Saladin (Salah ad-Din)

Saladin Yusuf ibn Ayyub was born in 1137 at the citadel of Tikrit into a Kurdish family of the Rawadiya tribe, originally from the Dvin region of Armenia. His family moved to Damascus and then to Baalbek, where his uncle Shirkuh led the army of Nur al-Din Zengi. The young Saladin grew up at his uncle's court, mastered horsemanship, law and Arabic, and memorised the Quran in his youth. In 1169 he accompanied Shirkuh on a campaign to Egypt, where the Shia Fatimid state was collapsing under Crusader pressure. After Shirkuh's sudden death Saladin found himself, at thirty-two, vizier to the last Fatimid caliph al-Adid. He governed with patience, ended the Fatimid caliphate in 1171, restored Egypt to Sunni rule, and founded the Ayyubid dynasty that would govern Egypt, Syria and Yemen for two centuries. Saladin united the Muslim front against the Crusader states in what is today Palestine. On 4 July 1187 he routed the army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem at the Battle of Hattin near Tiberias; the True Cross was lost and more than 20,000 Crusader knights fell. Three months later, on 2 October 1187, he entered Jerusalem peacefully after 88 years of Crusader rule, granting the Christian inhabitants the right either to leave safely or to remain under his protection — an act European chroniclers themselves recorded as a model of chivalry in the face of their own failure. For five years he then faced the Third Crusade and the English king Richard the Lionheart. Stern in battle, he was magnanimous in mercy: he sent Richard peaches and snow from the Lebanese mountains when the king fell ill, and offered him his personal physician. Saladin died in Damascus on 4 March 1193 of a passing fever, leaving no fortune sufficient to cover his own funeral. He was buried beside the Umayyad Mosque, where his tomb is still visited. Islamic history remembers him as a symbol of unity; European literature — even Dante's Divine Comedy — gave him a place of honour as the noblest of foes.