by John Man
Young Saladin seems to have had that crucial balance between security and insecurity – the immediate security of family and religion, the wider insecurity of religious strife, Sunni versus Shia, Islam versus Christianity, local leaders versus each other. His father Ayyub is described as kind, upright and generous. Saladin would have grown up ‘resilient’, in a term favoured by modern psychologists. Meaning what exactly? Here are some of the traits identified in a range of studies that tend to ‘promote resilience’:70
Summarized in Russell Hurd, ‘A teenager revisits her father’s death during childhood’; see Bibliography.
• problem-solving skills
• social competence
• a sense of purpose
• an ability to stay removed from family discord
• an ability to look after oneself
• high self-esteem
• an ability to form close personal relationships
• a positive outlook
• focused nurturing – i.e. a supportive home life
• a well-structured household
• high but achievable expectations from parents
In Outliers, his book analysing what it takes to make highly successful people, Malcolm Gladwell points out that one key element is a mentor, a guiding light, someone who provides both an example and a helping hand. If his father provided an example of good behaviour, Saladin’s two mentors were his hard-fighting uncle Shirkuh and Nur al-Din, ruler of Aleppo and Mosul, anti-Crusader, would-be unifier of Islam, Saladin’s master and employer, the man who gave him the chance to seize power in Egypt. Without these two – the one a campaigner, the other a ruler – Saladin might have remained insignificant.
So he was programmed for leadership. What now? The first and most vital element for a leader is the agenda, the vision, about which today’s leaders and leadership theorists talk a good deal. An inspiring vision is a rare combination of the right circumstances, the right vision and the right person, who must dream it up, communicate it and get followers to believe in it. You can only get so far by brute force. Even China’s First Emperor, though unremittingly ruthless, had a vision: national unity the better to fight off the ‘northern barbarians’. Far better than mere brutality is to have a Noble Cause, something bigger than the leader himself.
In Saladin’s case, the vision was an Islamic world free from the non-Islamic, anti-Islamic outsiders. As Daniel Goleman comments, leaders with vision ‘exude resonance: They have genuine passion for their mission, and that passion is contagious.’71 In his vision, Saladin had two great advantages. Firstly, the cause had been in the air for a generation, since the arrival of the Franks on the First Crusade in 1098. He did not have to invent it, but apply it. Secondly, when rallying support among wary rivals, it is always useful to be able to direct attention on to foreigners. Xenophobia works, especially in conjunction with a higher purpose.
The New Leaders (UK), Primal Leadership (US). See Bibliography.
Another prime element of his leadership was his readiness to share adversity. The nature of revolutionary leadership demands it. In the words of James MacGregor Burns, ‘The leaders must be absolutely dedicated to the cause and able to demonstrate that commitment by giving time and effort to it, risking their lives, undergoing imprisonment, exile, persecution and continual hardship.’ Saladin campaigned, fought, risked his life and almost died from disease. Shared suffering does not guarantee success, and many a brave, misguided leader has died in vain, forgotten; but a refusal to share suffering is an almost certain guarantee of failure. Saladin is in good company. Successful revolutionary leaders who suffered for their cause and followers include Alexander, Jesus, Muhammad, Genghis Khan, Mao, Lenin, Castro and Mandela.
Many leaders have known how to inspire by combining present suffering with a noble cause. Witness Churchill on 13 May 1940, after just three days as prime minister, and three days after the German invasion of Belgium and Holland. France would soon fall. Britain would stand alone. He told his Cabinet: ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ He repeated that phrase later in the day when he asked the House of Commons for a vote of confidence in his new all-party government, and added grim, inspiring words – inspiring because of their grimness. Saladin might have made similar speeches to rouse his troops:
We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be.
One other benefit of sharing hardship is that it is impossible for both leader and followers to deny harsh facts. For military commanders and corporate leaders alike, seeing, telling and absorbing the unpleasant truth is an important part of retaining morale, for there is nothing so destructive as optimism that is constantly confounded by events. Poor leaders hide limitations and lay claim to genius, often with ludicrous results. Mussolini was ‘always right’, Idi Amin proclaimed himself Conqueror of the British Empire. Great leaders acknowledge inadequacies and seek to make them good. In his analysis of what makes good companies great, leadership expert Jim Collins concludes: ‘There is a sense of exhilaration that comes in facing head-on the hard truths and saying, “We will never give up. We will never capitulate. It may take a long time, but we will find a way to prevail”.’
Related to Saladin’s readiness to share adversity were two other qualities. First, his austerity. This is rare in leaders. Few can resist the urge to collect riches. Part of Genghis Khan’s appeal was his refusal to do so, adopting the guise of a simple Daoist sage: ‘In the clothes I wear or the meats I eat, I have the same rags and the same food as the cowherd or the groom.’ Saladin too considered his followers before himself, so much so that in death he had nothing to his name. Baha al-Din says his treasury held just 47 dirhems and one gold piece. ‘He left neither goods, nor house, nor real estate, neither garden, nor village, nor cultivated land, nor any other species of property.’
To this must be added his integrity. He kept his word. Lord Shang and Machiavelli were all for duplicity, if it served the leader’s purpose. That was not Saladin’s way. Keeping promises is a fundamental attribute of good leadership, for without it the trust of allies and those further down the chain of command vanishes, morale plummets, concerted action becomes impossible, creating what Daniel Goleman refers to as a ‘toxic organization’, in which ‘resonance’ gives way to ‘dissonance’.
All these qualities combine to strengthen morale. Someone who gave the matter of morale much thought was General Sir William Slim, who in 1943 was faced with restoring the morale of Britain’s 14th Army after the Japanese drove it out of Burma into India. As he recounts in his book Defeat Into Victory, ‘morale is a state of mind’, which must be created on three levels: spiritual, intellectual and material. By ‘spiritual’ he was referring not to religious fervour, but to belief in a ‘great and noble cause’, that must be tackled at once with aggression, by every man, each of whom must feel his actions have a direct bearing on the outcome. Intellectually, they must feel that the object is attainable, that their group is efficient, and that their leaders are to be trusted. Finally, they must feel they are provided for materially, with the tools for the job, in both weapons and conditions. This is virtually a blueprint for almost every force facing apparently overwhelming odds (not, however, for those few unusual cases in which men see a greater virtue in self-sacrifice than in victory: Japan’s kamikaze pilots, today’s Islamic suicide bombers).
Thanks to Shirkuh and Nur al-Din, Saladin’s career took off in Egypt. He was there supposedly to establish Nur al-Din’s authority. Egypt’s wealth would provide a basis
for unifying Islam and confronting the Crusaders. But no one foresaw the consequences – that Saladin would gain the experience he needed to take power for himself and emerge as Nur al-Din’s rival. To do this he exercised the most basic of his leadership skills: ruthlessness. He fought the Franks, collaborated in the murder of the vizier Shawar, built up a formidable army, bullied the young caliph into naming him vizier with power to command both the government and armed forces (including its fleet, the only Muslim one in the region).
His new position presented problems. Sunni Syrians and Shi’ite Egyptians were old rivals. Each despised the other. Saladin could not rule by charm, or by claiming legitimacy, but by force and duplicity. He engineered plots, arrested and tortured the plotters, dismissed troublesome rank-and-file members of the Egyptian army and palace guards – black troops and black eunuchs who formed a non-Egyptian minority. At a stroke he rid himself of a danger, without antagonizing the majority. That came later, when he imposed Sunni practices – but by then he had donned the mantle of Islam’s protector against the Frankish threat. On this basis, he put an end to the Fatimid caliphate, scattered the caliph’s library, divided Cairo’s palaces among his family, crushed revolts – even crucified two ringleaders in central Cairo – and spread his control to Yemen, all to ensure that he was master of Egypt. These are the acts of a leader more devoted to force than subtlety.
But now what? Egypt’s wealth was the key to conquest, but the door was Syria. Only from Syria could the Franks be confronted. It was obvious that he was a rival to his master, Nur al-Din. There could have been civil war – except that the two shared the same vision, and both held back for three years. Then Nur al-Din’s death gave Saladin a chance to claim his former master’s realm. This would not be easy, because major cities – Damascus, Aleppo, Mosul, Homs, Hama, Baalbek – were held by Nur al-Din’s heirs or allies. It was now that Saladin’s skill in exercising soft power came to the fore. Considering himself well qualified to take over by his record of conquest, anti-Crusader campaigning, wealth and power, he had to usurp, while pretending deference to Nur al-Din’s lineage. There was no point forcing himself on those cities and regions whose support he needed, if by doing so he turned them from rivals into enemies on a par with his real enemies, the Crusaders. If he besieged a city, he had to do so with a hand tied behind his back. If he won a battle, he took care not to pursue, slaughter and pillage. He often wrote to the caliph in Baghdad, asking for his backing, pointing out what he had achieved – ending Ismaili rule in Egypt, struggling against Shi’ism. Why, no one was better qualified to rule and take on the Franks – all, of course, as the humble instrument of Allah.
It took ten years of steps forward, steps back, negotiations, appeals, shows of force followed by displays of magnanimity, but in the end it worked. The caliph granted him a ‘diploma of investiture’, exhorting him to respect justice, surround himself with honest men, govern without violence – but also to pursue jihad and reconquer lost territories. There were limits – the caliph did not want Saladin approaching Baghdad, and there would be no money. But Saladin was free to turn his unified army against the Crusaders. He had the legitimacy he sought.
Success went only briefly to his head, for his ambitions were even more imperial. He dreamed of wider conquests – Iraq, Turkey, north Africa – even on occasion of spreading Islam to Europe. But this dream was a mistake. The first steps took him away from his main target, the Crusader states and Jerusalem. Fate stopped him, in the form of the fever that almost killed him. More by luck than judgement, he survived, to return to jihad.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of his soft leadership was that he applied it in his dealings with his enemies. He probed, retreated, consulted, negotiated, agreed, kept promises, exchanged and released prisoners, changed his mind, dealt courteously with Christian women. He acted like this partly because that was his character, partly because it worked. Negotiation often saves fruitless fighting and unnecessary losses. If xenophobia works in conquest, clemency works in victory. If you do not humiliate an enemy, you will not drive him into permanent hostility. Integrity paid off. ‘If we refuse what we have promised and are not generous with the benefits,’ he said once, ‘no one will ever trust us again.’
Saladin was not always great and good; he was not always successful; many of his successes were reversed; but it is remarkable that he clung to the virtues of good leadership, resisted the evils of poor leadership, and achieved as much as he did. That is why he is an object of admiration today.
17
Legacy: A Glowing Image, a Grim Reality
LONDON’S IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM HAS MANY OBJECTS FROM many wars. But there are some things that just don’t fit with weapons and battle-scenes. On the third floor, a certain corridor displays a small collection of such curiosities. One is a bronze wreath of laurel leaves which sports a number of Arabic inscriptions, many little eagles and a monogram made up of the initials IRWII. The story behind this strange object makes an unlikely link between four people: Saladin, a Turkish sultan, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and Lawrence of Arabia. It also reveals a good deal about Saladin’s reputation in both the West and the world of Islam.
Though hero-worshipped by Muslims at his death, Saladin was shortly afterwards forgotten, ignored, and disparaged for reasons we will get to later. Only in the late nineteenth century, with the rise of nationalism and Islamic internationalism, did Saladin once again become a Muslim hero. First off the mark was Abdul Hamid II, sultan of Turkey from 1876. As part of his despotic attempt to re-knit the decaying fabric of the Ottoman Empire, of which Syria was still a part, he claimed Saladin as his model. For Abdul Hamid, the European powers were latter-day Crusaders, busy tearing at the flanks of Islam and his empire. To symbolize his self-proclaimed role as saviour of his empire and Islam’s new unifier, he ‘restored’ the mausoleum and saved Saladin’s decaying wooden coffin by encasing it in marble.
Next to take an interest in the tomb was Germany’s Kaiser, Wilhelm II, in 1898. This had nothing to do with Saladin, and everything to do with European politics. Wilhelm’s Germany was on the rise. It faced enemies to east and west – Russia and France – and needed allies. The Turks had long feared that Russia wanted to dominate the Bosporus, because that was her gateway for her navy to get from the Black Sea through the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Culturally, Germany and Turkey had nothing much in common. Politically and militarily, they had lots. So during a whirlwind trip around the empire, the Kaiser took in Damascus and the mausoleum, where, according to his aide Ernst Freiherr von Mirbach, there were two wooden coffins, one being Saladin’s, the other that of an unnamed vizier.
At a banquet that evening Wilhelm as good as inferred that Abdul Hamid, pan-Islamist that he had become, was Saladin reborn. The Kaiser offered his thanks, he said, ‘moved by the thought of standing on the place where there tarried one of the most chivalrous rulers of all time, the great sultan Saladin, a fearless, blameless knight who often had to instruct his followers in the correct ways of knighthood.’72 He finished: ‘May the Sultan and may the three hundred million Muslims – who, living scattered over the earth, honour him as their caliph – be assured of this: that the German Kaiser will be their friend for ever.’
The phrase ‘fearless, blameless knight’ was a reference to the pan-European medieval ideal of knightly perfection: der Ritter ohne Furcht und Tadel, le Chevalier sans Peur et sans Reproche.
Next day, he laid flowers on the tomb and promised to pay for a new one. His odd contribution to the mausoleum is still there – a very un-Islamic sarcophagus of white marble, which, as a plaque says, is empty. Saladin’s remains supposedly lie alongside, in the tomb restored by Abdul Hamid, which is covered in green cloth embroidered with Quranic verses. What happened to the ‘vizier’ is a mystery. Today’s visitors crowding into the little mausoleum, only a few metres square, admire the purity of its coloured marble walls and high white dome, but many must surely wonder why Islam’s hero needs two coffins. It may
also occur to some that there is no certainty that Saladin is actually there, in the fabric-draped sarcophagus. Only by opening it will we know. Frankly, that’s not about to happen.
Wilhelm also left another reminder of his presence: the bronze wreath that now resides in the Imperial War Museum. The scattering of little eagles are German imperial eagles, the monogram IRWII is made from the initials of Imperator Rex (Emperor-King) Wilhelm II.
Now for the final link. The wreath lay on Saladin’s tomb for twenty years, surviving the turmoil that replaced Abdul Hamid with a new revolutionary government in 1908. In 1918, Lawrence of Arabia, leading light in the British-backed Arab insurgency against the Ottoman Empire, arrived in Damascus a few hours after it fell to British imperial troops (in fact Australians). Here he helped establish a provisional Arab government under his friend and co-insurgent Emir Feisal, soon to become king of Iraq. According to one story, Feisal presented Lawrence with the Kaiser’s wreath to symbolize the supposedly imminent end of European imperialism in Arabia. On his return to England, Lawrence presented it to the museum. Lawrence, who liked to dramatize things, had a slightly different version of what happened. The museum records that in his ‘deposit note’, he claimed to have removed the wreath himself from the sarcophagus ‘as Saladin no longer required it’.
This tale raises questions. Why did Muslims forget about Saladin for 500 years? Why did they resurrect him? And why did Christian Europeans, who were otherwise eager to dismiss Islam, never falter in their admiration?
Let’s first take the fall and rise of his reputation in the Muslim world.
One reason for his demotion was that, in the cold light of history, he did not succeed in his aims. He wanted to free the Middle East of the Crusaders (and even dreamed of spreading Islam to Europe, a sort of reverse Crusade). But in this he failed. Jerusalem was taken and the Franks were down, but not out. They retained Acre and much of the Syrian coast, enough to stage a comeback and retake Jerusalem fifteen years later. The Crusaders were not finally thrown out until 1291, almost a century after Saladin’s death, by the Mamluk rulers of Egypt – who, incidentally, also threw out the Mongols, a far greater threat than the Crusaders had ever been.
