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00:00For thousands of years, the holy lands of the Middle East have run with blood.
00:10Here, the scars of battle fought between three of the great religions of the world are etched
00:17into the earth.
00:18But the deepest wound was made by a war between Christian and Muslim, begun at the close of
00:24the 11th century and fought for 200 years.
00:31At stake, a tiny strip of land just a few hundred miles long, but with the greatest
00:37prize, Jerusalem.
00:51Now this holy war has passed into legend.
00:56But they were those who saw it with their own eyes.
01:02Great chroniclers from two different worlds, Christian and Muslim, who wrote of great deeds,
01:10great battles, great warriors, of men who would lay down their lives for their God.
01:25This was the collision of two great faiths, the clash between the crescent and the cross.
01:32This was the Crusades.
02:03In 1096, to great fanfare, more than 60,000 Christian warriors set off from Europe on
02:09the first crusade.
02:11Their goal was Jerusalem.
02:14For more than 400 years, the holy city had been in Muslim control.
02:19The crusaders vowed to reclaim it in the name of Christ.
02:23For Christians, Jerusalem is so important because Jesus died here on the cross and he
02:30rose from death.
02:32So the most important point of the history of salvation took place there.
02:37So therefore, Jerusalem, for the Christians, is the center of the world.
02:46This Christian army had struggled its way 3,000 miles across the forbidding landscape
02:51of the Middle East in a series of epic encounters with the forces of Islam.
03:00After three years, this, the first crusade, reached the walls of Jerusalem.
03:05Once inside, no one was spared.
03:12An estimated 30,000 citizens were slaughtered by the crusaders.
03:16Muslims, Jews, even fellow Christians.
03:20But as the crusaders reveled in victory, slowly, steadily, the Muslims prepared to strike back.
03:27Eventually, the wrath of Islam would be unleashed on the fledgling crusader kingdom
03:32under one leader, Saladin, and one battle cry, Jihad.
03:47When Jerusalem was taken, during the first crusade, the killings were horrible.
03:53The Jews who'd gathered in the temple were burnt.
03:57Promises made to Muslims that Muslim women and children would be allowed out free
04:03were violated with impunity.
04:07To Muslim eyes, two of their holiest shrines were now defiled.
04:12Two of their holiest shrines were now defiled.
04:15The crusaders stabled their horses in the Al-Aqsa Mosque and at the Dome of the Rock,
04:20where the prophet Muhammad is said to have ascended to heaven.
04:24They tore off the Islamic symbols to re-consecrate the mosque as a church.
04:29In the heart of Jerusalem, its gleaming new crucifix boasted to the Muslims
04:34that this was now a Christian city.
04:37They were just stunned and shocked by the violence, the brutality,
04:42the killings that were inflicted on them,
04:45and what shocked them even more, that this was done in the name of Christianity.
05:00140 miles to the northeast, in the city of Damascus,
05:04thousands of Muslims flocked to the Umayyad Mosque to mourn the loss of Jerusalem.
05:14Imagine the scene here when the news arrived from Jerusalem to the Damascene people
05:20that Jerusalem was captured.
05:22Not only captured, but the Muslims and Christians there, fellow Syrians,
05:26were massacred in their thousands.
05:29Every little corner was filled by men, by soldiers,
05:33taking their turbans off, moaning, weeping, and discussing what should happen.
05:42Though the will of the people to rise up against the Christian invaders was strong,
05:46in 1099, the Muslim world was in no position to mount a counter-attack.
05:52To the most celebrated Islamic chronicler of the age, Ibn al-Athir,
05:57the reason was clear. Its leaders were hopelessly divided.
06:03Whilst the Christians were conquering and settling in our territories,
06:07the rulers and armies of Islam were fighting amongst themselves.
06:13This caused much discord and disunity among the people,
06:18and weakened their power to fight the Christian enemy.
06:24The culture of Islam was magnificent,
06:27and big advances had been made in the sciences and mathematics.
06:33Nonetheless, the political institutions of Islam had not succeeded
06:38in creating a society which could be stable.
06:43And what we saw emerging were strong local rulers,
06:48and what we can describe as city-states.
06:53Since the death of Muhammad, the Islamic world had been split between two competing doctrines,
06:59the Sunni orthodoxy of Baghdad and Aleppo,
07:03and their bitter rivals, the Shia, who held power in Cairo.
07:12To defeat the Christians, they would need one leader
07:15who could unite the strength of the Muslims under the banner of war.
07:23This was the greatest fear of the Crusaders, a major Muslim counter-attack.
07:31William of Tyre was a scholar and Christian archbishop,
07:34whose chronicles have become the most important record of the life of the Crusaders.
07:40Through zealous Christian eyes, he recounted how the Muslims, or Saracens,
07:45began their guerrilla campaign against the fledgling Kingdom of Jerusalem.
07:51The entire country surrounding this city was inhabited by infidel Saracens
07:58who were cruel enemies to our people.
08:00Even within these city walls there was scarcely a place where one could rest in security.
08:05They reduced the realm to such a state of terror
08:08that no one dared venture outside the fortifications.
08:13To survive in this hostile environment,
08:16the Christians who remained after the First Crusade
08:19had to secure their grip on their new kingdom.
08:26After the capture of Jerusalem, many of the Crusaders returned home.
08:29There's only maybe two or three hundred knights left there.
08:32Jerusalem must have seemed quite an empty place.
08:34I mean, physically, it's quite a big city.
08:36What the Crusaders had to do, of course, was to try and hold on to that,
08:38try to consolidate it, and also try and get more people out there.
08:42That was the crucial thing.
08:45The Catholic Church appealed for European families to come and settle in Jerusalem.
08:50The homes of Muslims, Eastern Christians, and Jews
08:53were requisitioned to house the new arrivals.
08:58Recruiting tours went around Western Europe, advertising the idea,
09:02much as when Americans were told to sort of go west,
09:05this was go east, young man.
09:07You're going to get good property, good tax deals,
09:09you've got a sort of sense of adventure.
09:11The other thing, of course, you'll be living in Christ's patrony.
09:14There's that extra element to it as well.
09:18Everybody who is faithful to Christ,
09:22he has an inclination to go to the place where Jesus lived,
09:26where Mary, his mother, lived, the Apostles.
09:29And also, because Christianity derives from the Jewish roots,
09:34also where the prophets lived.
09:37In the aftermath of the First Crusade,
09:39Jerusalem blossomed into a thriving spiritual metropolis
09:43with a population of around 30,000,
09:46about the same size as medieval Paris.
09:50What we have after the First Crusade
09:52is a series of nails that are hammered into the fabric of the Holy Land,
09:56strong points that the Crusaders have,
09:59but they have to be connected,
10:00they have to link up these cities that they've taken
10:03and consolidate the territory.
10:06Europeans set up new farms, villages and castles
10:10around the captured cities
10:12and created four powerful new Crusader states,
10:15Edessa, Antioch, Tripoli and the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
10:22Now that the Holy City was Christian,
10:24pilgrim visitors from Europe poured into Jerusalem.
10:29Every year, thousands of them flocked here,
10:32determined to walk in Christ's footsteps
10:34and to worship at the holy places.
10:36Like tourists of today, they needed advice on food, drink,
10:40where to stay, health care,
10:42and they also needed a guidebook.
10:45The top attraction in this 12th century guidebook
10:48was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
10:51Rebuilt by the Crusaders to house the key to Jerusalem,
10:56rebuilt by the Crusaders to house the key holy sites under one roof,
11:00it was a spiritual tourist complex for thousands of faithful visitors.
11:08The guide also included the essential destination for every traveler,
11:12the souvenir shop.
11:15Hi, would you like to buy some souvenirs, please?
11:17Yes, please. What do you want?
11:18Yeah, the holy water actually is what I was most interested in.
11:21Can you tell me a little bit about it?
11:22Yeah, you've got holy water, holy oil, holy incense, holy earth.
11:26Where does the water come from?
11:28The water comes from River Jordan.
11:30Right.
11:31It has been blessed inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
11:35Okay.
11:36Do you want anything else? Rosaries, holy oil, holy earth?
11:40No, I think...
11:41Rosaries with the holy water?
11:42No, that's fine. It's the holy water I was really after.
11:44Good. Thanks very much indeed.
11:45Thank you, sir.
11:46In the back streets of Jerusalem,
11:48the pilgrims found not just souvenirs,
11:51but also a taste of foreign food.
11:54Pilgrims needed to eat,
11:55and this is the notorious street of bad cooking,
11:58fast food for the Middle Ages.
12:00Now, it's quite possible, of course, that you're going to get ill,
12:03and you're going to need some help.
12:04Let's look at the guidebook and see what they have to say about it.
12:07Next to the Holy Sepulchre is the hospital,
12:10in which a great crowd of sick people is collected.
12:13The total of persons at the time when I was present was 2,000.
12:17Between night and day, there were sometimes more than 50 corpses carried out.
12:20But again and again, there were new people admitted.
12:27On capturing the city,
12:29the crusaders had taken over the hospital of St. John.
12:34Here, Christian pilgrims who fell ill
12:37were cared for by the men who took holy vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience.
12:44Known as hospitalers, they soon took on a military role.
12:49To ensure the safe passage of thousands of pilgrims to and from the Holy Lands.
12:58All along the way are bandit bands,
13:01lying in wait for you, waiting to pounce on you.
13:03So much so, that a pilgrim in the early 12th century,
13:06writing an account of pilgrimage,
13:08said that the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem
13:11was littered with the bones of dead pilgrims,
13:14and that if you were with pilgrims,
13:16and one of your friends, one of your buddies was killed,
13:18don't stop to bury him,
13:20because the grave you dig, he said, will be your own.
13:35To offer increased protection to these pilgrims,
13:38a second holy order had been established.
13:42Combining a monastic way of life with the bearing of arms,
13:46this brotherhood believed fighting off the infidel
13:49was both an act of charity and a way to salvation.
13:57They became known as the Knights Templar,
14:00taking their name from their headquarters,
14:02the ancient site of the Temple of Solomon.
14:05Both of these military orders would quickly become for the Muslims
14:09the most feared and reviled symbols of the Crusader occupation.
14:15They both become immensely powerful as monastic orders
14:19and as political forces in the Crusader states.
14:23They're able to do this because both the Hospitallers and the Templars
14:26develop military strength.
14:29They become the elite fighting troops of the Crusader states,
14:32and they're essential to the survival of this world.
14:36To underpin the defense of their new kingdom,
14:39the Templars and the Hospitallers oversaw the construction of a chain of castles.
14:44The most magnificent was Crac de Chevalier in modern-day Syria.
14:49Stark symbols of authority,
14:51these castles declared to the Muslims that the Christians were here to stay.
14:57But the Muslims dreamed of fighting back against the Crusaders
15:01and returning Jerusalem to their faith.
15:05An old Arabic word was being uttered once again,
15:09the word for struggle, jihad.
15:19Through the early 12th century,
15:21men across the Muslim world began to talk of rising up
15:25under the banner of jihad against the Crusader occupation.
15:29The jihad is the key element in the armory of Muslim ideology.
15:34The notion of jihad dated from the time of the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century,
15:38so it's something that's integral to the Islamic faith.
15:40It's not something that's invented to sort of counter the Crusade.
15:43It's there and it's sort of taken off the shelf
15:45and deployed against the Crusaders.
15:48Imad al-Din Zengi, a Turk, was the ruler of the city of Mosul,
15:52now part of modern-day Iraq.
15:54Intelligent and ruthless, Zengi was intent on expanding his empire.
15:59He would be the first leader to launch a successful jihad
16:03against the despised Christian invaders.
16:07For him, it was essential that he defeat and move them out of the Muslim heartland.
16:13To do this, he had to unite Syria under his leadership.
16:19The mighty citadel of Aleppo
16:21is one of the oldest Islamic fortress cities in the world.
16:24The knights of the First Crusade had never dared to attack it.
16:28Like most of the Muslim world at the time,
16:31Aleppo was an independent city-state with its own ruler.
16:36Zengi set his sights on this fortress as his new power base,
16:40a springboard to topple the Crusaders.
16:44With his military strength growing,
16:46he offered to protect Aleppo from the Christians.
16:49In 1128, an agreement was reached,
16:52and Zengi took control of the city.
16:56With Mosul and Aleppo, he now controlled northern Syria.
17:02Before he came to power, we had no one to impose justice.
17:06And the presence of the Christians in our land
17:09had made the country into a wilderness.
17:12And he made it flower again.
17:23It took Zengi nearly 20 years of brutally fighting his fellow Muslims
17:27before he finally united northern Syria.
17:32His own secretary described him as a lion,
17:36some kind of fierce wild cat.
17:38I believe the words that he used to describe him were a raging calamity.
17:42Zengi was one of those, fortunately, minority of the human race
17:46who seemed to have enjoyed causing pain to his fellow human beings.
17:50His own troops followed him in terror, it was said,
17:54because if he told them not to step on crops on their route of march,
17:59and one of them did, he would have him hanged.
18:01In 1144, Zengi was now at last ready
18:05to let loose his ruthlessness on the crusade.
18:08120 miles from his power base in Aleppo
18:12was Edessa, one of the crusader states.
18:15And Zengi had just learned of a golden opportunity to recapture the city.
18:22Zengi had always covered it, Edessa,
18:26and looked for a chance to achieve his ambition and take it.
18:31Once he heard that the prince of Edessa was out of the city,
18:35it was like a sign from God for him to advance.
18:46Nearly half a century after the foundation of the crusader states,
18:50the Muslims were finally about to strike their first counterblow.
18:55Zengi besieged the city with an army of 30,000 men.
19:06The few crusader knights who remained to protect Edessa
19:09were taken by surprise and desperately retreated within the walls.
19:15For Muslims, this was the long-awaited show of strength,
19:19and the great Arab chronicler Ibn al-Athir reveled in it.
19:25They battered the walls ceaselessly,
19:28and nothing interrupted their remorseless struggle.
19:32His troops were as numerous as the stars in the sky,
19:37and the fields around the city were filled with them.
19:41They say that birds dare not fly near.
19:46So absolute was the destruction by the besiegers,
19:51and so unwinking their vigilance.
19:56The fortifications were so strong that the only way to get inside Edessa
20:00was to bring its walls tumbling down.
20:03Zengi brought in expert miners,
20:05who knew precisely how to attack the walls' foundations.
20:09Going over walls is difficult because you get shot at and all the rest of it.
20:14But under the city walls there was a natural cave system,
20:18and his men broke into the cave system
20:21and started to pick away at the bottom of the walls.
20:27The Christian settlers in the city desperately tried to defend the tunnels.
20:33But they stood little chance against Zengi's powerful assault.
20:38His troops set fire to the wooden beams supporting the tunnels.
20:43As they burned, the walls above came crashing down.
20:52Tunneling is actually very effective,
20:55and very quickly Zengi's troops broke into the city.
21:08One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
21:15Once inside, the Muslims began to slaughter the Christian inhabitants.
21:20Thousands of men and women and children were killed.
21:27William of Tyre chronicled the terror of his fellow Christians
21:31as they fled to the safety of their citadel,
21:34the tower in the heart of the city.
21:36The more prudent of the citizens rushed to the citadel
21:40so that they might at least preserve their lives, if only for a short time.
21:45At the gate there was such a crush of people trying to enter
21:48that because of the press of the crowd many were suffocated and died miserably.
21:54Zengi! Zengi! Zengi!
22:04Edessa was now back in the hands of the Muslims,
22:07and Zengi the hero of the Islamic world.
22:10The first phase of the jihad, the struggle against the Christian empire, was won.
22:16The taking of Edessa marked an important stage in the taking back of Jerusalem
22:23because what it created was the feeling we can do it.
22:27Although Zengi had led his people to victory, he wasn't admired.
22:31He remained brutal and feared.
22:36He had told one of his slaves that the next morning the slave would be killed
22:40for having offended Zengi in some minor way,
22:43and the slave, assuming that his life was over anyway,
22:46decided to take Zengi with him that night.
22:48As the mighty Zengi slumbered amidst his proud army,
22:54ringed by his braves with their swords, he perished.
23:03Neither riches nor power were of use to him.
23:07Two years after the taking of Edessa, the 59-year-old Zengi was murdered in his bed.
23:13The hopes of the Islamic world might have died with him,
23:16but there was another willing to take up the challenge.
23:19His own son, Nur al-Din, a man who would prove to be a very different leader than his father.
23:32Nur al-Din was the son of the brutal Turkish warlord, Zengi.
23:37He was ready to continue his father's battle,
23:39and he set out to unite the Muslim world and restore Jerusalem to Islam.
23:44Nur al-Din was a very pious man,
23:47you know, did not like too much play,
23:49did not like the way in which the caliphs lived in Baghdad
23:54with their opulence and their splendor and their dancing girls and their wines,
24:00and said, one reason why we have suffered these defeats
24:04is because we as a people have become too indulgent.
24:09He was highly respected because he never misused his authority and his power.
24:15The Christians saw the rise of this new leader as a serious threat to the crusader kingdoms.
24:22His message was simple and direct, unity and jihad.
24:29Nur al-Din's vision was very straightforward.
24:32Our countries have been occupied by the barbarians,
24:37and we have to free them.
24:39And the only way to free them, they have waged holy war on us,
24:43we will wage a holy war against them.
24:54In Europe, word reached the Pope of the fall of Edessa.
25:00On December 1st, 1145, Pope Eugenius III
25:04was compelled to take drastic action.
25:07He called for a second crusade.
25:10The second crusade was an extraordinarily ambitious scheme.
25:13It was an idea of extending the borders of Christianity in every single direction.
25:17The Christians were terribly confident at this time.
25:19They looked upon it as a sort of a rerun of the first crusade.
25:22A lot of the preaching stresses the idea
25:25that the crusaders should live up to the deeds of their fathers.
25:29The call to arms was answered by one of the most powerful men in Europe,
25:33King Louis VII of France and his wealthy wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine.
25:40The first crusade had been led by nobles, counts.
25:42Here, the King of France, King Louis VII, took the cross.
25:46This was, of course, quite a sort of radical move.
25:48The idea of a king leaving his lands for two or three years,
25:51having probably a sort of one in three chance of dying, it's a dangerous thing.
25:55King Louis had a deep Christian faith
25:58and was determined to honor the exploits of the first crusaders
26:01by retaking Edessa and then expanding the crusader kingdoms.
26:08But he was a man of very little military experience and not a natural leader.
26:20In May 1147, he set off on the second crusade,
26:23leading an army of more than 30,000.
26:27At the heart of his fighting force were 300 highly skilled Knights Templar.
26:33It took Louis' crusader army nearly five months to cross Europe,
26:37from France to Asia Minor.
26:42The journey took them through the rugged landscape of central Turkey,
26:46along this still intact Roman road.
26:50The logistical problems of the second crusade were pretty frightening
26:54because they decided to move inland,
26:57through the mountains of south-east Anatolia,
27:00through this kind of terrain, in winter.
27:03Now, that's a very bad time of year to be moving.
27:06Very little food in the countryside.
27:10We know that they were almost entirely dependent on what they could carry.
27:15Many of the roads they were on, on high mountains like these in the background,
27:19narrow terraces, animals are falling off,
27:23men desperate to keep the food.
27:27But logistical problems weren't the only challenges the crusaders faced.
27:31The route took them through Turkish land,
27:33where they were in constant fear of attack by the local Muslim forces.
27:39You have to think, although this is mountainous terrain,
27:42there's plenty of open land.
27:44Over here, the Turks would be hovering,
27:47ready to pounce on any sign of weakness.
27:51The strength of the army lies in its compact, tight formation.
27:56By now, it was winter,
27:58and harsh weather conditions caused the crusaders to lose their tight formation.
28:04The heavily armed vanguard became separated from the main body,
28:09and the slow wagon train, led by Louis and Eleanor,
28:12was left behind and exposed.
28:15It was just the opportunity the Turks needed.
28:21Christian historian, William of Tyre,
28:23interpreted what happened next as a punishment from God.
28:28In battle array, they fell upon our forces.
28:31It was fought at close quarters with the sword,
28:35and brought death and destruction to the Christians.
28:40In punishment for our sins, the infidel conquered.
28:46An army was reduced to a very few.
28:50That day, the glorious reputation of the Franks was lost.
28:59Louis and Eleanor escaped, but thousands of crusaders were killed.
29:04To restore discipline,
29:06the humiliated Louis surrendered control of the march to the Templars.
29:13The battered crusader army staggered on to take refuge in Antioch,
29:17a city they had taken on the first crusade.
29:21There, faced with a diminished force of 20,000 men,
29:25and the growing strength of Nur al-Din,
29:28Louis abandoned the campaign to retake Edessa in the north,
29:31and instead looked south, to Damascus,
29:34a city much closer to Jerusalem.
29:38Nur al-Din also had designs on this independent Muslim city.
29:42The question was, who was going to take it first?
29:46In 1148, Louis made the first move.
29:51The attack on Damascus can be seen as a pre-emptive strike against Nur al-Din.
29:54He ruled Aleppo.
29:56If he was to take Damascus to the south,
29:58it would be the first time a Muslim had governed these two key cities.
30:01The whole eastern flank of the crusader states
30:04would be governed by one single man,
30:06with growing power, growing wealth, and a great, great threat.
30:10While in the past, Damascus had been an ally of the crusaders,
30:14it had recently become hostile.
30:17The people of Damascus got really terrified,
30:20because no one else before came that close to the city walls.
30:25The Damascene, simply like any other inhabitants,
30:28trying to defend their homes, trying to defend their families,
30:31trying to defend their habitats, their livelihoods.
30:34The Damascenes could have called on the ruler of Aleppo
30:37Nur al-Din to rescue them.
30:39But that would mean surrendering their independence.
30:42They were determined to defend their city, Damascene.
30:45They were really defending Islam against the crusaders,
30:48against the Frankish army.
30:50And they were really looking to die, to go to heaven,
30:53according to their beliefs.
30:56If there was one man who embodied their spirit of defiance,
30:59it was 71-year-old lawyer Al-Findalawi.
31:02His story has become part of the folklore of Damascus.
31:05His tale is still told today by storytellers in the city cafes.
31:13The crusaders believed in their evil hearts,
31:16they could take Damascus.
31:1850,000 infantry and cavalry marched on our city,
31:23and the Muslims challenged them to fight.
31:26In an orchard by the walls,
31:28the battle began.
31:40Al-Findalawi, the old lawyer, was determined to fight the infidel.
31:44So he went into battle,
31:47striking down Christians in the orchard like a man possessed.
31:59He said,
32:01I have offered myself for sale, and God has bought me.
32:28But through the night, the townspeople became demoralized
32:31by the horror of the fighting.
32:36After a fierce struggle,
32:38the crusaders overwhelmed the Muslims
32:41and closed in on the city walls,
32:44closer than any army in ancient or modern times.
32:58Al-Findalawi saw a dream.
33:02Hello?
33:04Al-Findalawi continued to fight bravely
33:07and refused to withdraw in obedience to God Almighty.
33:16But alas, he fell in battle,
33:19a martyr for the faith.
33:23For days, the battle raged in the orchard surrounding the city,
33:28and thousands of Muslims lost their lives.
33:32The proudly independent Demacians now had little choice.
33:36They sent word to Nur al-Din, pleading for him to send his army.
33:42It was just the news Nur al-Din had been waiting for,
33:46but it left Louis with a crucial decision.
33:49To stay and fight a growing Muslim opposition,
33:52or to retreat?
33:55If they withdrew from Damascus, they felt they would be shamed.
33:58If they stayed and fought, they might be defeated.
34:02So what they actually did was the worst of all worlds.
34:05They shifted their siege from one side of the city to the other,
34:09and then decided they had to retreat anyway.
34:12This was military incompetence.
34:20Louis returned home to Europe shamed and defeated.
34:24After so much hope, expense and suffering,
34:27his second crusade had ended in disaster.
34:31Not only had he turned his back on the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem,
34:35he had strengthened the resolve of the Muslims.
34:39For Christians, the consequences were calamitous.
34:45They abandoned the siege and returned home.
34:48As a result, fewer people undertook this pilgrimage thereafter.
34:53From this day on, the conditions for the Latins in the east declined.
35:00When the second crusade failed, the Muslim world was hugely, hugely relieved
35:04that God had blessed them with this divine victory.
35:07Also, of course, they were terribly confident.
35:09I mean, the last time the Franks had come over in huge numbers,
35:12the first crusade, they defeated the Muslims.
35:15Now kings had come over from Western Europe and had not succeeded.
35:18This meant the Westerners were not invincible.
35:21Muslims could succeed and could, perhaps, in the end, throw the Christians out.
35:29The failure of the second crusade was just what Nur al-Din needed to win over Damascus.
35:35Through intimidation and charm, he entreated them to unite with him.
35:40Only as one, he preached, could they have the strength to overtake all the crusader states.
35:48The Demascenes finally succumbed to his relentless campaign.
36:02In April 1154, they invited him to enter the city.
36:08People rejoiced at the prospects of good times ahead.
36:12Rich and poor, peasants and artisans,
36:16they all offered their prayers to grant the emir a longer life
36:21and victory over the Christians.
36:27They were throwing rice, petals, flowers, people really shouting,
36:31hurraying him and praising his courage and really they were happy.
36:41Nur al-Din was the first to try and give the Arabs a feeling that we are one people
36:47and that if we get together, we can actually do it.
36:54For the first time, the two powerful, wealthy cities of Muslim Syria were united under the same ruler,
36:59a man focused on the jihad whose objective was one day to drive the crusaders out.
37:05The entire eastern flank of the crusader kingdom was now in Nur al-Din's control.
37:10He was tightening the noose and now began the final phase of his master plan
37:15to surround the Christians entirely by taking control of a rich and powerful land to the south, Egypt.
37:24By 1160, the goal of the Muslims, now united under Nur al-Din, was to encircle the crusader kingdom.
37:31He already ruled Syria. Now he wanted to take command of Egypt and its independent capital, Cairo.
37:38Cairo was like a beautiful bride with an impotent husband waiting to be taken
37:44and absolutely necessary in Nur al-Din's eyes if there was ever a war.
37:50Absolutely necessary in Nur al-Din's eyes if there was any chance of defeating the crusaders.
37:57And there was also a big worry on the part of Nur al-Din that if we don't take it, the crusaders might.
38:05The crusaders also coveted Cairo.
38:08Egypt was a rich and strategically positioned country and in the early 1160s, it was up for grabs.
38:16Egypt wanted to remain independent. It was the stronghold of the Shia branch of Islam
38:22and was just as determined to resist Nur al-Din's Sunni orthodox Muslims as the Christians.
38:29But in 1168, the Christians made a fatal mistake and handed Nur al-Din a great advantage.
38:38The crusaders perpetrated a brutal massacre of Shia Muslims in an Egyptian town near Cairo.
38:53If the crusaders have acted differently, they would have taken Cairo with the greatest of ease
39:00They would have taken Cairo with the greatest of ease
39:04for the city notables were ready to surrender it.
39:09But when they heard of the massacres perpetrated by the Christians, they decided to resist.
39:16The Egyptians were left with little choice but to plead with Nur al-Din for help.
39:24Nur al-Din was only too eager to help.
39:27He sent in his most talented and ambitious young general to help the Egyptians defend Cairo.
39:33His name was Saladin.
39:37To the Muslim world, Saladin is a legend.
39:40His heroic reputation was carefully crafted by one man, his close friend and confidant, Baha al-Din.
39:48Baha al-Din was close to and a great admirer of Saladin.
39:53I bore witness to the genuineness of the rare stories told about the noble hero, Saladin.
40:05Like a medieval spin doctor, he put a gloss on the great deeds of his master.
40:12One could swear that from the time he set out, he did not spend one silver coin except on jihad.
40:23Saladin shared his master Nur al-Din's ambition to control both Syria and Egypt and drive out the crusaders.
40:31But under his own leadership.
40:33And that was not enough.
40:35And that meant taking on Nur al-Din himself.
40:38His first step was to assume command of all of Egypt from the Shia rulers, by any means necessary.
41:05The fact that some people who were in Saladin's way, in his path to power, conveniently died at appropriate moments,
41:21has led other people to suggest, at the time and since, that Saladin had something to do with those convenient demises.
41:27That's impossible to prove.
41:30People did die with distressing regularity.
41:35By the end of 1169, with all his rivals conveniently out of the way,
41:41Saladin was now the unchallenged ruler of Egypt, controlling as much territory as his mentor, Nur al-Din.
41:51Nur al-Din used to call Saladin the ambitious.
41:55Definitely, Nur al-Din wanted to punish Saladin for his treason.
42:02Five years later, before he could cut his young lieutenant down to size, Nur al-Din died, under mysterious circumstances.
42:12He was 57.
42:16Saladin rushed from Cairo to Nur al-Din's fortress stronghold Aleppo.
42:21But a successor had already been announced.
42:25The son of Nur al-Din was the new ruler of Syria, al-Salih.
42:32He was just 12.
42:35But young as he was, al-Salih was no pushover.
42:39He refused to allow Saladin to enter the city and forced his army to camp outside the gates of Aleppo.
42:49The young leader then took his boldest step.
42:54He called on the services of a group of religious fundamentalist hitmen to eliminate his rival.
43:02Their name has gone down in history.
43:05The assassins.
43:08The word assassin is derived from hashishi.
43:12Hashish, we all know, is marijuana.
43:15And the story was that the only way they could be worked up to go and kill someone was by drugging them out of their skulls.
43:24The assassins tracked Saladin down to his tent outside the city walls.
43:36They got through his guards, killing one of them.
43:42Saladin was lucky to escape with only a flesh wound.
43:47The assassination of Saladin would have been a tremendous blow to the cause.
43:53And when the assassin actually got into his tent, it must have created total panic. You can just imagine it.
44:02A year passed before Saladin returned, determined to capture Aleppo.
44:10This time he was taking no chances.
44:13He ringed his quarters with guards and even scattered chalk dust and cinders around the tent to detect footprints.
44:22Still, despite the security, the assassins struck again, in a curious and disturbing way.
44:30By his pillow, they left a present, some pastries, and with them a death note, warning Saladin to retreat or next time they would succeed in assassinating him.
44:45Saladin fled Aleppo again.
44:48It was seven years before Saladin's fortunes changed.
44:54In 1181, his rival, al-Salih, now 19 years old, died.
45:01Like his father and grandfather before him, another victim to die in uncertain circumstances.
45:08I have no problems in believing that Saladin was ruthless.
45:13What's the problem?
45:14I mean, in order to survive in that world, you had to be.
45:17Whether he was responsible for the killing of Nur al-Din's son, one doesn't know.
45:24Syria and Egypt now belonged to Saladin.
45:27Eighty years of Muslim disunity were over.
45:32Now, he has encircled the crusader states.
45:35He is threatening to strangle them into oblivion.
45:39And I think what we can see happening, as far as the crusaders are concerned, is a real heightening of the temperature, a heightening of the level of threat,
45:48and an awareness that really things are moving inexorably towards some kind of serious confrontation.
45:55Having fought and bullied the Muslim world into a coalition, Saladin would now have to deliver a knockout blow against the Christians of the Holy Land.
46:04Saladin would now have to deliver a knockout blow against the Christians of the Holy Land.