The Moslem world was nominally divided between the Syrian caliph of Bagdad and the Egyptian caliph of Cairo. Egypt was wretchedly governed. The caliph of Cairo was but a creature of his viziers. Amaury, seeing the possibility of extending his domains to the Nile, took arms against him. In 1163 he sent an army which might have held the country, had it not been driven out by the enemy’s flooding the valley of the Nile. One party in Egypt invoked the assistance of Nourredin, who sent as his general Shirkuh the Kurd, uncle of Saladin. Amaury accomplished against him the capture of Pelusium in 1164. In 1167 he took Alexandria, commanded at the time by young Saladin. He later penetrated to Cairo and laid El Fostat in ashes. In 1168 Shirkuh renewed the war. Amaury, marching from Egypt to meet his antagonist in the desert, was flanked by that general, who suddenly occupied the land left undefended. Amaury, who had married a niece of the Emperor Manuel, made with the Greeks an unsuccessful attack upon Damietta. Here the Christians felt the hand of one who was destined ultimately to overthrow all their power in the East. Saladin was in command. On the death of Shirkuh he had been appointed vizier by the caliph of Cairo. The caliph, wearied of being controlled by designing and capable men who absorbed in their own interests the power they defended, selected Saladin, thinking that the young man’s inexperience would be less of a menace to the caliphate. Nourredin, however, divined the genius of the young vizier and assigned to him the supreme command in Egypt. He then deposed the caliph, and with his reign brought to an end the dynasty of the Fatimites, which for two hundred years had held the land of the Nile. Thus Nourredin ruled supreme from Babylonia to the desert of Libya. Only the kingdom of Jerusalem marred the map of his dominion. To reconquer this for Islam was his incessant purpose. With his own hands he made a pulpit, from which he promised the faithful one day to preach in the mosque of Omar on the temple site. But the Moslem world was already attached to one destined to be greater than Nourredin. The youth of Saladin had been one of apparent indolence and dissipation, but he veiled beneath his indifference the finest genius and most unbounded ambition. As soon as he felt the possession of power he assumed a corresponding dignity, and men recognized him as one appointed of Heaven. Turbulent emirs, who had ignored him as a chance holder of position, now sat reverently before him. Even the priests were struck with the sincere austerity of his devotion. The caliph of Bagdad bestowed upon him the distinguished dignity of the vest of honor. Poets began to mingle his name with those of heroes as the rising star. The pious included it in their prayers as the hope of Islam.