those of
Christendom; and Noureddin, the sultan of Aleppo, eagerly embraced the
opportunity which gave him a hold on the Fatimite Caliph of Egypt,
when Shawer, the grand _wazir_ of that Caliph, came into his presence
as a fugitive. A soldier named Dargham had risen up and deposed him,
and the deposition of the wazir was the deposition of the real ruler,
for the Fatimite caliphs themselves were now merely the puppets which
the Merovingian kings had been in the days of Charles Martel and
Pepin.

Among the generals of Noureddin were Shiracouh and his nephew Saladin
(Salah-ud-deen) of the shepherd tribe of the Kurds. These Noureddin
despatched into Egypt to effect the restoration of Shawer. His enemy
Dargham had sought by lavish offers to buy the aid of the Latins; but
the terms were still unsettled when he was worsted in a battle by
Shiracouh and slain. Shawer again sat in his old seat; but with
success came the fear that his supporters might prove not less
dangerous than his enemies. He refused to fulfil his compact with
Noureddin and ordered his generals to quit the country. Shiracouh
replied by the capture of Pelusium, and Shawer, more successful than
Dargham in obtaining aid from Jerusalem, besieged Shiracouh in his
newly conquered city with the help of the army of Almeric. The Latin
King after a fruitless blockade of some months found himself called
away to meet dangers nearer home; and the besieged general, not
knowing the cause, accepted an offer of capitulation binding him to
leave Egypt after the surrender of his prisoners. But the Latin armies
were transferred from Egypt only to undergo a desperate defeat at the
hands of Noureddin in the territory of Antioch, and thus to leave
Antioch itself at the mercy of the enemy.

Noureddin may have hesitated to attack Antioch, from the fear that
such an enterprise might bring upon him the arms of the Greek Emperor.
He was more anxious to extinguish the Fatimite power in Egypt; in
other words, to become lord of countries hemming in the Latin kingdom
to the south as well as to the north; and it was precisely this danger
which King Almeric knew that he had most reason to fear. To put the
best color on his design, Noureddin obtained from Mostadhi, the caliph
of Bagdad, the sanction which converted his enterprise into a war as
holy as that which the Norman conqueror waged against Harold of
England. The story of the war attests the valor of both sides, under
the alternations o