SALADIN (1137 OR 1138–1193)

Salah al-Din Yusuf b. Ayyub (d. 1193), who became known in the West as Saladin, was a Kurdish warrior renowned for his victories over the Crusaders and as the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty in Egypt, Syria, and upper Iraq. Saladin's defeat of the Crusaders at the Horns of Hattin (4 July 1187) in northern Palestine led to the Muslim reconquest of Jerusalem and the near elimination of the Franks in the Levant. His success in jihad against the Crusaders was celebrated by his court biographers. Not surprisingly, Saladin's name and example are powerful symbols in the modern Middle East. His subsequent struggles against the forces of the Third Crusade (1189–1192) and King Richard I of England became the stuff of romance in European literature, where Saladin and Richard emerge as rival chivalrous foes.

Saladin's career began in the armies of Nur al-Din b. Zangi, ruler of Aleppo and Damascus, and himself a famous counter-crusader. Saladin went to Egypt in early 1169 in a contingent of Nur al-Din's army sent to assist the Fatimid Caliphate, which in late 1168 had been attacked by Crusader forces. Saladin subsequently removed the Fatimids from power, and made himself ruler in Egypt, subservient to Nur al-Din. Upon the latter's death in 1174, Saladin moved against Nur al-Din's heirs and began to bring the Muslim cities of Syria under his command. He then used the combined resources of Egypt and Syria to attack the Crusaders. By forcibly uniting Muslim territory prior to assaulting the Franks, he followed the pattern of Nur al-Din and Zangi. The same strategy would be used by the Mamluks in their final elimination of the Latin states in 1291.

See alsoCrusades.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ehrenkreutz, Andrew S. Saladin. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1972.

Gibb, H. A. R. The Life of Saladin. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1973.

Lyons, Malcolm Cameron, and Jackson, D. E. P. Saladin: ThePolitics of Holy War. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Warren C. Schultz