Saladin
Saladin died of a fever in Damascus on the 4th of March 1193, and all he owned was one piece of gold and forty pieces of silver. The Kurdish commander who left so little had once ruled a realm that reached across Egypt, Syria, Upper Mesopotamia, the Hejaz, Yemen, and Nubia. He had handed most of his personal fortune to his subjects. He founded the Ayyubid dynasty and became the first sultan of both Egypt and Syria. Kurds, Turks, and Arabs revere him, and so does Western culture. He is often called the most famous Kurdish figure in history. How did a commander who began in another ruler's service come to govern an empire? What did he do to the caliphate in Cairo? Why did he spend years fighting fellow Muslims before turning his full strength on the Crusaders? And what happened in 1187 that carried his name far beyond the lands he ruled?
Saladin was born in Tikrit, in present-day Iraq, on the very night his family left the town, according to his biographer Baha ad-Din ibn Shaddad. The departure was an expulsion. In 1132 the defeated army of Zengi, Atabeg of Mosul, had found its retreat blocked by the Tigris, opposite the fortress of Tikrit. The fortress warden, Saladin's father Najm ad-Din Ayyub, supplied ferries and gave the soldiers refuge. Mujahid ad-Din Bihruz, a former Greek slave who governed northern Mesopotamia for the Seljuks, reprimanded Ayyub for this. In 1137 Bihruz banished him, after Ayyub's brother Asad ad-Din Shirkuh killed a friend of the governor.
Zengi remembered his debt. In 1139 Ayyub and his family moved to Mosul, where Imad ad-Din Zengi made him commander of the fortress at Baalbek. After Zengi died in 1146, his son Nur ad-Din became regent of Aleppo and leader of the Zengids. By then Saladin lived in Damascus, a city he reportedly loved, though almost nothing is recorded about his early childhood.
The family's roots lay far to the north. His parents were of Kurdish ancestry and came from the village of Ajdanakan, near the city of Dvin in central Armenia. His given name was Yusuf. Salah ad-Din is a laqab, an honorific epithet that means "Righteousness of the Faith". One teacher cast a long shadow over his youth: in Saladin's era no scholar had more influence than the sheikh Abdul Qadir Gilani, and Saladin was strongly influenced and aided by him and his pupils.
On education, Saladin himself wrote, "Children are brought up in the way in which their elders were brought up". His biographers Anne-Marie Eddé and al-Wahrani say he could answer questions on Euclid, the Almagest, arithmetic, and law. That portrait, however, reflects an academic ideal. What truly tied him to his contemporaries was his knowledge of the Qur'an and the sciences of religion, and several sources say he preferred religious study to soldiering. He also knew the genealogies and histories of the Arabs, even the bloodlines of Arabian horses, and he knew the Hamasah of Abu Tammam by heart. He spoke Kurdish and Arabic and knew Turkish and Persian.
The warrior he became owed far more to his uncle Shirkuh, the very man whose quarrel got the family expelled, and who proved the most influential teacher of his military career.
Baha ad-Din ibn Shaddad, a contemporary biographer, described Saladin as a devout Muslim who loved hearing the Qur'an recited and prayed punctually. By his account Saladin "hated the philosophers, those that denied God's attributes, the materialists and those who stubbornly rejected the Holy Law." Ibn Shaddad placed one devotion above the rest. Jihad, he wrote, weighed on the sultan's heart in every limb. Saladin spoke of nothing else, thought only of equipment for the fight, and had little patience for anyone who spoke of other things.
That zeal sat beside generosity toward mystics. Saladin supported Sufism and patronised khanqahs, the Sufi hostels of Egypt and Syria, along with madrasas that taught orthodox Sunni doctrine. Al-Maqrizi gives a long list of the khanqahs and zawiyas that Saladin and his followers founded and endowed. Saladin welcomed Sufis from Asia to Egypt, and the endowment deed for one khanqah required residents to come from abroad and settle in Cairo and Fustat. If none could be found, the money would go to poor jurists, either Shafi'i or Maliki, and Ash'ari in creed. It is still unclear why he wanted Sufis from outside Egypt, and the answer seems to lie in the particular kind of Sufi he hoped to attract.
His patience had a boundary. In 1174 he ordered the arrest of a Sufi mystic named Qadid al-Qaffas in Alexandria. In 1191, in Aleppo, he ordered his son to execute Yahya al-Suhrawardi, the founder of the Illuminationist current in Muslim philosophy. Ibn Shaddad reports that al-Suhrawardi was said to have rejected the Holy Law and declared it invalid. Saladin consulted some of the ulama, the religious scholars, before ordering the execution, and Ibn Shaddad filed the episode under the sultan's piety.
His rise, however, began in a foreign land, Egypt, where he first went in the shadow of his uncle.
In 1163 a vizier named Shawar was driven out of Egypt by a rival, Dirgham, a member of the powerful Banu Ruzzaik tribe. Shawar had served the Fatimid caliph al-Adid, and he appealed to Nur ad-Din for troops. In 1164 Nur ad-Din sent Shirkuh, and Saladin, then 26, went along. Once Shawar was reinstated, he offered Shirkuh 30,000 gold dinars to leave. Shirkuh refused, insisting that Nur ad-Din wished him to stay.
Saladin's part in that first expedition was small. Shirkuh ordered him to gather stores at Bilbais before Crusaders and Shawar's troops besieged it. At the battle of al-Babein, just west of Giza, accounts disagree about his place. One version has him commanding the right wing. Muslim sources of the time instead put him with the baggage of the centre, tasked with luring the enemy into a trap by feigning retreat. The Crusader horses struggled on steep, sandy ground, and their commander Hugh of Caesarea was captured while attacking Saladin's unit. Ibn al-Athir called the result one of the "most remarkable victories in recorded history", though more of Shirkuh's men died than the praise suggests. Shirkuh then split his army, and Saladin was left to hold Alexandria under siege.
In 1169 Shawar was reportedly assassinated by Saladin, and Shirkuh died the same year. Several candidates, mostly Kurds, were considered for the vacant viziership. One of Saladin's lieutenants, Isa al-Hakkari, urged a rival to step aside, saying "both you and Saladin are Kurds and you will not let the power pass into the hands of the Turks". Al-Adid, a Shia caliph, chose the Sunni Saladin, and the sources give conflicting reasons. Ibn al-Athir says advisers told the caliph there was "no one weaker or younger" and that no emir obeyed him. Al-Wahrani credits the reputation of Saladin's family for generosity and military prowess. Imad ad-Din says the Zengid emirs forced the caliph to invest him.
On the 26th of March he took office and, Arabic sources say, gave up wine and put on the dress of religion. Later that year his intelligence chief, Ali ibn Safyan, warned him of a plot. Saladin arrested and killed the chief conspirator, Naji, the civilian controller of the Fatimid Palace. The next day 50,000 Black African soldiers from Fatimid regiments, joined by Egyptian emirs and commoners, rose in revolt. By the 23rd of August he had crushed them, and Cairo never again mounted a military challenge to him.
The Fatimid court itself fell in 1171. In June Nur ad-Din wrote to Saladin to restore the Abbasid caliphate in Egypt, and a Shafi'i legal scholar named Najm ad-Din al-Khabushani, an enemy of Shia rule, urged him on. Several Egyptian emirs were killed, and al-Adid was told they had died for rebelling against him. The caliph then fell ill, or was poisoned, according to one account. He asked Saladin to visit and promise care for his young children, but Saladin refused, fearing treachery, and is said to have regretted it. Al-Adid died on the 13th of September. Five days later the Abbasid sermon was pronounced in Cairo and Fustat, naming al-Mustadi as caliph.
On the 25th of September Saladin left Cairo to join Nur ad-Din in attacking the desert castles of Kerak and Montreal, only to turn back on reports of plotting at home.
On the 15th of May 1174 Nur ad-Din died, leaving his power to an eleven-year-old son, as-Salih Ismail al-Malik. In a letter to the boy, Saladin promised to "act as a sword" against his enemies and called the father's death an "earthquake shock". Privately he faced a dilemma. Attacking land that had belonged to his master was forbidden by principles he believed in, and it might brand him a hypocrite. He needed an invitation from as-Salih, or a pretext such as the danger of anarchy.
The invitation came from Damascus. As-Salih had been taken to Aleppo, where the emir Gumushtigin assumed his guardianship and prepared to unseat rivals. Damascus asked Saif ad-Din of Mosul for help and was refused, so its emir turned to Saladin. He rode across the desert with 700 picked horsemen and reached Damascus on the 23rd of November amid general acclamation. The citadel held out four days, until his brother Tughtakin ibn Ayyub, after a brief siege, opened its gates. Saladin settled into his father's old home.
Hama fell with little effort, and Aleppo was besieged from the 30th of December. Gumushtigin, desperate, asked Rashid ad-Din Sinan, chief da'i of the Order of Assassins in Syria, to kill Saladin. On the 11th of May 1175 thirteen Assassins slipped into the camp but were spotted just before they struck. Saladin's rivals meanwhile accused him of ingratitude toward his old master's son. He lifted the siege and said he was defending Islam from the Crusaders. On the 13th of April 1175 he faced the combined Zengid armies at the Horns of Hama, after offering to give up everything north of Damascus. They refused, and his veterans surrounded and crushed them.
He then proclaimed himself king, removed as-Salih's name from Friday prayers and coinage, and minted gold at Cairo with his own title: al-Malik an-Nasir Yusuf Ayyub, "the King Strong to Aid, Joseph son of Job; exalted be the standard." The Abbasid caliph in Baghdad welcomed his rise. In 1176, as he crossed the Orontes, the sun was eclipsed; he took it for an omen and marched on. At the Sultan's Mound, about 25 km from Aleppo, he led a charge that broke the Zengid army. Saif ad-Din narrowly escaped. Saladin freed the prisoners with gifts and gave all the plunder to his troops.
During the siege of A'zaz that May, an Assassin rushed into a captain's tent and stabbed at his head. The blade failed to pierce his head armour and only slashed his gambeson. Aleppo eventually accepted a truce and alliance. When as-Salih's younger sister asked for A'zaz back, Saladin returned it and escorted her to Aleppo's gates with many presents.
In August 1176 he led his army into the an-Nusayriyah Mountains, where the Assassins held nine fortresses on high ground. He retreated the same month without taking one. Most Muslim historians tell a story from Masyaf. Saladin had chalk and cinders strewn around his tent to betray footsteps. One night he woke to see a figure leaving, with hot scones of the Assassins' peculiar shape beside his bed and a note pinned by a poisoned dagger. He cried out that Sinan himself had been there. Another version says Crusaders near Mount Lebanon forced his withdrawal. The source concludes that he really wanted an alliance, and Sinan thereafter sent contingents to strengthen his army.
He reached Cairo on the 22nd of September, after roughly two years away, and set about rebuilding. The city walls were repaired and extended, and work began on the Cairo Citadel. Workers dug Bir Yusuf, "Joseph's Well", 280 ft deep, and he built colleges such as the Madrasa of the Sword Makers. The great bridge at Giza was meant as a defensive outwork against a possible Moorish invasion.
On the 11th of May 1182 Saladin left Cairo with half the Egyptian army. The evening before, the tutor of one of his sons quoted a line of poetry: "enjoy the scent of the ox-eye plant of Najd, for after this evening it will come no more". Saladin took it as an evil omen, and he never saw Egypt again. Crusaders massed on the frontier, so he took the desert route across Sinai to Ailah and reached Damascus in June.
Kukbary, the emir of Harran, invited him to occupy the Jazira, and the truce with the Zengids officially ended in September 1182. Edessa fell first, then Saruj, Raqqa, Qirqesiya, and Nusaybin. At Raqqa, Qutb ad-Din Inal surrendered on condition that he keep his property. Saladin won the townspeople over by canceling a number of taxes and erasing them from the treasury records. His stated reason was "the most miserable rulers are those whose purses are fat and their people thin". When news came that Crusaders were raiding villages near Damascus, he answered, "Let them... whilst they knock down villages, we are taking cities."
He reached Mosul on the 10th of November 1182. The caliph an-Nasir sent a religious figure named Badr al-Badr to mediate, but Izz ad-Din rejected Saladin's terms, and the siege stalled. Wanting to withdraw without losing face, Saladin attacked Sinjar instead, which fell after 15 days on the 30th of December. His soldiers broke discipline and plundered it, and he saved the governor and officers only by sending them to Mosul. When a coalition gathered by Izz ad-Din advanced to Harran in February 1183, it sued for peace. Al-Fadil wrote that they "advanced like men, like women they vanished."
In late April, after three days of what Saladin called actual fighting, his army took Amid. He gave the city to Nur ad-Din Muhammad together with its stores. These included 80,000 candles, a tower full of arrowheads, and 1,040,000 books. The fall of Amid also brought Il-Ghazi of Mardin into his service.
Mosul itself he never took, and he wrote to the caliph for legal backing. He argued that he had won Egypt and Yemen under the Abbasid flag, while the Zengids of Mosul favoured the Seljuks and appeared only when they needed help. He promised that Mosul would lead to Jerusalem, Constantinople, Georgia, and the lands of the Almohads, "until the word of God is supreme and the Abbasid caliphate has wiped the world clean, turning the churches into mosques". He even offered to hand the caliph Tikrit, Daquq, Khuzestan, Kish Island, and Oman.
Aleppo was an easier prize. His brother Taj al-Muluk Buri took Tell Khalid, and Saladin camped before Aleppo on the 21st of May 1183. Its emir Zangi, who was unpopular and wanted to go back to Sinjar, agreed to an exchange. He gave up Aleppo and received Sinjar, Nusaybin, and Raqqa as Saladin's vassal. The formal handover came on the 12th of June, and the townspeople, who had not been told, were startled to see Saladin's standard on the citadel. Saladin called Aleppo "the key to the lands" and said "this city is the eye of Syria and the citadel is its pupil". Eight years earlier he had told Farrukh-Shah that "we have only to do the milking and Aleppo will be ours". Despite a promise not to interfere, he replaced the city's Hanafi courts with Shafi'i administration.
From Aleppo he marched to Harim, near the Crusader-held city of Antioch.
On the 25th of November 1177, near Ramla, Saladin's army was caught before it could form up. A small Crusader force of 375 knights, including Templars, cut down his soldiers at the battle of Montgisard. He had marched to Ascalon, which he called the "Bride of Syria", and sacked Ramla and Lod. When his bodyguards were falling, he saw defeat was certain and fled to Egypt on a swift camel with a small remnant of his troops.
Raynald of Châtillon later gave him a fresh grievance. In 1183 Raynald sent ships to raid the Red Sea. By Ibn Jubair's report, they burned sixteen Muslim ships and captured a pilgrim ship and a caravan at Aidab. Rumours spread that the Crusaders meant to attack Medina and move the Prophet's body. Saladin's brother al-Adil sent warships under an Armenian mercenary named Lu'lu, who broke the blockade. The 170 surviving Crusaders were put to death in various Muslim cities on Saladin's order. Saladin besieged Raynald's fortress at Kerak twice, in 1183 and 1184, without success. In 1186, after Raynald broke a truce, Saladin vowed to kill him personally and resolved to topple the entire Kingdom of Jerusalem.
On the 4th of July 1187 he met Guy of Lusignan and Raymond III of Tripoli at Hattin. The Crusader force was largely annihilated. Raynald was captured and Saladin executed him himself, having sworn to do so after Raynald ignored pleas from caravan members, who cited the truce, and insulted the Prophet. Guy feared he was next, but Saladin spared him, saying, "It is not the wont of kings, to kill kings; but that man had transgressed all bounds, and therefore did I treat him thus."
Jerusalem capitulated on Friday, the 2nd of October 1187, after a siege. Saladin preferred a bloodless entry and offered generous terms, but those inside refused them. Balian of Ibelin then threatened to kill about 5,000 Muslim hostages and destroy the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque. Saladin consulted his council and accepted quarter. The terms were read through the streets so each person could raise a ransom within forty days. The ransom was unusually low for every man, woman, or child, and against his treasurers' wishes he let many poor families go. Patriarch Heraclius helped pay for about 18,000 of the poorer citizens, but another 15,000 were enslaved. Al-Adil asked for a thousand of them and released them on the spot. Saladin also summoned the Jews and let them resettle, and the Jewish residents of Ascalon came.
Tyre remained uncaptured, though taking it first would have made better strategic sense. Saladin chose Jerusalem because of its importance to Islam. Conrad of Montferrat strengthened Tyre and withstood two sieges. Baha ad-Din recorded that Saladin, after these victories, mused about crossing the sea to pursue the Franks in their own lands. He imagined dividing his territories and making a will beforehand.
In 1188 Saladin released Guy of Lusignan at Tortosa. When Conrad refused to recognise Guy as king in 1189, Guy set out to besiege Acre.
A special "Saladin tithe" in 1188 helped pay for the Third Crusade, which ran from 1189 to 1192. King Richard I took over Guy's siege of Acre and captured the city. He then executed almost 3,000 Muslim prisoners. Baha ad-Din recorded two explanations: reprisal for Christians killed by Muslims, or Richard's reluctance to leave so many captives behind when he moved on Ascalon. Baha ad-Din concluded, "God alone knows what the real reason was."
On the 7th of September 1191 the armies clashed at Arsuf. Saladin's forces suffered heavy losses and withdrew. Richard occupied Jaffa and restored its fortifications. Saladin went south and tore down the defences of Ascalon, a city at the junction between Egypt and Palestine, so it could not fall into Crusader hands.
The two leaders traded envoys. Richard proposed that his sister Joan marry Saladin's brother, with Jerusalem as their wedding gift. Saladin rejected it when Richard insisted the brother convert to Christianity. Richard then suggested his niece Eleanor, Fair Maid of Brittany, and Saladin rejected that too. In January 1192 Richard's army reached Beit Nuba, just twelve miles from Jerusalem, and withdrew without attacking.
In July 1192 Saladin besieged Jaffa and very nearly captured it. Richard arrived a few days later and defeated Saladin's army outside the city, in what proved to be the last military engagement of the Third Crusade. The settlement that followed was a bargain. Richard agreed to demolish the fortifications at Ascalon, and Saladin recognised Crusader control of the coast from Tyre to Jaffa. Christians could visit Jerusalem as unarmed pilgrims, and the sides agreed to peace for three years.
The Kingdom of Jerusalem that he fought survived into the late 13th century, even though the defeat of 1187 had marked a turning point for the Christian military effort in the region.
Updated
Common questions
Who was Saladin and what did he found?
Saladin was a Kurdish commander and political leader who founded the Ayyubid dynasty and became the first sultan of both Egypt and Syria. At the height of his power his realm spanned Egypt, Syria, Upper Mesopotamia, the Hejaz, Yemen, and Nubia.
When and where was Saladin born?
Saladin was born in Tikrit, in present-day Iraq, around 1137. According to his biographer Baha ad-Din ibn Shaddad, he was born on the night his family left the town after Ayyub was banished.
How did Saladin become vizier of Egypt?
Saladin became vizier in 1169, after Shawar was assassinated and his uncle Shirkuh died. The Fatimid caliph al-Adid appointed him, and sources give differing reasons, including his family's reputation and pressure from the Zengid emirs.
What happened at the Battle of Hattin in 1187?
On the 4th of July 1187, Saladin's army largely annihilated the Crusader force of Guy of Lusignan and Raymond III of Tripoli at Hattin. Saladin personally executed Raynald of Châtillon and spared Guy of Lusignan.
How did Saladin capture Jerusalem?
Jerusalem capitulated to Saladin on Friday, the 2nd of October 1187, after a siege. Balian of Ibelin threatened to kill about 5,000 Muslim hostages and destroy the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, so Saladin accepted terms of quarter with ransoms for the inhabitants.
What was the outcome of Saladin's conflict with Richard I in the Third Crusade?
Saladin and Richard I agreed a truce after the Battle of Jaffa in 1192. Saladin recognised Crusader control of the coast from Tyre to Jaffa, allowed unarmed Christian pilgrims into Jerusalem, and agreed to three years of peace.
How did Saladin end the Fatimid Caliphate?
After the Fatimid caliph al-Adid died on the 13th of September 1171, Saladin realigned Egypt with the Abbasid caliphate. Five days later the Abbasid sermon naming al-Mustadi as caliph was pronounced in Cairo and Fustat.
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