The negotiations between Richard and Saladin
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer...
Value adorns your sovereignty,
And, to be sure, the sweetest speech
— Kalenda Maya, Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, translation by A. S. Kline
The epic conflict between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin is well known, to the point of being a pop culture reference point. The Third Crusade was a violent conflict, a medieval ‘World War’ that drew participants from much of the known world. Images that come to mind include the crumbling walls at the Siege of Acre, Crusaders marching at the battle of Arsuf with arrows sticking out of them like porcupines, and the eventual (failed) march on Jerusalem. Richard in particular is often presented, unfairly, as a one-dimensional violent figure.
What is far less well known is how often and deeply Richard and Saladin negotiated and how cordial most of the negotiations were. Richard’s skill as a diplomat is rarely mentioned.
Yet within days of arriving at Acre, Richard had sent an envoy to Saladin requesting a meeting. We have his precise words, courtesy of Saladin’s confidant and eventual biographer, Baha al-Din:
A messenger came to us with the following message: ‘It is the custom of kings when they happen to be near one another to send each other mutual presents and gifts. Now I have in my possession a gift worthy the sultan's acceptance, and I ask permission to send it to him.’
— Baha al-Din
It is often said, ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’ Robert Greene, in The 48 Laws of Power, puts it this way.
Never put too much trust in friends, learn how to use enemies…Be wary of friends - they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy…In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.
It is not hard to see this dynamic in Richard’s life; his nominal friends King Philip of France and Leopold, Duke of Austria did far more damage to Richard than Saladin ever did.
Saladin rejected this first request for a meeting, with the following words (again, via Baha al-Din):
It is not customary for kings to meet, unless they have previously laid the foundations of a treaty; for after they have spoken together and given one another the tokens of mutual confidence that are natural in such circumstances, it is not seemly for them to make war upon one another. It is therefore absolutely essential that the preliminaries should be arranged first of all.
But during the Siege of Acre, Richard became quite ill, and Saladin sent fruit and ice along with messengers and negotiators. Negotiations between intermediaries became quite frequent, and continued throughout the campaign.
After Richard besieged and took Acre, Saladin was horrified at the terms his captains had agreed to, and spent over a month negotiating to change or delay the terms. At one such negotiating meeting, Crusader representatives were led into Saladin’s presence and shown the piece of the True Cross, one of the most precious relics of the medieval era, which Saladin had captured at Hattin and dangled in front of the Crusaders as something to be negotiated for.
The king of England's envoys were shown the Cross to satisfy themselves that it was really there; they prostrated themselves on the ground before it till their faces were covered in dust.
— John Gillingham, Richard I.
The negotiations at Acre failed, which led to the execution of approximately 2700 Muslim prisoners held by the Crusaders. While Saladin was outraged by this event, negotiations resumed shortly, as the Crusaders marched from Acre toward Jaffa and thence Ascalon. No doubt Saladin hoped to learn whether Richard planned to march for Jerusalem, or to attack Egypt, as might have been a better plan.
At this time, Saladin was represented in most of the negotiations by his brother al-Adil, known to the Crusaders as Saphadin. The Crusaders were mostly represented by Bishop Hubert Walter.
Richard himself frequently met with al-Adil, eventually referring to him as ‘my friend and brother’. Richard and al-Adil became quite friendly, and their meetings were (on the surface at least) perhaps more friendly than the meetings Richard had with his ‘friends’. Food and cultural exchanges were frequent. Gifts were traded: horses, swords, and other treasures. At one meeting, al-Adil learned of Richard’s fondness for music and the troubadour culture, and summoned a female singer to sing traditional Arab music. She accompanied herself by what was reported in translation as a guitar, but was likely some form of lute (this story is reported from Arabic sources, in particular Ibn al-Athir).
Richard’s skill as a negotiator was feared by the Muslims:
See the cunning of this accursed man. To obtain his own ends he would employ first force and then smooth speaking. God alone could protect the Muslims against his wiles; we never had among our enemies a man bolder or more crafty than he…each time that he concluded a pact he broke it, each time he gave his word, he wriggled out of it, each time we told ourselves ‘he will be true’, he betrayed us.”
— Imad al-Din, an historian and advisor to Saladin.
He sounds rather Odysseus-like, does he not?
Yet much of the negotiations were held in a ‘half-joking, half-serious’ manner, in particular by Richard, and al-Adil came to expect this tone. Which made it even more difficult to be sure of Richard when he made one of his more flamboyant negotiating suggestions: that peace be made by al-Adil marrying Richard’s sister Joan, the former queen of Sicily.
Al-Adil wonderingly took this suggestion to Saladin, who at once accepted it. He knew or suspected it was a bluff. When Al-Adil reported his acceptance, Richard returned with the news that Joan had refused the marriage, and also claimed that he required the Pope’s permission for such a union. However, he told al-Adil, if al-Adil were to become a Christian, then of course the wedding would be permissable and all would be well. One can imagine al-Adil’s reaction.
Translators were key to all of these negotiations, as it does not appear that any of the primary participants shared a language.
Were Richard and Saladin negotiating in good faith?
There is little reason to doubt Richard’s desire to take Jerusalem back for Christianity, even indeed little reason to doubt the sincerity of his religious beliefs that were a primary driver of this desire. At the same time, as the Crusade wore on and his lands in England and France came under increasing turmoil from within and attacks from without, one imagines he would have happily signed a truce that split Jerusalem, or as it ended up, with Jerusalem still in Saladin’s control, but open to Christian pilgrims.
In Saladin’s case, by this time he was old and overextended. He was often ill; boils covered most of his lower body. His soldiers had been in the field for years, and they were tired and rebellious. Saladin was running out of money, and Richard had taken Acre, taken control of the sea by virtue of taking Saladin’s entire navy at Acre, and had the momentum. While Saladin surely wished to win, he also had many reasons to find an acceptable peaceful solution.
For both the Crusaders and Saladin, the negotiations were both a way to explore a possible peace, as well as a tactic to buy time, or to evaluate the state of mind of the enemy leaders and soldiers. They are a fascinating sidebar to this years-long conflict.
Richard and Saladin were never fated to meet in person. What a fascinating event that would have been!
