El-Aziz undertook a campaign against Syria, but was defeated and obliged to retreat to Cairo on account of a mutiny among his troops.  El-Afdhal pursued him, and had already pressed forward as far as Bilbeis, when El-Adil, who had hitherto espoused his cause, fearing that he might become too powerful, forced him to conclude a peace.  The only advantage he obtained was that he regained possession of Jerusalem and the southern part of Syria.  Soon after, El-Adil prevailed upon his nephew Aziz, with whom he stood on friendly terms, to renew the war and to take Damascus; El-Afdhal was betrayed, and only Sarchod was left to him, whereas El-Adil occupied Damascus and forced Aziz to return to Egypt again (June, 1196).  After Aziz’s death, in November, 1198, El-Afdhal was summoned by some of the emirs to act as regent in Egypt.  Others called upon El-Adil to adopt the same course.  El-Afdhal, however, became master of Egypt, and besieged Damascus, reinforced by his brother Zahir, who feared his uncle’s ambition no less than himself.  The agreement between the brothers, however, did not last long; their armies separated, and El-Afdhal was obliged to raise the siege and retreat to Egypt.  He was pursued by his uncle, and forced, after several skirmishes, to surrender the capital and content himself once more with Sarchod and one or two towns on the Euphrates (February, 1200).  El-Adil ruled for a short time in the name of El-Aziz’s son; he soon came forward as sultan, forced Zahir to recognise him as his suzerain, and appointed his son El-Muzzain as governor of Damascus; the towns which belonged to him in Mesopotamia were distributed among his other sons, and he thus became, to a certain extent, the overlord of all the lands conquered by Saladin.  His son, El-Ashraf, later became lord of Chelat in Armenia, and his descendant, Masud, Kamil’s son, obtained possession of happy Arabia; so that the name Malik Adil was pronounced in all the Moslem chancels from the borders of Georgia to the Gulf of Aden.

[Illustration:  025.jpg vase in the Abbott collection, new York]

El-Adil was so much engaged with wars against the Moslem princes,—­the princes of Nissibis and Mardin,—­and also with repulsing El-Afdhal, who wished to recover his lost kingdom, that he was unable to proceed with any force against the Crusaders; he took unwilling measures against them when they actually broke the peace, and was always ready to conclude a new treaty.  He took Jaffa by storm when the pilgrims, armed by Henry vi., came to Palestine and interfered with the Moslem devotions, and when the chancellor Conrad thereupon seized Sidon and Beirut, El-Adil contented himself with laying waste the former town and hindering the capture of the fortress Joron; Beirut he allowed to fall into the enemy’s hands.  Still later he permitted several attacks of the Christians—­such as the devastation of the town Fuah, situated on the Rosetta arm of the Nile—­to pass unnoticed, and even bought peace at the expense of the districts of Ramleh and Lydda, which had formerly belonged to him.  It was not until the year 1206 that he acted upon the offensive against the regent, John of Ibelin, and even then he contented himself with slight advantages and concluded a new truce for thirty years.