On Friday, October 2, 1187, Saladin’s troops took control of Jerusalem. They were scrupulously fair toward the conquered. Discipline held, and the city changed hands quickly and bloodlessly Saladin’s men repossessed the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, and they did so
on a day full of symbolism. By the Muslim calendar, it was the anniversary of Muhammad’s night journey, when, in honor of Christ’s passion, he had been transported on a magical horse-like creature, the Buraq, to the Dome of the Rock and from there to heaven.
Saladin was humbled by the enormity of what he had achieved. He interpreted the recapture of Jerusalem as a sign of God’s pleasure, and he was determined to show his respect. Later court chroniclers tripped over themselves to describe what happened. After securing the city, Saladin focused on the purification of Al-Aqsa Mosque. Because it had been occupied by the Templars for so many years, that was no easy task. But with men working around the clock, it was soon restored. Then, according to the chronicler Imad ad-Din,
The Quranic readers arrived, the official prayers were read, the ascetics and pious men congregated…. They joined in groups to pray and prostrate themselves, humbling themselves and beating their breasts, dignitaries and ascetics, judges and witnesses, zealots and combatants in the Holy War, standing and sitting, keeping vigil and committed to prayer by night…. The traditionists recited, the holy orators comforted men’s souls, the scholars disputed, the lawyers discussed, the narrators narrated.
Though a fair number of the Christians of the city were held for ransom, they were treated honorably. Given Saladin’s commitment to the basic tenets of Islam, that made sense. He took the Quranic injunctions about the People of the Book seriously, and that may have guided his choice of the preacher who gave the first sermon in the resanctified Al-Aqsa Mosque: the chief judge of Aleppo, known for his eloquence and learning, who delivered an impassioned lecture about the significance of Jerusalem to Muslims everywhere.
“O Men,” he cried,
rejoice at good tidings. God is well-pleased with what you have done, and this is the summit of man’s desire; he has helped you bring back this strayed camel from misguided hands and to restore it to the fold of Islam, after the infidels had mishandled it for nearly a hundred years. Rejoice at the purifying of this House…. It was the dwelling place of your father Abraham, the spot where the Prophet Muhammad, God bless him, ascended to Heaven, the
qibla
to which you turned to pray in the early time of Islam, the abode of prophets, the resort of the saints, the grave of the saints, the place where God’s revelation came down, and where all mankind must gather on the Day of Resurrection and the Day of Judgement…. It is the city to which God sent his servant and apostle, the Word which entered into Mary and Jesus.
1
The retaking of Jerusalem was the culmination of a dream for Sal-adin. Early in his life, he had dedicated himself to the unification of Syria and Egypt as a necessary prelude for a coordinated assault on the Crusader states and their jewel, the kingdom of Jerusalem. Donning the mantle of holy war, he had achieved his life’s ambition and evicted the Christians from the Dome of the Rock. And yet, in that moment of glory, his chosen preacher gave a triumphant sermon that linked Jerusalem to the biblical tradition of Abraham and Jesus.
Jerusalem was holy to Islam precisely because it had been holy to the Jews and to the Christians. It later became sacred to Muhammad and to the Muslim community, but only because it was the city of apostles. In short, Jerusalem was sanctified in Muslim eyes not in spite of but because it had been the holiest of holies for the People of the Book. For Saladin, Jerusalem was the glue binding the People of the Book to Islam. His holy war had been fought against both Muslim and Christian states that stood in the way of the unification of the entire community of believers—Christian, Jew, and Muslim—under the banner of Islam and the house of Saladin.
This is a far cry from how this period is commonly viewed. The simple black-and-white of us versus them, Muslims versus Christians, doesn’t come close to explaining why Saladin did what he did, and the modern understanding of holy war doesn’t help. Though Saladin is one of the few historical Muslims who enjoys a favorable image in the West, that does not mean he is understood. He may have been a noble soul in comparison with his contemporaries, but he was also a man of his era. He waged a jihad against the Christian invaders from Europe as part of a grand strategy to build a dynasty and restore the Near East to the glory of the seventh and eighth centuries.
HOLY WAR
SALADIN WAS NOT
the first to use the language of holy war, but before him, it had been ineffective. Even with the failure of the Second Crusade in 1147 and the inability of the Christian princes to capture Damascus, Jerusalem remained untouched and unchallenged. The Turkish and Arab emirs of Syria and Egypt remained at least as committed to fighting one other as they did to fighting the Franks or the Byzantines. Sometime in the middle of the twelfth century, however, the landscape began to change. A succession of strong Turkish and Kurdish princes cobbled together a formidable state to rival Jerusalem. The first crack to appear in the Frankish façade was the fall of Edessa, and the next was the Christian debacle at the gates of Damascus during the Second Crusade. Stepping into this breach was the ruler of Aleppo, Nur al-Din.
The political balance in the Near East was defined by two rivalries: one between Aleppo and Damascus, the other between the kingdom of Jerusalem and the surrounding Muslim states. In Aleppo, Nur al-Din, known as “the Saint King,” succeeded his father, Zengi, in 1146. His father cast a long a shadow, so feared that the rival emir of Damascus had entered into an alliance with the king of Jerusalem solely to contain him. It was a classic case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” It was also business as usual in the Near East at the time. One month, armies were arrayed on the side of faith, and Christians squared off against Muslims. Then, as one set of princes died, or were killed, old alliances melted away and new ones formed, based not on creed but on who wanted what. In the shifting political sands of the region, the Byzantines, transplanted Franks, intermittent Crusaders from Europe, the Fatimids of Egypt, Seljuk sultans, and Arab emirs jockeyed for preeminence. Strategically placed on central trade routes and standing between the Frankish states of the Mediterranean coast and the Turks inland, Damascus was the prime prize.
The ruler of Damascus, pinned between a cold alliance with the Franks to the west and the threat of Aleppo and Nur al-Din to the north and east, tried to have it both ways. While technically maintaining his pact with Jerusalem, he aggressively wooed Nur al-Din, who eventually agreed to a partnership. That upset the balance between Damascus and the kingdom of Jerusalem, and helped trigger the Second Crusade. Nur
al-Din then seized the opportunity created by the departure of the failed Crusader armies after 1147 to extend his reach. Seven years later, he did what the armies of the Second Crusade could not and captured Damascus.
The annexation of Damascus not only transformed Nur al-Din into one of the most powerful players in the region; because of his unusual character, it also set in motion a shift in tone. Nur al-Din was less inclined to accommodate the Franks. Instead, he wanted to remove the transplanted Westerners. Unlike most Muslim warlords, who were feared for their ferocity or ridiculed for their timidity but rarely, if ever, praised for their character, Nur al-Din was lauded for humility and devoutness. And unlike so many before him, he was driven not just by ambition but by faith.
The image of the Muslim warrior riding into battle with the Quran in one hand may be familiar, but to Muslims of the Near East in the twelfth century, it would have been alien. Nur al-Din was remarkable not because he was an archetype but because he was so different. Ambition was commonplace, but piety was a rare quality in a prince. Muslim jurists, recognizing that rulers used the Quran mostly when it was convenient and did what they wanted when it was not, had come to the conclusion that it was better to suffer the cruelties of a mercurial, even unjust ruler than risk the chaos that might come with trying to overthrow him.
The result was a political philosophy of accommodation. Muslim theologians were hesitant to challenge the legitimacy of a ruler, whether or not that ruler honored the laws of Islam, which rulers rarely did. With the decline in the power and prestige of the Baghdad caliphate, Muslim scholars adopted a pragmatic approach to the warlords and draped it with religious justification. That was not overly difficult, given that Islam, at heart, involved submission to the ultimate authority, God. Faced with political fragmentation, the
ulama
emphasized the duty of Muslims to submit obediently to the ruler. If the ruler was unjust, he would ultimately answer to God, and in the interim, it was the responsibility of the individual Muslim to submit to the ruler’s authority. The
ulama
, for their part, had a duty to ensure that religious law, the sharia, was preserved and honored, if not by the ruler, then at least by judges and scholars.
The ethos of accommodation and obedience was often challenged by individuals, but without a unified church, the
ulama
were less able to
resist the will of any particular ruler than bishops, cardinals, and popes were in Europe at the time. Occasionally, some scholar would denounce a ruler for his actions, but usually from a distance. A judge living in Baghdad could safely inveigh against an emir in Syria, but he would risk his life if he said the same things in Damascus. It was the rare individual who took a stand against a perceived violation of religious law by a ruler, and it was the even rarer individual who did not then have to flee to escape that ruler’s rage.
By contrast, Europe at the time was in the midst of a centuries-long struggle between church and state. The Crusades were a means to an end for the Catholic Church, which used the rallying call of war against unbelievers as a way to gain influence and power. Crusades were waged not just against Muslims in the Near East but also against pagan tribes in the Baltics, against heretics in Europe, and of course against Muslims in Spain. Most of these Crusades were spurred by a church and a papacy that were competing with political leaders for a dominant position in society.
But in the Muslim world, the political class was preeminent. In Baghdad, the Abbasid caliphate continued to exert a pull on the collective heartstrings of parts of the Muslim world, primarily because it was a reminder of an ideal of unity. The fact that such unity had rarely existed was less important than the fact that the ideal had always been central. No one could dispute that the Muslim world had been fractured for centuries, but the yearning for a unified community
(umma)
never faded. If anything, it grew stronger the more the reality of the Muslim world underscored its absence. As a result, while the invasion of the Crusaders did not initially lead to a counterreaction, the seeds were there. The inability of the Muslim states of the Near East to repel the Franks was a stark reminder of their divisions. After a tepid, shell-shocked response during the first part of the twelfth century, the political and military leaders of the Near East began to channel the unease and use it to craft a new balance of power capable of challenging the invaders.
It is impossible to understand the rise of Nur al-Din, and of his successor Salah ad-Din, without this context. Muslims were not only divided in the face of Western Christians, but they suffered from a debilitating legacy of doctrinal schisms that had afflicted the
umma
since the time of Ali and the formation of Shi’a. For the Sunnis, the Shi’ite Fatimid state in Egypt was just as disturbing as the Crusader states in Palestine.
Both represented the dire consequences of disunity. Both demonstrated what would happen to the
umma
if it fragmented.
When Nur al-Din died in 1174, he was praised throughout the Near East as a ruler of wisdom, maturity, and piety. But it was not immediately clear who would succeed him. The most likely candidate was his deputy, Saladin, the governor of Egypt who had spent more than a decade dealing with Frankish invasions and the intrigues of the rapidly decaying Fatimid state. Year by year, Saladin had acquired more influence, aided by the fortuitous death of assorted rivals. His battlefield victories were impressive, but his political instincts were also remarkably keen. After years of delicate maneuvering, he finally ended the life of the feeble Fatimid empire and ordered that the name of the Fatimid caliph be omitted from the Friday prayer and the name of the Sunni Abbasid caliph be included instead. Then, when he learned of the death of Nur al-Din, he moved with alacrity.
It was natural for Saladin to believe that he was the rightful heir to Nur al-Din. Like his former master, he professed a deep commitment to bringing the Near East under one Sunni overlord. At least that is the impression that has survived the centuries. Judging from the few contemporary histories that survive, it is hard to believe that Saladin was a man of flesh and blood. Either he was a master of propaganda or he was truly blessed with grace and nobility and motivated by a genuine passion to make the Muslim community whole. In truth, he may have been both.
It is ironic that Saladin is so celebrated in the West. In his day, he was the greatest defender of the concept of jihad in the Muslim world. In the words of one his biographers,
Saladin was extremely diligent in waging this holy war, and it was constantly on his mind. One could swear by one’s right hand without fear of contradiction that, from the time he first set out, intent on jihad, until he died, he did not spend a single gold or silver coin except on jihad and pious works. His heart and mind were so taken over by this burning zeal for jihad that he could speak of nothing else. Out of his desire to fight for God’s cause, he left behind him his family, children, country, home.