It was doubtless to keep some sort of watch upon Conrad that Richard remained at Acre till the end of March.[864] During the latter part of his stay there he was again engaged in negotiations with Saladin. When a messenger arrived at Jerusalem with a request that Safadin might be sent to confer with the king, nothing was known there of the Crusaders’ advance to Ascalon; Richard was believed by the Sultan to have placed his troops in winter quarters at Joppa and gone back thence straight to Acre.[865] Saladin [Sidenote: _Feb.-Mar._] bade his brother go by way of the Jordan valley and Mount Tabor, collect the troops of those parts in readiness for a renewal of hostilities, and then—as usual—go and hear Richard’s proposals, and if they were not acceptable, drag out negotiations till the whole Saracen army had had time to re-assemble. A note was given him containing the utmost concessions that Saladin was willing to make. They were these: an equal division of the land; the Cross to be given back; the Christians to have priests in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and pilgrims to have access to it, provided they went unarmed. “He was,” says Bohadin, “driven to offer these terms, by the general weariness of long-continued warfare, by a load of debt, and by the long absence of his followers from their homes; for there were many who never left him, and who dared not ask for leave.”[866] [Sidenote: _March 20_] Safadin set out on March 20. At Keisan he was met by Humphry of Toron with a message to this effect: “The division of the land is agreed upon already; but we must have the whole of the Holy City except the Temple of the Rock,” otherwise called the Mosque of Omar. This message Safadin transmitted to his brother, and the Sultan’s council—so Bohadin says—actually thought its terms near enough to their own to be “quite acceptable.” Safadin’s first messenger, however, was followed by another who [Sidenote: _March 27_] reached Jerusalem on the 27th with tidings that Richard had gone back to Joppa.[867] If it be true that Richard knighted Safadin’s son on Palm Sunday, March 29, at Acre,[868] the announcement must have been slightly premature; but by the time that Safadin himself returned to Jerusalem, on April 1,[869] Richard was certainly back at Ascalon.[870]