Why Saladin Continues to Captivate the Arab World

On October 2, 1187, the demoralized Christian defenders of Jerusalem watched Saladin, the ruler of the Muslim Near East, enter the city.  This day – by coincidence, the anniversary of the Prophet’s Night Journey to Heaven, marked the defining moment of the sultan’s career.

Yet eighty-eight years earlier, in July, 1099, the armies of the First Crusade completed their epic four-year journey from Europe to the Holy Land and stormed the city walls to perpetrate one of the most infamous massacres in history.  The crusaders were impelled by an intoxicating combination of intense religious devotion, grim determination and military power, a blend that represented the shared interests of the churchmen and the knighthood of Europe.  The Church saw the heart of Christianity recovered from the infidel, while the knights received unprecedented spiritual rewards (and thereby avoided the Fires of Hell, the likely destination for their wicked souls); plus, for the small proportion that stayed in the Eastern Mediterranean, there was the prospect of new lands.  It a real curiosity, however, that the fall of Jerusalem provoked almost no response in the Islamic Near East – a situation partly caused by the chasm between the religious and political classes of the Muslim world.  The crusaders were also fortunate because they arrived in the region at a moment it was beset by religious and political divisions.  One factor – as today – is the fundamental division between the two main branches of Islam, the Sunni and the Shia; such was the rivalry between them that each preferred to ally with the crusaders against one another, rather than work together.  Secondly, the year 1094 was described by contemporaries as “the year of the death of caliphs and commanders”; powerful rulers and religious figures, in both Sunni and Shia lands, had died (not always of natural causes...) to destabilise and break-up hitherto formidable regimes.  Had the First Crusade arrived ten years previously, I doubt that it would have got across Asia Minor.  In any case, the Muslim world did not realise (until it was too late) that the crusade was a war of religious colonization, rather than just a raiding party.

Amongst the first real signs of a response came from as-Sulami, a Damascene jurist.  In c.1105 he delivered a sermon that excoriated the local ruling classes for their laziness, self-interest and failure in their duty as Muslims to wage the jihad against the invaders.  Jihad is a basic tenet of Islam, and holy wars had been called during previous centuries, but the spiritual devotion required to react to as-Sulami’s passionate oratory was almost entirely missing; on one occasion his audience numbered just six people... In many respects, the details of his speeches would be repeated in later decades, but c.1105 the nobles and clerics of the Muslim world lacked the mutuality of interests that had driven the First Crusaders to victory.

The early decades of the twelfth century saw various short-lived alliances between Muslim cities and the emerging Christian states of the East – hardly a situation of holy war and more a reflection of realpolitik.  Slowly, however, a more religious dimension began to emerge, and in 1144, Zengi, the lord of Aleppo and Mosul, captured the major crusader city of Edessa to strike the heaviest blow to date in the Muslim fightback.  Notwithstanding his victory, Zengi was a secular individual who spent much of his career fighting his fellow-Muslims; by contrast, his son, Nur ad-Din, was a deeply devout man.

The efforts of this individual, largely neglected in the present day – his tomb for example, is gloomy and unnoticed, while Saladin’s is prominent on the tourist trail in Damascus – laid many of the foundations for his more famous successor.  Nur ad-Din means “Light of the Religion,” and his piety led him to found madrasas that encouraged the production of jihad ideology and an emphasis on martyrdom, sacrifice, the duty to holy war and a stress on the importance of regaining Jerusalem from the infidel (as noted above, it was the place of the Prophet’s Night Journey and hence the third most important location in Islam behind Mecca and Medina).  Thus, at last, the religious and political classes began to work together and the partnership so vital to holy war began to flourish.

Nur ad-Din was also a formidable strategist and he succeeded in bringing together, first, Aleppo and Damascus (in 1154), and he then annexed Egypt (1169).  This latter conquest meant the removal of the Shia from Cairo and thereby displayed his credentials as the champion of the Sunni.  To rule Egypt he appointed an able young warrior – Saladin.  Soon, however, the latter’s determination to establish control over Egypt began to alarm his patron.  In the early 1170s Saladin flagrantly disobeyed his commander’s instructions and a civil war seemed inevitable.  Nur ad-Din’s death in 1174 prevented this, but Saladin took almost a decade to sweep aside his heirs and, basically, to usurp his former master’s dynasty.  He also urged the Muslims of the Near East to join him in the jihad against the Christians and, through a blend of religious devotion and brilliant diplomacy, he managed to draw together a coalition of Egypt, Syria and the Jazira (northern Iraq) and force the Christians to battle in the summer of 1187.  By now, the crusaders themselves were riven by faction-fighting and, while they remained formidable warriors, on July 4, 1187, Saladin crushed their army at the Battle of Hattin.  Jerusalem soon fell and Saladin was described as “a champion and protector of God’s Holy Land.” His later reputation – which flourished in Western Europe, too – stressed his generosity, his love of culture and his chivalric courtesy to opponents, most notably Richard the Lionheart (during the Third Crusade, 1189-92).  While Saladin’s career had many sometimes contradictory facets, there is little doubt that the recovery of Jerusalem marked its apogee.  It was an achievement that has entered into legend:  he became the hero of Islam in the medieval age and remains a role model for many Muslims to this day.

Saladin’s image in modern Sunni Islam remains highly positive.  When, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Western powers began to colonize and conquer Muslim lands in the Near East (often invoking a distorted crusading heritage in doing so), he emerged as a symbol of successful resistance.  As the man who ejected the crusaders (or in today’s terms, either Westerners in general, or the Israelis) he accomplished the aim of many modern-day groups.  So potent is this legacy that he has been invoked by ideologies as diverse as Arab nationalism – for example, President Nasser of Egypt (for whom his rule over Syria and Egypt was a perfect exemplar) and President Hafiz al-Asad of Syria – to the Islamism of Osama bin Laden.  At a less charged level, he is the subject of a forthcoming Malaysian animated cartoon in which his good judgement and moral qualities are seen as a suitable role model for young people today.  As an historical figure, and as a figure in contemporary culture, Saladin's life and career continue to be interesting.