146 DESTINY DISRUPTED
with men of might. No one could intimidate him, yet he never stooped to
intimidating anyone over whom he had power. As a military leader, he was
okay, but nothing special. His power ultimately lay in the fact that people
simply adored him.
Saladin sometimes wept at sad news and often went out of his way to
perform acts of hospitality and grace. A Franj woman once carne to him
devastated because bandits had kidnapped her daughter and she didn't
know where to turn for help. Saladin sent his soldiers out to look for the
girl. They found her in the slave market, bought her, and brought her back
to her mother, and the two went back to the Franj encampment.
In his personal habits Saladin was just as ascetic and demanding of
himself as Nuruddin had been, but he was less demanding of others. He
was religious but lacked a streak of dogmatism that had marred Nuruddin's
personality.
The Assassins tried hard to kill Saladin. Twice they penetrated right to
his bedside while he was sleeping. Once they wounded him in the head
but he was wearing a leather neck-guard and a metal helmet under his tur-
ban. After these two attempts, Saladin decided to smash the Assassins once
and for all. He set siege to their fortress in Syria, but then-
Something happened. To this day, no one knows what. Some say that
Sinon, the Syrian head of the Assassins, sent a letter to Saladin's maternal
uncle promising to have every member of the family killed unless the siege
was lifted. The Assassins' own sources say that in the middle of the night,
after having surrounded himself with guards and every other possible pre-
caution against assassination, Saladin woke up to see a shadow passing
through his tent wall and to find a piece of paper pinned to his pillow bear-
ing the message, "You are in our power." That story is surely apocryphal,
but the fact that people believed it gives an idea of the power the Assassins
had acquired in the popular imagination. This time, however, the usual As-
sassin tactic backfired, for having tried and failed twice to kill him, the As-
sassins succeeded only in adding to the legend of Saladin's invincibility.
Saladin moved carefully, letting his reputation unite his people and soften
his enemies. He retook most of the Crusaders' holdings bloodlessly through
encirclement, economic pressure, and negotiation. In 1187, when he finally
moved on Jerusalem, he began by sending in a proposal that the Franj relin-
quish this city peacefully as well. In exchange, Christians who wanted to