute, 111.
32
Ibid., Conqute, 234.
26

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Savvas Neocleous

invasion of the Byzantine Empire by King William II of Sicily (r. 11661189).33

William invaded the empire in June 1185. Andronikos was deposed in September
1185.34 There was simply not enough time for negotiations between Andronikos
and Saladin to be carried out and a treaty to be agreed between the two rulers.
More importantly, none of the Muslim or Byzantine sources refers to a military alliance between Saladin and the Byzantine Empire against the sultanate of Konya.

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Relations between Isaak and Saladin (582588/11861192)

In 582/late 1186 or early 1187, Isaak wrote to Saladin to request the sultans aid in bargaining for the release of his brother, Alexios, who was being held hostage by Raymond
III of Tripoli (r. 11521187).35 During Andronikos Is reign, Alexios wandered in Syria
and Palestine, where he had fled with his family following his fathers unsuccessful conspiracy against Andronikos in late spring or early summer 1182.36 Soon after the
elevation of his brother Isaak to the Byzantine throne, Alexios departed for Constantinople, but in 1186, for reasons that are not clear, was seized and held hostage by
Raymond of Tripoli. The reason for Alexioss arrest was not that Raymond had
learned of the alleged conspiracy between Isaak and Saladin against the crusader
states, as the author of the anonymous letter preserved in Magnuss Chronicon and
after him Charles Brand asserted.37 In Shaban 582/October 1186, Raymond
himself made an alliance with Saladin against King Guy de Lusignan of Jerusalem (r.
11861192), and admitted Muslim troops into his fief of Tiberias38 an alliance
which attracted much criticism from his political opponents39 but is concealed by the
author of the anonymous letter in Magnuss Chronicon. Obviously, Raymond did not
seize Alexios because of the alleged conspiracy between his brother and Saladin. The
count simply intended to use Alexios for ransom purposes. Besides, Raymond seems
never to have forgiven the Byzantines for reneging on the negotiations for a marriage
between the Emperor Manuel and the counts sister, Melisende, in 11601161.
Raymond had responded to this affront with a series of attacks on Byzantine lands,
33

Magnus of Reichersberg, Chronicon, 511 (trans. Loud, 153).

On these events, see Brand, Byzantium, 6973, 1639.
35
Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 251.
36
Choniates, Historia, 2667, 531 (trans. Magoulias, 148, 291).
37
Magnus of Reichersberg, Chronicon, 511; Brand, The Byzantines and Saladin, 169.
38
Abu Shama, Le Livre des deux jardins: Histoire des deux rgnes, celui de Nour ed-Dn et celui de Salah ed-Dn,
ed. and trans. A.-C. Barbier de Meynard [Recueil des Historiens des Croisades Orientaux, volume IV]
(Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1898), pp. 3522, esp. 2578. See also: Hamilton, Leper King and his
Heirs, 223, 227229; Michael A. Khler, Allianzen und Vertrge zwischen frnkischen und islamischen
Herrschern im Vorderen Orient: Eine Studie ber das zwischenstaatliche Zusammenleben vom 12. bis ins 13. Jahrhundert (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991), pp. 33941.
39
Ambroise, The History of the Holy War. Ambroises Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, ed. Marianne Ailes and
Malcolm Barber, trans. Marianne Ailes, volumes I-II (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2003), I (Old
French poem): 39, verses 24436, II (English translation): 67. There had long been an alliance
between the disloyal Count Raymond and Saladin, of whom I tell, an alliance that was much talked of
in Syria. Richard de Templo, prior of the Augustinian priory of Holy Trinity in London from 1222 to
1248/50, denounces the deceit (fraus) and treason (proditio) of Raymond of Tripoli (Richard de
Templo, Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta Regis Ricardi, in Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of
Richard I, ed. William Stubbs [Rolls Series, XXXVIII/I] [London: Longman, 1864], p. 13; English translation: Richard de Templo, Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta Regis Ricardi, trans. Helen J. Nicholson
(Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1997], p. 31). For his chronicle, compiled between 1217 and 1222, Richard
relied heavily on Ambroises work and the Itinerarium peregrinorum. See also n. 47, below.
34

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while some years later, between late 1174 and July 1176, during his tenure as bailli
(regent) of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the count of Tripoli adopted anti-Byzantine policies, which resulted in the decline of Byzantine influence in the crusader kingdom.40
The history of negotiations between Byzantine emperors and Muslim rulers for the
release of prisoners and, more specifically, the Byzantine-Ayyubid treaty of 577/1181
may well account for the fact that Isaak did not hesitate to request Saladin in late
1186 or early 1187 to intervene with Raymond of Tripoli on behalf of the hostage
Alexios. The Byzantine ruler may have also been informed of Raymonds alliance
with Saladin and considered that the sultan would be able to exert his influence with
the count of Tripoli and bargain for Alexioss release. Through Saladins intervention,
Raymond agreed to ransom Alexios. By Rab I 583/late May or early June 1187,
however, when Saladin wrote a letter to Isaak to inform him of his agreement with
Raymond on Alexios,41 Raymond had broken his alliance with Saladin and made
peace with Guy de Lusignan.42 In his letter to Isaak, Saladin informed the Byzantine
ruler of his preparations for an attack on Tiberias and incited him to move against
the count of Tripoli as well, asserting obviously with Alexioss ransom in mind
that a rescue by the sword is nobler than one where money has to be weighed
out.43 In contrast to the claims of the author of the anonymous letter in Magnuss
chronicle that Isaak instructed Saladin to attack the Frankish settlers of Outremer,44
it was Saladin who incited the Byzantine emperor to attack Raymond, although
without success. Saladins appeal to the dignity of a rescue by the sword, as
opposed to ransom, was, as M.C. Lyons and D.E.P. Jackson have rightly pointed
out, not intended as more than rhetorical seasoning for his letter and he cannot
have been hopeful of his chances of luring Isaak into a full-scale war with the Franks.45
Muslim sources indicate clearly that Saladins subsequent negotiations with Isaak
were only intended to reach an agreement to institute Muslim prayers in Constantinople.46 The Brevis regni Ierosolymitani historia in the Annals of Genoa records that
following Saladins capture of Acre in September 1187, the sultan made a truce
with Isaak, the emperor of the Greeks to the effect that the emperor constructed
a mosque (musoca) in the city of Constantinople for the use of the Saracens; similarly, a letter of Pope Innocent III (r. 11981216) to the Latin Patriarch of Constantinople, Tommaso Morosini (r. 12041211), related that Isaak had agreed to
Saladins request to build a new mosque in the Byzantine capital.47 The mosque
40

Barber, The Crusader States, pp. 266, 414 n. 145.

Parts of the letter, which survives in one manuscript (al-Qad al-Fadil, Morasalat Fadhli, Ms. Brit. Mus.

Add. 7465, fol. 54v), are cited in Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 2512.
42
Hamilton, Leper King and his Heirs, 2289.
43
Cited in Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 2512.
44
Magnus of Reichersberg, Chronicon, 511 (trans. Loud, 154).
45
Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 252.
46
Baha al-Dn, History of Saladin, 121. As the English scholar and chronicler Ralph Niger records, Isaak
had made a treaty (foedus inierat) with Saladin, the prince of Damascus, and had admitted the Turks
with the rite of worship of the filthiness into his city (Ralph Niger, Chronica, ed. Robert Anstruther
[London: Caxton Society, 1851], p. 97). The English chronicler mistakenly thought that this was the
reason Frederick went to war with Isaak in 1189.
47
Brevis regni Ierosolymitani historia, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz [Monumenta Germaniae Historica
Scriptores, volume XVIII] (Hanover: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1863), pp. 4955, esp. 53.
In return for the construction of a mosque in Constantinople, according to the Brevis regni
Ierosolymitani historia, Saladin handed the Holy Cross over to Isaak. The latter information is wrong,
however: only in May 1192 the Byzantine emperor explicitly requested the surrender of the Holy
Cross but his demand was turned down by Saladin. See ns 100 and 113, below. Patrologia Latina, 216,
41

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Savvas Neocleous

was built in 1188.48 At the end of 584/1188 Saladin received a letter from the Byzantine ruler informing him of the planned crusade in the West and presumably the
completion of the construction of the mosque, which was ready for consecration
the first information is given in an alarming letter the Ayyubid sultan sent to his
brother Tughtekn in Yemen at the end of 584/late January or early February

according to Baha al-Dn, Saladin sent an embassy to

1189.49 Subsequently,
Isaak, which arrived in Constantinople in June 1189 to establish the khutba in the

of
newly built mosque of the Byzantine capital.50 Following the establishment
Islamic rites in the Constantinopolitan mosque, a Byzantine envoy was sent to the
sultan.51 The Byzantine ambassador reached Saladin in Rajab 585/15 August-13
September 1189.52 The chronology of events suggests that he must have been the
same envoy who, according to an almost identical report cited by Ibn al-Athr and
Abu Shama (d. 665/1267), delivered a letter, in which Isaak informed Saladin of
the departure of the Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa (r. 11521190) from
Germany on 11 May 1189 on crusade and promised, clearly on his own initiative,
to prevent the German ruler from passing through the Byzantine Empire.53
Isaak had never believed that the real motivation for Fredericks participation in
the Third Crusade was to march to the Holy Land.54 A Byzantine embassy arriving
at the German emperors court at Nuremberg in late December 1188 or early
January 1189 expressed Isaaks suspicions that the expedition to Jerusalem

(footnote continued)
col. 354: Isachius imperator ob gratiam Saladini fieri fecerit in urbe Constantinopolitana meskitam. According to
the anonymous author of the Itinerarium peregrinorum, composed between 1 August 1191 and 2 September
1192 in Tyre, it was rumoured (fama) in the Latin East that Constantinople had recently been polluted by
mosques (mahumeriis), which the perfidious emperor [Isaak] had permitted to be built to bindingly confirm
a treaty (foedus) he had made with the Turks (Das Itinerarium peregrinorum. Eine zeitgenssische englische
Chronik zum dritten Kreuzzug in ursprnglicher Gestalt, ed. Hans Eberhard Mayer [Monumenta Germaniae
Historica Schriften, volume XVIII] [Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1962], p. 293).
48
For the year of the construction of the mosque and its location in Constantinople, see David Jacoby,
Diplomacy, Trade, Shipping and Espionage between Byzantium and Egypt in the Twelfth Century,
in : Miscellanea fr Peter Schreiner zu seinem 60. Geburtstag, ed. Cordula Scholz and
Georgios Makris (Munich: K.G. Saur, 2000), pp. 83102, esp. 96.
49
Abu Shama, Livre des deux jardins, 389. For the date of Isaaks letter to Saladin, see Dlger and Wirth,
Regesten, no. 1584. Saladins letter to Tughtekn represents Abu Shamas last record under 584; this facili
tates its dating. The dating of Saladins letter to Tughtekn to late January or early February 1189 is also

favoured by Lyons and Jackson (Saladin, 292293). See also Hannes Mhring, Saladin und der dritte
Kreuzzug: Aiyubidische Strategie und Diplomatie im Vergleich vornehmlich der arabischen mit den lateinischen
Quellen (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1980), pp. 1745.
50
Baha al-Dn, History of Saladin, 121. Saladins embassy coincided with the arrival of the German envoys
dispatched to Constantinople by the German Emperor Frederick I (r. 11521190) to ensure full
implementation of the assistance promised by a previous Byzantine embassy to Nuremberg in late December 1188 or early January 1189. See Neocleous, The Byzantines and Saladin, 103. Isaaks honourable
reception of Saladins envoys, the imprisonment of the German ambassadors, and the Byzantine emperors subsequent attack on the German expedition of the Third Crusade was interpreted by the Germans as
a sign of collusion between the Byzantine and Ayyubid rulers against their crusade. See Neocleous, The
Byzantines and Saladin, 1015; Neocleous, Byzantine-Muslim Conspiracies, 2667.
51
Baha al-Dn, History of Saladin, 121.
52
Ibid.; Dlger and Wirth, Regesten, no. 1591. Hannes Mhring narrows down the date to between 15 and
27 August 1189 (Mhring, Saladin und der dritte Kreuzzug, 177).
53
Ibn al-Athr, Chronicle, II: 374; Abu Shama, Livre des deux jardins, 4378.
54
Neocleous, The Byzantines and Saladin, 1012; Neocleous, Byzantine-Muslim Conspiracies,
2667.

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would [in fact] be a hostile invasion of his kingdom.55 Fredericks negotiations with
the Serbian and Saljuq rulers before setting out for his eastward journey heightened
the Byzantine emperors suspicions and fears in fact, the arrival of the Byzantine
embassy in Nuremberg coincided with that of Qilij-Arslan.56 Isaaks imagination
ran wild. He pictured Frederick giving lands of the Byzantine Empire as a benefice
to the Grand Count of Serbia and conspiring to capture and transfer the [Byzantine] Empire to the rule of his son [Frederick VI] the duke of Swabia, who
accompanied his father on the Third Crusade.57 The Byzantine paranoid belief
that Frederick coveted the Byzantine Empire for himself dated back to the 1160s.
In 1161, a rumour was current that Frederick [.] was setting his whole nation
in motion to attack the Romans land.58 As the German emperors power in Italy
was rapidly increasing in the middle 1160s, Manuel himself became concerned
as to how he could check his [Fredericks] advance, lest his unexpected success
should turn him against the Romans land, over which from a long time back he
had cast a greedy eye.59 Fear of Frederick reached such a pitch that the Byzantines
imagined that as he [Frederick] intended to invade the Romans land [] he commenced to divide it among his followers.60 Unsurprisingly, therefore, Fredericks
decision to participate in the Third Crusade found the Byzantines and their ruler
in a state of panic and confusion. The patriarch of Constantinople, Dositheos (r.
11891191), who exerted an extraordinary influence on Isaak, prophesied that
the king [Frederick] never proposed to take possession of Palestine, but that his
intention was to march against the queen of cities [Constantinople], which he
would undoubtedly enter through the so-called Xylokerkos postern.61 Isaak was
determined to stop Frederick in any case. However, in his correspondence with
Saladin in 585586/11891190, he pretended to act in the sultans interests in
trying to destroy the German crusaders, in order to court Saladin and ingratiate
himself with the powerful sultan.62
55

Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris, in Quellen zur Geschichte des Kreuzzuges Kaiser Friedrichs I, ed.
Anton Chroust [Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, nova series, volume
V] (Berlin: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1928), pp. 1115, esp. 15; English translation: The Crusade
of Frederick Barbarossa: The History of the Expedition of the Emperor Frederick and Related Texts, trans. G.A.
Loud (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 33134, esp. 456. The Byzantine embassy had departed for
Nuremberg in September or October 1188; for the date of the embassys departure for Germany, see
Dlger and Wirth, Regesten, no. 1581.
56
Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris, 15 (trans. Loud, 45); Neocleous, The Byzantines and
Saladin, 101102.
57
On 25 August 1189, while Frederick was on the Byzantine Empire, he received an embassy from Isaak.
In his letters, the Byzantine ruler said that the friendship, which he had heard had united the emperor
[Frederick] and the Great Count [of Serbia], seemed to him very grave and suspicious. Isaak accused
Frederick of having given lands of the Byzantine Empire as a benefice to the Great Count of Serbia
and of conspiring to capture and transfer the [Byzantine] Empire to the rule of his son [Frederick VI]
the duke of Swabia. Information on the letters of 25 August is provided by the anonymous author of
the Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris and a letter of Bishop Dietpold of Passau to Duke
Leopold V of Austria (11771194) preserved in Magnuss Chronicon. Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris, 46-47 (trans. Loud, 75); Magnus of Reichersberg, 510 (trans. Loud, 150).
58
John Kinnamos, Epitome rerum ab Ioanne et Alexio Comnenis gestarum, ed. August Meineke (Bonn:
E. Weber, 1836), p. 202; English translation: Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus, trans. Charles
Brand (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 154.
59
Kinnamos, Epitome, 228 (trans. Brand, 172).
60
Kinnamos, Epitome, 262 (trans. Brand, 197).
61
Choniates, Historia, 404 (trans. Magoulias, 222).
62
Neocleous, Byzantine-Muslim Conspiracies, 271 n. 134.

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Isaaks double dealing vis--vis Saladin becomes particularly obvious when a

report of Saladins secretary, al-Qad al-Fadil (d. 596/1199), preserved in the
ma, is measured against a letter from the
work of the Muslim historian Abu Sha
Byzantine ruler to King Henry II of England (r. 11541189), preserved in the Ymagines historiarum of the well-informed English chronicler Ralph of Diceto (d. 1199/
1200). In the summer of 585/1189, as we are informed by al-Qad al-Fadils

dil (d. 615/1218) that he had rejected

report, Isaak boasted to Saladins brother al-A
the request of the German emperor, the king of Sicily and the rest of the Western
monarchs to participate in the forthcoming crusade, and had guarded the passes
and ordered the commanders of his fortresses to be on the watch for crusaders.63
Charles Brand used Abu Shamas evidence to support the thesis that the Byzantine
emperor agreed to a treaty with Saladin to oppose any crusading army which
entered the Byzantine domains.64 Both Brand and other scholars who subscribe
to his views, however, have failed to take into consideration the correspondence
between Henry II of England and Isaak, which contradicts the Byzantine rulers
claim that he was ready to oppose any crusading army entering his empire. In
January 1188, Henry II and Philip II of France (r. 11901223) jointly took the
cross the two monarchs would depart for Jerusalem together since neither
trusted the other remaining behind.65 In February or March 1188, Henry sent his
envoy Richard Barre to the courts of the Emperor Frederick I, Bla III of
Hungary (r. 11721196) and Isaak with letters requesting safe passage through
their kingdoms and access to markets for the planned English-French expedition
of the Third Crusade. The letters and replies, preserved in Ralph of Dicetos
work, have received little attention by scholars as the plan for an overland
English-French crusading expedition to the Holy Land eventually fell through.66
In his letter to the Byzantine sovereign, the king of Englands chancery was careful
to address him appropriately as glorious and most powerful prince Isaak Angelus,
emperor of the Romans by the Grace of God, always August, crowned by God.67
Henry expressed his confidence that Isaaks most great power commendably
watches over the defence of the catholic faith and the honour of the Christian
name and his glory has desired to work for the honour of the Most Holy
Church and the exaltation of the Divine Providence.68 Henry informed Isaaks
imperial majesty that he and King Philip II of France intended to journey to
Jerusalem in order to serve Almighty God, to the confusion of the enemies of the
Holy Cross in the Holy Land, which should be freed from the filth of the
pagans.69 Henrys request for the counsel and assistance of our [the Byzantine]
empire against the Saracens for the service of Almighty God was favourably
received by Isaak.70 The Byzantine ruler assured Henry that his intention was
63

Abu Shama, Livre des deux jardins, 508509. The question of the dating of al-Fadils report is discussed

in the Appendix to this article.

64
Brand, The Byzantines and Saladin, 173.
65
John W. Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus: Foundations of French Royal Power in the Middle
Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 23.
66
Ralph of Diceto, Opera Historica, ed. William Stubbs [Rolls Series, volume LXVIII/II] (London:
Longman, 1876), 5154.
67
Ralph of Diceto, Opera Historica, 52.
68
Ibid.
69
Ibid., 5253.
70
Ralph of Diceto, Opera Historica, 53.

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very pleasing to God and our empire because it is praiseworthy and because all
Christians must praise and aid it.71 Commending Henrys prudence and
probity, Isaak granted safe passage and plentiful market to the king and his
army, and sent Constantine and Nicholas, servants of our sacred palace, to
Henrys court to receive the necessary assurances from the ruler with regard to the
safety of the Byzantine Empire.72 Henry was assured that, once the requested assurances were given, he would be welcome to arrive as another lord and friend of the
empire.73 Even more importantly, the king of England was promised valuable
advice on Muslim tactics and strategy: you will be equipped with the advice of the
empire on in what manner you should avoid the ambushes of the Turks and by
what precautions you could attack and conquer them.74 Isaaks letter to Henry in
which the Byzantine ruler promised passage, markets, and counsel to the king of
England was composed a couple of months before the emperor assured Saladin
that he was ready to oppose any crusading army entering the Byzantine domains.
Isaaks assurances to Saladin amounted to nothing more than hollow promises.
Unlike the German Emperor Frederick, Henry II had not negotiated with Byzantiums enemies, the Serbian and Saljuq rulers. Besides, in sharp contrast to the rulers
of Germany and Sicily, the king of England had never threatened the interests and
integrity of the Byzantine Empire. In the second half of the 1170s, Manuel maintained
cordial relations with Henry II, who, in 1178, sent a pack of hounds to his Byzantine
counterpart.75 The Byzantine embassy to Fredericks court at Nuremberg in late
December 1188 or early January 1189 expressed Isaaks suspicions of the motives
of the German emperor and Philip II of France, but not of Henry II.76 Isaak may
even have hoped to forge an alliance with Henry while he was in the Byzantine
Empire. The formation of alliances with Western rulers while they were passing
through the Byzantine domains on crusade was a policy vigorously pursued by Byzantine rulers. In October 1147, the Emperor Manuel had endeavoured to persuade
King Louis VII of France (r. 11371180), while in Constantinople on his way to Jerusalem on the Second Crusade, to enter into an alliance against King Roger II of
71

Ibid.
Ibid.
73
Ibid.
74
Ibid.
75
The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Twenty-Fourth Year of the Reign of King Henry the Second, A.D. 11771178, volume XXVII (London: Arthur Doubleday, 1906), p. 19. See also Manuels letter to Henry
dated in 1176 and preserved in Roger of Hovedens Chronica (Roger of Hoveden, Chronica, ed.
William Stubbs [Rolls Series, volume LI/II] [London: Longman, 1869], pp. 1024; English translation:
The Annals of Roger de Hoveden: Comprising the History of England and of Other Countries of Europe from AD
732 to AD 1201, trans. Henry T. Riley, volumes III [London: H.G. Bohn, 1853], I: 41923). See also
Alexander Aleksandrovic Vasiliev, Manuel Comnenus and Henry Plantagenet, Byzantinische Zeitschrift
29 (1929): 23344; Savvas Neocleous, Imaging the Byzantines: Latin Perceptions, Representations, and
Memory (c. 1095-c. 1230), PhD thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2009, pp. 1667.
76
Isaaks distrust of Philip II of France must have arisen because the French king seems not to have sent
an embassy to Constantinople to negotiate with the Byzantines for his forthcoming crusading expedition.
Although Henry II of England had negotiated safe passage and market privileges for both himself and
Philip, Isaak was doubtless not convinced that the French king would abide by the commitments
Henry had undertaken. Philip II went to war with Henry again in the summer of 1188, i.e. around the
same time as the Byzantine ambassadors Constantine and Nicholas must have reached the court of the
king of England. On the resumption of hostilities between the two kings, see John D. Hosler, Henry II:
a Medieval Soldier at War, 1147-1189 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 967. On the date of arrival of the Byzantine envoys at Henry IIs court, see Mhring, Saladin und der dritte Kreuzzug, 77.
72

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Sicily (r. 11301154). As the French chronicler Odo of Deuil relates, if the emperor
could have gained our king as his ally against Roger, he would have lavished on him all
the wealth in the treasury.77 Although unsuccessful in achieving a Byzantine-French
axis, Manuel managed to form an alliance with King Conrad III of Germany (r. 1138
1152) against Roger II in October 1148 on the German kings return journey home
following the debacle of the Second Crusade. Sometime between 14 February and
1 March 1190, Isaak, following the conclusion of a peace treaty between him and
Emperor Frederick, and convinced by now that his German counterpart had no interest in seizing his empire, sent an embassy to him proposing an alliance against Peter,
leader of the Vlach-Bulgarian rebellion against the Byzantine Empire.78
It is likely that Isaak may have hoped to use Henry IIs armies against the enemies of
his empire, probably the Turks of Konya. That this may have been Isaaks plan is also
suggested by his promise that he would provide the king of England with valuable intelligence on Turkish tactics, with which the Byzantines were well acquainted, as well as on
how to attack and conquer the Turks. By his peace treaty with Saladin in 576/1180,
Qilij-Arslan had secured his rear in eastern Anatolia. Following Andronikoss seizure
of power in Constantinople in the spring of 1182 and the subsequent murder of
Alexios II (r. 11801183), all treaties between the Saljuq sultan and Manuel, his son
and the regency in Constantinople were nullified. Qilij-Arslans hands were free to
initiate an aggressive policy toward the Byzantine Empire. In 579/11831184, several
Byzantine towns in Asia Minor fell to the Turks.79 Taking advantage of the Norman
invasion of the Byzantine Empire in the summer of 1185 and the upheaval that followed
Isaaks accession to the throne in September of the same year, the Saljuq sultan made yet
another attack on the Byzantine territories in Asia Minor.80 Although Isaak restored
peace by means of outlays and renewal of the annual tribute to Qilij-Arslan,81 he
must have remained concerned about the growing power of the sultanate.
As the plan for an overland English-French crusading expedition to the Holy Land
eventually fell through, it was only the German contingent of the Third Crusade that
took the overland route to Jerusalem. Isaak did his best to obstruct the Germans, convinced that their real intention was to conquer Constantinople. The Byzantine armies,
however, proved to be no match for the Germans. Despite his failure to destroy the
Germans, Isaak reported, in a letter written to Saladin immediately after the German
crusading expedition crossed the Hellespont in late March 1190,82 that he had inflicted
heavy casualties on Fredericks army the letter must have reached the Ayyubid sultan in
77

Odo of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici VII in orientem, ed. and trans. Virginia Gingerick Berry (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1948), pp. 823.
78
Historia de expeditione Friderici imperatoris, 69 (trans. Loud, 94).
79
Choniates, Historia, 262 (trans. Magoulias, 146). According to reports of Muslim pilgrims from Spain,
recorded by the Andalusian traveller Ibn Jubayr, Qilij-Arslan conquered 25 Byzantine cities in 579/1183
1184. See Ibn Jubayr, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, Being the Chronicle of a Mediaeval Spanish Moor concerning
his Journey to the Egypt of Saladin, the Holy Cities of Arabia, Baghdad the City of the Caliphs, the Latin
Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, trans. R.J.C. Broadhurst (London: Jonathan
Cape, 1952), p. 240.
80
Choniates, Historia, 3678 (trans. Magoulias, 203).
81
Choniates, Historia, 368 (trans. Magoulias, 203).
82
Isaaks letter is preserved in Baha al-Dns work. See Baha al-Dn, History of Saladin, 1212. The
missive was written in the year 1501 of the Seleucid era, which corresponds to 1 September 118931
August 1190. The contents of the letter indicate clearly that it was written after the German crusading
expedition crossed the Hellespont in late March 1190. Mhring favours a date in April 1190: Mhring,
Saladin und der dritte Kreuzzug, 185.

The Byzantines and Saladin

217

Rajab 586/August 1190 as indicated by its placement between the accounts of the arrival
of Henry II of Champagne (r. 11811197) at Acre on 16 Jumada II 586/28 July 1190 and
the burning of the Frankish trebuchets during the siege of the city in late Rajab 586/early
September 1190.83 In his missive, Isaak boasted that the Germans:

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suffered and were inconvenienced They lost much money, many

horses, baggage and pack animals. Many of them died or were killed.
With difficulty they escaped from the hands of my troops. They have
been so weakened that they will hardly reach your lands. If they do arrive,
they will be weak, having suffered much, and will be no benefit to their
kindred and no harm to your Excellency.84
Isaak knew that, sooner or later, the truth would be revealed to Saladin by others;
indeed, a letter from the Katholikos of Armenia, Gregory IV (r. 11741193), which
reached the sultan in Jumada I 586/late June or early July 1190 the letter being
composed shortly after Fredericks death on 10 June gave a much more reliable
account of the situation:85 Frederick entered the land of the ruler of the Greeks,
which he conquered and plundered He compelled the Greek ruler to obey him
and took hostages from him.86 Isaak had anticipated reports of this kind and, to
pre-empt them, asserted in his letter to the Ayyubid sultan that our enemies
spread lying rumours to suit their own aims.87
As an introduction to Isaaks letter to Saladin, Baha al-Dn mentions the sultans
embassy to Constantinople in Rab II-Jumada I 585/June 1189, which, having established the khutba, came to Saladin in Syria with a Greek ambassador in Rajab 585/15

August13 September
1189.88 Following the death of the Byzantine envoy while on his
mission, a new ambassador was sent to the Ayyubid sultan. This was the envoy who in
Rajab 586/August 1190 delivered the letter in which Isaak claimed that the Germans
had suffered heavy losses at the hands of his troops.89 Baha al-Dns detailed
account, including Isaaks letter, was summarised by Imad al-Dn, who made use of
Baha al-Dns work.90 As already mentioned, in Baha al-Dns work, the account of
the exchange of embassies between Saladin and Isaak leading up to the arrival of the
Byzantine envoy with the emperors letter in Rajab 586/August 1190 is placed
between the accounts of the arrival of Henry II of Champagne at Acre on 16
Jumada II 586/late July 1190 and the burning of the Frankish trebuchets during the
siege of the city in late Rajab 586/early September 1190. Imad al-Dns summary of
the embassies between Saladin and Isaak is similarly placed between the two
events.91 Abu Shama, who made use of both Baha al-Dn and Imad al-Dn, copied
first Imad al-Dns summary and then Baha al-Dns full account.92 Brand who
Baha al-Dn, History of Saladin, 1203.
Ibid., 122.
85
The letter of the katholikos is preserved in Baha al-Dns work. See Baha al-Dn, History of Saladin,
1146.
86
Ibid., 114.
87
Ibid., 122.
88
Ibid., 121. See n. 52, above.
89
Ibid.
90
Imad al-Dn, Conqute, 2445.
91
Ibid., 243246.
92
Abu Shama, Livre des deux jardins, 4702.
83
84

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Savvas Neocleous

made use of Abu Shamas work but not of Imad al-Dns original account which had
he used he would have known that it represents a summary of Baha al-Dns was led
to believe that two embassies from Isaak reached Saladin with letters claiming that the
Byzantine ruler had inflicted heavy casualties on the Germans.93 In reality, only one
Byzantine embassy reached Saladin in Rajab 586/August 1190.

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*****
In the 575585/1180s, Byzantine rulers had maintained diplomatic contact and
reasonably amicable relations with Saladin, the powerful sultan of Egypt and Syria.
They agreed to the release of Muslim prisoners held in Constantinople and to the maintenance of Islamic worship in the Byzantine capital. These were the only two concessions the Byzantine rulers made to Saladin. Nonetheless, in his exchange of letters
with Saladin in 585586/11891190, Isaak also pretended to act in the sultans interests
in endeavouring to destroy the crusading expedition of the German Emperor Frederick
I, who the Byzantine ruler erroneously believed wanted to conquer the Byzantine
Empire. Isaaks policy, however, was doomed to failure as before long his motives
became obvious to Saladin and his advisers. Al-Fadil, in his report on Isaaks claims

in the summer of 585/1189 that he had turned down

the request of the Western
94
rulers to take part in the Third Crusade, commented that the Greek king fears
greatly the Franks because of his empire and he wants to repel them; if he succeeds
in this completely, he will claim that it is in our interest.95
What is more difficult to ascertain is what Saladin offered the Byzantines in return
for the release of Muslim prisoners in 577/1181 and, more importantly, the construction of a new mosque and the instituting of Islamic worship in Constantinople in 584
585/11881189. Shortly after the conquest of Jerusalem, the Ayyubid sultan seems to
have permitted the priests from the local Orthodox community who remained in the
city to say the offices in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.96 This may well have been
Saladins concession to Isaak. The Byzantine emperor, however, was not satisfied with
this. In the letter Isaak sent to Saladin after the crossing of the German crusaders to
Asia Minor, he complained bitterly that we have no profit from your love and
tried to make the sultan feel guilty by alleging that his affection for him earned him
the enmity of the Franks [in this case the Germans] and their kin.97 The Byzantine
ruler concluded his letter by inviting the sultan to recognise the good intentions and
efforts of our Majesty and to send an envoy to inform us of all the matters about
which we have corresponded with you in the past.98 As Isaaks letter informs us,
these matters were first communicated to Saladin by the envoy who reached the
sultan in the late summer of Rajab 585/1189.99 Since the ambassador had died
while on his mission, a reply from Saladin on these issues was still pending in the
summer of 586/1190. Unfortunately for historians, these matters were not specified
Brand, The Byzantines and Saladin, 1756.
See n. 63, above.
95
Abu Shama, Livre des deux jardins, 509.
96
Jotischky, The Fate of the Orthodox Church, 1923; Bernard Hamilton, The Latin Church in the Crusader States: the Secular Church (London: Variorum, 1980), p. 311; Mhring, Saladin und der dritte Kreuzzug, 174.
97
Baha al-Dn, History of Saladin, 122.
98
Ibid.
99
Ibid., 121.
93
94

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The Byzantines and Saladin

219

by Isaak. This notwithstanding, conjectures can be made. Baha al-Dn relates that a
letter, which Saladin received from Isaak in Rab II 588/May 1192, included several
requests, such as a request for the Holy Cross and that the Holy Sepulchre and all the
churches of Jerusalem should be in the hands of priests sent by him and that the
sultan should agree to attack Cyprus.100 In other words, Isaak asked for the Holy
Cross, the transfer of the ecclesiastical institutions of Jerusalem to the jurisdiction of
the Church of Constantinople, and a joint attack on Cyprus, which had seceded
from the Byzantine Empire in 1184. Isaaks demands in the summer of 585/1189
must have been along the same lines as those of 588/1192. The re-conquest of
Cyprus in particular was an overriding concern to both Isaak and his brother and successor Alexios III (r. 11951203). From 1184 until May 1191, the island was ruled by
the self-proclaimed emperor Isaak Komnenos, a member of the extended imperial
family. In 1186, Isaak sent a fleet of 70 ships to the eastern Mediterranean to
recover Cyprus, but without success.101 In May 1191, the island was conquered by
King Richard I of England (r. 11891199), following provocations from Isaak Komnenos. Richard eventually sold his rights in Cyprus to Guy de Lusignan in May 1192.102
In the early summer of the same year, 588/1192, as al-Qad al-Fadil wrote in a report,
withRichard of England
Guy sent a letter to Saladin informing him that he had broken
and was ready to offer the sultan his services, submission to his orders and alliance
against the king of England.103 In his reply, Saladin reassured Guy that he should
attribute no importance to our negotiations with the master of Constantinople [Isaak
II] concerning the support we ought to lend him against Cyprus for we promised it
only when the country was in the hands of our enemy [Isaak Komnenos].104 This
is a clear testimony to the fact that Cyprus had figured in Isaaks demands on Saladin.
Saladins diplomacy was largely based on playing Christian princes off against each
other.105 According to al-Qad al-Fadils report of the summer of 588/1192, when Guy
of hisrupture with King Richard of England, the sultan
de Lusignan informed Saladin
did welcome the proposal of the king [Guy] and encourage him in his rupture
[with Richard I] because, by spreading discord among the Franks, he facilitates the
triumph of Islam.106 Even though Saladin and his advisers were well aware of the fact
that Isaak wanted to destroy the German contingent of the Third Crusade for his own
reasons, the sultan undoubtedly welcomed the Byzantine rulers initiative in the
Baha al-Dn, History of Saladin, 201. Isaaks ambassador arrived in Jerusalem on 23 Rab II 588/midMay 1192, after a two-month journey (Dlger and Wirth, Regesten, no. 1608; Jacoby, Diplomacy, Trade,
Shipping and Espionage, 100; Mhring, Saladin und der dritte Kreuzzug, 1878).
101
Choniates, Historia, 36970 (trans. Magoulias, 2045); Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States, 235;
Harris, Byzantium and the Crusades, 128.
102
Peter W. Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 11911374, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 78.
103
Abu Shama, Livre des deux jardins, 509.
104
Abu Shama, Livre des deux jardins, 510.
105
Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, 370.
106
Abu Shama, Livre des deux jardins, 510. Mhring and Lilie have argued that the king mentioned by
al-Fadil is Isaak Komnenos of Cyprus and not Guy de Lusignan (Mhring, Saladin und der dritte Kreuzzug,

186187; Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States, 242 n. 75). These two scholars arguments, however,
do not hold water for two reasons. First, al-Fadil would have never described Isaak Komnenos as a

Frank. Second, as has been seen (see n. 104, above), Saladin reassured Guy that he should attribute
no importance to our negotiations with the master of Constantinople [Isaak II] concerning the support we
ought to lend him against Cyprus for we promised it only when the country was in the hands of our enemy
(emphasis added). Before Isaak Komnenoss secession, Cyprus formed part of the Byzantine Empire. The
enemy mentioned by Saladin could be no other than Isaak Komnenos.
100

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220

Savvas Neocleous

summer of 585/1189 to obstruct the Germans. However, there is no evidence that

Saladin agreed to offer Isaak anything in exchange for what the Byzantine emperor was
determined to do in any case. Latin reports that the Ayyubid sultan transferred the
ecclesiastical institutions of Jerusalem to the jurisdiction of the Greek Church and was
ready to hand the Holy Land over to Isaak if the emperor obstructed the Third
Crusade were nothing more than rumours that had evolved and flourished among the
rank and file of the crusading armies.107 Moreover, Saladin never sent troops to the
Byzantine rulers assistance as maintained by two German chroniclers. The continuation
of the Chronica Regia Coloniensis for the period 11761199, completed at the monastery of
Saint Pantaleon in Cologne soon after 1199, claimed that Saladin sent Isaak soldiers
called Aleni (dicebantur Aleni).108 According to the Chronicon Montis Sereni, written
around 12241225 by one of the canons of the Premonstratensian abbey of Saint Peters
on the Lauterberg, Isaak received from him [Saladin] 800 Turkish archers in assistance
(octingentis sagittariis Turcis in auxilium).109 The Aleni and Turci mentioned by the two
German chroniclers were Alan and Turkish mercenaries in the imperial army.110
Although Isaak failed in his initiative to destroy the German crusading expedition, in
Rajab 586/August 1190, Saladin seems to have eventually agreed to offer the Byzantine
ruler support against Cyprus, which is what Isaak appears to have first demanded in the
summer of Rajab 585/1189;111 the sultan must have wanted to keep the Byzantine
emperor away from the kings of France and England who had left from western
Europe on crusade in July 1190. By the early summer of 588/1192, however, the situation had changed: the outcome of the Third Crusade had been largely decided and
Saladin no longer needed Isaak or owed him any favours.112 As a result, all the requests
made by Isaak to Saladin in Rab II 588/May 1192 were turned down by the
Ayyubid ruler.113 The Byzantine emperors failure to obstruct the German contingent
of the Third Crusade was undoubtedly what the sultan had in mind in the summer of
588/1192, when he concluded his letter to Guy de Lusignan by frankly stating that
Neocleous, The Byzantines and Saladin, 939; Neocleous, Byzantine-Muslim Conspiracies,
26870.
108
Chronica regia Coloniennsis, ed. George Waitz [Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum
Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, volume XVIII] (Hanover: Monumenta Germaniae
Historica, 1880), p. 147.
109
Chronicon Montis Sereni, ed. Ernest Ehrenfeuchter [Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores,
volume XXIII] (Hanover: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1874), pp. 130226, esp. 161.
110
For the employment of Alan and Turkish mercenaries in the Byzantine army, see John W. Birkenmeier, The
Development of the Komnenian Army, 10811180 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), p. 233. For the use of Alan mercenaries,
in particular, to block Fredericks passage, see Choniates, who records that the Alans, led by Theodore, the
son of Alexios Branas, were the first and only ones to resist the Germans [since] the Romans [i.e. the Byzantines] fled ignominiously with headlong speed. Historia, 409. (trans. Magoulias, 225). According to the more
fanciful conspiracy stories that evolved amongst the rank-and-file crusaders, Saladin even sent Isaak poisoned
flour and grain and a cask of poisoned wine intended for the extermination of the Germans. See Neocleous,
The Byzantines and Saladin, 935; Neocleous, Byzantine-Muslim Conspiracies, 26870.
111
Baha al-Dn, History of Saladin, 122; Abu Shama, Livre des deux jardins, 471; Mhring, Saladin und der
dritte Kreuzzug, 185186. Brand (The Byzantines and Saladin, 174) argues that a joint attack on Cyprus
was agreed between Saladin and Isaak in AugustSeptember 1189 or not long afterwards. This thesis is
not supported by the evidence. As has been seen, Isaaks envoy, who reached Saladin in Rajab 585/late
summer 1189, died in Syria and it was not until Rajab 586/ August 1190 that a new Byzantine ambassador
arrived to resume negotiations with the sultan.
112
For a narrative outline of the Anglo-French expedition of the Third Crusade, see Peter Lock, The Routledge Companion to the Crusades (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2006), pp. 1534. For a detailed account, see
Tyerman, Gods War, 43174.
113
Baha al-Dn, History of Saladin, 201.
107

The Byzantines and Saladin

221

in truth, the Greek king has never succeeded in his enterprises; we gain nothing from
his friendship and fear nothing from his enmity.114

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Appendix
Abu Shama places al-Qad al-Fadils report, according to which Isaak boasted to Saladins brother
the request

dil that he had rejected

al-A
of the German emperor, the master of Sicily and the rest
of the Western rulers to participate in the Third Crusade, guarded the passes and ordered the
commanders of his fortresses to be on the watch for crusaders, under the Islamic year 586/15 February 11904 February 1191.115 Charles Brand has dated Isaaks same claims to Saladin even
later, namely to the summer of 1191.116 It does not, however, make sense that the Byzantine
ruler would make the above allegations after February 1190, i.e. after he had finally concluded
a peace treaty with Frederick, and eminent Byzantine nobles were sent as hostages to guarantee
the fulfilment of their rulers undertakings. Isaaks claims, which are mentioned in the same
context as the establishment of the khutba in Constantinople that took place in Rab II
Jumada I 585/June 1189, strongly suggestthat the Byzantine ambassador, who reached Saladin
in Rajab 585/15 August13 September 1189 and, as argued, delivered Isaaks letter in which
the Byzantine ruler announced the departure of Fredericks crusading expedition from
Germany,117 must have been the same one who conveyed, during an audience with Saladins
dil, the message that Isaak had turned down the request of the Western monarchs
brother al-A
dil was in Egypt
to take part in the crusade and was on his guard against crusaders. Since al-A
in the summer of 585/1189, the Byzantine envoy must have travelled from Constantinople to
Egypt, from where he eventually headed for Syria to be received by Saladin.118
The master of Sicily mentioned by Isaak in the same message was doubtless William II,
who had made peace with the Byzantine emperor in late 1187119 and concentrated his efforts
on the new crusade proclaimed by Pope Gregory VIII (r. 1187) on 29 October 1187 by
sending a fleet of 50 ships and 500 knights to the East in the short term and considering crusading.120 William IIs death in November 1189 gives a terminus ante quem for Isaaks message to
Saladin. It is highly unlikely that Isaak meant Tancred of Lecce (r. 11891194), the illegitimate
grandson of Roger II, who, following the death of his cousin William II, had been crowned king
of Sicily with the support of a group of leading magnates. Tancreds position was too weak to
permit him to participate in the crusade.121 Finally, the reaction of Saladin and his advisers to
Isaaks aforesaid claims, which is mentioned in the same report of al-Qad al-Fadil the
them;if he sucGreek king fears greatly the Franks because of his empire and he wants to repel
ceeds in this completely, he will claim that it is in our interest demonstrates that the Byzantine
ruler made the above allegations before he tried, unsuccessfully, to destroy the German crusaders.
Obviously, Abu Shama was mistaken in placing al-Qad al-Fadils report on Isaaks claims in
11904 February 1191).122
the summer of 585/1189 under the Islamic year 586 (15 February
The seventh/thirteenth-century Arab historian, who sloppily copied from several sources and fragments available to him, is often unreliable about dates. For example, he misplaces Raymond III of
Tripolis defection to Saladin under the Islamic year 580 (11841185).123 This, of course, is not
to diminish the value of Abu Shamas work. Despite inaccuracies in dates, the Arab historians
compilation remains invaluable to scholars: thanks to Abu Shama, a great number of fragments,
reports, and letters of the period under investigation have survived.

114

Abu Shama, Livre des deux jardins, 510.

Ibid., 5089.
116
Brand, The Byzantines and Saladin, 177.
117
See ns 5253 above.
118
Mhring, Saladin und der dritte Kreuzzug, 1789.
119
On the date of the peace treaty, see Dlger and Wirth, Regesten, no. 1578c.
120
Lock, Routledge Companion to the Crusades, 72, 152, 321.
121
See also Mhring, Saladin und der dritte Kreuzzug, 178.
122
See also Mhring, Saladin und der dritte Kreuzzug, 181, who similarly favours a dating of al-Fadils

report on Isaaks claims to August 1189.

123
See n. 38 above.
115