Balian of Ibelin
Balian of Ibelin threatened to destroy Jerusalem in order to save the people inside it. He was a baron of the second rank in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, from a family that had risen through service rather than conquest, and he married the dowager queen Maria Comnena - which put him close to the throne without giving him a claim to it. He was at Hattin in July 1187, where Saladin destroyed the field army of the kingdom, and was among the few who cut their way out. He then asked Saladin for safe conduct into Jerusalem to fetch his wife, on his oath to stay one night and not bear arms. The patriarch and the population begged him to stay and take command; he wrote to Saladin explaining that he was breaking his word and why, and Saladin - who understood the position - sent an escort for the family instead. With sixty knights and a city swollen with refugees he held the walls for about two weeks. When the defence became hopeless he negotiated, and the negotiation is what he is remembered for. Told the city would be taken by storm, he answered that the defenders would then destroy the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa mosque, kill their own families and the Muslim prisoners, and leave nothing worth capturing. Saladin took the terms: a ransom per head, the poor freed in thousands at the expense of Saladin's own brother and of Balian, and no massacre - which the Frankish capture of the city in 1099 had not managed. The restraint was real and it was not mercy for everyone. Those who could not raise the ransom and were not covered by the bulk payments went into slavery in thousands, which is what the terms meant for the poorest people in the city. Balian left for Tyre and spent the rest of his life in the diplomacy of a kingdom reduced to a coastal strip.
- Lived: 1143 CE – 1193 CE
- Nationality: Frankish
- Roles: military
