less bitter than 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 of disaster and success.  The Latin King had already entered Cairo, when a large part of the force of Shiracouh was overwhelmed by a terrific sandstorm.  But the retreat of Shiracouh across the Nile failed to reassure the Egyptians.  Almeric received two hundred thousand gold pieces for the continuance of his help, with the promise that two hundred thousand more should be paid to him on the complete destruction of their enemies; and the treaty was ratified in the presence of the powerless sovereign, whose consent