Saladin: The Sultan Who Vanquished the Crusaders and Built an Islamic Empire

232 Pages·2016·11.06 MB·English

by  John Man

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Copyright © 2016 by John Man Maps by Tom Coulson at Encompass Graphics First published in Great
Britain in 2015 by Bantam Press, an imprint of Transworld Publishers. Transworld is part of the Penguin
Random House group of companies.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
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without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. For
information, address Da Capo Press, 44 Farnsworth Street, 3rd Floor, Boston, MA 02210.
Typeset in Sabon by Falcon Oast Graphic Art Ltd.
Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-0-306-82488-3 (e-book)
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents List of illustrations
Preface: The Once and Future King
1 A World in Conflict
2 A Teenager in Damascus
3 Into Egypt
4 Building a Power-base
5 Back to Syria, and a Dead-end
6 Enter the Villain
7 Defeat and Victory: The Tide on the Turn
8 Reynald’s Raid
9 Build-up to the Show-down
10 The Horns of Hattin
11 Retaking the Holy City
12 The Third Crusade: The Gathering Storm
13 Acre
14 The End of the Third Crusade
15 Death, and Enduring Life
16 A Brief History of Leadership
17 Legacy: A Glowing Image, a Grim Reality
Bibliography
Photographic acknowledgements
Index
List of Illustrations and Maps
1 The Holy Lance: engraving from William Hone’s Everyday Book, 1826
21 Clash between crusader and Muslim cavalry: engraving of a twelfth-
century crusader window (now destroyed) at St Denis from Bernard de
Montfaucon’s Les monuments de la monarchie françoise, 1729
43 Pigeon post: fifteenth-century woodcut illustration from The Travels of Sir
John Mandeville, 1481
63 Depiction of Saladin after a twelfth-century Arabian codex. Print
Collector/Getty Images
77 Knight praying before going into battle, redrawn from the Westminster
Psalter c. 1250, from Short History of the English People by J. R. Green,
1893. Universal History Archive/Getty Images
89 Reynald de Châtillon: drawing after a contemporary seal from The
Crusades by T. A. Archer and Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, 1894
103 Soldiers undermining a city wall: drawing after an illumination in
Chroniques de France ou de Saint Denis, 1325–50, British Library, from
Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages by Henry Shaw, 1843. Print
Collector/Getty Images
125 Camel train redrawn from the Catalan Atlas of 1375
135 Siege machine: drawing after a manuscript illumination from Dresses and
Decorations of the Middle Ages by Henry Shaw, 1843. Print
Collector/Getty Images
151 Balian of Ibelin: drawing after a contemporary seal from The Crusades by
T. A. Archer and Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, 1894
169 Jerusalem: drawing after the reverse of a Templar seal representing the
Mosque of Omar or the Templum Domini from The Crusades by T. A.
Archer and Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, 1894
187 Frederick Barbarossa: sixteenth-century engraving
195 Richard I: drawing after a contemporary seal from A History of the Art of
War by Charles Oman, 1898
209 Saladin: sixteenth-century engraving. © Bettmann/Corbis
231 Mourning the death of Saladin: coin issued in 1193, the year of his death
237 Saladin enthroned: coin issued in 1215-16
249 Motif of Saladin’s eagle used on the Egyptian flag
List of maps
14–15 The World of Young Saladin c. 1140
157 Battle of Hattin 1187
228–9 Saladin’s Empire 1190
Preface
The Once and Future King
ASK ANYONE IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN TO NAME their
greatest hero and the answer you will get is almost certainly ‘Saladin’. All across
Europe and America, if you ask for one Arabic hero, the answer, after a pause
for thought, will probably be the same. One in a million might say that, strictly
speaking, he wasn’t Arabic but Kurdish. But you get the point. Kurds, Arabs,
Iranians, Turks, north Africans, Jews and Europeans of all nationalities, and
many Americans with Middle Eastern connections, think Saladin is one of the
greatest leaders of all time, with virtues to match his achievements.
History supports them, up to a point. But there is more at work than history.
Saladin is a fantasy hero as well as a real one. He embodies dreams and wishes,
like Arthur, though rather better because so much more is known of him. Take
one theme of his life story, which is like the plot of a good-guy v. bad-guy
movie. Saladin himself is, of course, the good guy. Against him is set a baddie
with such archetypical faults that he sounds like a caricature. His name was
Reynald, and he came to the Holy Land for fame and fortune, which he found by
doing terrible things. He caught the eye of a princess and took control of her
city. He wrung cash from a prelate by torturing him and leaving him naked in the
burning sun to be food for insects. He used that money to invade and ruin a
beautiful and peaceful island. A spell in prison made him even more fanatical,
greedy and bloodthirsty. By the time Saladin came up against him, Reynald was
the grim master of the grimmest of Crusader castles. He ignored truces and
insulted those who remonstrated. Saladin was so appalled by his behaviour that
he set aside his usual magnanimity and swore he would kill Reynald with his
own hands. Finally, after a famous victory, he did so, taking off his head with
one blow of his sword. Insult, vengeance, retribution: these are themes that have
driven great storylines from the ancient Greeks to Hollywood.
There’s Hollywood in another strand of Saladin’s story too. In the battle