January 1137-1193 A.D. Saladin—Muslim Military & Political Leader
Saladin (1137/1138–1193) was a Muslim military
and political leader who as sultan (or leader) led Islamic forces during the
Crusades. Saladin’s greatest triumph over the European Crusaders came at the
Battle of Hattin in 1187, which paved the way for Islamic re-conquest of
Jerusalem and other Holy Land cities in the Near East. During the subsequent
Third Crusade, Saladin was unable to defeat the armies led by England’s King
Richard I (the Lionheart), reuslting in the loss of much of this conquered territory.
However, he was able to negotiate a truce with Richard I that allowed for
continued Muslim control of Jerusalem.
On July 4, 1187, the Muslim forces of Saladin
(Salah al-Din) decisively defeated the crusader army south of the Horns of
Hattin in Palestine, capturing Guy, king of Jerusalem; Reginald of Châtillon,
Saladin’s enemy whom he personally killed; over two hundred Knights Hospitaller
and Templar Knightly Orders whom he ordered to be killed; and many crusaders
whom he ransomed. The remaining captured Christians were sold on the local
slave markets.
Born into a Kurdish, Sunni, military family,
Saladin rose rapidly within Muslim society as a subordinate to the
Syrian-northern Mesopotamian military leader Nur al-Din. Participating in three
campaigns into Egypt (which was governed by the Shi`ite Fatimid dynasty),
Saladin became head of the military expeditionary forces in 1169. After he was
appointed wazir(adviser) to the Shi`ite caliph in Cairo, he consolidated his
position by eliminating the Fatimid’s sub-Saharan infantry slave forces.
Finally, in 1171 the Shi`ite Fatimid caliphate was brought to an end by Saladin
with the recognition of the Sunni caliphate in Baghdad. In the meantime, Nur
al-Din kept pressuring Saladin to send him money, supplies, and troops, but
Saladin tended to stall. An open clash between the two was avoided by the death
of Nur al-Din in 1174.
Although Egypt was the primary source for his
financial support, Saladin spent almost no time in the Nile Valley after 1174.
According to one of his admiring contemporaries, Saladin used the wealth of
Egypt for the conquest of Syria, that of Syria for the conquest of northern
Mesopotamia, and that of northern Mesopotamia for the conquest of the crusader
states along the Levant coast.
This oversimplification aside, the bulk of
Saladin’s activities from 1174 until 1187 involved fighting other Muslims and
eventually bringing Aleppo, Damascus, Mosul, and other cities under his
control. He tended to appoint members of his family to many of the
governorships, establishing a dynasty known as the Ayyubids in Egypt, Syria,
and even Yemen. At the same time he was willing to make truces with the
crusaders in order to free his forces to fight Muslims. Reginald of Châtillon
violated these arrangements, to Saladin’s annoyance.
Modern historians debate Saladin’s motivation,
but for those contemporaries close to him, there were no questions: Saladin had
embarked on a holy war to eliminate Latin political and military control in the
Middle East, particularly Christian control over Jerusalem. After the Battle of
Hattin, Saladin, following the predominant military theory of the time, moved rapidly
against as many of the weak Christian centers as possible, offering generous
terms if they would surrender, while at the same time avoiding long sieges.
This policy had the benefit of leading to the rapid conquest of almost every
crusader site, including the peaceful Muslim liberation of Jerusalem in October
1187. The negative was that his policy permitted the crusaders time to regroup
and refortify two cities south of Tripoli—Tyre and Ashkelon.
From Tyre, Christian forces, reinforced by the
soldiers of the Third Crusade (1189–1191), encircled Muslims in Acre, destroyed
the bulk of the Egyptian navy, and, under the leadership of Richard the
Lion-Heart, captured the city and slaughtered its Muslim defenders. Saladin, by
avoiding a direct battle with the new crusader forces, was able to preserve
Muslim control over Jerusalem and most of Syria and Palestine.
Saladin’s reputation for generosity,
religiosity, and commitment to the higher principles of a holy war have been
idealized by Muslim sources and by many Westerners including Dante, who placed
him in the company of Hector, Aeneas, and Caesar as a “virtuous pagan.”
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