LIFE OF SALADIN
Saladin (1138-1193) was born into a prominent Kurdish family, and it is said
that on the night of his birth, his father, Najm ad-Din Ayyub, gathered his
family and moved to Aleppo. There, his father entering the service of 'Imad
ad-Din Zangi ibn Aq Sonqur, the powerful Turkish governor in northern Syria.
Growing up in Ba'lbek and Damascus, Saladin was apparently an undistinguished
youth, with a greater taste for religious studies than military training. There
appears to have been few if any depictions of Saladin, but apparently tradition
holds that he was a short man with a neat beard and even somewhat frail.
His formal career began when he joined the staff of his uncle Asad ad-Din
Shirkuh, an important military commander under Nur al-Din. Nur al-Din, the
ruler of Damascus and Aleppo, succeeded his father, Zengi, after that ruler's
death, engaged in a race with the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem to take over
Egypt. During three military expeditions led by Shirkuh into Egypt to prevent
its falling to the Latin-Christian (Frankish) rulers of the states established
by the First Crusade, a complex, three-way struggle developed between Amalric
I, the Latin king of Jerusalem, Shawar, the powerful vizier of the Egyptian
Fatimid caliph, and Shirkuh.
In the last of these military expeditions, together with his uncle, Saladin
approached the walls of Cairo on January 2, 1169 at which point the Franks, who
had the city of Cairo under siege, retreated. Six days later, after allowing
the Franks to evacuate unopposed, his troops reached the walls themselves.
Thereafter, Saladin lured the rather untrustworthy Shawar into an ambush on
January 18th, killing him. His uncle, Shirkuh then became vizier. However, he
also died unexpectedly on the 23rd of March.
Subsequently, Saladin became vizier to the last Fatimid caliph (who died in
1171), earning him the title al-Malik al-Nasir ('the prince defender'), and
therefore his relations and successors were all given this title. It took
Saladin, or more properly, Salah al-Din Yusuf Ibn Ayyub (meaning Righteousness
of Faith, Joseph, Son of Job), only a few more years to became the sole master
of Cairo and the first Ayyubid sultan of Egypt in 1174. The Fatimid caliph's
death on September 12th of 1171 left the reins of power in Saladin's hands,
under the suzerainty of Nur al-Din. The situation could not have lasted
indefinitely, but the death of Nur al-Din on May 15, 1174 allowed Saladin, as
the sole ruler of Egypt, to assert his right to the throne. Saladin soon moved
out of Egypt and occupied Damascus and other Syrian towns, though Egypt
continued to be a base of his operations.
Saladin claimed legitimacy not from his lineage, but from his upholding of
Sunni orthodoxy. The Fatimids had failed, despite their long rule, to impart
their faith to the mass of the Egyptian population, and Saladin and his
successors addressed the task of making Egypt once more a center of orthodox
belief.
Saladin, like the great Amr Ibn el 'As, is a romantic historical figure in whom
it is difficult to find much fault. In fact, some of his most ardent admirers
have often been his Christian biographers. They, as much as the Arabs, have
made a myth of him, and what always attracted Europeans to Saladin was his
almost perfect sense of cultured chivalry. It is said that the crusader knights
learned a great deal about chivalry from him. For example, when the Crusaders
took Jerusalem in 1099 they murdered virtually all of its inhabitants, boasting
that parts of the city were knee-high in blood. When Saladin re-took the city
in 1187, he spared his victims, giving them time to leave and safe passage. It
was, after all, a holy city, and it was captured by the Muslims in a 'just
war'.
In fact, despite his fierce opposition to the Christian powers, Saladin
achieved a great reputation in Europe as a chivalrous knight, so much so that
there existed by the 14th century an epic poem about his exploits, and Dante
included him among the virtuous pagan souls in Limbo. His relationship with
King Richard I of England, who managed to repel him in battle in 1191, was one
of mutual respect as well as military rivalry. When Richard was wounded,
Saladin even offered the services of his personal physician.
Trade and commerce was essentially built into the Muslim faith and Mohammed
himself had laid down the religious rules for honorable behavior because
caravan trade and business demanded a particular kind of trust in the words of
others. Thus, it is said that Largesse was an essential part of Saladin's
faith.
Saladin brought an entirely different concept of a city to Cairo after the
Fatimids, because he wanted a unified, thriving, fortified place, protected by
strong walls and impregnable defenses, but functioning internally with a great
deal of commercial and cultural freedom, and with no private or royal enclaves
and no fabulous palaces. He wanted a city that belonged to it's inhabitants
even though he would be it's absolute ruler.
Many historians have attributed Saladin's plan for Cairo to purely local or
military considerations, but Saladin had what would now be called a world view.
He was, in fact, trying to defend a whole culture as well as it's territory, an
ideology as well as a religion. He looked on Egypt as a source of revenue for
his wars against Christian and European encroachments, and against the
dissident Muslim sects who divided Islam at this time. Apparently, he wanted
Cairo to be the organizing center for an orthodox cultural and ideological
revival, as well as a collecting house for the vast wealth he needed for his
defense against the crusades.
Though he began his career in Egypt under the Fatimids, he sought to re-educate
Egypt in orthodoxy (Sunni faith) rather than simply crush his rival Muslims
with the sword, which he did only when necessary (though he did lock up or
execute the entire Fatimid court). In fact, while his most famous creation in Cairo
today may be the military fortress known as the Citadel, his greatest
architectural contribution to Cairo was probably the madrasa, a college-mosque
where the interpretive ideology of the religion and Islamic law could be taught
once more instead of Shi'a dogma. To this end, he imported Sunni professors
from the East to staff his new schools. In eleven years, he built five such
colleges as well as a mosque. However, they taught more than religion, with
studies in administration, mathematics, geodesy, physics and medicine.
One of the schools that he built was near the grave of the Imam el Shafi'i, the
founder of one of the four main rites of the orthodox Sunni sect, and the
school to which many Egyptians still belong and to which Saladin himself was a member.
This was in the southern cemetery known as Khalifa.
But, of course, Saladin did think of the city's defenses. Even though he opened
up the royal city, he still had to have a genuine fortress that would be
invulnerable to any kind of military attack. Thus, between 1176 and 1177, he
began to build the Citadel, today, one of Cairo's most famous monuments. He
also needed a center of absolute authority within the city, and this need would
also be met.
Saladin's imprint on Cairo is still very visible today. Above all, he wanted to
enclose the whole of it, including the ruins of Fustat-Misr with a formidable
wall, and he began with Badr's wall to the north and extended it west to the
Nile and the port of al Maks. On the east, under the Mukattam Hills, he carried
Badr's walls south to his Citadel, which was built two hundred and fifty feet
above the city on its own hill.
Regrettably, however, though he may have shaped Cairo, little of his building
work remains. None of his religious monuments have survived, and little of
Saladin's Citadel or his city walls are left. Perhaps the most impressive work
that does still remain is the original perimeter of the Citadel, especially
when viewed from the rear, which makes its medieval character absolutely real.
However, most of today's Citadel was not built by Saladin, and in fact most
every conqueror including the British added something to it.
Perhaps one of the most regrettable losses within the Citadel that Saladin
built was a hospital, who his secretary, Ibn Gubayr, described almost in terms
of any good modern clinic today. He said it was a "palace goodly for its
beauty and spaciousness". Saladin staffed it with doctors and druggists,
and it had special rooms, beds, bedclothes, servants to look after the sick,
free food and medicine, and a special ward for sick women. Nearby, he also
built a separate building with barred windows for the insane, who were treated
humanely and looked after by experts who tried to find out what had happened to
their minds.
Saladin opened the palaces of al-Qahira (Cairo) and sold off the fabled
treasure of the Fatimids, including a 2,400 carat ruby, and an emerald four
fingers in length and the caliph's splendid library, to pay his Turkish troops.
He replaced the Fatimid's elaborate bureaucracy with a feudal system that gave
his military officers direct control over all Egypt's rich agricultural lands,
an act that has been blamed for a very sever famine which occurred during his
successor's reign.
Such wealth enabled Saldin to stride from success to success in Palestine. At
the Battle of Hattin (where he captured Jerusalem) in 1187, he dealt the
Crusader kingdoms a blow from which they never recovered. Thousands of
Christian prisoners were marched the 400 miles back to Cairo, where they were
forced to work extending the city's fortifications and building the Citadel.
Saladin left Cairo in 1182 to fight the crusaders in Syria, and he never
returned. By the time he died in Damascus in 1193, he had liberated almost all
of Palestine from the armies of England, France, Burgandy, Flanders, Sicily,
Austria and, in effect, from the world power of the Pope, as well as
establishing his own family in Cairo. In his battles against these European
crusaders, he often had the aid of eastern Christians, who were as much the
victims of the western armies as anybody else in the eastern lands. The Proud
Georgians, for instance, preferred Saladin to the Pope, and so did the Copts of
Egypt.
In the end, Saladin was succeeded by his brother al Adil, but the groundwork of
the city of Cairo was now developed and it would struggle on often through the
reigns of cruel, arbitrary, intelligent, cultured, brutal, artistic rulers with
a populace who lived a very full and risky life of hard work, trade, gaiety,
terrible suffering, calamity, patience and extraordinary passions who somehow
managed to break the confines of the religion and the harsh authority which
governed their lives in future years.
A timeline of Saladin's Life:
* 1138: Born in Tikrit in Iraq as the son of the Kurdish chief Najm ad-Din
Ayyub.
*
* 1152: Starts to work in the service of the Syrian ruler, Nur al-Din.
*
* 1164: He starts to show his military abilities in three campaigns against the
Crusaders who were established in Palestine.
*
* 1169: Serves as second to the commander in chief of the Syrian army, his
uncle Shirkuh.
*
* 1171: Saladin suppresses the Fatimid rulers of Egypt in 1171, whereupon he
unites Egypt with the Abbasid Caliphate.
*
* 1174: Nur al-Din. dies, and Saladin uses the opportunity to extend his power
base, conquering Damascus.
* 1175: The Syrian Assassin leader Rashideddin's men make two attempts on the
life of Saladin. The second time, the Assassin came so close that wounds were
inflicted upon Saladin.
* 1176: Saladin besieges the fortress of Masyaf, the stronghold of Rashideddin.
After some weeks, Saladin suddenly withdraws, and leaves the Assassins in peace
for the rest of his life. It is believed that he was exposed to a threat of
having his entire family murdered.
* 1183: Conquers the important north-Syrian city of Aleppo.
* 1186: Conquers Mosul in northern Iraq.
* 1187: With his new strength he attacks the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, and
after three months of fighting gains control over the city.
* 1189: A third Crusade manages to enlarge the coastal area of Palestine, while
Jerusalem remains under Saladin's control.
* 1192: With The Peace of Ramla armistice agreement with King Richard 1 of
England, the whole coast was defined as Christian land, while the city of
Jerusalem remained under Muslim control.
* 1193 March 4: Dies in Damascus after a short
illness.
BY =>PROF MUHAMMAD NAWAZ JANJUA
HAMZA NAWAZ JANJUA
AHMAD NAWAZ JANJUA
* 1193 March 4: Dies in Damascus after a short illness.
