In 585 AH Tughril sent costly gifts and presents, made his excuses, and sought forgiveness.

Ibn Yūnus then reappeared; he was appointed supervisor of the state storehouses, but was dismissed after only a few months.

In that year and the next there took place a siege of Acre the like of which had never been heard. The Sultan had already captured the city and settled Muslims in it, but the Franks converged on it by land and sea from every far-flung quarter and surrounded it completely. Saladin marched out to repel them, yet they neither wavered nor considered withdrawal; instead they built a wall and a trench around their own camp. More than one fierce engagement ensued and great numbers were killed—an account of it all would require a separate volume. The standoff, the war of attrition, and the fighting dragged on for a little over twenty months. Reinforcements continued to reach the enemy from the remotest seas, while Saladin appealed for help to the Caliph and others, even dispatching an envoy to the ruler of the Maghrib, Yaʿqūb al-Muʾminī, urging him to mobilise, but nothing came of it. All the Christians’ anguish was rooted in their loss of Jerusalem.

Ibn al-Athīr said (1): The priests put on black in mourning for Jerusalem and upbraided the people for abandoning it (2). They put to sea to rouse the Franks, and they even painted Christ being struck and wounded by the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. This spectacle had a profound effect on the Christians, and they mustered an incalculable multitude of men and an immeasurable treasure of wealth.

A Kurdish man who used to raid with the Franks at Hisn al-Akrād told me that they took him with them by sea. He said, “We sailed on until we reached Rome; when we left it we had filled the four galleys with silver.” (3)

Ibn al-Athīr also said (4): They set out, facing hardship and ease alike, by land and by sea; had it not been for—