In addition to being a dedicated holy warrior and man of God, he was “sociable, well mannered and entertaining…. The purity of his character
was always evident: when in company he would allow no one to be spoken ill of in his presence, preferring to hear only their good traits; when he himself spoke, [he was] never disposed to insult anyone.”
2
If that were not enough, he was also—apparently—handsome, with kind, clear eyes and a finely trimmed beard. He was prone to acts of generosity and gentle in his interactions with women and children. It was said that he would share his food with supplicants and visitors, in honor of the old custom of the Arabs, rather than hide behind the elaborate rituals of later monarchs. He prayed regularly and publicly and delighted in listening to the verses of the Quran recited by expert readers. He was distrustful of philosophers and mystics who went beyond what the Quran and the tradition dictated. It was said after his death that one of his only regrets was that he had never been able to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. At the end of an expansive list of Saladin’s remarkable traits, which stretched to many pages and thousands of words, one of his biographers explained that those were “simply a few examples of his soul’s lofty and noble qualities. I have limited myself… in order not to extend this book unduly and bore the reader.”
By the time Saladin encountered the armies of the Third Crusade, his image had been burnished to perfection. But in the years immediately after Nur al-Din’s death, there were some who disagreed with the haloed portrait. Where most surviving accounts are unabashed hagio-graphies, not everything written about Saladin was so flattering. One satirist described drunken orgies, stupid scribes, humpbacked ministers, and cowardly generals who fought only when victory was certain. Like the court jester in Europe, satirists were allowed to poke fun at the powerful, to a point. The dark side of Saladin’s piety may well have been a lack of humor about himself, and he was so offended by one description that he had the author banished. The poor soul was hurt and surprised, and wrote a bitter letter asking what he had done to deserve such treatment. “Why have you sent away a trustworthy man who has committed no crime and no theft? Banish the muezzins [who call the faithful to pray] from your lands if you are sending away all those who speak the truth.”
3
These sour notes, however, were drowned out by the chorus of praise, not just in his own time but in later generations. Western historians were particularly impressed. One of the premier twentieth-century scholars of Near Eastern history, H. A. R. Gibb, summarized Saladin’s
legacy in language that would have done a court historian proud. “For a brief but decisive moment, by sheer goodness and firmness of character, he raised Islam out of the rut of political demoralization.” High praise from a sober English don, but nothing compared to the fulsome portrait left by Edward Gibbon in the eighteenth century. Gibbon, who rarely hesitated to use his pen to commit character assassinations, elevated Sal-adin high above the rank and file of humanity. He wrote that Saladin, having been fond of wine and women as a youth, saw the error of his ways and transformed himself.
The garment of Saladin was of coarse woollen; water was his only drink; and while he emulated the temperance, he surpassed the chastity, of his Arabian prophet [Muhammad]…. The justice of his divan was accessible to the meanest supplicant against himself and his ministers…. So boundless was his liberality that he distributed twelve thousand horses at the siege of Acre… and in a martial reign, the tributes were diminished, and the wealthy citizens enjoyed, without fear or danger, the fruits of their industry.
Yet Gibbon was not blind to Saladin’s core. “In a fanatic age, himself a fanatic, the genuine virtues of Saladin commanded the esteem of the Christians; the emperor of Germany gloried in his friendship; the Greek [Byzantine] emperor solicited his alliance; and the conquest of Jerusalem diffused, and perhaps magnified, his fame both in the East and West.”
4
Gibbon, who embodied the swirl of contradictions that flowed through English society of the eighteenth century, which was still attached to the church yet testing the limits of that allegiance, recognized that Saladin was both a believer to the core and an empire builder. Which took priority in Saladin’s soul is impossible to determine. But it is safe to assume that resurrecting an imperial Arab state and serving God were one and the same for him. His political ambitions were fully compatible with his religious passions, and his religious fervor gave him a strength and determination that most of his rivals lacked.
Some Western historians have argued that Saladin was primarily a dynast who manipulated religious imagery and language to justify his actions and craft his image. They note, correctly, that between 1174, when Nur al-Din died, and 1187, when Jerusalem was taken, Saladin spent nearly three years actively fighting other Muslim rulers, and little
more than a year fighting Christians. Yet even when battling other Muslims, Saladin used the justification of holy war. Against the Shi’ite Fatimids, that was easy: wars between competing Muslims sects were every bit as vicious and ideological as wars between Christian sects could be. And judging from the Old Testament, battles between different Israelite tribes were hardly civilized affairs. But Saladin also relied on the language of holy war to validate his campaigns against other Sunni Muslim states.
Throughout his career, Saladin wrote letters to the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad, hoping to receive a blessing. Even in its absence, he claimed that he was acting as a loyal servant of the Commander of the Faithful and as the caliph’s sword. As such, he would sweep away heretics and bring the errant Muslim city-states of the region once more into the fold of the community of believers. Those cities that resisted his entreaties he attacked because they were standing in the way of God’s will. When the emir of Mosul refused to bow, Saladin claimed that the city was a key element in a master plan. With Mosul safely in Saladin’s camp, the rest of the region would follow as surely as night follows day. Every other holdout would succumb, and then Jerusalem and finally Constantinople, “until the word of God is supreme and the Abbasid caliphate has wiped the world clean, turning the churches into mosques.” Later, face-to-face with the leaders of Mosul, Saladin stated that he had only one reason for wanting the city, and it had nothing to do with his Kurdish roots. “We have come,” he declared, “to unite the word of Islam and restore things by removing differences.”
5
For Saladin, the ends ultimately justified the means. Though he didn’t seem to take any pleasure in war, he saw it as a necessary instrument. At each stage in his career, he was able to identify what was required to get to the next stage. After he had solidified his position in Egypt, he knew he still could not mount a credible challenge to the kingdom of Jerusalem. To do so would require the combined resources of the various states of the Near East. Unless they voluntarily submitted to him, he would force them to join him. If that meant war, then he would fight.
Yet Saladin’s jihad was not the jihad of the twenty-first century. It was not a holy war of hate. It was a war of restoration, a struggle
for
orthodox Islam rather than
against
Christians or against Muslims who deviated from the Sunni path. There was a reason that Saladin spent more time
fighting against other Muslims—including the fierce, fanatical, and at times suicidal cult of the Assassins, who were the al-Qaeda of their day—than he did against Christians. But that reason had nothing to do with doctrine. It was tactical. Only a unified Muslim Near East could defeat the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem.
If holy war is understood primarily as a struggle against non-Muslims and Muslims who have strayed, Saladin doesn’t make much sense. But the problem here is not Saladin’s jihad; it is how jihad has come to be defined by both Westerners and Muslims in the modern world.
As Islam evolved, so did the idea of jihad. Traditionally, there are two types of jihad in Islam: the greater jihad, which is an individual struggle for purity, and the lesser jihad, which is a campaign against those who dishonor or defeat the community of the faithful. The greater jihad is something all devout individuals must wage against their desires, especially those desires that contradict the central teachings of the Quran. The mystics of Islam often spoke of jihad as a dark night of the soul, where the striver is faced with his demons and must confront them in order to stay on the path toward God. The lesser jihad can take the form of a war against unbelievers, but it can also be any focused effort to restore Muslim society. War is one tool; political reform might be another; and economic policies could be as well.
6
When Saladin spoke of jihad, he meant the remaking of Muslim society in the Near East, both because that was the right thing to do and because only then could Muslims once again rule Jerusalem. Not once was he accused of hypocritically using the language of jihad to advance selfish ambitions, in large measure because he first tended to his own spiritual house. In short, he seems to have embraced the greater jihad before he embarked on the lesser. And there lies the explanation why Saladin, the holy warrior par excellence, is nonetheless admired in the West and remains an icon in the Near East and in many parts of the Muslim world.
THE THIRD CRUSADE
BUT AS LAUDED
as he was and still is, Saladin was also a flesh-and-blood warrior. The Saladin admired by most Westerners is so good and
pure that he is almost a caricature. The real Saladin, however, was not always disposed to forgive his enemies or treat them with leniency. He had little tolerance for mystics who refused to fight and instead retreated from society to probe the inner meaning of the Quran, and he developed an obsessive hatred for at least one Christian adversary, named Reynald of Châtillon. This Saladin, the angry general, the stubborn commander who was neither curious about theology nor kind to those who were, has been safely tucked away in the past.
That said, it was not as though Reynald was undeserving of contempt. He had a checkered career, as an adventurer, knight, and political prisoner who married well in 1176 and thereby became lord of one of the most imposing fortresses in Jordan, the castle of Kerak. Its ruins still inspire awe, perched high above the Dead Sea in the biblical land of Moab. Before Reynald became a castellan, he was known for his brutalities, one of which entailed beating the patriarch of Antioch, then smothering the wounds on his face with honey and leaving him out in the middle of the summer in the Syrian desert to be tormented by flies and assorted carrion fowl until he agreed to pay an exorbitant ransom. Once in control of his own fortress, Reynald apparently took unseemly pleasure in casting enemies off its ramparts.
Saladin could not have cared less about what Reynald did to the patriarch of Antioch or other Christians who crossed him, but he took offense at Reynald’s attacks on pilgrimage caravans headed to Mecca. Not only was the north-south route through Syria a central artery for pilgrims, it was—as it had been for centuries—a primary trade route. Disrupting the caravans, harming the pilgrims, and stealing their goods posed a serious challenge to Saladin. So did Reynald’s successful raids along the Red Sea. Any ruler who had aspirations of being accepted as a viable sultan had to be able to protect access to the holiest place of Islam. If Saladin could not guarantee the safety of pilgrims making the annual hajj to Mecca and Medina, he could not claim the respect of the Muslim world. Reynald’s attacks also jeopardized Saladin’s revenue. Protecting the caravans meant not just respect, but the right to collect moderate payments for the service.
The raids staged by Reynald provoked a lethal response. Saladin declared war, raised an army of more than twelve thousand cavalry, and invaded the kingdom of Jerusalem. The Franks, recognizing the magnitude of the threat, patched over their differences. The count of Antioch,
who had been flirting with Saladin and had even entered into a preliminary alliance with him, fell into line and made peace with the Templars and Hospitallers. The Crusader states assembled a formidable army, but that only made their subsequent defeat worse. Their military strategy was poorly conceived and proved to be no match for their adversary. They were gulled into meeting Saladin at a place of his choosing, on terrain that he desired, and at the hour he elected. The result in 1187 was a devastating battle at the Horns of Hattin, a labyrinth of barren hills just west of the Sea of Galilee.
On the morning of July 3, 1187, the Frankish armies woke to no dawn. Instead, the skies were filled with burning smoke. They had spent the previous day in the arid vale of Hattin, and though they knew that Saladin was near, they did not know precisely where. That morning, engulfed by the smoke generated by the brushwood and dry grass fires set by Saladin’s forces, the disoriented Franks were surrounded and annihilated. The king of Jerusalem and the masters of both the Templars and the Hospitallers were captured. So was the hated Reynald and a precious, irreplaceable relic: a piece of the True Cross.
With the dead still on the battlefield, the captives were brought to Saladin’s tent. According to one Frankish account of what happened, Saladin
ordered that a syrup diluted with water in a cup of gold be brought. He tasted it, then gave it to the king to drink, saying: “Drink deeply.” The king drank, like a man who was extremely thirsty, then handed the cup on to Prince Reynald. Prince Reynald would not drink. Saladin was irritated and told him: “Drink, for you will never drink again!” The prince replied that if it pleased God, he would never drink or eat anything of his. Saladin asked him: “Prince Reynald, if you held me in your prison as I now hold you in mine, what, by your law, would you do to me?” “So help me God,” he replied, “I would cut off your head.” Saladin was greatly enraged at this most insolent reply, and said: “Pig! You are my prisoner, yet you answer me so arrogantly?” He took a sword in his hand and thrust it right through his body. The mamluks who were standing by rushed at him and cut off his head. Saladin took some of the blood and sprinkled it on his head in recognition that he had taken vengeance on him. Then he ordered that they carry the head to Damascus, and it was dragged along the ground to show the Saracens whom the prince had wronged what vengeance he had had.