Saladin

Saladin is one of the few enemies of the Crusaders whom the Crusaders themselves came to admire. The sultan who united Egypt and Syria broke the Crusader kingdom at Hattin in 1187 and took back Jerusalem, and Britannica calls him the most famous of Muslim heroes. Baha ad-Din ibn Shaddad, who was at his side through his last campaigns and at his deathbed, left a portrait of a pious, generous and patient ruler that historians still read alongside the chronicles of his enemies.¹

Early life: a Kurdish family in the service of Zangi

Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub was born in 1137 or 1138, in the year 532 of the Islamic calendar, in the citadel of Tikrit on the Tigris, where his father, Najm ad-Din Ayyub, was governor. The family was Kurdish. The Encyclopaedia Iranica traces it to Shadhi, a notable of the town of Dvin in Armenia, who had moved to Iraq with his sons Ayyub and Shirkuh and become commandant of Tikrit.²

The family soon had to leave Tikrit. Baha ad-Din says Ayyub went to Mosul, and the Iranica that in 1138 Ayyub and Shirkuh took service with Zangi, the powerful atabeg of Mosul; Britannica says the family moved to Aleppo, again into Zangi's service. Ayyub later governed Baalbek, and Saladin grew up there and in Damascus.³

Egypt: from officer to vizier, 1164 to 1174

Saladin's career began on the staff of his uncle Shirkuh, a leading commander of Zangi's son Nur ad-Din. Shirkuh led three expeditions into Egypt, where the weak Fatimid caliphate was caught between the Frankish king Amalric of Jerusalem and the vizier Shawar. On the third, in 1168 to 1169, Shirkuh made himself vizier, and when he died a few months later, in March 1169, Saladin succeeded him, at about thirty-one, as commander of the Syrian troops in Egypt and vizier of the Fatimid caliph.⁴

In 1171 he abolished the Shiite Fatimid caliphate and restored Sunni Islam in Egypt. He remained in theory the vassal of Nur ad-Din, but that tie ended with Nur ad-Din's death in 1174. Britannica judges that his quick rise owed something to family nepotism and much to his own emerging talent.⁵

Uniting Syria, 1174 to 1186

Using the wealth of Egypt as his base, Saladin marched into Syria with a small but disciplined army. From 1174 to 1186, Britannica writes, he pursued the union of Syria, northern Mesopotamia, Palestine and Egypt under his own banner, by diplomacy backed when necessary by swift force. The Iranica marks the stages: Aleppo, the last Zangid center in Syria, in 1183, and Mosul reduced to a client in 1186.⁶

He built his rule on religion as well as arms. Britannica describes his devotion to the jihad, the colleges and mosques he founded and the scholars he commissioned to write on holy war. Baha ad-Din, who saw him daily, records that he kept his prayers to the end, getting down from his horse at the hours of prayer even when traveling.⁷

Hattin, 4 July 1187

In 1187 Saladin was at last able to throw his full strength against the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He attacked Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee. The Crusader army, about 20,000 men by Britannica's estimate, left its water at Sepphoris on 3 July to relieve the town, marched across a hot, dry plateau under constant harassment, and spent the night without water. On 4 July Saladin's army, about 30,000 strong, drove it against the twin hills called the Horns of Hattin. Baha ad-Din describes the Muslims setting fires around the Franks, who, tortured by thirst, surrendered. The relic of the True Cross carried into battle was captured.⁸ › Battle of Hattin, 1187

In his tent Saladin gave King Guy of Lusignan a cup of iced rose-water. When Guy passed it to Reynald of Châtillon, the lord of Kerak who had broken the truce, Saladin had his interpreter say that it was the king, not he, who had given the man drink: by Arab custom, a captive given food or drink by his captor was spared. Then he struck Reynald down with his own sword. Britannica and Baha ad-Din both record the killing, and Baha ad-Din quotes Saladin reassuring Guy that kings do not kill kings. Britannica adds that he had almost all the captured Templars and Hospitallers executed.⁹

Jerusalem, 2 October 1187

With the kingdom's field army gone, its cities fell one after another; Britannica lists Acre, Beirut, Sidon, Nazareth, Caesarea, Nablus, Jaffa and Ascalon within three months. On Friday 2 October 1187, by Baha ad-Din's reckoning the anniversary of the Prophet's night journey, Jerusalem surrendered after eighty-eight years in Frankish hands.¹⁰ › Siege of Jerusalem, 1187

Saladin had meant to avenge the massacre of 1099, Britannica writes, but agreed to let the Christians buy their freedom. Baha ad-Din gives the terms: ten Tyrian dinars for each man, five for each woman, one for each child, with those who paid escorted to safety at Tyre, and more than three thousand Muslim prisoners in the city freed.¹¹

Command style

Saladin's victories came less from new tactics than from organization and will. Britannica stresses that he turned the balance of power by uniting and disciplining many unruly forces, and that at Hattin he was helped by his own good sense and a phenomenal lack of it on the enemy's side. His army was a coalition: the Iranica notes that Kurdish troops, in tribal units such as the Hakkari, were prominent in it but at most a third of his forces.¹²

He could be beaten. Baha ad-Din, no critic of his master, admits a severe defeat at Ramla in the autumn of 1177, when Saladin's army was caught by a Frankish charge while it was changing the position of its wings, and fled toward Egypt; the translators' notes date the battle to 25 November 1177. Baha ad-Din adds that God repaired the loss ten years later at Hattin.¹³

His limits showed too. He failed to take Tyre, where the Christian survivors gathered and the counterattack began, and he probably did not foresee how Europe would answer the fall of Jerusalem. Through the Third Crusade he had to keep tired feudal levies in the field season after season, which Britannica counts as perhaps his greatest achievement.¹⁴

The Third Crusade, 1189 to 1192

The Third Crusade brought the kings of England and France to the siege of Acre, which fell in July 1191. Baha ad-Din, an eyewitness on the Muslim side, accuses Richard the Lionheart of breaking his word when Saladin was slow to meet the terms of surrender: in August 1191 more than three thousand Muslim prisoners, tied together with ropes, were killed before Saladin's outposts. On 7 September Richard beat Saladin's army at Arsuf, a battle Baha ad-Din calls a blow to all Muslim hearts.¹⁵ › Battle of Arsuf, 1191

Richard twice came within a few miles of Jerusalem but never attacked it. On 2 September 1192 the two sides agreed a peace of three years: the Crusaders kept Acre and a narrow coastal strip, Ascalon was to be demolished, and Christian pilgrims were given access to the holy places. Baha ad-Din says Saladin accepted it because his troops were worn out and his funds exhausted.¹⁶

Death in Damascus

After the truce Saladin withdrew to Damascus. On 21 February 1193 he fell ill with what Baha ad-Din calls a bilious fever; Baha ad-Din, who visited him morning and evening, describes the bleeding by his physicians, the days when his mind wandered and his patience with the servants who brought water too hot and too cold. He died at dawn on Wednesday 27 Safar 589, that is 4 March 1193, a date on which Baha ad-Din and Britannica agree.¹⁷

He left almost nothing. Baha ad-Din records forty-seven silver dirhams and a single gold piece in the treasury, and no house, estate, garden or village; Britannica writes that his friends found he had not left enough money to pay for his grave. His relatives were already dividing his empire.¹⁸

The empty treasury was the result of a lifelong habit. Britannica describes his growing reputation as a generous and virtuous ruler, free of pretense and cruelty. Baha ad-Din, who handled some of his gifts, tells how Saladin gave away whole provinces and how once, at Jerusalem, with no money left to make presents to a crowd of delegations, he sold one of his own farms to the treasury and gave away the price.¹⁹

Legacy and memory

The empire was shared, as Saladin had planned, among three of his sons, a nephew and his brother al-Adil, a family confederation that the Iranica calls his lasting political creation. His family ruled Egypt and neighboring lands as the Ayyubid dynasty until the Mamluks took power in 1250.²⁰

His reputation outgrew his conquests. Britannica notes that the scale of the Third Crusade and the impression it made on Europe gave him a luster as the gallant and chivalrous enemy that his victories alone could never have conferred. In the Muslim world he remains the model of the ruler who united his people and recovered Jerusalem.²¹

Compare him with his great rival in Saladin vs Richard the Lionheart, read the life of Richard the Lionheart, or see his defining victory in full at the Battle of Hattin.