In the year 1095, Alexius Comnenus, Emperor of Byzantium, sent a series of frantic messages to Pope Urban II in Rome. Couched in the elaborate style of the time and dwelling at length on Comnenus' troubles, the messages could have been summarized in one word: "Help." Asia's fierce Seljuk Turks had conquered the vast Anatolian reaches of the Emperor's domain and were almost at the gates of Constantinople. Without help, Comnenus told the Pope, Byzantium's undermanned army could not hold out and Constantinople, the bastion of Christendom in the East, would surely fall to the Turks.
Urban went Comnenus one better. At the Council of Clermont in France in November, 1095, in what historian Philip Hitti has called "probably the most effective speech in history," he not only rallied troops to save Constantinople but set in motion a series of "holy wars" to free the Holy Land and Jerusalem from 400 years of Muslim rule. They were wars that would later be called Crusades and which would call forth onto the stage of medieval history some of that period's most remarkable figures, One of them, a hero to both Islam and Christianity, was Al-Malik al-Nasir al-Sultan Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, better known as Saladin.
By the time Saladin made his appearance, Urban's exhortations had succeeded beyond his most extravagant hopes. The crusaders had saved Constantinople, conquered the Holy Land, and had ruled what they called the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem for 70 years. The crusaders being a tiny minority in a sea of hostile Muslims, their rule was not an easy one. On the other hand, with Islamic power fragmented among the Seljuk-dominated caliph of Baghdad, the rival Fatimids of Cairo and a semi-independent warlord in Syria called Nur al-Din, crusader rule also seemed permanent.
Saladin, son of a high-ranking Kurdish officer in Nur al-Din's army, was an Arab by culture, language and inclination. Born in Tikrit, Iraq, in 1138, he was called Yusuf ibn Ayyub (Yusuf son of Ayyub) but later assumed the additional name of Salah al-Din (Rectifier of the Faith). From these beginnings, he became one of the few Muslims of the times famous enough to win a westernized version of their names. The crusaders, and later all of Europe, shortened Salah al-Din to Saladin—the name under which he was later romanticized in the West in countless poems and legends.
Late in the year 1168, Saladin took part in an expedition commanded by his uncle and sent to Egypt by Nur al-Din to head off a Frankish take-over. Nur's soldiers eluded the Franks and entered Cairo as liberators. Saladin's uncle died two months later and in March, 1169, Saladin, at 31, was appointed Sultan of Egypt. Arab chroniclers relate that at this time Saladin gave up wine and other pleasures and made a vow to deliver the Holy Land from the Franks.
Two years later, the last Fatimid caliph died (Aramco World, September-October, 1969) and Saladin founded his own dynasty, the Ayyubids. Using Egypt as a power base, he also began the long task of unifying Islam in order to fulfill his vow.
There followed an 18-year period during which Saladin put his Egyptian base in order, his two chief rivals—King Amalric of Jerusalem and his erstwhile suzerain, Nur al-Din—died, and Saladin unified the country between the Nile and the Tigris under his rule. This was a period of sporadic clashes with the forces of the Leper King, Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and his successor, King Guy of Lusignan, of truces almost invariably broken by the Franks and restored, thanks to Saladin's legendary tolerance. But open warfare was carefully avoided. Then, in 1186, the treacherous Reginald of Chatillon, bandit-knight and master of the Castle of Kerak in Jordan, who had previously made it known that he intended to conquer Mecca itself, attacked a large caravan traveling through the desert beneath his mountain eyrie. For Saladin this was the last straw. He proclaimed a holy war against the crusaders and vowed to kill Reginald with his own hand.
On July 4, 1187, a vast force under Saladin's banner defeated the Frankish army in the battle of the Horns of Hattin—in which Saladin struck down the captured Reginald as promised. Then on October 2, almost 90 years after the first crusaders took the Holy City, came the supreme moment of Saladin's career—the capture of Jerusalem.
This momentous event, however, sent ripples of indignation across Europe and brought on the Third Crusade, led by Richard the Lion Hearted and King Philip II of France. Five years later, after a period of battles, sieges, counter-sieges and diplomatic negotiations, Saladin and Richard signed a peace treaty under which the Muslims kept Jerusalem and the interior and the crusaders were permitted to retain, for a short while longer, their tenuous hold on the coastal towns. Saladin, having fulfilled his oath, withdrew to Damascus where, at the age of 55, he died, already a hero and soon to be a legend.
The legend, of course, was embellished after his death with such myths, half-truths, superstitious beliefs and romance, that the real Saladin nearly vanished. Fortunately, Arab historians who were his contemporaries and the Latin chroniclers who lived in the Holy Land preserved a more realistic picture.
It seems that Saladin was a slender man of medium height with a dark complexion, dark hair, eyes and beard, and a rather melancholy expression. He had tremendous endurance and simple tastes in food. He liked fresh fruit and sherbet, drank barley-water when he was suffering, and enjoyed boiled rice. When not in the field he liked nothing better than an evening surrounded by scholars, friends and poets, discussing theology and law or listening to readings of the Koran, which if well rendered could move him to tears. He kept a small book in his pocket in which he wrote down quotations from his favorite authors, and he would often read aloud from it to illustrate a point in his conversation. Saladin liked chess, but his favorite pastime was polo—largely because it involved horses. Horses were his weakness and he offered them frequently as special gifts. He could reel off the pedigree of an Arabian mare without a moment's hesitation.
Although Saladin had all the wealth of Egypt and Syria at his disposal, the trappings of power had no attraction for him. When he became supreme ruler of Egypt after the death of the Fatimid caliph, for instance, he preferred a small simple house to the caliph's fabulous palace (4,000 rooms, a 120,000-volume library and sackfuls of jewels). Knowing that others liked ostentation, however, he gave away most of the contents of the palace.
Unlike the colorfully-dressed crusaders, Saladin usually wore a simple wool or linen cloak. As a youth, as a concession to the treachery that lurked behind every Egyptian curtain, he wore a coat of mail under his robes. His personal retinue—loyal men who were willing to die for him, and often did—followed his example. In his later years he wore a padded coat while on horseback to keep off the chill.
In contrast to the deference shown to other autocrats, there was no need to fawn in Saladin's presence. Ignoring protocol, he commanded loyalty by his personal bearing and example, his gentle character and his magnanimity. During audiences for example, the jostling petitioners often trod on the very cushion where the Sultan sat smiling.
More important, perhaps, was his relationship with his officers and principal emirs. During one long tour of inspection, his friend Baha al-Din, who later wrote a history of Saladin, was riding in front of the Sultan and inadvertently splashed mud all over him, ruining his clothes. "But he only laughed and refused to let me go behind," the historian related. Discussion was free and unrestrained by any need for flattery. At one officers' meeting the Sultan asked for a drink but nobody paid any attention. He had to repeat his request several times, a secretary recounted, before he was served. For his followers to have felt so free in his presence, Saladin must have inspired a trust which was unthinking.
Little is known about Saladin's wife, except that he married her in Egypt and that she stood by him through thick and thin and gave him 16 sons. There is no record that Saladin ever took on the four wives allowed by Islam. It is evident that his campaigns were a personal sacrifice, since he had to leave his wife and children for long spells, and it was well known that nothing pleased him more than sitting in the cool gardens of his palace in Damascus, playing with his younger children. His eldest son, al-Afdal, became one of his principal lieutenants, but there is more than one hint in the chronicles that his favorite was his third eldest, al-Zahir.
If Saladin was an unusual sovereign, he was a more unusual—even unique—general. In addition to his talents as commander, strategist and planner, Saladin was chivalrous to a fault, a trait that made him famous in the West.
Although he could be inflexible and even cruel when the occasion demanded, he genuinely disliked bloodshed. In fact, the only stain on his record was the execution of about 300 knights of the two main military orders, the Templars and the Hospitalers, at Tiberias a few months before he captured Jerusalem. And even that act when considered in the context of those unsettled times, was no awful crime. When the crusaders first occupied Jerusalem in 1099 they killed thousands, including women and children. When Saladin recaptured the city, there was no killing and no desecration of holy places, and Christian pilgrims were allowed free access to their places of worship.
The Sultan, far from becoming drunk with power, seemed to feel that his new responsibilities demanded more and more restraint. At the famous siege of Acre several years later the most colorful of Saladin's adversaries, Richard the Lion Hearted, violated an agreement and slaughtered the city's entire 3,000-man garris