Saladin Moslem Military Hero
Conqueror of the Kingdom of Heaven and opponent of Richard the Lionh
Saladin united the Middle East and fought two separate armies of crusaders. He is seen as a great military leader by both the east and the west.
Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub Salah al-Din (known in the Western world simply as Saladin) was born in the small town of Tikrit to Kurdish parents of a noble class in 1137 AD. The name Salah ad-Din means "Righteousness of Faith", and has been an inspiration for Muslims in many respects. He chose the military life and served as an officer in the armies of the Caliphate of Syria, seeing combat against the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt in the 1160s. In 1169 Saladin took on the role of Vizier for the minor child Abbasid Caliphate and basically held power over this part of what is now Syria. Eventually he declared himself the Caliph after the young man died. He then led his armies to finally defeat the forces of his old enemy, the Fatimid Caliphate and by 1181 he had taken control of everything that is now Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Palestine and Syria.
This brought him into conflict with the Christian knight commander Raynald of Chatillon. Raynald had threatened to burn the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina to the ground and both raided Muslim shipping routes and attacked unarmed pilgrims on the Hajj from his base in Jerusalem. Saladin led his armies to war with the crusaders to end this practice. Raynald struck first and led his armored knights into the desert and the shocking defeat at the Battle of Hattin in July 1187. There Saladin, no stranger to desert warfare, waited until the crusaders were exhausted and out of water to strike and utterly crush them. He executed Raynald and ransomed the captured knights which included the leaders of the Hospitallers and the Knights Templar. This led directly to the capture of Jerusalem in October and set forth Richard the Lionheart's Third crusade to liberate the city. On September 7, 1191, at the Battle of Arsuf, 30 miles north of Jaffa, Saladin attacked Richard's army. Saladin attempted to lure Richard's forces out to be easily picked off as he had done with Raynald, but Richard maintained his formation and with the Hospitallers on Saladin's right flank and the Templars on the left Richard won the battle. On September 2, 1192, Richard and Saladin finalized a treaty by which Jerusalem would remain under Muslim control, but which also allowed unarmed Christian pilgrims to visit the city.
History records that Saladin was a more benevolent warlord than his crusader opponents. When Saladin took Jerusalem he allowed the crusaders there to leave unharmed. Richard however had 2700 of the Muslim prisoners from the captured garrison of Acre killed, including women and children despite having promised that he allow them to be ransomed. This was seen as being in particularly poor taste because Saladin had already paid one third of the ransom requested for the garrison and was making arrangements for the balance. Saladin won great respect among the knights by sending Richard a replacement horse after his mount had been killed in battle. In another engagement he sent Richard his personal doctor after learning that the crusader king had taken ill.
On Saladin March 4, 1193 died of natural causes at age 56. His treasury was empty from years of warfare and he was buried in a plain wooden crypt with very little ceremony. Saladin was buried in a tomb in the Umayyad Mosque in what is now Damascus, Syria. He is seen as a great military hero and nationalist in the Moslem world and SalahaddinUniversity in Arbil in Iraq, among many, was named in his honor. He is rare among Middle Eastern military leaders in the fact that he has been broadly written about and praised. He was written of by Dante in The Inferno as well as by Sir Walter Scott in The Talisman. A man who saw himself as the greatest warlord of the modern world, Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany bought and shipped an ornate marble sarcophagus to the mausoleum, however out of respect for the old hero's remains they were never moved from the ancient wooden chest they have been in since his was entombed and Willy's crypt remains unused. . Saladin has recently been portrayed in the western world in the movieKingdom of Heaven in 2004. The British Army, which owes its lineage arguably to King Richard the Lionheart and his knights of the third crusade, have a very well designed armored car named after Saladin that is used by a dozen countries
Sources
The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin (Crusade Texts in Translation) D. S. Richards (Translator) ISBN-10: 0754633810
Saladin: All-Powerful Sultan and the Uniter of Islam -Stanley Lane-Poole ISBN-10: 0815412347
