Saladin
Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, commonly known as Saladin, was a Kurdish commander and political leader. He was the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty and the first sultan of both Egypt and Syria. An important figure of the Third Crusade, he spearheaded the Muslim military effort against the Crusader states in the Levant. At the height of his power, the Ayyubid realm spanned Egypt, Syria, Upper Mesopotamia, the Hejaz, Yemen, and Nubia.
Alongside his uncle Shirkuh, a Kurdish mercenary commander in service of the Zengid dynasty, Saladin was sent to Fatimid Egypt in 1164, on the orders of the Zengid ruler Nur ad-Din. With their original purpose being to help restore Shawar as the vizier to the teenage Fatimid caliph al-Adid, a power struggle ensued between Shirkuh and Shawar after the latter was reinstated. Saladin, meanwhile, climbed the ranks of the Fatimid government by virtue of his military successes against Crusader assaults and his personal closeness to al-Adid. After Shawar was assassinated and Shirkuh died in 1169, al-Adid appointed Saladin as vizier. During his tenure, Saladin, a Sunni Muslim, began to undermine the Fatimid establishment; following al-Adid's death in 1171, he abolished the Cairo-based Fatimid Caliphate who was an Isma'ili, and realigned Egypt with the Baghdad-based Sunni Abbasid Caliphate.
In the following years, Saladin led forays against the Crusaders in Palestine, commissioned the successful conquest of Yemen, and staved off pro-Fatimid rebellions in Egypt. Not long after Nur ad-Din died in 1174, Saladin launched his conquest of Syria, peacefully entering Damascus at the request of its governor. By mid-1175, Saladin had conquered Hama and Homs, inviting the animosity of other Zengid lords, who were the official rulers of Syria's principalities; he subsequently defeated the Zengids at the Battle of the Horns of Hama in 1175 and was thereafter proclaimed the Sultan of Egypt and Syria by the Abbasid caliph al-Mustadi. Saladin launched further conquests in northern Syria and Upper Mesopotamia, escaping two attempts on his life by the Order of Assassins before returning to Egypt in 1177 to address local issues there. By 1182, Saladin had completed the conquest of Syria after capturing Aleppo but failed to take over the Zengid stronghold of Mosul.
Under Saladin's command, the Ayyubid army defeated the Crusaders at the decisive Battle of Hattin in 1187, capturing Jerusalem and re-establishing Muslim military dominance in the Levant. Although the Crusaders' Kingdom of Jerusalem persisted until the late 13th century, the defeat in 1187 marked a turning point in the Christian military effort against Muslim powers in the region. Saladin died in Damascus in 1193, having given away much of his personal wealth to his subjects; he is buried in a mausoleum adjacent to the Umayyad Mosque. Alongside his significance to Muslim culture, Saladin is revered prominently in Kurdish, Turkic, and Arab culture. He has frequently been described as the most famous Kurdish figure in history.
Early life
Saladin was born in Tikrit in present-day Iraq. His personal name was "Yusuf"; "Salah ad-Din" is a laqab, an honorific epithet, meaning "Righteousness of the Faith". His family was of Kurdish ancestry, and had originated from the village of Ajdanakan near the city of Dvin in central Armenia. He was the son of a Kurdish mercenary Najm ad-Din Ayyub. The Rawadiya tribe he hailed from had been partially assimilated into the Arabic-speaking world by this time.In Saladin's era, no scholar had more influence than sheikh Abdul Qadir Gilani, and Saladin was strongly influenced and aided by him and his pupils. In 1132, the defeated army of Zengi, Atabeg of Mosul, found their retreat blocked by the Tigris River opposite the fortress of Tikrit, where Saladin's father, Najm ad-Din Ayyub served as the warden. Ayyub provided ferries for the army and gave them refuge in Tikrit. Mujahid ad-Din Bihruz, a former Greek slave who had been appointed as the military governor of northern Mesopotamia for his service to the Seljuks, reprimanded Ayyub for giving Zengi refuge, and in 1137 banished Ayyub from Tikrit after his brother Asad ad-Din Shirkuh killed a friend of Bihruz. According to Baha ad-Din ibn Shaddad, Saladin was born the same night his family left Tikrit. In 1139, Ayyub and his family moved to Mosul, where Imad ad-Din Zengi acknowledged his debt and appointed Ayyub commander of his fortress in Baalbek. After the death of Zengi in 1146, his son, Nur ad-Din, became the regent of Aleppo and the leader of the Zengids.
Saladin, who now lived in Damascus, was reportedly fond of the city, but information on his early childhood is scarce. About education, Saladin wrote, "Children are brought up in the way in which their elders were brought up". According to his biographers, Anne-Marie Eddé and al-Wahrani, Saladin was able to answer questions on Euclid, the Almagest, arithmetic, and law, but this was an academic ideal. It was his knowledge of the Qur'an and the "sciences of religion" that linked him to his contemporaries; several sources claim that during his studies, he was more interested in religious studies than joining the military. Another factor which may have affected his interest in religion was that, during the First Crusade, Jerusalem was taken by the Christians. In addition to Islam, Saladin knew the genealogies, biographies, and histories of the Arabs, as well as the bloodlines of Arabian horses. More significantly, he knew the Hamasah of Abu Tammam by heart. He spoke Kurdish and Arabic, and knew Turkish and Persian.
Personality and religious leanings
According to Baha ad-Din ibn Shaddad, Saladin was a pious Muslim—he loved hearing Qur'an recitals, prayed punctually, and "hated the philosophers, those that denied God's attributes, the materialists and those who stubbornly rejected the Holy Law." He was also a supporter of Sufism and a patron of khanqahs in Egypt and Syria, in addition to madrasas that provided orthodox Sunni teachings. Above all else he was a devotee of jihad:In 1174, Saladin ordered the arrest of a Sufi mystic, Qadid al-Qaffas, in Alexandria. In 1191, he ordered his son to execute the Sufi philosopher Yahya al-Suhrawardi, the founder of the Illuminationist current in Muslim philosophy, in Aleppo. Ibn Shaddad, who describes this event as part of his chapter on the sultan's piety, states that Al-Suhrawardi was said to have "rejected the Holy Law and declared it invalid." After consulting with some of the ulama, Saladin ordered al-Suhrawardi's execution. Saladin also opposed the Order of Assassins, an extremist Isma'ili Shi'i sect in Iran and Syria, seeing them as heretics and as being too close with the Crusaders.
Saladin welcomed Asiatic Sufis to Egypt, and he and his followers founded and endowed many khanqahs and zawiyas of which al-Maqrizi gives a long list. However, it is not yet clear what Saladin's interests in the khanqah actually were and why he specifically wanted Sufis from outside Egypt. The answers to these questions lie in the kinds of Sufis he wished to attract. In addition to requiring that the Sufis come from outside Egypt, the waqfiyya seems to have specified that they be of a very particular type:
Early expeditions
Saladin's military career began under the tutelage of his paternal uncle Shirkuh, a prominent military commander under Nur ad-Din, the Zengid emir of Damascus and Aleppo and the most influential teacher of Saladin. In 1163, Shawar, the vizier to al-Adid, who was the Fatimid caliph at the time, had been driven out of Egypt by his rival Dirgham, a member of the powerful Banu Ruzzaik tribe. He asked for military backing from Nur ad-Din, who complied, and in 1164, sent Shirkuh to aid Shawar in his expedition against Dirgham. Saladin, at age 26, went along with them. After Shawar was successfully reinstated as vizier, he demanded that Shirkuh withdraw his army from Egypt for a sum of 30,000 gold dinars, but he refused, insisting it was Nur ad-Din's will that he remain. Saladin's role in this expedition was minor, and it is known that he was ordered by Shirkuh to collect stores from Bilbais prior to its siege by a combined force of Crusaders and Shawar's troops.After the sacking of Bilbais, the Crusader–Egyptian force and Shirkuh's army were to engage in the Battle of al-Babein on the desert border of the Nile, just west of Giza. Saladin played a major role, commanding the right-wing of the Zengid army, while a force of Kurds commanded the left, and Shirkuh was stationed in the centre. Muslim sources at the time, however, put Saladin in the "baggage of the centre" with orders to lure the enemy into a trap by staging a feigned retreat. The Crusader force enjoyed early success against Shirkuh's troops, but the terrain was too steep and sandy for their horses, and commander Hugh of Caesarea was captured while attacking Saladin's unit. After scattered fighting in little valleys to the south of the main position, the Zengid central force returned to the offensive; Saladin joined in from the rear.
The battle ended in a Zengid victory, and Saladin is credited with having helped Shirkuh in one of the "most remarkable victories in recorded history" according to Ibn al-Athir, although more of Shirkuh's men were killed and the battle is considered by most sources as not a total victory. Saladin and Shirkuh moved towards Alexandria where they were welcomed, given money and arms, and provided a base. Faced by a superior Crusader–Egyptian force attempting to besiege the city, Shirkuh split his army. He and the bulk of his force withdrew from Alexandria, while Saladin was left with the task of guarding the city, where he was besieged.
In Egypt
Vizier of Egypt
Shirkuh was in a power struggle over Egypt with Shawar and Amalric I of Jerusalem in which Shawar requested Amalric's assistance. In 1169, Shawar was reportedly assassinated by Saladin, and Shirkuh died later that year. Following his death, a number of candidates were considered for the role of vizier to al-Adid, most of whom were ethnic Kurds. Their ethnic solidarity came to shape the Ayyubid family's actions in their political career. Saladin and his close associates were wary of Turkish influence. On one occasion, Isa al-Hakkari, a Kurdish lieutenant of Saladin, urged a candidate for the viziership, Emir Qutb ad-Din al-Hadhbani, to step aside by arguing that "both you and Saladin are Kurds and you will not let the power pass into the hands of the Turks". Nur ad-Din chose a successor for Shirkuh, but al-Adid appointed Saladin to replace Shawar as vizier.The reasoning behind the Shia caliph al-Adid's selection of Saladin, a Sunni, varies. Ibn al-Athir claims that the caliph chose him after being told by his advisers that "there is no one weaker or younger" than Saladin, and "not one of the emirs obeyed him or served him". However, according to this version, after some bargaining, he was eventually accepted by the majority of the emirs. Al-Adid's advisers were also suspected of promoting Saladin in an attempt to split the Syria-based Zengids. Al-Wahrani wrote that Saladin was selected because of the reputation of his family in their "generosity and military prowess". Imad ad-Din wrote that after the brief mourning period for Shirkuh, during which "opinions differed", the Zengid emirs decided upon Saladin and forced the caliph to "invest him as vizier". Although positions were complicated by rival Muslim leaders, the bulk of the Syrian commanders supported Saladin because of his role in the Egyptian expedition, in which he gained a record of military qualifications.
Inaugurated as vizier on 26 March, Saladin repented "wine-drinking and turned from frivolity to assume the dress of religion", according to Arabic sources of the time. Having gained more power and independence than ever before in his career, he still faced the issue of ultimate loyalty between al-Adid and Nur ad-Din. Later in the year, a group of Egyptian soldiers and emirs attempted to assassinate Saladin, but having already known of their intentions thanks to his intelligence chief Ali ibn Safyan, he had the chief conspirator, Naji, Mu'tamin al-Khilafa—the civilian controller of the Fatimid Palace—arrested and killed. The day after, 50,000 Black African soldiers from the regiments of the Fatimid army opposed to Saladin's rule, along with Egyptian emirs and commoners, staged a revolt. By 23 August, Saladin had decisively quelled the uprising, and never again had to face a military challenge from Cairo.
Towards the end of 1169, Saladin, with reinforcements from Nur ad-Din, defeated a massive Crusader-Byzantine force near Damietta. Afterwards, in the spring of 1170, Nur ad-Din sent Saladin's father to Egypt in compliance with Saladin's request, as well as encouragement from the Baghdad-based Abbasid caliph, al-Mustanjid, who aimed to pressure Saladin in deposing his rival caliph, al-Ad. Saladin himself had been strengthening his hold on Egypt and widening his support base there. He began granting his family members high-ranking positions in the region; he ordered the construction of a college for the Maliki branch of Sunni Islam in the city, as well as one for the Shafi'i denomination to which he belonged in al-Fustat.
After establishing himself in Egypt, Saladin launched a campaign against the Crusaders, besieging Darum in 1170. Amalric withdrew his Knights Templar garrison from Gaza to assist him in defending Darum, but Saladin evaded their force and captured Gaza in 1187. In 1191 Saladin destroyed the fortifications in Gaza built by King Baldwin III for the Knights Templar. It is unclear exactly when, but during that same year, he attacked and captured the Crusader castle of Eilat, built on an island off the head of the Gulf of Aqaba. It did not pose a threat to the passage of the Muslim navy but could harass smaller parties of Muslim ships, and Saladin decided to clear it from his path.