The author of the Latin Continuation of William of Tyre's History remarks that during Raymond of Tripoli's second regency ‘the land was free from external battles, but not from those within’. Raymond, when he became regent, had, in the last days of Baldwin IV's reign, entered into negotiations with Saladin ‘with a request about the Antioch truce’, which Lyons and Jackson suggest was an attempt to extend to the other Frankish states the truce which Antioch had had with Saladin since 1183. It would seem that these negotiations were successful, for Saladin concluded a truce with the Kingdom of Jerusalem soon after this, which the Eracles claims was to last for four years.

Saladin was anxious to return to Iraq, where his recent gains were threatened by Izz ad-Din of Mosul, who had formed a coalition with al-Pahlawan, atabeg of Azerbaijan, and the Shah Arman of Akhlat. He was not willing to leave his other dominions unprotected as he had done in 1182, possibly because he was aware of the mission that had been sent to the West to seek military aid, and in addition to his truces with the Crusader States he also tried to negotiate peace with the Byzantine Emperor Andronicus Comnenus, and with Rupen III of Cilicia. Saladin left Damascus in the early spring of 1185 and did not return until May 1186.

Frankish morale received a severe blow when it became known, either from the Patriarch Heraclius in person, or from messages sent by him, that no western prince would be coming to help the kingdom. This was not through any lack of zeal on the part of the envoys. The embassy first visited Pope Lucius III at Verona, where, on 31 October 1184, Arnold of Toroja, master of the Temple, died. There Heraclius and Roger des Moulins met with Pope Lucius III and the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and the pope issued the bull Cum cuncti praedecessores, commending the embassy to Henry II of England and urging him to give help to the Holy Land.